I've now finished my first run-through of the the game (not yet dabbled into the epilogue) with something like 39 Missiles, more or less, 5 Energy Tanks, possibly 4 Accel Charges and 2 E-Recovery Tanks.
Final impression: an enjoyable first stab at this new direction for Metroid. Touch up a few bits & bobs on the presentation side and they'll really be onto something with this.
In the end, I'll call the story and its exposition passable. Once the big secret about the Bottle Ship was revealed, I was reminded of I, Robot a great deal. The whole idea of cloning the Space Pirates, Ridley, the Metroids etc. and then putting them in the hands of a artificial intelligence that becomes too intelligent for its own good is quite like the NS-5s being corrupted by V.I.K.I., in that it was so clearly NOT a good idea in the first place. Maybe it's not told in the most elegant fashion, but it's a good enough story conceit for having Planet Zebes environments inside a man-made facility.
The game design, on the other hand, has many, many things to commend about it in spite of the more linear structure. Plenty of scavenging for expansions - I particularly enjoyed attaining those that leveraged the Shine Spark - and a healthy dose of backtracking. In fact, some of the changes to the gameplay that people have been chastising didn't bother me much because, in all honesty, they aren't actually big changes at all. For example, the manner in which you get all your power-ups, sans the Diffusion Beam and the Seeker Missile, which are discovered the conventional way. The one everybody seems to love to hate is the long trek through Sector 3 before unlocking the Varia Suit. But is it really all that different to running through Norfair or Magmoor Caverns before you find the Varia Suit? I agree that in a narrative sense, it is a little absurd that certain powers are withheld, but in a game design sense, it's how it has always been, just presented slightly differently. In Other M, the great satisfaction of moving through a fairly challenging area to find an upgrade which makes said area a breeze to go back through is definitely still there. I loved travelling on the path to Sector Zero, where the weird gravity effects are in place, and then through it later with the Gravity Suit, negating those effects.
Graphically, it ranks up there near the top, a tad below Galaxy, Corruption and Brawl for best visuals on Wii. Aurally, it has its ups and downs. The dramatic music is great to listen to when it is there, but everything is surprisingly quiet a lot of the time, more so than I was expecting from reading the reviews. Prior Metroid titles have proven that music can offer memorable melodies and atmosphere at the same time, so I would have this aspect of the game differently, but it isn't a killer.
That's all I have to say. I might back for 100% completion some time in the future when I have no other games to play.
Topic: Metroid Other M (Read 525695 times)
