I seem to be a oddball in that my main beef with Other M is the gameplay. I truly found the game an utter chore to play and it lacked the very elements that make Metroid enjoyable to me in the first place. The storyline is stupid but I enjoy Metal Gear Solid games so a bad story isn't enough to turn me off.
Federation Force was raked over the coals by reviewers and I don't try out games that have been almost universally **** on. There are tons of games I've heard great things about but I've never played so why would I spend my limited time or money on games with poor reputations? If anything reviewers tend to overrate games so Federation Force's average score being around 64% suggests that it's really bad. If it was the same game but wasn't made by Nintendo, wasn't Metroid, and was on the Vita would it have any notoriety at all?
I think having some concerns about these new Metroid games is justified because of another Nintendo franchise that never recovered once it had a few duds: Star Fox. I haven't given a damn about a Star Fox game in 20 years. Star Fox Adventures reviewed well at the time but it is a really meh game and it is really only Star Fox in name. Star Fox Command got okay reviews but never sounded like anything that would interest me. The other two games, the ones with the most "proper" gameplay, are generally regarded as trash. So if we have an example of a franchise that Nintendo seemingly lost interest in and farmed out for some lousy games that has never returned to the level it was. If it can happen to Star Fox why can't it happen to Metroid? We've got two dud games in a row, long absences between releases, third party devs with no previous experience with the series getting the work - it's all the same cues so I think it's worth being cautious about.