phantom_leo said:

Con: Team Ninja can't portray a woman without sexualizing her. Samus isn't a love-sick school-girl, nor is she a heaving-breast, overly-emotional woman. Her speaking a lot and the whole Adam story-line worries me in their hands. SAMUS WAS NEVER MEANT TO BE A SEXUAL OBJECT!

This ain't a con in my book. Bounty Hunter or not, Samus is still a woman. Anyway, Nintendo should have thought of the consequences when they rendered her in that Zero Suit for Brawl.

Coopersville said:

Anyway, she doesn't look too sexualized in the leaked preview footage. The Brawl Samus was more chesty.

Wow! Anyway nice tits and ass.

Dvader said:

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This room is like something from the X-files, the government is brainwashing these people. Off camera Mulder is peeking through a small window.

gamingeek said:

Dvader said:

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This room is like something from the X-files, the government is brainwashing these people. Off camera Mulder is peeking through a small window.

Perfect.

CVG

From the demo we played last week, Team Ninja co-developed Metroid: Other M is definitely a culture shock for fans.

Start button pressed and the demo kicks off with the most gorgeous FMV sequence yet seen in a Nintendo game. It's pure Metroid fan porn: the visually stunning video details the final moments of Super Metroid, with our hero Samus Aran taking on the gigantic mother brain in a glorious fight to the death, leading to the destruction of the planet Zebes and the death of sole remaining Metroid.

It's a fantastic opening to a series entry that even Nintendo admits contains "a lot more cutscenes" - a big shock to the system considering up until now Metroid has been all about lonely atmosphere and hardly a single spoken word.

Retroid
The game begins proper as the bounty hunter awakes in a futuristic hospital, having dreamed the lovely FMV that's just exploded all over our retina. Although Samus has a voice, the developers have cleverly kept the tone of the SNES classic alive by having our once-silent hero talk entirely in post-event narrative - from what we've seen she never directly exchanges dialogue with anyone.

With the obligatory training section and barrage of cut-scenes out of the way, the Other M demo naturally turns to the real meat of the series; responding to a distress signal on an abandoned space station. Cue more lovely FMV, and then gameplay.

At times Other M looks just like the delicious Super Metroid sequel our 12-year-old selves imagined future consoles would produce. Samus runs through seemingly endless corridors, summersaults and wall jumps up vertical chasms and then blasts her way through an army of turtle-esque alien critters sprawled across the walls and ceiling.

The game's controls are surprisingly streamlined. In fact - for good or bad - Other M is played entirely with the Wii Remote; the 1 button fires, 2 jumps, A activates the morph ball, while d-pad-only movement recreates the feel of an oldschool sidescroller.

There are advanced techniques hidden underneath this setup, such as holding the 1 button to activate a power bomb or jamming the d-pad at the very last minute to dodge an attack, but otherwise everything about the game has been simplified to accommodate the accessible input. Enemies don't drop power ups, switches are automatically pressed upon contact and - most controversial of all - the game aims for you.

M is for Mishap
It's from here that the press demo seemingly exposes a game that's unsure of what it wants to be. Platforming sections look and feel like a promising 2.5D upgrade for the series, but slightly spam-y automatic shooting mechanics take away some of the retro satisfaction we may have gotten from being able to manually target enemies.

Pressing up on the d-pad, instead of aiming Samus's weapon towards the onslaught of flying critters, simply walks her further back into the scenery. Sacrificing the series' core mechanic (shooting) for the ability to walk two feet into the scenery of an empty corridor (though later levels may develop this) seems questionable at this point.

And all of this simplification is in the name of one of Other M's hallmark features. With a point of the Wii Remote at the television screen players can jump to first-person mode at any time. From here you can scan the environment for clues and launch missiles at baddies' weak points.

Unfortunately you can't actually move in this mode and the demo environments we played were sorely lacking the attention to detail and fantastic, clever art design of the Retro Studios-developed prime games.

When tasked with jumping behind the visor to target a boss character's weak points, our involvement went as deep as looking in its general direction and spamming the shoot button - though we could run over to it in third person for some typically Team Ninja wrestling moves.

From our experience with the demo the Wii pointer could've been put to much better use, though perhaps the full game will better show off the first-person mode.

We would've much preferred a trade-off of 3D movement for full shooting controls - or even better, a nunchuck-Wii Remote pointer setup which would allow both 3D movement and full control of Samus's projectiles. Because at the moment walking into a room and thoughtlessly spamming the fire button until all enemies are dead just doesn't cut it.

What worries us most about Other M though aren't the play mechanics - these can be fixed up before release (even if it is very close). What concerns us - as fans - is that even with Metroid co-creator, Yoshio Sakamoto on board, the game seems to have ditched all familiarity with the Metroid series.

The art-style is retro and fantastically animated, but visually Other M is nowhere near as attractive or artistically pleasing as the seven-year-old Metroid Prime. The series' famous score too sounded dull and totally out of synch with the series. Finally for a game with a new focus on narrative, cut-scenes in our short demo were wooden and plagued with dodgy dialogue such as, "I authorise the use of Ice Guns!"

But it was a short demo. It goes without saying we've got our fingers crossed really tight that future Other M play sessions address our concerns, but Metroid purists may be in for a big surprise this summer - and not necessarily a great one.

Auto aim sounds bad

angrymonkey said:

Come back retro.....come baaack.

Eh, maybe their new game will kick ass.

Yeah, I miss Retro. I hope that Nintendo gave them carte blanche to work on whatever they wanted. Such a shame that two of the designers had to leave.