- I pick a game, whether good or bad, that I could rant about in some way, and then I create a rant based on the game.
- Rants may not necessarily focus on how bad the game is, but rather may even be focused on poor aspects of otherwise pretty good games.
- People are free to comment on the rants, give their input, carry on a discussion regarding one of the rants (even if it's older than the newer rants that appear).
- I have no definite timeframe for when I'll be posting a new rant, but I'll at least let a few days pass between rants, depending on the flow of traffic regarding each specific rant. For example, lengthy conversations on a specific rant will postpone the next rant, but not necessarily until discussion's finished, because I may get the urge to move on to a new subject. But you are still free to continue the discussion on a past rant, even if a new one is posted.
- Rants likely will contain spoilers, so if one of my rants is on a game you haven't played and don't want to spoil any of the game for yourself, do not read these rants.
- Remember, this is all my opinion. If you happen to like the subject matter that I'm ranting on, or disagree with me, don't take it personally. I shouldn't even have to say this, but I'm posting this reminder anyway.
Index of Rants
- Metroid: Other M
- Sonic Colors
- Pokémon Black and White
- Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney
- Super Mario 3D Land and Super Mario 3D World
- Megaman 2
- Fallout 3
- Castlevania: The Adventure
- Link's Awakening's Chamber Dungeons
Metroid: Other M
I hate this game. I got so little enjoyment out of this game and I'm pretty certain I've gotten headaches from playing this game. Oh sure, like everyone else, when the game was announced and we saw our first trailer of it, I was pretty excited at the prospect of getting a new third-person Metroid game with the promise that it would be like the sidescrollers we know and love, but transitioned into a 3D environment. I was eager. I thought it would be great. But news continued to pour out about its new schemes and attempts to change up the formula, and I got more and more nervous. Particularly about first-person mode, and how it would be required to solve some puzzles or defeat some enemies, or even just shoot missiles. But I decided I'd give it a chance, and I was intrigued at the more in-depth story they hinted at.
However, for whatever reason, I didn't manage to acquire the game at launch date, and in fact did not get a hold of a copy until Christmas of 2011. At that point, I had heard the tales of the story being terrible and Samus' characterization deplorable, as well as several people in IRC proclaiming it as a horrible game. So when I actually did play the game, I went into it with a combination of low expectations because of this, but a hope that what I'd be playing would still be true to the Metroid formula and deliver a fantastic experience.
Let's not beat around the bush: It was a terrible game. One of the worst I'd ever played. Might declare it the absolute worst if it weren't for Superman 64.
Now let's get onto why I feel this way, starting with the most important part: The gameplay. Sure, it starts out fine enough, being basically a 2D Metroid in 3D, with your D-pad controlling movement and 1 and 2 being your shoot and jump buttons. Where it gets irritating is when the space is opened up and you can move eight directions, where a D-pad just doesn't cut it as well as a control stick would have. Sure, for the most part the game manages to keep you on a fixed track so that simply holding one direction does well enough, but it's not perfect, and you really should have been given use of the control stick to move Samus.
And then there's combat itself. Combat feels far too automatic and repetitive in this game. I get that it's a far better alternative than having to manually aim at everything in a 3D plane, but it just makes things too simple. The finishing moves for larger enemies were interesting at first, but after a while, having to finish off every enemy that way (at least if you wanted to save time) got really tedious. The new "SenseMove" dodging system is a good idea in theory, but too many encounters became nothing more than "Keep dodging until you get an opening to attack the foe." If they had made combat more varied with several ways to take down more dangerous foes, it could have been far more interesting than the final product. As it stands, combat felt like more of a chore than a staple of the series.
And then there's the biggest problem... First-person mode. Perhaps Team Ninja thought it was necessary, because Metroid was fresh off the fantastic Prime series and expected people would only want to play a Metroid game with first-person in it. Not true, since there was a likely larger crowd that wanted a pure sidescrolling Metroid. Or perhaps they were trying to meet in the middle and please both crowds. But unfortunately for them, it was a terrible addition that should have been left on the cutting room floor. It feels forced, and the fact that missiles are restricted to first-person mode makes it even more irritating. And the fact that some enemies can't be defeated unless you go into first-person mode makes it more irritating, especially when you can't move at all. You can look around, but you can't move. This makes it kind of pointless except for obscure puzzles that feel arbitrary, as well as the horrible pixel hunt segments scattered throughout that take ages for you to find out what you're supposed to be looking at. A single drop of green blood on the ground? Someone standing in a window you can't make out? These are horrible, and should have been scrapped entirely along with first-person mode; maybe then they could have developed a control scheme for the Wiimote/nunchuck or the Classic Controller that would have made the rest of the game feel better.
The least of my complaints is the linearity, because it didn't feel as forced upon you as others seemed to say. But the design of each area, for the most part, is uninspired and bland. I can not remember distinctly any areas I felt were truly exciting to navigate. Oh, and let's not forget the upgrade system. Or, "upgrade" system. In actuality, Samus has all of her items, she just decides to let "Daddy" tell her what to do, instead of being the woman we know her as and using her own judgment. And by that I mean her former CO, Adam Malkovich, gets to tell her when she gets to use certain pieces of her repertoire. Guess what this means? You get to navigate an extremely hot volcanic area for several areas before Adam finally tells you you can use the Varia Suit. It's a really arbitrary system, and sure, at least it's not the cliche "random suit malfunction oh no now you must go get all your gear back" scenario, but it's also kind of shortsighted.
I guess that brings us to the story. The story itself isn't so bad, and actually has a few interesting twists, but it has such a terrible presentation that it's easy (and forgivable) to disregard the entire story as garbage. Sure, it has a few bright spots; Adam's portrayed well, Anthony Higgins is a fun character, and Samus' backstory doesn't really have any problems. But Samus is portrayed by what I can only assume is a female copy of Hayden Christensen, and there's an overload of dialogue, meaning her lines drone on heinously. She repeats the obvious in her inner dialogue, speaks far too much, and the game seems to be more a fan of "telling" than "showing," unlike previous Metroid games. As mentioned above, Samus' characterization takes a blow by making her seem subservient to Adam rather than be the independent woman we're used to seeing her as. Sure, you can explain it away in the backstory by her relationship with Adam in the past, and Adam even does make it clear to her at the beginning that she's going to play by his rules while they're working together aboard the Bottle Ship, but it still comes off as a forced addition for the sake of gameplay reasons. And it even makes Samus seem a bit less intelligent, where she has to be told what works and what doesn't, whereas in the past she was more than resourceful enough to figure these things out for herself. And the only sign at all that she contested this agreement was a segment where she activated some of her abilities without Adam's permission, with the snarky line as well. The problem is this was during a segment when Adam's fate was unknown, so it seems kind of assholish to say when the guy may be dead at that time. "Adam! I must see if he's okay! But screw that jackass."
Then there's the stupid "baby" motif that dominates the entire storyline. The baby Metroid, the bottle ship, the "baby's cry" distress signal... Okay, we get it. Babies. Babies everywhere. I mean sure, Samus was attached to the Metroid and I'm sure its death took a toll on her, but can you get any more blatant and forceful with the baby puns? Whoever wrote this game's story and dialogue should be fired and never allowed to touch anything else in storytelling ever again. I'm sure the story would have turned out much better if it was still the same story, but a professional writer wrote all the dialogue. Oh, and they hired someone for Samus who could actually act. Has anyone ever heard the cut narration by Samus in Metroid Prime? The narration itself is out of place, but that voice is wonderful, and they should have recast her for Other M. It would have at least been that much more bearable. Instead, they hired some stage actor who had no experience in professional voice work, and the results are... this game.
Let's get the Ridley PTSD scene out of the way: It had basis in the 90s comics/manga, it's not new, it was apparently done realistically according to experts, and Ridley had in fact traumatized Samus as a child, so it isn't that unfitting. It just seems that way since no other game portrayed her suffering PTSD. I'm sure the PTSD would be suppressed when she knew he was alive and knew she had to just kill him, whereas in Other M's timeline, she knew he was dead on Zebes, but he came back anyway. I'm not gonna hate on that part because everyone already has already, and perhaps unfairly. The other games either were limited by the systems they were on or go in hand with that "She knew he was alive so she could suppress it" explanation. Moving on.
I'm also not sure how I feel about them disregarding the Chozo entirely. Aren't they pretty much the backbone of Samus' existence? I mean, this game was supposed to explore Samus' past, yet they leave out the most important piece of it. Oh well, I suppose they can't be featured in every game. And there's also the fact that Ridley is now a Pokemon... I dunno I don't like his evolutionary cycle. Little Birdie may have been cute, but turning into a giant lizard thing in one step? ... yeah... And then mutating again into Ridley? My guess is it was contrived so that they could explain why Ridley was back: "We cloned this but didn't know what it was and thought it was cute so we kept it." I'm sure just cloning him and his first form was just a smaller Ridley would still work, they could just as easily have said "We were gonna try to use him on our side like the Space Pirate clones, but it failed." Bah. So much terrible in the story of this game, so little time.
Now, the background plot of the Bottle Ship (and later the BSL laboratory in Fusion) involving the Federation secretly commissioning scientists to clone and study life to try to use for its own gain is a good plot, and I like the dynamic of the Galactic Federation not being as pure and triumphant as one might think. All of that makes for a good story. But the rest of the story is presented so poorly that it's difficult to like. In fact it's easy to hate. Doesn't help that it's told in multiple, lengthy, unskippable cutscenes either. It really all comes off as a failed experiment in the end.
As I analyze my rant and consider what I may have left out, I realize there are two things I haven't really talked about. One, the items. Which, eh, are fine I suppose, but not spectacular, and they only suffer by being incorporated into such a horribly-controlled game anyway. The other are the bosses. Which are pretty horrid, bland, or just not that exciting. Or a combination. There was one fight that was at least partially interesting, but when it became a boss that you fought multiple times, the magic wore off quickly. Oh, and don't get me started on the Queen Metroid. I'm having a hard time recalling a worse final boss than this in any video game. The first phase is a horrid segment where the Queen Metroid spawns regular Metroids, which can only be defeated by freezing them with a charge shot and then breaking them by firing a missile at them in first-person. It's difficult enough to freeze them, but breaking them gets even more difficult when there are tons of Metroids flying at you and won't stop pestering you. The next stage of the battle I can't recall, but I don't want to. The final stage allows you to relive your fondest Metroid II memories by going inside its mouth and laying a power bomb. Something many people don't figure out at first, probably because they, like Samus, had forgotten how to figure things out for themselves instead of taking orders from prompts. (In case it's not clear, that entire last sentence was a joke and another shot at Other M itself.) I figured it out, but eh, I didn't feel the slightest satisfaction. I just felt sad I wasted that much time of my life on this piece of garbage that dare call itself a game, let alone a Metroid game.
And then there was the whole retarded "You're being killed by giant beasts but if you target the girl in the background the ending cutscene plays!" And don't get me started on Phantoon... He epitomizes the whole "dodge endlessly then fire a shot when there's an opening" problem with much of the combat in this game. Eugh.
And so, there you have it: The reasons why Other M deserves to be dumped in a toilet more than your own feces. I went into it with low expectations, and still thought it was a terrible, terrible game. One of the worst ever made. A game I've ranted about so many times in various degrees in chatrooms, that I decided to compile as many of my thoughts into one post. This rant. Hopefully I got them all, despite how large this rant is already. So yeah, there's my first rant. Hope it entertained you in some way.