Other M

Ever heard the phrase franchise killer? Eleven years ago Other M hit store shelves and its effect on the storied franchise was nothing short of catastrophic. Whether you hate the game or maybe even love it, the ripples it created had long lasting effects on the franchise. It would take seven years before another Metroid game to come along, unless you count Federation Force, which most people do not. But beyond that Samus would not come back to our home televisions for eleven years.

So what happened? Is the game that horrible? Many reviews at the time praised its simple control scheme and Samus' quick response to inputs. Indeed the only complaints on the game play front were the limiting nature of the first person perspective. Most of Other M is third person and in this mode of play the player can move her in all directions although mostly you will navigate along the basic compass directions of the D-pad. The game is designed to play like a 2-D game but you can run toward and away from the screen. This play-style works best moving left to right and away from the camera. But as soon as you have to run toward the camera you become aware of some of the limitations to this design. In the few larger arenas Samus movement feels largely unnatural as you will tend to tap the D-Pad trying to activate Samus’ instant dodge move or sense move as the game calls it..

Samus' charge beam is incredibly slow intentionally and missiles are locked behind the first person mode. So the quickest way to get a charge shot is to successfully dodge an attack while charging your beam. This gives you an instant full charge and a window to attack. So you will often in boss fights or mobs stand still tapping a direction holding the charge button waiting for an enemy to attack you so you can punish them. This might be more fun if it was based on reaction and skill. But the window for the dodge is so large it takes almost no skill at all to pull off. Long corridors filled with enemies can also be dismissed with ease thanks to the lock on mechanic.

Samus automatically locks on to enemies she is facing. Which means in the games many long hallways you can run down hammering the fire button and just mow down enemies with little or no skill. But on the other end of the spectrum you will encounter enemies that are damage sponges. These enemies, you are encouraged to dispatch by jumping on them with a charged beam and killing them with a cinematic headshot. But the timing and execution for this is difficult and so you will often save several seconds of gameplay of you and the enemy jumping around while you try to use So the game fluctuates from segments that are too easy to moments of frustrating difficulty due to the nature of the controls. Missiles as already stated are locked behind the first person perspective activated easily by pointing the remote at the screen. But doing so locks the player in place and even changing direction requires a button press. This makes using missiles in combat clunky. Despite this you will often need to use missiles for puzzles and bosses.

The only effective mode of play I found was the over the shoulder perspective reserved for tense and small spaced. In these moments the game achieves the tension that the franchise is known for. But these segments are short and often contain few intractable elements. Even firing Samus weapons is not available. The game frustratingly gates the player at every turn. Adam’s arbitrary and mind numbingly stupid restrictions of Samus arsenal aside. A lot of the gameplay feels similarly limited. You can move in 3-D with a two dimensional input device. You can shoot and “explore” in first person, but you can not move while doing it. You can explore tight areas with a cool cinematic perspective but only certain ones and during these segments you can do nothing but walk. But all of this pales in comparison to the biggest sin of Other M.

Far, far too often the player loses control of Samus to sit through long, poorly scripted and badly directed cutscenes. Now I am not going to critique the story, I mean I could as there are many flaws. Like Samus' uncharacteristically stilted and timid personality that fluctuates depending on the needs of the story. But those have been well documented and honestly watching bad cutscenes and voice overs have their own charm in video games. In fact the whole situation could be easily forgiven if not for the fact that the cutscenes are un-skippable. Why? Why would they do that? Taking away the agency of the player for fifteen to twenty minutes periodically in the game is inexcusable even if the cutscenes were amazing.

Originally when I played Other M I had a softer opinion of the game. I have some fond memories of it, particularly playing it with friends and family, enjoying the pervasive sense of terror. Once playing with my cousins we were all laughing and having a good time when an enemy jumped up grabbing Samus startling all of us. It is a testament to the world building at play in the game. The art design is a little dark but that just adds to the atmosphere. The colors for Samus suit are too harsh though and she contrasts so hard with the backgrounds that I think this was likely intentional to make her stand out in the lower resolution the Wii offers. But this has an unfortunate side effect of making her a sickly yellow color, something comparable to bile. But I just did not notice all this the first time I played it why?

Well first the cutscenes were new to me when I played the game originally so sitting through them was entertaining, even though they were bad. A lot of games from that period also had unfortunate color choices related to the limitations of hardware coupled with just some ugly colors being common. The gameplay felt new because the market was not yet replete with excellent Metroid Vania’s to play. It was a new Metroid game and I was riding high off the franchises successes with Zero Mission, Fusion and the Prime Games.

I said in my last review (see below), which was on Samus Returns, that playing Metroid Dread increased my enjoyment of that game. But the exact opposite occurred when I tried to play Other M again. I found it difficult to return too because now the cutscenes are in the way of what I love most about the franchise: the immersive world building and gameplay. When I finally got to play the game I spent several minutes being tutorialized before more cutscenes took control back away from me. When I finally got control “for real,” I was shocked by how un-engaging and unchallenging the game really is. None of the challenge that is there comes from intentional design either, just poor execution of the controls and unnecessary limitations placed on the player. I found it a real struggle to continue playing the game.

I feel sort of bad because I was one of the people who defended this game back in the day. I still do not think it's terrible, but I do think it actively discourages replay-ability. To me that is one of the strengths of the franchise and I have replayed every game in the cannon more than once just to experience the journey and try something different each time. But I do not think I will return to Other M again and it is a shame that I feel like I can’t. Honestly if the cutscenes were skippable, I might. But as it stands the segments of gameplay one is offered in exchange for the missable story equals diminishing returns with passing moment. I used to like this game, but the long list of better Metroid and Metroidvanias to play means it will likely sit in my collection collecting dust.