Nintendo just Other M'd Star Fox

[The Almighty Aardvark]

I was kind of psyched for this game, me and my brothers have spent a lot of time with Starfox Assault multiplayer (actually played it last night). Of course though, turns out this game doesn't have any sort of respectable multiplayer. I don't get why this keeps happening. Even Nintendo, which used to be the bastion for local multiplayer, seems to be dropping it across the board. Gaming is more widespread and social than ever, but there are fewer games than ever being made that you can play with someone else in earshot.

 

[shrekfan246]

For the record, I can't comment on Star Fox in particular because I have very little interest in the series, but by and large every game I've played which has used gyro controls has felt awful to control in those particular segments. It could just be that those games all happened to have poorly-implemented gyro control, but then I'm not so sure it's a coincidence that it happens in every single one. Gyroscopes in controllers/handheld consoles were a cool idea, but have ended up largely being a failed idea that was (rightfully) ditched by most games that actually wanted to succeed.

It can be a neat little option in certain ways. I actually quite liked the gyro aiming in Wind Waker and Twilight Princess HD. Aiming in those games is usually a very short action, so it doesn't have enough time to become a nuisance. You can use the analog stick along with it, so you have the solid movement of a stick and the quick precision of the gyroscope. And as a happy accident the Wii-U controller's weight makes the gyro aiming feel more solid overall, as opposed to the lightweight of a regular controller.

I found the aiming in Wind Waker HD to be a bit too twitchy. I admittedly have slightly unsteady hands, but trying to get the grappling hook to settle on those little swinging spots became far more of a chore than it ever was in the original game. Also, considering it was just used for swinging the grappling hook (or could you use it for the bow and camera, too? Been a while), it seemed incredibly pointless. I can't fault people for accusing Nintendo of being gimmicky whenever I think about stuff like that, because to me it seems like a "trying to fix what isn't broken" situation.

I mean, I appreciated the additional speed you get from aiming with the Wii U controller's gyroscope, but at least in my case it ends up sacrificing precision, which isn't the best solution in the world.

 

[Elvis Starburst]

Yeah, gonna not agree with this 100%. A lot of people complain about the controls because it splits your attention. If you're not good at that, of course it's gonna suck.

Example: In the first mission there are these annoying spider enemies that storm a tower that General Pepper is holed up in; there weak point is directly on top of their heads, so your only choice is to use the gyro controls to point your reticule straight down on them, all the while careening into buildings because you can't see where the fuck your going because you'll be using cockpit mode for this, which also fucking sucks because its forced.

Absolutely right that it's a mess that it's forced. But, the best way to handle these things is to angle your flight path AWAY from buildings first, then make a sort of "run" by swooping above them, and pulling away when the fire against you gets too intense. It's slightly flawed in execution, but you gotta plan your attacks out a bit more first.

And then, when Nintendo decided to brilliantly add in platforming, I discover that when you try and turn your little shit walker in a circle so you can face the next platform, it doesn't pivot; it instead walks in a mini circle. Which means, when the platform is tight on space, you'll either be forced to do a six point turn like the world's most inept driver, or fall off the platform and start all over again. You can't really strafe, either, meaning you'll be spending a lot of time picking off your targets from a stationary position, ie making you a ginormous sitting duck, which is why the animal they designed this off is so fitting.

Considering how pissed you sounded when first experiencing it, it sounds like you might not have sat down and tried everything first. If you did, you'd know you can tilt the right stick left or right to turn your orientation in a completely stationary position. By holding ZL, you can indeed strafe properly, and it makes handling a bunch of enemies in tight corridors a lot easier cause you don't have to worry about accidentally turning.

TA lot of what you do in the hover copter is just plain boring; fly from this point to this point, deploy your fuck-about robot to hack some thing, and then do it all again.

No issues here. It halts the pacing quite a bit, I agree. It's cool, but it's not a fun thing to play with half the time.

This game is bad, guys

Is it bad, or is it one of those "Fuck this game and its controls, IT SUCKS" types of moments? From how the reviewers are going about it, I'm tempted to say it's that sort of case. As you might have guessed by now, I got used to the controls, and now that I have, it's a lot of fun. Yes, it splits your attention. Yes, it requires more of your brain to make it good (It's much harder than it needs to be with the control scheme).

But like any Platinum game, it has a learning curve, and this one is far steeper than anything else in the series. I'm no master of the game, having only done 1 play through, but it's not the worst thing ever. The game simply asks of you to plan your attack a bit better in cases of all-range mode, and those spider enemies are proof of that idea. I can tell you're not gonna play it anymore I'm sure, but I can tell you I had a much easier time by being in a comfy chair that didn't move, was in a good sitting position, and made sure to press Y whenever the angles got weird.

Oh, and no, it's absolutely not like Other M. Not a damn chance.

Side note: I'm not arguing this against you, just giving perspective from someone who's having fun with the game and sees what the game is supposed to ask of the player, with is very different from previous titles

 

[JCAll]

Maybe I'm eating my own words, as I've neither played Other M nor Zero, but are they really being framed as the worst of their respective series? Surely, SURELY they can't be as bad as Command or Hunters?

Please tell me they're not.

Command is worse than Zero, I'll give you that one. But for all the problems with Hunters, it's a classic compared to Other M. Other M is the absolute nadir of everything Nintendo has ever produced. Even Wand of Gamelon and the Super Mario Bros movie were better than Other M. At least you could laugh at their terribleness.

 

[Dragonbums]

Starfox Zero just sucked. And it sucked because Miyamoto is trying to bring it back to it's highly simplistic roots which just isn't going to work for it anymore.

Not going to argue the validity of the complaint, but that doesn't seem to be a common theme among reviewers and players. Most of them would prefer a simpler control scheme, from what I've heard, since the current one splits your attention.

I guess I should of clarified that I wasn't talking about the control scheme. But more or less how Miyamoto wanted Starfox to be a simple shooting game with enough plot to justify the games existence.

I can't really make a statement on the controls since I have never experienced them first hand.
But plot wise this series is just begging to evolve into something more than Starfox 64 basic plot.

 

[RaikuFA]

I'll wait for a patch to get rid of the crappy controls then.

 

[JaKandDaxter]

This thread honestly makes me want to hook up my N64 and play StarFox 64.

Maybe later tomorrow or Monday I'll do just that. More so because playing and enjoying Star Wars Battlefront dogfighting got me in the mood for fighter combat.

 

[Chester Rabbit]

Yeeeeah we all know it was more than gameplay taking a departure from the traditional Metroid style that made Other M what it is.

 

[Souplex]

Maybe I'm eating my own words, as I've neither played Other M nor Zero, but are they really being framed as the worst of their respective series? Surely, SURELY they can't be as bad as Command or Hunters?

Please tell me they're not.

I don't know about Zero as I'm not one of the 7 WiiU owners, but Other M is far worse than Hunters.
Hunters was tolerable at worst, and the multiplayer was actually really fun.
Other M is just...
*Nosebleed*
Hunters happened, other M never came out, because Nintendo saw how terrible it was going to be and pulled the plug around the time Bloomberg lost his election for a third term so it wouldn't be inflicted on humanity.
...Sorry about that, I occasionally have disassociative episodes where I glimpse better parallel universes.

 

[Something Amyss]

Video is long, but he does talk about the controls and such in enough depth to give you an idea.

All this video said to me is "never trust Girard's opinion again."

Yeah, gonna not agree with this 100%. A lot of people complain about the controls because it splits your attention. If you're not good at that, of course it's gonna suck.

Or, you know, if you don't like it. Or just don't care.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

Never heard of this Other M thing, so when I searched it up I found out it's a critically praised Metroid game. Anyone care to tell me why you guys hold it in such low regard? Sorry, not a Nintendo guy.

Anyway, TBH everything I hear about this game sounds bad. Not awful, just bad.

The control issues remind me of the Steam controller, it takes a long time to get used to and can be eventually usable, but when you could achieve the same or better with the original controls or controller, why bother?

 

[Nazulu]

Never heard of this Other M thing, so when I searched it up I found out it's a critically praised Metroid game. Anyone care to tell me why you guys hold it in such low regard? Sorry, not a Nintendo guy.

Did you look it up on the opposite site? lol

I have no idea who gave it critical praise, because it brought so much disappoint when it was released, that it became the word to sum up big mistakes. Even though some people here have to take it literal

Spoiler: If you're interested

Frankly, it just wasn't a Samus many of us wanted to see (or hear). The story wasn't great at all, there were some silly design flaws, and it's general aesthetic is pretty bland along with the music.

 

[thebobmaster_v1legacy]

Never heard of this Other M thing, so when I searched it up I found out it's a critically praised Metroid game. Anyone care to tell me why you guys hold it in such low regard? Sorry, not a Nintendo guy.

It's kind of hard to do, since you aren't a Nintendo guy, and thus not all that familiar with the Metroid series (presumably).

The best I can do is a comparison. I'll assume you've played the Resident Evil series, or at least the early ones. You would therefore be familiar with Ada Wong, badass journalist extraordinaire. Highly capable, can stand on her own two feet, and doesn't need help from others to be awesome.

Now, imagine a game came out where it was revealed that everything that made Ada Wong badass was a result of a boss that she used to work for, who spent all of his time condescending to her AT BEST. Rather than take any offense to this, she looks up to said boss, seeing him as the only person who ever believed in her, and sees him as a surrogate father, and will do anything to protect him.

Does that sound ridiculous, and demeaning to Ada's character? Well, that's almost EXACTLY what happened with Samus.

 

[Something Amyss]

Never heard of this Other M thing, so when I searched it up I found out it's a critically praised Metroid game. Anyone care to tell me why you guys hold it in such low regard? Sorry, not a Nintendo guy.

I'm not sure critical acclaim is the right term. It sits at a Metascore of 79 in an industry where a 9/10 score can now mean you hate a game. Several of the top scores for Other M come from review sites with Nintendo right in their name. Maybe it's just a personal bias, but even if I like a publication dedicated to a certain platform, I tend to weigh their scores a bit less.

I think Other M complaints are somewhat overblown, but the story's bad and the voice acting is just...terrible.

Ultimately, here's why the game wasn't "Other M'd:"

Metroid Mother took a beloved, silent protagonist and after nearly 30 years, gave her a voice. In doing so, they turned one of gamings first iconic badasses into an aimless, ineffectual and IIRC sometimes whiny cardboard cutout. A lot of the backlash was that this wasn't Samus. Not just someone's persona headcanon, but Samus in general. It seems to be near-consensus. Even a lot of the people I've seen who liked the game hated Samus in it.

In short: Other M was a competent game that pissed people off for betraying the character. In a franchise that was light on story, I have trouble saying the addition of a bad one hurts it.

Star Fox, on the other hand, goes kind of the opposite route. It screws with base mechanics and alters the way the game fundamentally plays. This may be my own bias, but this is fundamentally different animal to me--for one, you can skip Other M's cutscenes, but the only way to skip these issues is to not play.

In other words, I think the other M complaints are overblown, but these ones don't seem to be.

The control issues remind me of the Steam controller, it takes a long time to get used to and can be eventually usable, but when you could achieve the same or better with the original controls or controller, why bother?

The major difference in my opinion is I can see situations where the Steam controller would be useful. It allows me to easily play TBS games from my couch/bed without the need for space for a mouse. It doesn't give me the accuracy of a mouse or the feedback of an analogue stick, but it provides me something positive for the effort: I can play the kinds of games I'd normally play K+M with without the bulk. Especially handy if there's no controller support (because honestly, the track pad is better as a mouse substitute than an emulator+thumb stick).

Also, that it's optional, and if I don't like it I have a 360 controller hooked up and ready to go. The mechanical issues here are "get used to it or get lost."

 

[Sean Renaud]

Yeah I haven't played it yet but this is not an "Other M" as the above and other have noted. Other M had some voice acting issues and some issues that SJWs get their panties in a knot over. But the issues were with the story. The gameplay was solid to good all around and I would be thrilled to play another game built like that just perhaps not designed by Team Ninja. I mean seriously the guys behind DOA: Beach Volleyball gave you a game. The fact that Samus isn't a super model fending of clothing eating slime monsters qualifies as them showing restraint.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I think they Other M'd Star Fox in the sense that it took them forever to finally churn outh another game, and it disappointed.

 

[Guffe]

This is a shame to hear.

Sssssnnniiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiipp!!!

Yeah I came back here after it had 20 something replies and noticed that the OP is a bit in the minority and that the majority seem to think the game is at least OK.

I have never had any problems with motion controls since the Wii and even think the Skyward Sword motion controls work well
.>
<.<

But I am still not sure I want to put 50 euros on a StarFox game, must see what happens after I finish the games I am playing at the moment, shouldn't take too long, maybe I end up getting it sooner rather than later

 

[JagermanXcell]

For someone whose been hands on with it for 4 hours...

IT IS NOT OTHER M that might be Color Splash.

As for Zero, characters are still true to their respective roles even going as far as to bring the old VA's back. And the story is just 64's again but with a bit of a modern flare to it. This game is far from universe destroying as Other M's. It's more of a revisit and return to the series so that it can take off again. Even the character portraits during dialogue have that puppet like feel the original had.

Then there's the controls.
Remember a couple years back where reviewers said Wonderful 101 is the worst WiiU game even because the controls were "crap"?
Well history has repeated itself. The controls in Zero are their definition of "crap", (they're more so Miyamoto forced but i'll explain why...) they're unorthodox.

And just like W101, I feel sorry for people who didn't actually invest into getting used to them to spread good word because once you get the controls down the game is A LOT OF FFFFFFUUUUUUN. It's fun. This game isn't great or anything special. It's just fun. I
m glad it turned into raw fun.
The final boss is also going to be missed out on which is a shame, cause it's the best final boss in the series.

Except for certain Walker sections. Miyamoto thought down on the stick is hover.... down=hover? I know he loves the WiiUs motion controls but I bet everyone at Platinum office saw the designs for it and questioned if his age was settling in.