I'm both saddened and amused at how the people tearing the game apart and the ones defending it have one key thing in common. About 90% of them admit they haven't even played it. Rent it, play until you escape the ship unarmored, then you will actually have a valid opinion. You know those things you get from your own experiences, and not from the result of a coin toss to decide which side of the love/hate war you are gonna be on this time.
possible spoilers
The review itself could have been copied almost unabridged from the pirates last week on gamefaqs lol. One key gripe, i.e. samus needing her "boyfriend's" permission, to use items is flawed for several reasons. First, he is not her boyfriend. The closest thing to a boyfriend she likely ever had was Ian, Adam's younger brother, and after the incident she couldn't stand to be around Adam, and follow his orders anymore. A rash decision perhaps but when you are a walking planetary holocaust machine you have a bit of a fallback job.
Her presence at the bottle ship was unexpected, and rather than step on the toes of her former CO and jeopardize a mission in a situation with potential civilian/facility collateral damage, she forgoes the heavy weapons until the situation demands them.
That in itself is a perfectly sound explanation of why you can't just powerbomb every room, and is far more plausible than an explosion/getting jumped on by Ing as a means to strip your powers. Fusion's having most of your suit cut away makes the most sense though.
The retarded thing about the authorizations tho is that sometimes they make sense. You get ambushed and NEED your wave beam. Tada you got it!
Other times you have to go through several lava rooms and a damn volcano before you use varia. I didn't mind the gravity suit not being authorized right away though because the variable gravity sections were some of my favorites in the game. Having to wall jump DOWN a wall from the ceiling was pretty trippy. Even if disallowing suit upgrades like varia and gravity serve no tactical purpose, its a game. Deal with it.
When you get space jump/screw attack you will probably lol at the dialogue.
The scenes themselves are on average well directed, visually appealing and the action is dynamic. The dialogue is serviceable to good in places. Honestly the opening few scenes of backstory kinda drag out, but after the midpoint of the game the plot actually has a few twists. Whether or not you like them or not, or accept that some are lifted almost directly from fusion, is up to you. Personally the mystery of the deleter intrigued me, and I was disappointed at how neatly it was resolved. Also at how one character in the game had virtually no lines or any appreciable contribution at all other than being one more possible identity of the deleter.
Definite spoilers
Adam's sacrifice was a great scene even though how easily samus was incapacitated was stupid. Even more idiotic was that his sacrifice was truly pointless. He may have taken out the *unconfirmed* unfreezable metroids, but MB wasn't in sector zero and the control metroid specimen wasn't there either for obvious reasons. How he could know enough about the project and yet not know that MB wasn't some AI stuck in sector zero is sad. Especially after they had to reprogram her, and the intel he likely received before heading to the bottle ship would have made mention of Melissa's involvement in the facility being compromised.
Ridley's part in the plot was actually pretty cool. The fact that they spent so much time on Samus's army days and none at all on her childhood means that most people wouldn't have a clue who Ridley is or why he shocks her momentarily. Those that do know, are probably sick of his appearance still being regarded as a suprise. I mean aside from whether or not he'll be another robot this time, that's always a coin toss.
One thing the game desperately needs is skippable scenes. Since you ARE spending a not small ammount of time watching them, I'd have loved to have about twice as much ship to explore than is given. Sector 3 is particularly small, 2 being pretty large and interesting, and 1 being mid sized and the most well designed IMO. There are a few smaller areas but they are like a few rooms is all.
The items are all suitably well hidden. Some are pretty hard to find, even at the "postgame" where they are all marked on the map. The very first missle upgrade you see is sadly one of the ones i had to look at a guide for. I would have been looking for several days lol.
The combat is actually the best part of the game. It ranges from pretty easy to very hectic for regular encounters. Bosses are awesome tho. Some more than others, but the cameos in particular were more fun than the original times you fight them in some cases. Totally suprise extra final boss too. Only downside is the 1st person, not just the missle thing. The "investigation" scenes need a bigger hit box/more obvious target in more than one case.
While my opinion is that this is a decent game that COULD have been excellent, and that it mostly succeeds at what it tried to accomplish, it really should have tried harder. They went to the trouble of trying to revamp the series, and what we could expect for a story from Nintendo of all things. So they really should have brought their A game with that plot. Rehashing pieces of Fusion and Super with 2 subplots that had potential just doesn't cut it.
The characters that aren't Adam or Samus could have had more to them than a name and in K.G.'s case not even that lol. Seriously K.G. had the crap role in this game. I liked Anthony and what little we saw of James and thats it.
The game is a solid 6-7/10. The boss fights and actual gameplay are more than worth a rent. The plot is interesting even if all you get out of it is a reason to ***** on a forum.
Would I want more metroid games like it? HELL NO! Either go back to doing it like Super/Prime 1&2, or they need to do a hell of a lot better next time with an ORIGINAL plot. Hopefully more and better hidden upgrades, that you don't need to beat the game to actually collect the last 3rd of them. Preferably with a larger ship or overwhelmingly preferably a new planet. I like it when the areas aren't so cleanly segregated. At least in Fusion you could in the end travel between sectors easily with hidden paths. I liked the plots and detailed mostly optional scanning of the prime games. I liked the run and gun action of super, and how the immense planet was put together. I.E. sequence breaks and shortcuts involving actual skill and timing.
Zero mission excelled at that as well.
There is virtually no reason to replay Other M other than hard mode. No other endings, no sequence breaks, no super cool shortcuts or tricks. Just a lot of unskippable movies and some good boss fights. Even then Prime 2 had way better.
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