Zero Punctuation: Metroid Other M

BlueInkAlchemist

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Jun 4, 2008
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Sylveria said:
Since game one when she was a space mercenary that kicked ass and took names without ever having a single order barked in her ear.
Other than the ones we barked into her ear through the use of a controller, you mean.

Sylveria said:
So you've never played the game yet you're sucking its meat regardless. Here's a towel so you can clean all that Nintendo wank off your chin.
How am I "sucking its meat" by pointing out a flaw I saw in the arguments that Samus Aran as a character had been completely derailed? I fail to see the connection between looking for clarification as to the source of all this nerdrage and wrapping my lips around the nearest Wiimote.
 

Turbo_ski

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luckey said:
sorry yahtzee, bob's argument makes more sense to me in this case then your does, so it looks like i'm gonna get this one
http://screwattack.com/videos/TGO-Episode-40-Heavens-to-Metroid
Except Bob incredibly biased towards Nintendo. Calling him an Nintendo fanboi is an understatement in that regard.
 

Atmos Duality

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Aiddon said:
And another thing I'd like to bring up is military protocol. Yeah, Samus may not be part of the army anymore, but the GF has jurisdiction over the Bottle Ship and they have EVERY right to refuse her access if they see fit. Adam allows her to participate as long as she follows orders which SOLDIERS HAVE TO DO. When you're in the armed forces you obey your CO, you carry out orders, and you don't make your problems the problems of others.
There's military discipline...and then there's blind retardation.
Asking someone to run through a burning building is one thing. Asking them to do it naked for absolutely no reason, is another.
 

David_G

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Hubilub said:
Oh my. Could this be one of the few times where people don't comment before watching the video?

IT'S A MIRACLE!

EDIT: "And it's a lot smaller and more linear than, say, Metroid Fusion"

I see what you did there
I didn't. Can you explain? Disregard this, I suck cocks. (Didn't see the other post you made.)
Well, I don't make a habit out of posting in ZP videos, because of the magnitude of posts that get made, it's really unlikely that someone will see your post, but, anyway, great review, really did make me laugh at some points.
 

repeating integers

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Hubilub said:
team star pug said:
Hubilub said:
Oh my. Could this be one of the few times where people don't comment before watching the video?

IT'S A MIRACLE!

EDIT: "And it's a lot smaller and more linear than, say, Metroid Fusion"

I see what you did there
I do not. I remember metroid fusion being a 2d sidescroller for the gba but I don't get the joke.

OT moreso: He didn't review reach so I can only imagine he was dumbstruck by how good it was. (in joke). I bet his review of reach will be something I don't agree with (I like reach) but still ind hilariuos
Metroid Fusion was, at least before Other M came out, the most linear Metroid game.
Yes, but Metroid Fusion was awesome and shame on anyone who does not believe it to be so. :p

I'm glad this wasn't a review of Halo: Reach, since any review he did of that game would undoubtedly be negative... and may run the risk of turning me against Yahtzee forever. <3 Reach.

In other news, I wonder what the special ZP will be about. I'm certainly hoping it won't be him announcing the end of the series, as this is just too entertaining. Still, it's all mysterious, making me a bit tense.
 

BlueInkAlchemist

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Jun 4, 2008
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Hubilub said:
BlueInkAlchemist said:
So the best way to enjoy a game that's trying not to be an FPS is to play an FPS? Huh.

When was Samus established as having a "bold, independent spirit"? I don't remember that being mentioned at all in any of the games other than the fact that you, the player, are controlling her and she's completely alone. She blindly followed our orders even if it meant smacking into a wall repeatedly when our phones rang or falling into an acid pit when we mis-judged a jump she probably could have handled were she in control of her own body.

This sounds so much like so many other arguments against Other M I'm wondering if Yahtzee either got bored with the ZP enterprise now that his novel's out or has just been too busy to form salient points that he's cribbed notes from other sources. Not that I myself would ever do such a thing [http://gameoverthinker.blogspot.com/2010/09/episode-40-heavens-to-metroid.html].

Funny? Yes. Accurate? No idea. I'm too poor to own a Wii. But I find myself kinda confused by all of the hatred. Maybe it's just me.
To be fair, in Metroid Fusion her personality was rather bold and independent. It starts with her going on a mission to inspect a space station that's gone silent, but when she realizes that the place is crawling with creatures that can kill and then clone living organisms, and that the government wants them for weapons, she abandons her mission AND defies her partner AI (which is hinted at to actually be Adam) so that she can destroy the space station.

But mostly I think that when people say her personality is bold and independent, they are only trying to give more power behind the fact that Samus was one of the first iconic female badasses in gaming, and she didn't need a personality because by that time, most badasses didn't need personalities to be badass (Like the majority of 80s action films). Giving her a personality wasn't needed, because Samus wasn't supposed to be a deep character, she was supposed to be a badass without personality, showing that the role of badass wasn't exclusive to men.

Now, I'm not saying that they shouldn't add more depth to her. On the contrary, not adding depth to her would be stupid. But you can add depth to a character without taking away the badassness. What Other M did was take away the feeling that Samus was a super-badass. She was too dependent on other characters, she froze still when facing Ridley, and all that other stuff people complain about.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that while Samus didn't have much of a personality before Other M, her character still made a statement: Women can be equally as awesome as men. And Other M took away that statement.

Metroid Fusion is still the best Metroid game in the series for me, because that game managed to add some more depth to Samus while keeping her a badass.
Thank you for responding intelligently to my question rather than taking refuge in the idea of me being a Nintendo fanboy or saying I like getting it down the throat from their marketing department. I'll ask you a question pursuant to this in PM, because this has gone on long enough. We're not talking about the review any more at this point.

Which was funny. I guess.
 

GloatingSwine

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Hubilub said:
Of course, as GloatingSwine pointed out, Fusion became much more open towards the end of the game when you had all the power-ups and could go scout for upgrades, but the fact that it started of very linear is what I think Yahtzee had in mind when saying that Other M was more linear than Fusion.
It's not just that. It's that you can sequence break in Fusion. Not as much as in the other games (especially Super Metroid), but you can still try and do things in the wrong order, and deliberately skip items and upgrades in order to provide more challenge. (there are special ending screens for particularly low item runs).
 

Firia

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Sep 17, 2007
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I watched the game played out via youtube, since I knew I wouldn't get to play the game (no wii), and had the same questions. Who is the Deleter? Yeah, I know WHY that line of story was essentially discarded, but then who is the guy driving the over-sized street cleaner?

Also Spoiler alert!
Remember all that discussion about how the metroids were reengineered to be resilient to the Ice Beam, and therefore unbeatable? And then when we finally start fighting metroids, it's the Queen, and the ice beam totally works? Wft, I ask you, was the point of bringing up these resilient metroids if were weren't going to even attempt to fight them? I was thrilled to see this FRESH take on metroid combat. "Goodie! Something that will challenge Samus, and perhaps bring about a new power-up," I thought. But nope! Just boom, take out a corner of the damn spaceshi via cut scene, and resume business as usual.

Overall, the game was 50% facepalm, and 50% cool. When Team Ninja starts mucking around with the story, or Robo-Samus starts to drone on, it's kinda meh-worthy. But the game play looked cool... cept for the missile system.
 

Dr. Paine

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GloatingSwine said:
epsilon246 said:
As a result of believing he was dead she was not ready to fight him and suffered an attack.
Why should Samus possibly believe that Ridley is dead? She's beat his ass down four times now and yet he keeps coming back. It's more of a surprise when Ridley doesn't turn up yet again. Quite frankly by now it should be him that suffers PTSD. The Space Pirates are already piss scared of Samus and shit a collective brick whenever she shows up. (seen in the scannable logs in the Prime games)
In space, apocalypse is you!

And agreed- if this was like, the first time Ridley had returned? Alright, I could accept Samus freezing up. Third? Hesitation, sure. But by the point of this game, it's already happened several times. There's no really getting used to this sort of thing, but you'd expect the person who's singlehandedly killed him about four times already to have more of an 'I can take you' reaction and dive right in as opposed to curling up dropping a bomb, no matter how brief.
 

Aisaku

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Getting mad at ninja theory for their demeaning portrayal of women is like getting pissed at a dog for peeing on the carpet.

What shocks me the most is that Nintendo say okay, go ahead. It's as if they don't care and would rather cash on the DoA demographic than excercise some control over how one of their household characters is handled.

Out of curiosity, how was Samus' portrayal over the Smash Brothers story modes?

Edit: Watched Moviebob's take on this: http://screwattack.com/videos/TGO-Episode-40-Heavens-to-Metroid

While I agree that it's a bit of an overreaction to completely dismiss the new characterization of Samus, and that we can't expect the companies to get exactly how we think Samus should be, I still hope they would have given her a bit more of an authority and self reliance. Is for some reason Samus any less of an expert and a hero than Snake that she needs to be rescued and led by the hand hm?
 

FrossetMareritt

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Sep 10, 2008
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Pretty spot on review! Oddly enough, I already went out and bought the Metroid Prime Trilogy just to get over Other M.
 

k-ossuburb

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Jark said:
Any ideas as to what the "Special Episode" mentioned at the very end will be centered around?
Duke Nukem Forever, maybe. Although how he got hold of a copy way before its release is a mystery, so it's a long shot.
 

Cherry Cola

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Jun 26, 2009
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GloatingSwine said:
Hubilub said:
Of course, as GloatingSwine pointed out, Fusion became much more open towards the end of the game when you had all the power-ups and could go scout for upgrades, but the fact that it started of very linear is what I think Yahtzee had in mind when saying that Other M was more linear than Fusion.
It's not just that. It's that you can sequence break in Fusion. Not as much as in the other games (especially Super Metroid), but you can still try and do things in the wrong order, and deliberately skip items and upgrades in order to provide more challenge. (there are special ending screens for particularly low item runs).
Hu. I didn't know that.

You have given me another reason to replay my favorite handheld game!

Where did I put my Advance SP?
 

Flame Rider

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Apr 5, 2010
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Brian Blessed you say?

I WOULD APPROVE!!

*coughcough*
This definitely made me laugh good and plenty, which is certainly an achievement, considering my nature.
 

Mantonio

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BlueInkAlchemist said:
So the best way to enjoy a game that's trying not to be an FPS is to play an FPS? Huh.

When was Samus established as having a "bold, independent spirit"? I don't remember that being mentioned at all in any of the games other than the fact that you, the player, are controlling her and she's completely alone. She blindly followed our orders even if it meant smacking into a wall repeatedly when our phones rang or falling into an acid pit when we mis-judged a jump she probably could have handled were she in control of her own body.
I'm sorry, but your logic is just stupid. That's like saying Gordon Freeman is actually a bad guy, because I like to throw grenades at the feet of NPC teammates and watch them die. Or that because I once spent an afternoon throwing Mario into a pit over and over, he never saves the princess and is completely incompetent.

Story and gameplay segregation dude.
 

Dr. Paine

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Hubilub said:
GloatingSwine said:
Hubilub said:
Of course, as GloatingSwine pointed out, Fusion became much more open towards the end of the game when you had all the power-ups and could go scout for upgrades, but the fact that it started of very linear is what I think Yahtzee had in mind when saying that Other M was more linear than Fusion.
It's not just that. It's that you can sequence break in Fusion. Not as much as in the other games (especially Super Metroid), but you can still try and do things in the wrong order, and deliberately skip items and upgrades in order to provide more challenge. (there are special ending screens for particularly low item runs).
Hu. I didn't know that.

You have given me another reason to replay my favorite handheld game!

Where did I put my Advance SP?
There's actually an area where you can find a message left explicitly for people who pull off a particularly difficult sequence break... I've also head Prime has some nice ones, including getting the Space Jump first.
 

GloatingSwine

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BlueInkAlchemist said:
Not that I myself would ever do such a thing [http://gameoverthinker.blogspot.com/2010/09/episode-40-heavens-to-metroid.html].

Funny? Yes. Accurate? No idea. I'm too poor to own a Wii. But I find myself kinda confused by all of the hatred. Maybe it's just me.
I note that you made the link to Ripley, but here's the thing, Ripley got to be a human and well realised character, got to show human attachment (again, it was already there in Alien in the camaraderie of the crew) without turning into a broken bird that needed Daddy to protect her, Ripley was the protector. Even in Alien 3, where her character was about as broken down as it was going to get (Some might try and tell you they made a fourth Alien movie, but they are clearly mad), she was still ready to face down her personal demon.

And she didn't whine about it on her blog like Samus does in Other M.

If the person who wrote the story for this had watched Aliens a few times, we might have got a significantly better character.