Metroid: Other M Review

Samus is a Female executioner and is the lead she is brutal. Nintendo’s ask who is she? By the time you’ve played the game you know. Project M aka Team Ninja have created Samus and take 3D characters to a whole new level in Metroid: Other M.

Samus floats effortlessly but can hit the ground with a mighty thud depending on the landing area and if it’s an enemy or not. Samus has  evasive moves from the work Team Ninja perfected in Ninja Gaiden, vaulting away in slow motion. Holding down shoot as you perform Sense Move charges the arm cannon instantly.

To perform well in combat you need to focus on timing rather than position. Dodging and firing dictates the pace and more you fire the greater the explosions towards the end of the game. The 3D navigation works best with Nintendo’s Analogue stick rather than the Dpad.

Most areas of the space station game world appear side-on as 2D planes, while more expansive scenes are generally sculpted with the D-pad’s rigid axes in mind. Hell, Samus’ returning Speed Booster ability – a reality rippling sprint triggered by running in a straight line – would be tricky without the D-pad.

Metroid Other M Screenshot 2

Despite of the smooth transitions it can be very disorientating to give a real spontaneous fell to the combat options and is quite a contrast to the instinctive style and then such a methodical way to attach, swivel, get your bearings, aim, lock and fire. But the view from inside Samus visor is required to navigate identify firepower, open doors, find hidden switches and fire missiles.

Metroid Other M Screenshot

Rooms are flooded, drained, rotated, exiting a lift to discover a fully functioning volcano and swamps flickering between damp menace and the sterile warehouses beneath.The ship houses artificial ecosystems allowing Samus to gambol through forests, desert canyons, snow drifts and more. Their artificiality births surreal sights that would never have gelled in Prime. Project M share Retro’s eye for ‘evolving’ level design. Exploring often uncovers switches or morph ball opportunities that turn entire spaces on their head. Morph ball tracks whisk Samus hundreds of metres above a sea of sinking lava platforms navigated earlier. Plop into another hole and she finds herself rolling about the Bottle Ship’s expansive attic space.

Prime had a head for heights; here Samus can practically power bomb the Pearly Gates. The Bottle Ship is packed with cinematic happenings, harking back to Super Metroid and Fusion. Repeat appearances from one persistent horror remind us of SA-X’s Fusion performance, while a dramatic self-destruct moment takes the opening of Super Metroid and buffs it with graphical oomph not available in 1994.

However, with objective markers and regular map updates, Other M feels more hand-holdy than its forebears. Indeed, we never felt the helpless isolation that defines Samus’ best adventures. Too eventful to be lonely, this doesn’t mean Project M can’t find elbow room for powerup hide-and-seek. A new system marks hidden items on the map once all enemies are dead. Let us assure you this does not make them any easier to find – it shows their resting place, not the snaking routes required to sniff them out. As an indicator, we stormed through Other M in ten hours with just 42% of the pickups found.

Other M is a forgiving Metroid. Or rather, the most finely tuned. Nintendo hit that sweet spot: empowering without nannying. Digging out energy tanks takes the edge off the few difficulty spikes, but the natural rate of ability unlocks is expertly synchronised with the task at hand.

Metroid: other M is traditional, in a regimented space station, the bottle shop it’s Metroids’s linear over Primes oragnic layout. Other M had intended to be different but it’s weakness stems from the same place as strengths: this is a marriage of two very different minds, both trying to size each other up. Nintendo’s accessible design principles ensure it doesn’t treat us too roughly but Ninja Gaiden had bombastic spectacle and wincing executions but was so hardcore we lost a hand to an instruction manual paper cut. This is a true Metroid, Samus is an excellent character, smooth in execution and packed with fire power, that’s what counts in a game that at times is Resident Evil.