Metroid: Other M. A deceptive game

After having a few weeks to let this game stew in my brain a bit, I figured now was the time to say something about it.

I picked up the game with much skepticism that Nintendo had mad a cardinal mistake, giving Team Ninja the reigns with Samus Aran. That and the reviews of the game were all over the place. And yet, I still pre-ordered the game, just because of the name. I was afraid that maybe the developer responsible for such titles as Ninja Gaiden and Dead or Alive might make something the Metroid something of a strange fever dream of the above mentioned games.

Metroid is one of my favorite NES games of all time. In fact its one of my favorite game series of all time. The games back in day had this way of capturing your attention. It was just you and this alien planet for you to explore. The sounds, the sights -- you never knew what was lurking around the corner in the game. The music had this haunting sound to it, and was paced just right as you wondered the worlds the games had to offer.

This new Metroid title doesn't quite do all the things that I mentioned from the previous entries in the series. Nintendo sought to actually tell a story with Metroid Other M, making its major focus about Samus Aran and her past. They tried to make her seem more like a person, as apposed to a somewhat faceless character. Most Metroid games have made her out to be a hard as nails bounty hunter trying to stop something that threatens the galaxy. While this is not a negative, it certainly detracts from the idea that this a "traditional" Metroid title.

The story picks right up after the events of Super Metroid for the SNES, and goes full speed ahead with how Samus is feeling and how she is dealing with past events and the current situation. Having received a distress call from the "Bottle Ship," she sets out to investigate what has happened upon the ship. When she arrives she soon discovers that the Galactic Federation is already there, and a unit sent to investigate is under the command of her old commanding officer.

Without spoiling much more about the game, I found it to be a compelling reason to continue playing, though are there several things that I found marring to the overall experience. The voice acting in the game is flat and subpar. In particular, the voice actress for Samus was monotone throughout most of the game. It was not until later in the game that I found her to be a bit more emotional.

The way the game controlled was also in question, as Metroid Other M only uses the Wii remote to control. Holding it sideways like a classic NES controller, moving Samus around in a 3D space with only 8 directions because of the d-pad. After awhile I got used to it, and I found myself being able to pull off her various moves with ease. I found that firing missiles was a little cumbersome, though not nearly as annoying as I thought it would be. You must point the Wii remote at the screen and the lock on to a target to fire missiles.

There are also times in the game that force you into a first person view, like when you are setting up to fire a missile. You cannot move past these parts until you find the the item you are suppose to scan in the environment. I was actually stuck for about 45 minutes looking for the right thing to scan at one point.

Despite a few problems and quirks here and there, Metroid Other M is a solid title. Not the traditional Metroid title, and I am glad that Nintendo took a risk with their franchise. I can only hope that the next one is a return to form.

If you are a Wii owner looking for a good game, get this game.

A fitting first post

Welcome to the first blog post in this blog, which will serve as an introductory post about what I intend this blog to cover and be about, and who I am as a person. It will be a short little blurb (I hope).

So to cover what this blog is all going to be about, videogames. Maybe I will throw some news up here from time to time as well. I want to do some specialized posts to, maybe looking back on history of video games or a review of an older game. I also intend to put up my own reviews, and when I attend a covention, I will attempt to put a blog about what I have been doing there.

And now a little about myself. Where should I start? I guess it would be best to start by saying that I started playing games when I was very young. It must have been in 1988 or so when I started playing video games. I was handed an NES controller over at a cousin's house, and I was immediately captured by what I was presented with on screen. Super Mario Bros. was the first game I ever played. I played just about every major NES game, (To name a few, I played Zelda I & II, Metroid, Tetris) with a few here and there that not many people may have played. Some of those titles included a shmup called Jackal, an overhead RPG called Crystalis (Probably my favorite NES game of all time.)

Sadly I had to part ways with my cousin, and when it was time to get home, I longed to play those videogames that I played when I was over there, and sure enough it was a matter of time before my parents had enough me and my brother's nagging. The funny thing is, the way I had gotten my Nintendo was a little...strange, to say the least. It was, I think a Sunday morning, and I didn't want to eat the bacon that my mother had made for me for breakfast. My dad told me that if I finished my bacon, I would have a Nintendo later that day. My mom took me and brother out shopping and sure enough, when we came back, there sitting on the dining room table in a "Babbage's" (Yeah, remember that store?) bag with a brand spanking new NES in the box waiting to be hooked up to our TV in the living room.

After a few years, in 1991, the Super Nintendo came out, and it was time to upgrade. I remember reading a Nintendo Power with all the pictures and screenshots of what the system looked like, and what the games looked like. I was blown away. Unfortunately the NES we had went by the wayside and we traded in the system. We got the SNES and the rest is history with Super Mario World, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Final Fantasy II, and Final Fantasy III. There were plenty more that I played, but none are coming to mind at the moment.

The whole Genesis and SNES console war thing passed me by. I was a Nintendo fan through thick and thin. I even had every single variation of the Gameboy. I completely skipped what Sega had to offer when it came to their stuff. (Except for the Dreamcast, but that is a different story.) Sometime down the line, I think it was sometime in 1997, me and my brother ended up with a PlayStation (One of those originial grey systems). Final Fantasy VII was quite an amazing game at the time, and for many it still is. Most of the games I played on that system were RPGs, as I had begun to mature and appreciated deeper storylines. Final Fantasy VIII, Star Ocean The Second Story, Thousand Arms, and Grandia were all games I really loved on that system.

For Christmas 2001 one, we managed to get a Playstation 2, and that system was pretty much the first DVD player we also had. There were some many games that I played that naming just one is a bit hard, though I guess that one that sticks out in my mind was Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne. The depth of that game was quite awesome, and the amount of content in that game was enough to keep you playing for at least 80+ hours.

Eventually I graduated from highschool and got my own job and I was able to afford my own systems, and I ended up with and Xbox, which was the first system from Microsoft. It was quite the amazing system, having its own hard drive to save games to. Halo was a game that brought many people together and was also the game that gave Microsoft a foothold in the videogame market. There is much else to say here except that I bought Fable, Halo 2, and Panzer Dragoon Orta (probably several other games that I am not mentioning too...)

But anyway the rest is history when it comes to the later generation systems, namely the Xbox 360 and PS3, both of which I currently own, and I am currently updating my personal game library with new games almost every week and month. At the moment I also own several classic systems that I never got around to playing when I was younger. I own a Turbo Grafx-16, Sega Saturn, & Dreamcast. I am looking to get my hands on a PC-FX, a Virtual Boy, and a ZX Spectrum next.

Until next time...