In Defense: Metroid: Other M (Cont'd)

WARNING: THERE WILL BE SPOILERS IN THIS POST

This, unfortunately, is where a majority of people's opinions begin to diverge, and I'm gonna go ahead and talk about this a bit. There are a few issues that keep coming up about the game from what I can tell, and I shall divert from my review to tackle them a bit:

"Samus is retarded." - This is clearly a paraphrase, but a lot of players are complaining about the fact that Samus doesn't act how she should, given what we know about her to begin with. I find this to be a statement that's grounded on a basis of a whole septic tank of poo and urine. This is where I'm gonna get more nerdy than usual CUZ I LOVES ME SUM METROID. We know very little about Samus prior to this game because her personality and actions are barely established in any other game besides Other M. People are getting friggin' butthurt that Samus has emotions and isn't simply a killing machine.

Think about that for a second. OH MY GOD, A HUMAN BEING WHO HAS EMOTIONS! CALL THE COPS! Of course she's gonna have them, you idiots. Think back to the previous games, and you can even find some slight evidence of emotion within the series. Like I said, we know very little...but what we can gather from the previous entries is that she DOES, in fact, feel things. In Super Metroid (the manual, to be specific), it's revealed that she cannot bring herself to kill the Metroid hatchling at the end of Metroid 2, and it began to cling to her as if she were its mother. In the Super Metroid introduction, she even says that the Metroid followed her like a "confused child," indicating that she understood the type of bond that it had established with her. So if she were heartless, she still could've blown it away, laughed her ass off and collected her cash, but she chose not to. Also, the Metroid gave its own life to save Samus in Super Metroid from that ugly bitch, Mother Brain. I dunno about you, but if someone jumped in front of me to save me from a gunshot and died in the process, I think I'd be pretty affected as well. Of course, I have yet to try that theory out.

Another thing that shows that she's not just a cold machine is her deviation from her specified job. Samus Aran is a bounty hunter...bounty hunters are people who complete tasks for cash. However, a whole slough of the shit that Samus does has nothing to do with her getting paid. In Super Metroid, she only chooses to go back to Ceres because she hears a distress call...she hasn't been paid to do it. If she were really an emotionless twat like Boba Fett, she woulda just been like NOT MY PROBLEM BYE and left to get her payment! In Fusion, Samus finds out that the G-Fed are trying to capture the X-Parasites and the SA-X that has been hounding her for the entirety of the mission. These guys sent her to find out what was going on, so of course she decides to be a good girl and help them to capture the...oh wait, no she doesn't. She decides to send the BSL station on a crash course with SR388 on her own in order to protect civilization because she's certain that the G-Fed are making a damn mistake. In the process, she becomes an outlaw, so she has effectively put herself at risk for the safety of others.

Another issue that people are getting irritated about is when Samus encounters Ridley in Metroid: Other M. Her reaction to his presence is a brief freakout and a relapse, where we are shown Samus as a young child. For those who don't know what the deal is, Ridley and his legions, the Space Pirates, are responsible for the destruction of Samus' home colony and also her parents. The issue that people are finding with her SHORT reaction to seeing Ridley is that she hasn't had such a reaction in her previous encounters with him, of which there were 4...with the most recent one being Super Metroid, chronologically. In Super Metroid, Samus not only tore Ridley apart, but THE WHOLE FUCKING PLANET EXPLODED, TAKING THE PIRATES WITH IT. In Metroid/Metroid: Zero Mission, all she did was destroy Tourian, which was a small portion of Zebes where the Metroids and Mother Brain were located. If I went to some planet, killed a guy, and then the whole planet blew up afterwards...I'd assume he was toast. The mere fact that Ridley exists in some way, shape, or form is shocking to Samus because of his complete obliteration in Super Metroid...even the fucking pieces that she blew him into are BLOWN TO PIECES AGAIN FROM ZEBES EXPLODING! In actuality, the Ridley in Other M is a clone of the original, and not the one that actually murdered her family. So no, I don't blame her for having a BRIEF moment when she sees him in Other M. Plus, it's not like it stops her from kicking his ass anyway, so what's the big deal?

Another complaint arises from those saying that Samus is whining all the time. Out of all the things she said, I didn't find that she whined at all. Sure, there are times when she reflects on past events and tells about them from her perspective, but whining? I don't think so, and I'm not even gonna waste any more time on this one.

The fact of the matter is that people wanted her character to be explored, and now a majority of them are bitching about it and complaining that she's not how they envisioned. Apparently, most players thought she was a near-inhuman SLAUGHTER DEVICE that people use as a tool to do their dirty work, when there are hints throughout the game series that this is simply not the case. In Other M, players are given their precious backstory in spades, and you know what? It's not bad, so get over it! Samus is given depth in Other M, and established as a real person with thoughts, reactions and emotions who is still able to pull herself together under pressure and blow things away in mere seconds. You can see her transitions between a calm, collected bounty hunter and a human being with a past and issues even just in her vocal changes. Other M establishes Samus as...what's it called? Oh...a THREE-DIMENSIONAL CHARACTER! I can safely say I had absolutely no problem with how she was portrayed in Other M.

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"Authorization of Samus' powers is dumb and I HATE IT!!" - This has been a large thing that people complain about as well, and I really don't find it to be that big of a deal.

It has been known since before the game came out that rather than collecting powerups for Samus' suit as you go, Adam Malkovich (the commanding officer of the mission) authorizes Samus' use of the abilities that she's already got from Super Metroid. One of the main reasons this occurs is to protect the G-Fed soldiers and also the Bottle Ship itself from getting too busted up, so abilities are evaluated and allowed as Adam gains clearance for Samus to use them. Samus decides to follow Adam's orders while she's on the ship because she respects the guy and has a huge past with him. Let's get one thing straight...these authorized powerups are just as satisfying to get as when they are in pickup form, and using them is still a blast (Sp...Sp...Speeeeed Booooster *drool*). You may get some form of satisfaction from picking up your abilities yourself, but the effect is exactly the same except it doesn't add to your completion percentage, which in reality isn't that big of a deal at all.

Now let's talk about the Varia suit. So Malkovich waits for a while to clear the use of Samus' Varia suit and it turns out that you need to wander through some areas that are superheated and cause damage before he authorizes it. A lot of players are having issues with this, but when I was playing the game I really didn't care (even the second time through after seeing all the complaints!), and I think that kind of says something on its own considering I've been playing these games since the very beginning. The problem resides in the fact that, in the midst of this story-driven Metroid game, you need to look at this event from a gameplay perspective. Game designers are charged with the task of creating challenges for the player, and making your way through the heated segments without the Varia Suit is just that...a challenge. Without having a heated area prior to unlocking the Varia, the effect of the Varia's resilience to heat is lost. I remember playing Super Metroid my first time and making the mistake of entering a heated area before getting the Varia, and man did I ever appreciate that suit once I located it. The difference there, I suppose, is that if you know where to go you can avoid burning before you get the Varia and so it's really based on choice. This game forces you to deal with it for a while, but I found it no different than say, dodging the blue X-Parasites to get to the Varia Suit in Metroid Fusion. These parasites would hunt you down and damage you, so you had no choice but to avoid them...but to get the Varia, you HAD to overcome them and deal with them beforehand and once you got the suit you could absorb them for health. Risk/reward system, people...it's nothing new.

Storywise, yes, it's a little hard to buy it because the Varia suit has no chance of being harmful to any of the other soldiers, and the thought of Adam watching Samus run through a superheated lava-filled death room without authorizing the suit is a little wonky, so I WILL give you that. There's always the argument that Samus could just activate it without his consent in this case, but if this were the choice she made, then two things would happen:

a) She loses character: It completely goes against her earlier choice to obey Adam's commands, making her a fickle, unreliable character without resolve, a trait that I believe they've conveyed her to have since the beginning of the series. She chooses a path and sticks to it, and if she deviated from it and started turning on upgrades without authorization, it would break her trust with Adam Malkovich and he'd ask her to leave the Bottle Ship. That would just be stupid.

b) Idiots complain that she doesn't just go against his orders on other occasions and activate a bunch of other shit: Why doesn't she activate the grappling beam? It's relatively safe! Well if she can activate that then surely she can activate her Space Jump ahead of time and that's okay! If the Space Jump is on then the Screw Attack should be too and it rips people apart but she could be really careful not to hit them!! It just snowballs from there.

They did the best they could with the reasoning that they established for earning powers, and I had no qualms with going through a little bit of a challenge to get that fuckin' suit. I would rather it seem weird that Adam didn't allow it earlier than for Samus to go back on her word that she firmly agreed to earlier in the game and turn the Varia suit on without being given the OK, because for me, that would ruin her personality.

Also I don't know what this crap is about people complaining about Samus being "subservient to the male stereotype" for following Adam's commands. This is a person she respects and has a complex history with, of which there are few. He's also one of Samus' former commanding officers from when she was associated with the G-Fed. Maybe if she encountered a completely random group of people, and the head officer was a male who she didn't know AT ALL, and she just kinda went "...oh okay, I'll do what you say,"...THAT would be weird. However, her following of Adam's requests has a much deeper past to it, and that really needs to be taken into consideration before pulling out the goddamned sexism argument. Retarded.

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"Sense move makes the game too fucking easy." - This argument is ass. If you're good at the sense move, then yes it will make the game easier...but that's the whole damn point! Apparently this thing is too easy to pull off to some, where I really don't see that as an issue.

When an attack is on the way, you tap a direction on the control pad to make a quick dodge in the direction you pressed. This, in itself, is not terribly difficult...but it's the learning to dodge in the correct directions and NOT messing that up that makes it trickier. Dodge the wrong way against the Rhedogian, and you're gonna get smacked around and lose some health. Dodge the wrong way in almost ANY situation, and you're gonna lose some health. It's not a broken system, it's just that people learn what direction to dash and in what situation (which is the whole goddamned point anyway).

Also, with respect to those complaining that the window of opportunity is too large for this move...it's called a SENSE move for crying out loud. You SENSE something and you press the damn button! You see (SENSE) the attack coming? You dodge outta the way! Even if you know it's coming because you've played the game before, you're still reacting to your SENSES. It just depends on YOUR fuckin' reaction time to whatever's being thrown at you. If you're a bit faster on the dodging than others, great...but don't complain about the game's dodging being broken for that reason alone. It's tricky to pull it off perfectly and avoid any damage whatsoever.

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"You can't explore at all!!!!!!!!!" - What the hell are you talking about? You can still explore in this game...quite a bit, I find. The issue in this case is that the game sometimes locks doors so you can't access specific areas at specific times. Despite this, I found that you could still go and re-explore a main area before progressing to the next one quite frequently.

After I got bombs, I went back and got a few missile pickups...exploration! On my way out of Sector 1, I went back to check it out a little bit more and see what I could get with my recently re-gained powers...that's EXPLORATION. I did the same thing with Sectors 2 and 3...OH MY GOD EXPLORATION!!! It's not like the powerups are just sitting out in the open, either. These things are pretty cleverly stashed away, and you really need to look around your surroundings to figure out what to do. You can go back and check areas more often than people seem to think you can, and I wound up finding many of the game's powerups before the end of the game.

It seems that the locking doors really happens when you're in a story-intensive situation in the plot. This makes sense to me from a design perspective because it keeps the plot moving along and prevents the player from forgetting Samus' current motivation. Since this is Metroid's real first foray into the realm of a very story-driven game (something they've been plugging since the game was announced), I can see why they desired to keep the plot moving along and to keep the player moving along with it.

I can understand what the deal is, and that locking doors behind you sucks sometimes because it prevents you from going back whenever the hell you want...but to say Metroid: Other M lacks exploration is to say Super Mario Galaxy lacks platforming and that's just idiocy. The level of exploration definitely differs from say, that of Super Metroid or Metroid Prime, but this is a design choice based on the nature of the rest of the game and so I can understand why they did what they did. I will agree that yeah, it's a little bit clumsy sometimes, but does it ruin the game? Hell no. Story requires some form of structure in order to function correctly, and they chose to make Other M a little restrictive in order to present the story more efficiently.

Fusion is worse in terms of exploration anyway! At least Other M doesn't completely cut you off from the MAIN SECTIONS OF THE GAME...and the areas that DO get locked away? They don't have any fuckin' pickups in them anyway so you can still get 100% completion when they're inaccessible! Fusion really messed everything up, I thought, by making all those MAIN SECTIONS completely inaccessible at a specific point in the game and cutting the player off from the goddamned powerups in them that you were gonna come back for later. One could argue that I should go back and get those powerups when the game allows me...but that would be an argument for the same case in Other M, I believe.

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So those are my opinions about the complaints of Other M...and I'm sure they'll get ignored just like everyone else's little forum posts and tweets and all that crap, but as a huge Metroid fan I couldn't just NOT throw my two cents out there when there are so many idiots spouting out comments without ANY good reasoning behind them. Like I said in my actual review of the game, this is NOT a perfect Metroid by any means...but people are freaking out about it way too much, and pulling out statements like THE DEATH OF METROID!!! The whole game was an interesting risk, and in the end it comes together well...maybe even better than it should have! Even if I DID hate the game...I'd still appreciate Nintendo and Team Ninja for at least trying something new and fresh.