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Despite the Team Ninja Touch, Other M is a True Metroid Game

This dark, alien labyrinth feels familiar.

August 6, 2010
Metroid: Other M
Metroid: Other M Credit: Nintendo

By the end of my most recent hands-on demo with the upcoming Metroid: Other M, Nintendo's representatives had decided to start calling me "the android." This was inspired by the fact that I played through never-before-shown areas of the game with total efficiency, taking down foes and finding hidden items that had stumped everyone who had played the demo before me. In fact, I did so well that it screwed up their presentation, which had been tailored around the presumption that everyone would lose a certain battle -- one that I managed to squeeze through.

So... that means I'm, like, the most awesome gamer ever, right? Ha! Not a chance. Years of turn-based RPGs have dulled my action game reflexes to a dull, butter-knife edge, and I wouldn't dare to pretend otherwise.

No, the fact that I breezed through what I played of Other M doesn't speak highly of me. Rather, it's a credit to the game. You see, I've been playing Metroid games for much longer than I care to count, and I've developed a deep, personal connection to the series for the way it's shaped my gaming tastes; I go back and replay my favorite entries at least once a year. The fact that I was able to slip right into Other M with such ease simply means that Other M is a true Metroid game through and through, one that plays and controls exactly the way my decades of repetition have trained my muscle memory to expect.

This wasn't a given. Sure, Other M is being overseen by Yoshio Sakamoto, who has been involved with most of the series' core titles, but the involvement of Tecmo's Team Ninja has left many Metroid fans wary. Would the game abandon the isolation and exploration for which the series is known in favor of raw action? It's certainly seemed a possibility. And, to date, all Nintendo has really shown of Other M has been the opening section, which is heavy on dialogue and linearity -- not the series' strengths.

Having played beyond the twin chameleon battle shown at this year's E3, though, I'm feeling a lot more confident about Other M's direction. It's shaping up to be very much a classic Metroid experience presented in a new and interesting way: Less talk, more poking around lonely environments crammed with monsters and secret passages. The Team Ninja influences are definitely visible, especially in the brutal killing moves and timing-based evasion system Other M introduces, but the most important thing Yosuke Hayashi and his crew have brought to Metroid is the way the game deals with 3D space.

Ninja Gaiden. The game is constructed of rooms and chambers that function as self-contained battlefields, and survival comes down to managing groups of enemies and knowing when to keep your distance. Of course, Samus primarily uses middle-ranged attacks rather than Ryu Hayabusa's melee skills... though Other M does reward players for taking the battle up close. Samus's special attacks and lethal moves only work at short range, and they're far more effective than chipping away at foes with rapid fire or even charged shots.

Despite the move to 3D and the addition of grappling-style actions into Samus's repertoire, though, Other M feels, above all else, like Metroid. Combat has the same flow and cadence as Super Metroid, and the familiar rhythms of classic enemies have been converted perfectly into a new dimension. That's why I felt right at home with the game: It plays exactly like I expect a Metroid game to play.

Plus, there are plenty of extra items to be found for those who explore -- and as always, they require a grasp of the physical space Samus inhabits and how different areas are interconnected. At one point, I rolled through a cracked glass window in morph ball mode, cleared a room of enemies, and discovered it was a dead end. But a look around (and up) revealed a missile expansion in a duct running along the roof. So, I ducked back out of the room through the crack and ran along the exterior hallway to the open end of the duct, which I was able to climb into in order to collect the power-up and, in the process, reveal the next area. A classic Metroid moment, perfectly translated into a third-person action game.

Telling, what Other M doesn't feel like is Metroid Prime. This seems like a very deliberate decision by the developers, especially considering that Other M makes heavy use of the first-person perspective. It's significant, I think, that going into first-person mode requires changing your grip on the controller -- to enter Samus's viewpoint, you have to release the controller with your left hand and point it at the screen. This forces you to relinquish the ability to move Samus, preventing the game from adopting a first-person shooter style. You're not completely immobile in that POV, though; tapping the A button right as enemies attack will allow you to perform a quick evasion. But as with the powerful melee strikes, the first-person mode is a trade-off: You leave yourself more vulnerable in return for the ability to target specific enemies and make use of powerful missile attacks.

The game's enemies definitely put Samus's skills to the test in any perspective. The tensest part of the demo came shortly after the chameleon battle, as a trio of deadly armadillo-like creatures attacked in a sealed-off room. Heavily armored and devastatingly powerful, these beasts forced me to go into evasion mode, dodging their melee strikes while above ground and dashing out of the way when they burrowed and make a beeline for Samus underground. The key to this battle proved to be avoiding their attacks and using every brief opening to fire off a charged shot, which could potentially stun them and leave them open to a melee strike. This sequence reminded me of nothing so much the infamous fight with the grey space pirates in near the end of Super Metroid; the rhythm and strategies of the two encounters are quite similar and really drive home the fact that Nintendo and Team Ninja have nailed the classic Metroid feel in the third dimension.

The overall structure of Other M seems likely to fall in line with Metroid Fusion, from the imperious commands of Adam Malkovich to the fact that the vessel Samus explores is divided into numbered sections. And the difficulty seems to fall in line with Fusion as well. Bosses are deadly but can be defeated with observation and pattern recognition. Normal enemies are less powerful, but still dangerous enough that they can't simply be shrugged off -- especially since the only way to restore health is to stop at a save station or use a risky Crystal Flash-like recharge move when Samus's energy is critical.

1UP.

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