BombermanBoard

Duke Serkol · #24 Posted: Wed Dec 08, 2010 10:24 am

Regulus 777 wrote:

Oh man, more depressing news huh?

Yeah and it came to me right out of the blue. Everyone was so busy complaining about the story that I hadn't heard anything bad about the controls when I bought the game. Had I known, I would have gotten it used (I'm a collector so even if I think it's a massive turd, I had to get it)

Regulus 777 wrote:

I loved Super Metroid but wasn't personally able to make the transition to the newer 1st person games. I couldn't get into it though I have to admit they still had a very Metroid like feel and atmosphere. I just don't like 1st person games much so I haven't been too into the series lately.

Yes, Metroid Prime 1 is essentially Super Metroid in 3D and first person view... so unless you like those, it's not gonna work for you. Normally I have issues with FPS games, they give me motion sickness, but thankfully the Primes didn't. I think it's the hud that helps by filling part of the screen with something static.

Regulus 777 wrote:

i think the last one i tried out was Fusion which seemed decent IMO.

Fusion was a big let down to me, but it's still passable as a Metroid (or pretty darn good as a game in general). Other M is guilty of two of Fusion's biggest offenses (linearity and too much *beep*ing dialogue) but it takes those to the extreme and adds on more insults.
I would have thought Sakamoto had learned his lesson since after that one he made Zero Mission which was short but a true Metroid game by every meaning of the word. So much for that.

So to begin my analysis of Other M (and I'll preface this by saying that not having gone for the medical profession I never thought I would one day analyze feces), the intro of the game is nice, but as soon as you're thrust into the tutorial you immediately know something's wrong. Namely the controls are all kinds of screwed up. First off, Sakamoto wanted people to wonder how they would get a 3D game to be controlled with the D-pad (this game doesn't use the nunchuck, as you probably know). The answer?
They didn't. The controls are -extremely- clunky. Moving around in a 3D space while only being able to go in 8 fixed directions is extremely disconcerting, especially for an action game. It's the reason Nintendo came up with the N64 controller in the first place, too bad Sakamoto didn't get the memo. Also since this is a Wii-mote you only have so many buttons to go, meaning that there's no run button. In other words, Samus can only move at one speed... which happens to be thrice the default speed of any other Metroid game ever made. Expect to run into enemies a lot! Oh and on that note, it goes without saying that in order for this ridiculous set up to at least resemble a method of controlling the game, it's necessary that the camera moves in a predetrmined way, which means you have -absolutely- no control on the camera whtsoever. You'd think that would improve things significantly, but they managed to *beep* this up too as the camera will, at a surprisingly frequent rate, be placed in such a way that you can NOT see where you're going. Seriously often enough I find myself having to stop and shoot randomly toward the screen to make sure there isn't anything that needs to be taken out before I can keep going.

This leads us to the next issue: the autoaim. Despite its claim to be a throwback to the 2D Metroids, due to the inability to move in more than 8 directions this game has to rely extensively on autoaim. It's quite laughable really. So long as the enemy is in Samus' field of vision (meaning if she isn't turned anything more than about 80° degrees away from it) all you have to do is hit the button and Samus will take it on herself to target the enemy. It gets really ridiculous in some situations when you're just facing forward to the very center of the screen and enemies from both sides move in toward you (and thus toward the center) allowing you to shoot them all down just by mashing the attack button repeatedly as they line up in front of you.

But perhaps you've heard about how you can go into first person view by turning the pointer toward the screen, uh? You'd think that certainly this would improve things, right? Well though luck, it doesn't. First of all, there's a delay. Going in and out of FP view does not freeze the game, only slows it down for a moment (which looks kinda silly), so you'd better hope you won't get blasted while the visual shifts. Once you're in FP view... you can keep on hoping the enemies decide not to attack you, because you are -rooted- into place.
There isn't really any sensible reason for this since the D-Pad isn't any further away from your thumb. It just stops functioning because "*beep* it".
So now you're in FP view you can at least attack more efficiently right? Well, if you want to attack with the beam weapon while in FP view then you can -not- use the lock on. Why? Because locking onto enemies is how you activate your missiles. And these are not the missiles of Super Metroid, nooo, this crap has a delay between shots. But that's okay because you will only have very few missiles in this game since each expansion only raises your total by one, not five as in the other games. What's that? "This sucks?" Oh, we've only just started here...

There actually is a way to move while in FP view... by dodging enemy attacks. Naturally this means you can only move if a bullet is about to nail you, but hey, beggars can't be choosers right?
Now you'd think this would be made in a simple intuitive way... and you'd be half right. It is simple: you have to jerk the Wii-mote in one any direction. Yup, you heard me, while you're using the pointer to aim your gun in FP view you are expected to move out of harm's way by jerking your pointer away from the target. Genius. It's not something tat comes naturally so it takes a lot of getting used to.
I did however readily manage to dodge while out of FP view... mostly unintentionally. You see in standard view dodging is performed in a completely different way (because as everyone knows, you can't shake your controller while holding it horizontally... oh wait yes you can, they built all of Wario Land Wii around that idea). No in standard view you dodge by pushing any one direction immediately before being hit. Yeah I'm not shitting you. To dodge attacks you have to first stop moving. What. The. *beep*.
So what happens is that most of the times I'm just standing still and attacking, then I see a bullet come my way and I push a direction to walk out of the way... instead Samus performs a dodge (essentially a sommersault) and each and every time I'm momentarily disoriented by the fact that my character did something I did not intend for her to do (which often ends up getting me hit by the next attack). What's worse is... the dodge/sommersault animation isn't all that different from the one you get when being hit. So at times I honestly don't know wheter I dodged an attack or got blasted in the face. It's horribly confusing.
Eventually though, you get the hang of this dodging business... and that's when the game essentially turns into a movie, because you can dodge your way out of -anything- as much as you want. There is no interval of time before you can perform another dodge, and you are literally invincible while doing one (you can pass through anything). So essentially you can stop moving normally and just keep tapping directions to spam the move. Sure you could try to hold back from doing that, but there's fights in the game that seem designed to be won that way. Oh and for some reason shooting right after a dodge gives you an instant charge shot. Because you know, we needed an incentive to dodge.

At this point, you're probably having trouble piecing together this incoherent mess. So let me bring up the question you should be asking if your head wasn't spinning: if you have to lock on to shoot missiles in FP view, how do you shoot missiles in standard view?
Well that's really simple: you don't. You can only shoot missiles while in FP view.
Has your head exploded yet? Well this just might do the trick: remember Super Missiles? In Super Metroid you selected them as an alternative to the regular ones. Lately (in the Prime games, most notably) Super Missiles are just a bunch of regular missiles combined into one by charging up the missiles as you would the beam... guess which approach this game went with?
Now think about this: you can only activate missiles by locking onto enemies and you can only shoot Super Missiles by charging while missiles are activated. And you can't move while in FP view. As you can probably tell, this all translates into "Super Missiles are completely impratical during combat. Enjoy using them solely to open doors."

Since we're talking about missiles, have you heard that this game has no items dropped by enemies? Well what this means is, surprisingly, that you have unlimited missiles. The catch is, you can only restock by standing still. You do this by pointing the Wii-mote upwards and holding down A (seriously who thinks this shit up??). So yeah, once again, you'd better hope the enemies decide to take a break and stop shooting you. Oh and of course this can only be done in standard view. Whereas the missiles you're restocking are only used in FP view. Which takes an additional moment then to transition into. And roots you in place.
HOW DID THIS SHIT GET PAST BETA TESTING STAGES?!?!?!?

Oh, you may be wondering about health, since hey, enemies that always dropped that stuff now won't do so anymore. Because *beep* it.
Well, the above described method also restores health... but only if all your energy tanks have already been depleted and you're on the last 40 HP. It takes longer to pull off (it's not gradual so you can't interrupt it and get partial benefits from it) and does not recharge more than a few tanks, depending on dedicated items that you collect (you may wonder why it can only be done when you're down to 40 or lower and not, say, when you're at 60 and want to get back to 99... how many times do I have to say "because *beep* it"?). Oh and yeah, the only way to fully recharge your tanks is to reach a save point. Yippie.

For what is worth, the morph ball actually controls better than in Prime, probably just due to it having less inhertia. On the other hand, it's completely useless in fights because unlike Prime in which you took less damage in ball form, here getting hit snaps you out of the ball. What you still thought they'd do anything right? Well, I suppose it should be said that jumping surprisingly does -not- require you to throw your Wii-mote into the air clap your hands, scream "Jumpzor!" and catch it on the way down. At this point I expected no less.

So, you now probably believe the controls can't possibly get worse. Wrong, because just when you think that, they start getting "fancy" (no really).
First off, have you seen how Samus would sometimes get physical with enemies in the trailers? Guess how that is accomplished? By going into them. I swear I'm dead serious. There are some enemies which you can grab and toss by walking into them. This is completely automatical and I've often found myself doing so by accident (like the dodge).
Sometimes it isn't as simple as walking. In the tutorial I had one very surreal moment when I was told to "jump on its head". Right away I cracked up, exclaiming "That's a nice Super Mario joke there!". But I kept shooting and the enemy would not die. The game told me to stop sucking (almost literally. Yeah the tutorial actually insulted me for being slow) and repeated the earlier instructions. So I did, after several tries (it's hard to jump onto a moving target in a 3D environment with only an 8 directional D-Pad... who would have tought!) and again though I had not charged my weaponSamus delivered a charged shot to the head of my foe (because really charging your shot is only necessary when Samus doesn't feel like being a show off). I'm starting to be sick just by thinking back to all this...
There's also one more "technique": running into a stunned foe makes you perform a fatality. This seems to be bullshittingly mandatory against some enemies, but I could be mistaken.
Now the thing is... apart from this very last technique about stunned foes, there is no way at all to tell when you can interact with enemies in such ways. You just have to try throwing yourself at them, most likely getting hurt (and repeatedly too since, as I said, it's hard to land squarely on an enemy's head).
What's worse is... Samus has a really shitty armor in this game. You know those enemies that cling onto ceiling only to dive at you when walking by? The ones that in other Metroid games dealt something between 5 to 10 damage? Well one of them got a whooping 40 out of me. And I hadn't found any E-Tanks at the time. Obviously some bosses then will take out about 100 with one hit.

And yet, the game can still come off as pretty darn easy because of the dodge move. Also, they must have been very aware of how clunky this turd is, so the enemies are often bizzarrely not aggressive, leaving you time to recharge and shoot your missiles. As a result, you'll generally advance through the game without really enjoying the confusing yet easily won fights and still find yourself swearing like a sailor when you lose not because the game is genuinely hard but because of how clunky it is (really, that word never gets out of my mind for so much as a moment as I play through this thing).

Oh and I'm -not- done. There's still more ways, outside of combat, for the controls to suck. See, occasionally the game feels like being subtle-creepy. The thing is... it goes at this with the grace of a sledgehammer.
Every now and then, in certain areas with no enemies (not all of them, thankfully), the game will arbitrarily decide that Samus must stop running. Instead she will then walk around at a pace that would embarass even Resident Evil characters. Sometimes the game forces you to navigate huge-ass areas in this fashion. It takes for-*beep*ing-ever and, get this, nothing happens until you get to your destination. I'm dead, *beep*ing, serious. So yeah, after this magnificent example of douchebaggery, the programmers were clearly faced with a conundrum. How could they break up the action in an even more forced, arbitrary and extremely pissant way? They found a solution. Occasionally, Samus will be startled by something. When this happens you are forced in FP view and are required to go on a pixel hunt. Seriously, it's not as simple as just looking around until you find something, you have to guess (emphasis on that word) where it is Samus is supposed to look then keep the cursor on that spot for a few seconds (obviously to prevent you from just waving it around and get on with the game... as anybody clearly would like). The actual object you are looking at is generally only revealed afterwards (that's why I said emphasis on guess and pixel hunt. You only really see something small and partially obscured) and believe it or not: more often than not it is something that has no influence on the in-game action, just the plot. Seriously, Samus will just see something, shrug/remark on it and that's it. Wow. It honestly feels like everything in this game has been designed specifically to suck and piss off the player.

And that's all for the controls (yeah, I can't believe it's finally over either). So what of the game's other problems? Well first of all, this game is linear. Extremely so. There's no such thing as branching paths that can advance you through the game indipendently from one another. No. You will always have a destination and only one way to get there, with minor detours only meant to let you find some extra hidden power ups. On that note, Samus has a built in hidden item radar in this game that tells her where in a room hidden items are located after she cleared it of all enemies. Why after? Because... oh you're tired of hearing me say that. Actually I think the reason is that without enemy droppings, this is the only incentive to kill enemies rather than run past them besides the occasional door that only opens after they are dealt with. And with controls this enjoyable, the incentive is very much needed. Also, as I mentioned before, doors will inexplicably stop you from going back to previous areas (like they did in Fusion, except without bothering with any explanation as to why), so you better look around really hard when that blue dot blips on your map.
While we're talking of the map, it's important to mention that it utterly sucks. The one in the corner is multilayered, but the one in the submenu isn't. Yup, a 3D game with a 2D map. How's that for half-arsedness? Oh and when exploring... I'm sorry, when strolling by a new area, you are almost always given the map to the path you are to take by the save stations (again, like in Fusion).

Speaking of items brings us to one of the game's most universally disliked aspects, the plot. Yeah, that's a weird connection, I know. And that's the problem right there.
See, this game takes place after Super Metroid. So a reason was needed as to why Samus is back to basic abilities at the start of the game. Retro Studios in Prime made her go through accidents that disable her armor's powers. Cliché but functional.
Team Ninja decided to be "original" in this too (and by "original" I mean *beep*s). Samus has all her powers from Super Metroid (or most)... except missile expansions and tanks (which is left unexplained... brilliant). She just won't use those powers. Why? Because she's decided to go on a joint mission with Captain Asshole Munchon*beep* and he hasn't specifically authorized those abilities. Let this be absolutely clear: he hasn't gone and listed all abilities she can't use, only a few; ones that, in his own words, could damage the station (like Super Missiles or Power Bombs). Samus is just assuming that unless he specifically authorized it, she must not use it. No matter how life threatening the situation may be, Samus will die rather than use her full abilities. There is one particularly serious offender in the Varia suit. You have to go through a super heated area in which your healt depletes constantly because you don't have the Varia activated and Samus will rather burn to ashes than do so. It's only during the latter half of the boss fight that Captain Asshole calls in to tell her that she probably should use it. The absurdity of this is appalling when considering that the Varia suit can in no way damage anything being just a protective armor. Same goes for the grapple beam. Captain Asshole has you go around chasing a monster, then give up and reassign you elsewhere when the path's blocked... then go back and use the grapple beam to get over the obstacle! Something similar happens also with the wave beam, you navigate a maze, reach a point where you'd need it, get out and only then you are told you can use it, making you have to go back through the maze. WHAT THE *beep* WERE THEY THINKING????

This, of course, is all part of Samus' "scared emotional wreck of a girl" characterization you certainly heard about. Samus, the lone wolf best bounty hunter of the galaxy, is more afraid of not having the approval of her father figure (who acts extremely authoritative, rude and emotionally detached) than of dying a horrible death. Oh and she also is concerned about what a bunch of sexist dudes think of her. All human because clearly the Galactic Federation is entirely made of humans, right?
To most people that criticize this, the shit hits the fan when she is confronted with

Spoiler:

Ridley, the Ridley she killed twice in Zero Mission, once in Prime1, twice in Prime3 and one more time in Super Metroid, and she literally turns into a little girl and has to be rescued by one of said dudes. Now personally I don't mind this as much as the bullshit explanation about not using vital items. We all are entitled to moments of paralyzing terror... what I do mind is that her armor dissolves (seriously, it turns to colorful dust) because of her panic attack and comes back just in time to save her from turning into a stain on the floor. WHAT. THE. HELL???

Uff... that was a long rant. Oh and I almost forgot: all of the Metroid Prime games had nearly no loading whatsoever. The same goes for most Nintendo games as the company has always been sensible about this... not Hemorroid Other Emo, no sire.
Every time you go to load your saved game, you'll be treated to a very long loading sequence (to give you an idea of it: the game gives you a "the story so far" text and by the time you're done reading you'll often still have to wait a while).
Also the game expects you to move around in a certain way. Do otherwise and you'll have to stop at doors that refuse to open because the game (as it notifies you in a corner) needs to load.

How about that? You can have a great game like Prime and play it as much as you like without any breaks... or you can bore yourself to death as you wait for a piece of crap to drive you bonkers.
Being it the later released game, you'd think at least the technical aspect would be handled better.

Honestly, this game is a *beep*ing insult to the franchise. Whereas Fusion could not really be considered a good Metroid but was still a very enjoyable game, Other Emo is barely a mediocre game and a Metroid in name only.
As far as I'm concerned it's on the same level as the Zelda CD-i games (which are a surprisingly good parallel since they too have horrendously bad controls and cringeworthy cutscenes).