For anyone who wants a more detailed review, here's one I wrote on another message board:
There are no spoilers in this article
So I have just completed Metroid Other M. I’m blown away. I think that describes my feelings the best. I don’t exactly know why it was blasted so much in the gaming media (A 2/5, seriously G4?) but I thought it was a very well done game. Hell, that is an understatement. Other M has issues, I won’t argue, but none you won’t find in any other AAA game. Perhaps a few more, simply because somethings they include turn out to be inconvenient for no apparent reason. It seems to all be done in a effort to shove a whole lot more into a decently old system. And if I had to describe in a sentence how Other M feels, I’d simply say it works. It puts a ridiculous amount of stuff, from fan-pleasing secrets and surprises, to a story I wholeheartedly enjoyed, to a system that fuses Super Metroid with Ninja Gaiden. So many people saw this as something that was just never going to function correctly. It was too much. But it works perfectly fine. It flows, and fuses, and flies as it goes on, and it never misses a beat. The pacing is amazing. The environments live and breathe, they thrive. It takes a complex story and puts in complex features, and complex way of controlling, but against all odds: it works.
Metroid Prime is my favorite game of all time. It is a simple setting, a practically nonexistent story, and yet it presents a world so flowing with emotion out of it’s isolated theme, that it adds infinite amounts to the already great core Metroid gameplay. Metroid Other M is practically the opposite in the Metroid spectrum. It creates a full story that is constantly pulling, and pushing at the gameplay. The sense of isolation is only realized at certain points in the game. Half the time, it may as well be a science fiction movie (although the story is relatively original, and had me guessing at several certain points). Samus actually narrates the story. Compared to the simple, but perfected Prime, Other M might as well have just used the Metroid system to create an entirety new type of game. However, I think this is how the Metroid series may have been originally envisioned. Perhaps Retro simply took the idea from earlier games, thinking it was the style the creators had always intended for the series, and made it 3D, and modernly reinvigorated it. Either way, Other M now stands at 2nd in my list of best Metroids ( I never beat Super, but I have done so to about every other game) even beating the 2 sequels to Prime. If this does not tell you how much I enjoyed this game, I don’t know what will.
The story is one of the few that is actually a driving factor for me to complete the game. I found it well intertwined with the game itself, a feat that developers are just starting to master in this generation. It also transforms the mechanics of 2D Metroids perfectly into 3D ( or at least very close), something aided by the use of the d-pad control, in fact. It just feels like a Metroid at it’s core. It happens to complicate the system to a ridiculous amount, but in the very core of the game, it is a Metroid. All it’s complexity turns it into a game the likes of which Nintendo fans have never seen. It may definitley alienate a few. But I feel it is those few that or too stubborn or stupid to realize that Metroid cannot be suspended in it’s simple, but elegant, and beautiful Prime system. The game needs to evolve. It did not evolve perfectly, what does? It took the leap of faith, and though a few flaws may be prevalent, considering the leap the game has taken, it it utterly brilliant. Prime may have perfected the current Metroid system, but Other M took it to a place that few games have gone, it took a leap few games are willing to take, and I must say, I think I enjoy this game far more than if Retro had made a Prime 4. It took quite a lot of guts to move Metroid to this position, but it was not in vain. There are problems, and glitches, and unpolished areas, and infuriatingly cheap sequences. But Nintendo just put a ridiculous amount of effort to try something new. And you know what?
It works.
. Screw G4 they suck anyways.
