I am probably one of the few gamers in the world that have no pre-conceived notions when walking into the Metroid universe. I’d never played a single Metroid game until recently picking up Metroid: Other M for a review. I’m not sure whether or not that was a good or bad thing at this point.
I expected to walk into Metroid as a fresh new IP for me, at least, given that the entire world was new to me. But I couldn’t help but think that super soldier equals Master Chief, and this being a Nintendo game equals awesome character and hit-or-miss storyline. I got exactly what I bargained for in the last department (that is, the storyline turned out to be a miss and the character was pretty awesome), but she is far from this awesome super soldier. You end up feeling more like you’re playing a cheesy robot with a blaster for an arm instead of anything grounded in some sort of reality. Don’t get me wrong, I know this isn’t supposed to be hyper-realistic, but something about it put its cheese higher up than I thought it should have been. Maybe it was the voiceover. Yep, it was definitely the voiceover. Shut up already, Samus.
The storyline is nothing to write home about; you’re dealing with a simple yet somehow convoluted story that involved more than one of you… I think. Samus just seemed to keep talking about her life and how she felt rather than letting me play through it. It seemed disjointed and a way for the developer to get out of having to come up with an interesting way to tell the story from the first person.
Perhaps I’m being too hard on the game overall. A redeeming factor, but by no means a saving grace, were the graphics. Somehow, Team Ninja manages to get a lot more horsepower out of the Wii than you’d ever expect possible given the current load of games available. The bosses were also cleverly crafted and well executed, both in design and strategy. I expected more given the usual Zelda bosses I’m used to, but remembering that this is not a Zelda game, I realize I need to cut it a bit of slack.
Feel free to let this review’s length be a testament to how I just couldn’t enjoy this game. I’m hoping for some really great stuff to come out of Nintendo in the near future, and I really hope that another development team doesn’t change around the formulas for classic icons like Kirby or Donkey Kong when they launch this November in Epic Yarn and Country Returns, respectively. I’m going to refrain from giving Metroid a review because I am not one of those people that had been in love with Metroid since I was three, I can’t judge because it may just not be something that I’m interested in. I can understand why people like it, but it’s just not for me. I need a bit more depth and strength from a title, especially when it claims to be so much and Metroid: Other M, for me, just didn’t deliver.