I actually liked the combat rolling and executions in Other M. I didn't like how you're supposed to replenish missiles or how the gravity suit was just an aura.
Moving forward, I wouldn't mind seeing some aspects pop up again provided the series actually moves forward. I wouldn't mind it going back to the 2D styled environments either if it would help to rediscover some roots.
Executions in videogames is casual garbage.
Probably, but I'm a sucker for them. It's probably why I enjoyed Ryse: Son of Rome and Shadow of Mordor
Some of the stuff in other m was good, yeah. I particularly liked how the did power bombs; no ammo or expansions, and they just used a charge meter.
It's a much better system that Fusion's ridiculous 'find 31 power bomb tanks so we can have exactly 100 pickups for 100% and you'll have 74 power bombs!'
The first 3D version of the speed booster was a fairly good concept, but the execution was fucked. You have an ability that lets you run really quickly in a setting where every room is a long corridor. Move too quickly, and you run through sections faster than the game can load them. Was the best solution to this really to put speed humps everywhere? You couldn't find a better solution that doesn't stifle the player's movement?
The Space Jump, too. Instead of the infinite jumps/flight of the 2D games, we get a single ascending jump followed by infinite horizontal jumps. The game takes place in a spaceship. A confined, closed-roof environment. Why limit the player's mobility?
You can make good platforming sections that cater to the Space Jump's mobility. This is just another example of lazy design. Ugh, this game.
I'll admit some of the flashy boss kills, but most of the others felt dumb.
The combat and visuals in Other M weren't bad in my opinion. But they also weren't what most people (including me) would like in a Metroid game. It fits for a Team Ninja game.
That being said, the combat is really the only thing you can deem acceptable in Other M. Everything else from controls, level design, story and music is plain bad. And Team Ninja actually had nothing to do with it. It was all Sakamoto.
I honestly think that Other M could have been great. But the focus on story is what made it bad. Not only because the story was horrid (and boy was it), but because every other major gameplay and design issue in the game is tied to the story. Pixel hunts, QTEs, linear hallways, arbitrary skill unlocks, bad use of missiles...it all has to do with the story.
Other M was a perfectly good game marred by some minor issues like the dull point and click sections and a trash story.
Objectively speaking, it's better than all 3 prime games combined. While it lost out on puzzle solving, that shit only served to slow down the gameplay and was never an element in the actual Metroid games.
But hey, it's "sexist" so it's a bad game.
Dodging had so many frames of invulnerability it trivialized anything the game had to offer before you had to switch to first person. You could literally just mash any direction at any time during combat and you would avoid almost everything.
There's a slew of issues with the game's first person mode. But the most egregious is not being able to move in a game centered around movement and dodging.
>While it lost out on puzzle solving, that shit only served to slow down the gameplay and was never an element in the actual Metroid games.
I think the puzzles in Prime were annoying, but it had more to do with the limitations of first person view and the huge amount of area you needed to explore. In the 2D games, puzzles are obviously still a factor. Its just much easier to find a bomb hole or power up when you only have 2 dimensions of movement. There's only so many areas in a square room that can be searched. Unlike in a Prime game where you can spend an hour in a Chozo room and still never figure out which grey panel or statue you need to bomb.
Even the 2D morph ball sections in Prime were badly constructed, though.
The scan visor was clearly an attempt to make hunting for the right area easier, but I think it was too lax in its identification. Things like bombable spots shouldn't have been made "realistic" for the sake of atmosphere, they should have been colorful for the sake of gameplay. There were plenty of ways to make it less cumbersome, they just didn't go for any of them.
Metroid is dead and i hate you all.
I think, regardless of the story or any of that shit, that Other M just strayed too far from the core Metroid formula to be called a Metroid game.
A lot of people believe that a franchise is just a name. I disagree. I think if a game is drastically different to predecessors, or to the games that set the stone for the series then it should be considered a spin-off.
In my opinion the three most important Metroid aspects are, in order:
1. Atmosphere
2. Exploration
3. Upgrades
These are the three things you need for it to be Metroid.
But Other M failed in all three areas.
It had little to no atmosphere, coming off as just a plastic toy version of Metroid. Dull and boring.
It had literally no exploration at all. The furthest you could deviate from the intended path was the odd hidden air vent with an energy tank.
And it didn't really have any decent upgrades. It just had the usual fare, but even they weren't utilised very well. Metroid upgrades should be exciting to find, and they should change the way you interact with the world. Even something as simple as the Long Beam changes the game.
In Other M you were walking through these movie sets completely devoid of character, you were following a yellow line on the floor and you never got any significant powers or tools that changed the way you traversed the world.
I think I've given enough argument to say that I don't think Metroid: Other M counts as a core Metroid game.
An other M style game could be really good, they just massively fucked it up with retarded decisions and lack of exploration
naw nigga exploration is #1
but you are correct otherwise
I just had a mental image of using space jump to navigate complex corridors in 3D and it made me angry that Other M was so 2 dimensional.
I think Fusion shows that less exploration can still work to a degree if the atmosphere and upgrades are well done. Even Zero Mission was a bit more linear than the original, and it still worked OK.
But going as far as Other M with the linearity is just a mistake.
>fusion less exploration than SM/ZM, a step below
>prime 3 less exploration than 1/2, a step below
exploration is what metroid is founded upon, it's the core
I think you have a valid point, but I myself personally value atmosphere very heavily in all video games.
I will certainly agree that heavy story focus always hurts Metroid games.
>1. Atmosphere
I'm guessing you just mean different locations here, which all the games have. Atmosphere is a meaningless buzzword.
>2. Exploration
A fucking missile tank halfway up a wall isn't really exploration. It's a bonus for the people who want 100% items, fair enough, but most people aren't going to bother with it.
>3. Upgrades
The way you describe upgrades is ridiculous. In the mainline titles, they're generally used as excuses to make you backtrack and artificially extend the game. There's nothing wrong with making the game more linear.
Your arguments would also apply in some aspect to half of the real games.
My problem with it was the awful cutscenes,
and that the game was too easy,
like I 100% it without even trying.
>Atmosphere is a meaningless buzzword.
uh huh
>moving forward
>not accepting that Metroid is already dead forever
I know it hurts, bro.
I'm sorry that the Phenandra drifts reveal just made me think "huh, a snow level" instead of "wow, look at all this ATMOSPHERE!".
The game with the most exploration is Metroid, and I'd say it's a pretty safe bet that everyone here doesn't even fucking like that game. Wandering about looking for the next power up or wall to bomb isn't good gameplay.
>Atmosphere is a meaningless buzzword.
Buzzword is the king of buzzwords.
Atmosphere is, yes, not exactly tangible. But you can clearly, for want of a better word, 'feel' it when it's there.
A combination of the environment you're in, the music playing, the context of the situation. It all adds up to the atmosphere of the game. Atmosphere is an important part of the versimilitude of the game as well. Metroid II is undebatably the ugliest Metroid game, completely unimmersive, and yet it manages to have a thick atmosphere by use of sound and level design. It's very claustrophobic and disorienting which makes the world feel all that much more imposing.
I think that atmosphere is one of the most important aspect of Metroid. And I think you're a fool if you don't understand what atmosphere is.
Atmosphere should compliment gameplay. Graphics as a whole should compliment gameplay. There's nothing wrong with having good graphics. Its obviously better to have good graphics than not. But graphics (or atmosphere) alone can't hold up a game.
If your game is just walking along the beach collecting trash, then its a pretty shitty game. Even if the 'atmosphere' is amazing.
The metroid games have no atmosphere. Every 2 seconds, you shoot a wall and it pops up with a handy hint of what you should use to blow it up. The locations don't form a cohesive whole, they're just generic areas with different looks to break up the monotony. The music design is nothing special, I'd say only Super Metroid has a decent soundtrack.
Samus thread?
>The metroid games have no atmosphere
Ah, it's bait. Makes sense now.
Close-quarters combat and Metroid don't seem very logical to me in general. If it's gonna stay third person I'd rather see it start taking stuff from Shinji Mikami's games.
>There's nothing wrong with making the game more linear.
Fusion's linear progression was the worst aspect of an otherwise fantastic game. Metroid shouldn't be linear, period. Fuck off if you want to incorporate that shit. You can go to almost any other game series for linear progression, but let Metroid stay fucking exploration and upgrade focused. Taking that shit away undermines the entire structure of the series.
>atmosphere is a buzzword
If you took Super Metroid, removed all the atmosphere and were left with simplified geometric shapes moving in a black void making Atari noises it would be an identical game?