[Scourge of Ages]

I must say that I agree with everything written in the original review, there's nothing I didn't like about it (the review).

[phatosealpha]

Wait....out of that entire review, the part the metroid crowd wants to argue about is the plot?

The same Metroid crowd that had debates about whether or not Fusion should've bothered with a plot at all?

Wow.  This game must really suck.

[Mongoose]

Wow.  This game must really suck.

Or perhaps it's because that component of the review was most egregious to fans of the series in general and this game specifically.  Even coming from the perspective of someone who hasn't yet played the game, I certainly consider some of the statements made in there to be dubious at best...there's a lot of the critic's personal preference (or lack thereof) shining through there.  I'd also highly advise taking any single review with a massive grain of salt, unless you know that a particular reviewer's tastes often align with your own.  Numerous other sources have given Other M high all-around marks, control system included, and I've heard from several people who, while having various quibbles with it, have enjoyed it as a whole.

[Shivan Hunter]

Whether games are "art" or not is something for philosopher gamer nerds to discuss. I will meanwhile be playing such things as Blue Planet and not giving a crap whether it's "art", because it is nonetheless a truly wonderful experience.

[Nuke]

Films aren't art either if you examine them in the same way as computer games, they are simply rolls of celluloid, the art is in the Story, the acting and the sets which are copied onto the film via a scientific technique.

No-one asked what Mona-Lisa's motivation was...

leonardo was obviously nakid when he painted it. i mean look at her, she looks like a woman who just saw a penis.

[phatosealpha]

Or perhaps it's because that component of the review was most egregious to fans of the series in general and this game specifically.  Even coming from the perspective of someone who hasn't yet played the game, I certainly consider some of the statements made in there to be dubious at best...there's a lot of the critic's personal preference (or lack thereof) shining through there.  I'd also highly advise taking any single review with a massive grain of salt, unless you know that a particular reviewer's tastes often align with your own.  Numerous other sources have given Other M high all-around marks, control system included, and I've heard from several people who, while having various quibbles with it, have enjoyed it as a whole.

Eh...the review itself is of minimal interest to me.  The reaction of the fanbase is what's interesting, because it is so atypical of it.  Fusion was met with annoyance for having an arbitrary plot device limiting them instead of their ability.  The review implies that M:OM does the same thing, and is kind of insulting to Samus to boot.  If the base is arguing that it's OK because games aren't art, instead of nodding and going "Yeah, this is friggin stupid", something is amiss.

Then I factor in that this is one of the groups I'd expect to starting screaming that art in games is in the gameplay, not the tacked on story....

To be honest though, the lack of major interest in the game is more of a signal though.  Walked by the game in Wal-mart the other day, and was surprised it was already out, since no one had mentioned it in any of the places I visit online.  This is the first discussion of the game I've encountered - and silence when dealing with a well known property on a platform hurting for hardcore games is a condemnation in and of itself.

[Topgun]

all forms of entertainment are art. that's my view on the matter.

[swashmebuckle]

Lol @ Nintendo for creating one of the only major video game series with a non-jiggling female protagonist and then handing it off to the studio responsible for Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball.  And even the most schlocky game is still art.  It's just bad art.

[Mongoose]

Eh...the review itself is of minimal interest to me.  The reaction of the fanbase is what's interesting, because it is so atypical of it.  Fusion was met with annoyance for having an arbitrary plot device limiting them instead of their ability.  The review implies that M:OM does the same thing, and is kind of insulting to Samus to boot.  If the base is arguing that it's OK because games aren't art, instead of nodding and going "Yeah, this is friggin stupid", something is amiss.

See, Fusion was one of my favorite entries in the series precisely because of those plot devices.  I sort of have an atypical entry into the Metroid series...my first game was Prime (and its sequel) and then Fusion, and I still haven't made it around to Super Metroid.  For me, the thought of having this really rich universe/backstory and a strong character like Samus, and then never really exploring either one, feels like somewhat of a waste of potential.  I personally prefer the stronger narrative focus that a few of the newer games have pursued, as opposed to the "wander around and find power-ups" model of the original games.

As far as "insulting" Samus goes, I haven't yet played the game myself, so I can't pass judgment on it as a whole.  However, I do agree with a point I saw someone make that directly counteracts one of the main complaints of this review.  The author took particular offense at Samus's reaction to Ridley, at the flashback to a scared little girl crying as she stood face-to-face with a monster, because Samus has already faced down Ridley a few times before over the Metroid timeline.  But the thing is, I feel like it's far more appropriate for Samus to react this way than for Ridley to be treated as just some boss that you have to lob missiles at.  According to the backstory, this is the same creature that killed her parents and destroyed her homeworld.  Is anyone going to react in business-like fashion when encountering the source of that much personal trauma?  Of course not.  To me, that's the way Ridley should be handled, and I'm glad to hear about that sequence in the game.

To be honest though, the lack of major interest in the game is more of a signal though.  Walked by the game in Wal-mart the other day, and was surprised it was already out, since no one had mentioned it in any of the places I visit online.  This is the first discussion of the game I've encountered - and silence when dealing with a well known property on a platform hurting for hardcore games is a condemnation in and of itself.

I've seen a rather massive amount of interest in it myself.  I occasionally browse the OverClocked ReMix forums, and there's a 20+-page thread going about it, with plenty of back-and-forth.  Just the fact that it's a very different sort of Metroid game has captured a lot of people's attention, for better or worse.  Also, from what I understand, Other M has just about the best opening-week sales numbers in Japan of any title in the Metroid series.  I haven't seen any details about the US release yet, though.

[The E]

As a complete outsider to the games (the last Metroid I played was Super Metroid),, all I can say is that I understand the people who do not like this new characterization of Samus Aran, simply because it's a complete departure from her characterization from previous entries.

That said departure was in the direction of making her weaker, less self-reliant, is something I cannot accept.

[Scourge of Ages]

EDIT: How about we go straight to the dragon's mouth, and see what everyone's talking about?
Here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecAYwkwI9Lc
Watch that, and give us your opinions. Spoilers, great and small, abound.

Like this spoiler: Ridley lives and you need to shoot him a lot. Also

Spoiler:

that black guy gets whacked.

Also some actual spoiler after the battle is over.

[Dark Hunter]

As a complete outsider to the games (the last Metroid I played was Super Metroid),, all I can say is that I understand the people who do not like this new characterization of Samus Aran, simply because it's a complete departure from her characterization from previous entries.

That said departure was in the direction of making her weaker, less self-reliant, is something I cannot accept.

The thing is that this characterization isn't new. She had no real character in the games prior to this, but the Metroid manga (which is canon) portrayed her in a very similar manner: full of insecurities and having Post Traumatic Stress Disorder regarding Ridley.

Gamers who didn't like that idea simply pretended the manga didn't exist. The problem is that the games have included said portrayal and it is now something gamers cannot ignore.

Personally, I think her character is justified given what her childhood was like. Hell, she didn't even join human civilization until she was a teenager. She's gonna have a few issues.

[phatosealpha]

Maybe because in every game, she's been alone against the world, and in almost every game, she's blown the living hell out of Ridley?  Kinda hard to make those two mesh.

[General Battuta]

As a complete outsider to the games (the last Metroid I played was Super Metroid),, all I can say is that I understand the people who do not like this new characterization of Samus Aran, simply because it's a complete departure from her characterization from previous entries.

That said departure was in the direction of making her weaker, less self-reliant, is something I cannot accept.

The thing is that this characterization isn't new. She had no real character in the games prior to this, but the Metroid manga (which is canon) portrayed her in a very similar manner: full of insecurities and having Post Traumatic Stress Disorder regarding Ridley.

I think that part of the problem is that this is how many people expect a manga to treat a female character (or, hell, maybe a character period.) I have to say I prefer the Aliens take on her; Ripley had terrible PTSD but didn't break down into a little whimpering girl when faced with the xenomorphs again. And by this point Samus has battled Ridley at least five or six times.

[The E]

EDIT: How about we go straight to the dragon's mouth, and see what everyone's talking about?
Here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecAYwkwI9Lc
Watch that, and give us your opinions. Spoilers, great and small, abound.

Like this spoiler: Ridley lives and you need to shoot him a lot. Also

Spoiler:

that black guy gets whacked.

Also some actual spoiler after the battle is over.

Yeah, I'm with Spoony on this one. Turning Samus into nothing more than an extension of an unseen(?) operator somewhere, who unlocks weapons based on his whim is bad design.
Turning her into a character who locks up when faced with a threat she has faced before is, once again, bad design.
Now, even if said Manga is canon, the older games in the Metroid series didn't portrait her that way. Yes, she didn't have much of a character. Meaning that, for better or worse, she became an icon of female badassery. Now that gets subverted very hard by telling us that all along, she was some kind of PTSD victim, who cannot be trusted with the full potential of her weapons until some controller decides that she should use $FUNCTION?
I would also submit to you that hiding major pieces of characterization in a medium that is external to the primary medium for storytelling is a bad decision.
It would be like leaving the reveal that Darth Vader is Luke's father out of the movie and putting it in the novelization instead, yet treating it like canon for ROTJ.

So, given her backstory, is there potential for characterization? Yes, certainly. But should that characterization contradict the perception that was built through the other games? I think it shouldn't.

[mxlm]

As far as "insulting" Samus goes, I haven't yet played the game myself, so I can't pass judgment on it as a whole.  However, I do agree with a point I saw someone make that directly counteracts one of the main complaints of this review.  The author took particular offense at Samus's reaction to Ridley, at the flashback to a scared little girl crying as she stood face-to-face with a monster, because Samus has already faced down Ridley a few times before over the Metroid timeline.  But the thing is, I feel like it's far more appropriate for Samus to react this way than for Ridley to be treated as just some boss that you have to lob missiles at.  According to the backstory, this is the same creature that killed her parents and destroyed her homeworld.  Is anyone going to react in business-like fashion when encountering the source of that much personal trauma?  Of course not.

As has been mentioned, she already killed his ass like five times. He turned himself into a robot and she still stomped his guts out. But what, now she's going to lock up?

This could make sense if it were the first time she were facing Ridley, if it was the story of her early days. It isn't that.

[Topgun]

First Zero-suit samus now this. They just keep ruining her image, Nintendo should have just let Retro and whoever made the gameboy metriod games (capcom?) make all the metriod games, not the people that made Extreme Beach Volleyball for God's sakes.

[Dark Hunter]

Why do people blame Team Ninja for Samus's character? THEY DIDN'T WRITE THE STORY. The same people who wrote the old games' stories wrote Other M's story.

Anyway, I'll point out to those that have not played the game that, this one scene aside, Samus was still the hypercompetent badass she usually is throughout. People are truly blowing this way out of proportion. Ridley's just that much of a badass himself.

[Mongoose]

As has been mentioned, she already killed his ass like five times. He turned himself into a robot and she still stomped his guts out. But what, now she's going to lock up?

This could make sense if it were the first time she were facing Ridley, if it was the story of her early days. It isn't that.

Except that, as Dark Hunter pointed out, she didn't even have a real character in those games.  She was a sprite attacking another sprite, nothing more.  Hell, I just played the original Metroid (via Zero Mission's bonus feature) for the first time, and Ridley's sprite was no bigger than she was, which is hilarious.  (Kraid looks even worse.)  I'd assume Super Metroid had a similar lack of setup.  The closest chance you'd have to portraying the situation like this would be in Metroid Prime, which didn't have Samus exhibiting any real personality either.  This is the first real time that Nintendo has chosen to portray Samus as a full character, and as such, this is the first time that we have the chance to see how things probably should have been all along, if the technology/design had allowed for them back then.  Remember that, at the end of the day, the series' co-creator was responsible for Other M's story, so one has to assume that this has always been his vision of Samus.

Yeah, I'm with Spoony on this one. Turning Samus into nothing more than an extension of an unseen(?) operator somewhere, who unlocks weapons based on his whim is bad design.

I'll agree that this system isn't really logical in any sense, but to be fair, neither were most of the other solutions to the problem.  At the beginning of every other Metroid game, Samus starts out possessing only the most basic of abilities, and she just so happens to come across them in whatever environment she was exploring.  That might make sense for the original Metroid, since she might not have possessed the abilities before that (Zero Mission actually had her stripped down to Zero Suit Samus before finding the Gravity Suit), but after that, it's always been essentially a gameplay contrivance.  I know the first two Prime games had to jump through some narrative hoops to justify the mechanic: in the first, you randomly have all of your abilities malfunction when you get thrown into a wall by an explosion, and in the second, a bunch of evil shadow aliens happen to steal them from you at the start of the game.  I don't know that Other M's solution is all that great of a way to justify the mechanic, but it isn't really any less logical than what came before.

[The E]

As has been mentioned, she already killed his ass like five times. He turned himself into a robot and she still stomped his guts out. But what, now she's going to lock up?

This could make sense if it were the first time she were facing Ridley, if it was the story of her early days. It isn't that.

Except that, as Dark Hunter pointed out, she didn't even have a real character in those games.  She was a sprite attacking another sprite, nothing more.  Hell, I just played the original Metroid (via Zero Mission's bonus feature) for the first time, and Ridley's sprite was no bigger than she was, which is hilarious.  (Kraid looks even worse.)  I'd assume Super Metroid had a similar lack of setup.  The closest chance you'd have to portraying the situation like this would be in Metroid Prime, which didn't have Samus exhibiting any real personality either.  This is the first real time that Nintendo has chosen to portray Samus as a full character, and as such, this is the first time that we have the chance to see how things probably should have been all along, if the technology/design had allowed for them back then.  Remember that, at the end of the day, the series' co-creator was responsible for Other M's story, so one has to assume that this has always been his vision of Samus.

Excuse me, but I do believe they had the ability to do more characterization even back in the SNES days. They chose not to. As a result, the fans got to "write" her character based on their perceptions of her during gameplay. Derailing that perception, even if it is done by the series creator, is still derailment. It's still perceived as acting out of character. My argument is, if this is how Samus was supposed to be all this time, why didn't they make it clear before? They could have done it during the Gamecube era. They chose not to. They decided to add characterization after more than a decade of games. Can you see why this upsets people?

Why do people blame Team Ninja for Samus's character? THEY DIDN'T WRITE THE STORY. The same people who wrote the old games' stories wrote Other M's story.

A bad story is a bad story, regardless of who wrote it.

Anyway, I'll point out to those that have not played the game that, this one scene aside, Samus was still the hypercompetent badass she usually is throughout. People are truly blowing this way out of proportion. Ridley's just that much of a badass himself.

So, the bad characterization can be excused because it's delivered inconsistently? That's not a good argument.....