I was a little aprehensive when I learned that Team Ninja was making the next Metroid (I hate what they did to Ninja Gaiden, and also hate arena brawlers in general.) I was more aprehensive when I saw clips of all the cutscenes (feeling that if they are focusing that much on story, how could they make a "true" Metroid game, look at Fusion). Then I learned that "Other M" was not just he code name, but the actual title, that is just acquard.

Besides all these things I was still super-excited for it, preordering it as soon as it was possible and counting down the days (even considering taking the day off from work). I finally got it, here are my thoughts after one night of play:

Story: I don't really care much for story in Nintendo games, but I'll live with it as long as it doesn't make the gameplay suffer. So far though it looks like Other M may be going the Metroid Fusion route, of locking you in to certains areas you can visit at particular times using story constraints. These are nearly as good as physical constraints which require you to have more items (the point of Metroid games), and they leave no room for sequence breaking (another major part of Metroid games, a part Retro Studios never seemed to understand.)

So far the controls seem pretty bad (hopefully I just need more time to get used to them). You can "do" everything you would expect, run, jump, spin jump, shoot, wall jump, bomb jump. But there are little flaws with just about everything. The first thing I noticed was that normal jump and spin jump take you to the same height. This has never been the case for any Metroid games to include both jumps (all but the first-person games). You can "shoot" things, but it basically ammounts to walking into a room and mashing '2' until everything is dead, Samus has some major auto-aim. Since up and down on the d-pad move you forward and back, there is no way to aim up, down, or crouch, so I understand it needs the auto-aim, but I'd much rather they go the Shadow Complex route, where it is actually 2D gameplay, but looks 3D. Wall jumping works well, when it works, but so far I havn't been able to figure out any way of telling if I can wall jump off a wall without trying (you can never wall jump off invisible walls though).

Speaking of invisible walls, the environments look great, and feel very Metroid, but they are riddled with invisible walls, this is the opposite of what Metroid games should have (fake walls).

You still collect things, of course, but after several hours of play I still havn't heard an item collection jingle! :(!!! Just a little "shoop" sound like in Shadow Complex. It might not sound like much, but it makes collection much less satisfying. Imagine Zelda without any of the collection or puzzle jingles. The music in general is pretty lacking, which is pretty bad for a Metroid game (which usually have quite memorable music).

The fighting, when it isn't just mashing '2' on entering a room, feels much like an arena brawler. You run around charging, jump on guys, cinematically shoot them in the head as you lose control of Samus. It feel much more disjointed than I'd like. Super Metroid had a few doors-lock-kill-enemies rooms, but not nearly this many. In most metroid games the exploration and combat mechanics blend well together (ex: you can walljump to help in either) but in Other M it feels more like there are two sets of actions which are useful for the different aspects of the game.

I am clearly disapointed, hopefully things will turn around. With Ninja Gaiden I feel like Team Ninja said "Ninja Gaiden games are just really hard games with ninjas". Then went off and made a game just based on that, losing much of what I like in the NES games. For Metroid it would be, "A game where you collect things and fight monsters as Samus". That is true, but there is so much more that seems to be left out. It feels a lot like a 3D Metroid Fusion (with evem more missing nuance) so far. I'll write another article once I've finished it.