Alright, here we go. I borrowed this game along with Jungle Beat from a friend, because they were two games with a strongly negative reception in their respective fansbases, yet admittedly had their positive aspects. I was curious, almost curious enough to spend money to buy them myself. Having played them now, I’m quite glad I didn’t.
Not to get ahead of myself, but this one had the wider bad blood of the two. Its instant derailing of Samus’ character after almost 25 years is held as its greatest crime. I’ll add my own crimes to the list during this review, but between it and Jungle Beat, I preferred this one, the latter two thirds of the game were more fun. Inferior to previous 2D Metroid and the Primes in my opinion, but it had things going for it. Let’s get the crap out of the way first though.
Anywhere on the Internet you can find the criticisms of this game, especially the story-related elements. However, we can’t ignore the gameplay shortcomings: Enemies take way too long to deal with early on, the charge is so slow and they take so many hits. Action is broken up frustratingly with unnecessary shifts in control: slow-walking from a zoomed-in perspective or looking aimlessly around in first person. In the moment too, switching from the uncomfortable sideways-Wiimote to pointing for missiles is clunky, so much that I barely bothered with it. Finishing moves were poorly explained so I had trouble pulling them off, and half the time they didn’t “finish” them anyway.
Enemy designs were ugly and overcomplicated, and their names were just hideously unpronounceable. I guess it made them seem more alien? The environment concepts were interesting but they, along with the setting and premise, were shamelessly ripped off from Fusion. Music is basically nonexistant, and the ambience I either ignored or was drowned out by sound effects so aurally there was really nothing there.
The premise is poorly executed and the symbolic posturing is so, so hamfisted. It cannot be overtstated how poor the writing here is, and the monotone voice acting does not help matters. There are several main players who are not characterised at all, then killed off with little fanfare or consequence. The major plot points of the first half trail off to nothing more than implication, and while environmental and implied storytelling is a strength of the Metroid series, contrasting it to the extremely in-your-face storytelling applied elsehwere leaves a lot of impact to fall flat.
Samus’ boobs are too big and her suit has heels. Heels, people. Her eternal monologuing inspires dread. And not Metroid Dread, hopefully. I wouldn’t normally use phrases like ludo-narrative dissonance but, uh, Other M has got it. I wanted to watch the cutscenes but at the same time I didn’t want to. And the whole thing ends on an anti-climax.
On the other hand, uh, running around feels good. Whew, I’m all ragey from that. Should have started with the good stuff. Well, it looks pretty. The map’s pretty good and the part of the game where you go around hunting items was fun enough for me to get 100%. Must be because there’s no talking, no plot, no forced sections. The abilities you get make you feel powerful, although by the end you could say overpowered, possibly because the enemies don’t really ramp enough I guess? I like the implementation of the speed boost and stuff with the level design. I also liked some of the environmental concepts with holograms, but there wasn’t enough of it.
Basically I’d agree that it’s a big misstep in the series. I chalk it up to the interpretation of Samus, the ludicrous excuses they put up for the gameplay constraints (the authorisation system gets too much hate probably, but it’s partially justified), and the one that surprised me was the almost complete ignoring of the Prime games. This is a very Japanese product, and you get the feeling that the arrogant and possessive Sakamoto didn’t care for what those Westerners did with his baby. So he made this? Really, this? I blame him for a lot of problems with the game, mainly because I like a figurehead to point the blame at, like Miyamoto. In some ways it competently evokes an extension of the 2D games into a pseudo-3D setting (it’s 2.5D really, maybe 2.75D at best), but in others it’s going against that. So I don’t know what its goals are.
I’ve seen the game for $10 and if you’re able to ignore very large aspects of a game to focus on the good parts, it’s worth it for that. The fighting is different to any Metroid before it, but the exploration feels pretty Metroidy. And the concept of telling a more in-depth story is interesting, but executed very poorly. My wife couldn’t bear to be in the same room as the game because of the talky parts. But it pretty much ruined the series for a few years, and the follow-up has to be good. That’s why some people wanted Retro to have another go (shut up, Tropical Freeze is gonna be awesome!). I like being up on all the happenings and lore and gameplay of all my favourite series, so I needed to play this. You don’t have to. Thumbs down not ironically
