Vimm's Lair: Wii Reviews - Metroid: Other M

Wii
Metroid: Other M

Graphics:
Sound:
Gameplay:
Overall:
7.99
7.51
6.90
6.96
Votes: 79
Reviews: 2


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Reviewer: Zorro Date: Mar 16, 2023
So I've played almost every Metroid game at least several times over and have 100%ed each one. Yes, even NES Metroid. Other M is the exception. It's not because it was tedious like DK64, but because of how boring and just not good it is. If this was the first Metroid game you've played, I wouldn't blame you for it potentially being one of your favorite games... However.

Graphics: 5
It's the Wii, I'm not expecting some 4K ultra realistic mega RTX 2,000 level graphics. Hell, I barely even care about graphics in general. But here's the thing. In other Metroid games, excluding NES Metroid, almost every area looks unique and is memorable. But in Other M, only a small handful of short rooms look different than every other room which all are either metallic hallways, metallic hallways with fire, and metallic hallways with ice.

Sound: 4
This game came out after Fusion, yeah? And in Fusion, the sounds were great. Take for instance the encounters with the SA-X. The sound is very immersive, especially for a GBA game, with the eerie footsteps and the pounding heartbeat. Then there's things like the crisis moments like the reactor over-heating, or sending Seres crashing down into SR388. The loud sounds give it a real urgent feel which is contrasted with the music having this hopeful sound, like it's saying "You can do this!" So tell me. How does a Wii game have worse sounds than a GBA game? Sound in games should try to immerse you as much as the rest of the game and hoo boy, does the sound in Other M not do that. If I were to elaborate on what I think it fails at, you would be reading an 8 page essay.

Gameplay: 1
It absolutely fails as a Metroid game. Not just in story, characters or sound, but in gameplay and the progression. In other Metroid games such as Super Metroid, the game just throws you into Planet Zebes and says "Go find some shit." It doesn't hold your hand, it lets you loose and lets you find things yourself. It doesn't undermine the player by handing you all the needs for your problems, it lets you do things yourself and paces out major items properly. The main way to tell whether or not a Metroid game is paced properly is by thinking "If I was given every item at the start, would that break the progression?" If the answer is yes, then that means it's doing everything correctly, because the only thing stopping you is whether or not you have the item.

But in Other M, it just gives you all the items you need when you need them, no exploration required. Remember what I was saying about the "If I have every item" thing. Well in Other M, even if you have every item, you'll still be waiting to be given access to open this door so you can go to this unimportant area and then be told to backtrack to the area you just came from to then be given a major item then told to go back to that unimportant area because "Oh it's suddenly important now."

Overall: 3
Not good. Definitely not good. Go play Super, Fusion, Prime, Zero Mission, Prime 2, Prime 3, Samus Returns or Dread, they're all infinitely better than Other M.

Other M? I barely know her! This game sucks.

 

Reviewer: An idiot on the internet Date: Sep 28, 2019
Ok. But. Why?

Graphics: 5
The graphics were ok. But there were better at the time. And as a personal note I really dislike when games do super pre rendered cutscenes, it causes a dissociation between gameplay and story. Which is bad, especially for Metroid.

Sound: 7
he sound is the only thing this game did right, barely. It doesn't sound awful or even average but still falls pretty short. Especially when compared to previous titles in the series.

Gameplay: 3
The controls and overall feel were a confusing convoluted mess that didn't function right half the time.

Overall: 3
Its story is hot garbage. Its controls don't work, and the gameplay graphics are disappointingly average. I'll put it this way. If it had almost any other name, any other IP attached, it would have been a relatively ok game. As it is, it's not Metroid.

Who decided to grab this of all games from the Wii library?