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tomatobob: 2010-11-08 07:39:55 am
One shall stand, one shall ball.
Well, maybe not love, that's a strong word. Not hate, maybe.

Hello! I am tomatobob, professional hater, part time troll, and dabbling okay poster. I have just begun my very first playthrough of the infamous video game of the series Metroid and silly subtitle, Metroid: Other M.

I have decided on this occasion to also make a thread which serves the singular function of putting my money where my mouth is regarding this game and my near constant criticisms of it and its methods. I feel I owe it to myself and you all, dear members of the Metroid 2002 internet web forum site, to own up to my words and maybe back them up with actual reason! I've had my fun at the expense of this game and its supporters by now, it's only fair that I actually give it a real shot.

So I have set out on my journey, with my mind as open as it can be regarding this slightly polarizing game and I will be sure to let you all know every time I feel that I was actually wrong about Other M. I will also attempt to restrain myself in instances when I turn out to be right as I wish to keep things fair.

At this point I have made it to the first save point in Sector 2, so I've gotten through one of the more... contentious portions of the game already and it was definitely the section I was most looking forward to seeing for myself.

So first things first, as expected, those cutscenes are still bad as is the writing. The voice work for People Who Are Not Samus is decent enough it seems, but People Who Are Samus should have gotten some caffeine in their system before recording. I don't know if I want to blame that actress entirely though, I don't know how one could be expected to read those lines and deliver them with anything other than utter contempt for the writer and possibly the person who got me this job. You'd also need a supremely talented actress to make that sort of deadpan, cold delivery actually work even if the writing was good, this poor lady never had much chance. Sad

That out of the way, I can say that I actually am enjoying the game so far, the game parts are pretty good overall. The controls do take getting used to, as many reviews said, and even once you have them down they aren't great. Mostly competent, d-pad movement in 3d space bothers me about as much as I expected. I want to add one note for Opium here and say I agree with her complaints about the auto aim to an extent, I ran into some issues where Samus started shooting at a stupid target and not one that would have been more helpful such as the one diving at her face. I actually got killed during the encounter where you get the Ice Beam because she decided the giant burning bug nest that she couldn't damage was a better target than the pirates jumping around shooting the hell out of her. A little annoying.

But still, I'd say fights like that one are where the game really shines, you have a lot going on at once as far as enemies go and it doesn't really feel overwhelming (particularly if you just mash the d-pad like a mad man), especially when the Diffusion Beam comes into play. So far that's my nomination for best thing in the game, it's just handy as hell. The rooms with regular enemies hanging around aren't very fun though, the game doesn't seem designed for that slower pace you get outside of the action set pieces. When it's on it's pretty much everything I wanted to hope it would be based on the trailers.

Now. Sector 3. Let's talk about good old Sector 3. In places it felt like it was ripped straight out of a rom hack. Heat rooms with no Varia. Enemies that exist solely to toss you into the lave when you don't have Varia. Better run bitch cause that lava's rising real fast and you still don't have Varia by the way. I was surprised though, based on the amount of complaints I heard I'd have thought that the heat was more devastating than it was, it really didn't do much damage, it just seemed to do enough to make everything else more annoying. The Lava Whale just straight up murdering you at the entrance to the area was kind of funny though, I just wish I had some indication that it was a hidden quick time event and not some scripted thing. I assume more of those are coming as the game goes on. I also like that you finally get the Varia Suit at the very end of all that nonsense, it's like a deliberate troll on the part of the developers, they had to know full well what they were doing on this and geared it for maximum rage. I can respect that. I was also pleasantly surprised by the fact that there was apparently more than one way to beat that boss, seems like you can forgo the Overblast and just freeze and missile if you want. I didn't, but I almost did so that's kinda neat I think. Overall, not as bad as I expected based on the number of complaints I saw.

Thus far I'm actually liking the game well enough. I know I harped on the whole concentration thing a lot during development, and I still think it's stupid, but it actually does work okay. It's not terribly easy to use in the middle of a fight but it does work relatively quickly so when you do get to use it you don't have to hang around like a tool of too long. I also like that missiles actually hurt things pretty badly so far in this game, given how awful they were in the last two Primes. They almost seem worth the trouble in this one. Probably won't be by the end though. When the game works, it really works so I'm feeling pretty good about going through this one.

Out of curiosity, does that sub plot thing with the little white furry thing that showed up in Sector 1 get as stupid as I think it will? I have a couple ideas on where that may be going and they seem pretty stupid. Is it actually connected to Mullet Lizard cause it seems like it is and if so... Oh boy.
Thread title: 
I like turtles.
It evolves into El Pollo Loco at level 16.  At level 36, El Pollo Loco evolves into Ridley.
red chamber dream
Quote:
Out of curiosity, does that sub plot thing with the little white furry thing that showed up in Sector 1 get as stupid as I think it will?

does _______ in other m get as stupid as you think it will? of course not, it's always worse.


Quote:
it's like a deliberate troll on the part of the developers, they had to know full well what they were doing on this and geared it for maximum rage. I can respect that.

lol
ANKOKU
Quote from tomatobob:
Out of curiosity, does that sub plot thing with the little white furry thing that showed up in Sector 1 get as stupid as I think it will? I have a couple ideas on where that may be going and they seem pretty stupid. Is it actually connected to Mullet Lizard cause it seems like it is and if so... Oh boy.

That's actually not a "sub-plot"... it's the entire reason Adam is sending you to the sectors.

If you want to talk about sub-plot. Wait till you see the Deleter.

As for the Furby of doom, it's really not that bad of a plot. It does explain something that none of the other games have.
my umbrella goes directly to Bankai
the varia segments were paced well, yeah. i guess some people just freak out when their health drops in a hazardous area (just look at mp2's complains) but for me it was tame. i died only to the actual enemies and the boss (surprise kills).

adding "pre-evos" to Ridley help him be a more believable beast. it was also a good way to bring him back without people realizing it (if he was going to be born at his final stage, i bet they wouldn't have cloned him at all)
One shall stand, one shall ball.
I guess you're right about the natural freak out at "health drain" zones in Metroid, though at least in Echoes the Dark World actually fucking murdered you before you got the Dark Suit. As did heated/frozen rooms in previous games. Sector 3 was fucking tame by Metroid standards honestly, I actually dislike it less looking back than I did at the time when those goofy lava golems were tossing me in the drink. Seems like if you're going to do that kind of thing, that's about as well as it's going to be done, whether it should be done I'll leave up to the player. I think the big issue is just realizing that the drain ain't shit and you really aren't in great danger.

Also lol: "This FEDERATION FACILITY is designed to perform GALACTIC FEDERATION APPROVED bioweapons experiments. Definitely a FEDERATION RESEARCH FACILITY."

"Wait, Adam! Is the Federation doing bioweapons experiments?!"

"Uh... guess... so?"

*Ten Minutes Later*

-Looking at a bunch of busted up shit- "Clearly this station was meant for bioweapons research..." Samus and Adam are truly the greatest minds of their generation.

Quote from arkarian:
does _______ in other m get as stupid as you think it will? of course not, it's always worse.

In some ways this is comforting, Other M will defy expectations at every turn. Good or not, at least you didn't expect it!

Quote from sabata2:
That's actually not a "sub-plot"... it's the entire reason Adam is sending you to the sectors.

Oh dear.
Quote from tomatobob:
Quote from sabata2:
That's actually not a "sub-plot"... it's the entire reason Adam is sending you to the sectors.

Oh dear.

Well, 90% of the time until you get to a certain point in the game, yeah.
Hey Tomato -- why are you writing now? you are still way too early in the game? if you decide to go for 100%, don't ask for help; finding all the items on your own is very rewarding. some are well hidden and you need to be persistent and clever in finding some of them.
Anywhere, everywhere
Oh, it's ok, tbob, things get much worse.
One shall stand, one shall ball.
Quote from mazerski:
Hey Tomato -- why are you writing now? you are still way too early in the game? if you decide to go for 100%, don't ask for help; finding all the items on your own is very rewarding. some are well hidden and you need to be persistent and clever in finding some of them.

Nah it's nothing like that, I just want to sort of make up for all the fun a had with at game's expense before I got my hands on it. And It's easier for me to lay my thoughts out when they're fresh in my mind rather than later on, so I figured I'd post as I go. I only brought up the furby because I had an idea of where that was going and just wanted confirmation of the silliness of it.

On that note. Ahahahahahahaha that was the goofiest reveal. Furbley. I so much wanted to be wrong about that, but that wouldn't have been as funny.

Having now seen the full cutscene leading up to the Ridley fight I feel like if it ended at the point where Ridley took out that walkway and flew behind our dear heroes in silhouette it would have actually been a cool intro for the guy. Course then it went off to wacky town, I like to think that Captain Diversity's line about learning a lesson about subtlety was actually directed at Sakamoto.

Also Ridley looks goofy as hell, the chest of a body builder, arms of an orangutan and the lower body of a six year old. The fight itself was pretty fun, but I do wish that they'd give you a better indication that you were actually hurting him, I fought him like four times before beating him and I still have no idea which shots were actually doing damage. He does butt loads of damage though.

One thing I've noticed as I've gone on is that it feels like most pick ups that you see lying around are there just to annoy you. Feels like once you finally spot the darn thing you discover that you can't actually get it yet. Though having just gotten Space Jump/Screw Attack, I imagine that feeling should be going away. I actually gave up on actually picking up a few of them without even really looking for them in some cases. Good thing they mark them on the map, because finding them would be an incredible bitch without that.

I also found that the Wave Beam is a pretty huge upgrade from Ice apparently, up to that point I was feeling that the beams were ridiculously weak, then Wave came along and actually seemed to do damage to things. So that was nice.

I guess the only other big thing that got my attention was the item acquisition. It seemed like a lot of them required me to go fin a point along a linear path at which I could no longer progress with my current equipment so, with no indication given, I had to go back a couple rooms for Adam to say it was okay to use the thing I needed. Sort of defeats the point of having a guy authorize equipment use if you have to wander aimlessly for a while or get shot up a bit by guys you can't hurt to get him to actually do his job. I guess it's not so different from typical Metroid fare, but with they way it's done here it feels like there should be a kind of logic to it that isn't there in the other games.

I guess this post sounds kinda bashy, so I do want to point out that I am still mostly enjoying things. It was nice to see the Speed Booster again even if everything in the game seems designed to make sure you don't ever get to use it. Though I did totally plow through a group of cannon fodder on my way to the save point I stopped at in Sector 1, which was pretty cool.

The plot has become sort of insane tangle of madness at this point it seems, I'm actually kind of enjoying the absurdity of what I think might be happening because if I actually try to understand it or even pay any great attention to it I'd probably lose my mind.
I don't get what was so bad about the plot, to be honest. I thought I understood it well enough as I went along, although it still surprised me with some of the later reveals.

And no, this isn't just directed at you. I've heard pretty much everyone say that at this point but I still don't see it. Maybe I'm overlaying what I know now onto what I think I knew the first time through.
THE PLOT isn't bad.  The DIALOG is.
I'm with Hunter... I still think the game works though I have no history of Adam and Anthony in some previous game(s).

If I recall, in the movie Alien, Ridley Scott used his kid when the astronauts landed on the Alien's planet (for scale)... could one of the developers of the game used his kid to do the voice over to save $$$? Is there a history of things like this in games?
I state this because I mentioned some time back that parts of the dialog sounds childish.
red chamber dream
seems unlikely any of the japanese developers have american kids but yeah it makes me wonder what the japanese sounds like. probably a lot better.
You have a good point... I didn't pay attention to the credits... I had to be thinking about Prime in that there were contributing Japanese and US teams. Just think if the actress is Fils-Aime's 15 year old (assuming he even has a daughter).
my umbrella goes directly to Bankai
i think the result would be similar since that kind of boring speech was actually encouraged when directing the actress.

also, it didn't look like the voice actors costed too much to hire.

the jp version's voice acting sounds just as boring.
One shall stand, one shall ball.
I really don't want to dump on the actress too much, she gave them what they wanted out of the character and there are points where her delivery is actually pretty good. It's a hard voice to sustain though, especially given the the dialogue she's working with. I mean, she may be not a top talent in her field, but she's really the least of the voice issues. It's pretty funny to me that the Prime series had Jennifer Hale on board to do minimal voice work and the one heavily voiced game passes her up even though, given what they were going for, she was really their only hope.

I do have to wonder how much of the game was more literally translated as opposed to localized, probably all of it. I imagine that the way people converse in this game is closer to how Japanese people do, so it may not be weird for the Japanese audience, but for an American audience it just seems like everyone is incredibly awkward socially.

Quote from Prime Hunter:
I don't get what was so bad about the plot, to be honest. I thought I understood it well enough as I went along, although it still surprised me with some of the later reveals.

I guess it's mostly in the presentation. It's so poorly written that, while there may well be a good enough plot in there, it's hard to really decipher it because actually listening to these characters talk is such an ordeal. It's hard for me o not tune out when the cutscenes start to drag on a bit. Though to be fair the whole, "We's gon make special forces units made of Space Pirates and Metrodes!" is a stupid idea and makes the Federation seem just as dumb as the Pirates, but without the charm the Pirates had in the Prime games. I understand wanting to make the Feds seem flawed in its own ways, but there's a middles ground between flawed government and cartoon-ishly evil by way of stupidity and they seem to be aiming for the latter in this case. Not terribly interesting.
red chamber dream
Quote from tomatobob:
I really don't want to dump on the actress too much, she gave them what they wanted out of the character and there are points where her delivery is actually pretty good.

oh come on, seriously? she's awful through and through.
Jennifer Hale would have definitely done a better job, though some people don't like her work on MGS4 and The Twin Snakes. I think she's great.
I like turtles.
Quote from tomatobob:
I guess it's mostly in the presentation. It's so poorly written that, while there may well be a good enough plot in there, it's hard to really decipher it because actually listening to these characters talk is such an ordeal. It's hard for me o not tune out when the cutscenes start to drag on a bit. Though to be fair the whole, "We's gon make special forces units made of Space Pirates and Metrodes!" is a stupid idea and makes the Federation seem just as dumb as the Pirates, but without the charm the Pirates had in the Prime games. I understand wanting to make the Feds seem flawed in its own ways, but there's a middles ground between flawed government and cartoon-ishly evil by way of stupidity and they seem to be aiming for the latter in this case. Not terribly interesting.

Exactly.  When the Pirates were too dumb to live, it was hilarious because of the way their stupidity was presented (gotta love the Pirate logs in Prime and Echoes).  When the Fed was too dumb to live, it was annoying because it was played completely straight.
Games where the federation is out-loud stupid:

Metroid Fusion: Metroid Fusion introduced the stupidity of the federation with their desire to capture a FREAKING SA-X.

Metroid Prime 3: Corruption increased their stupidity level by showing what happens when they rely too much on Biomechanical lifeforms to do what they want. It also shows them allowing the hunters to get corrupted with Phazon. Samus was actually smart enough to vent all that phazon.

Metroid Other M: Metroid/Space Pirate special forces, overreliance on a machine based off of an evil brain, and more.
One shall stand, one shall ball.
Quote from arkarian:
Quote from tomatobob:
I really don't want to dump on the actress too much, she gave them what they wanted out of the character and there are points where her delivery is actually pretty good.

oh come on, seriously? she's awful through and through.

I should have said "pretty good by comparison", there were a couple points where a line didn't sound totally awful when she said it. Half competent writing and an actual director and she'd have been at least passable.
On the 1st play through at the beginning when Samus (first time) says "the baby" and a little later when on the Bottle ship she runs into the Feds and says "Anthony" -- she does well in delivering these 3 words. Possibly the worst line is "No, you don't understand" -- chasing MB through the containers in Section 2.
No. The worst line is every subsequent time she says "The Baby".
One shall stand, one shall ball.
My one regret is that I forgot to keep a running tally of "The Baby" or just "Baby". In my defense though, I'd have had to make it into a drinking game and not only is it incredibly unlikely that I have enough booze to last through that, I would also have likely died in the attempt.