That wasn't the issue. The problem was that it was inconsistent with what we'd seen of her before. None of the games, prior to Other M, even remotely implied that Samus suffered any sort of trauma due to Ridley. Instead, she always tracked him down and killed him. So her freak-out in Other M came out of nowhere — other than a really old comic that only a handful of people knew about.
It'd be like seeing Mario suddenly have a mental breakdown over having to face Bowser again, despite all the times he's kicked Bowser's ass and went go-karting with him afterwards.
Surviving The Deleter isn\'t all that impressive when she\'s shown from the start to have better equipment than everyone else. What is impressive is that The Deleter manages to prove boss worthy by driving a forklift at her. Remember when Samus battled interplanetary space craft, armors and mechanoids? War Machines like Nightmare(in this very game), Mogenar, Quadraxis, mobile!Cetaphid and mobile!Slench?
Actually, this game, for all its cinematic sequences and flashier combat mechanics, has the most one hit kill scenarios of any Metroid game up to this point. Her armor seems to be made of tin cans, hand warmers and packing peanuts this time around, without even the excuse of it being stripped down like \"Fusion\" or \"competitive balance\" such as in \"Hunters\". It dissipates in areas where Ridley isn\'t even touching her before failing altogether while he\'s harmlessly carrying her around. At least the manga had her take a beating first and manually deactivate it due to trouble breathing. It fails after a single shot to the back from Adam here, making one wonder why the forklift was even necessary, how the army survives anything at all if their stuff is supposedly even weaker. A monster broke one of those tubes your power bombs have since Super Metroid? One hit kill. A piece of ceiling fell? You\'re dead, even though this same suit stripped down can survive BOX and Yakuza. An indoor avalanche, why am I even running? This should be a like a stiff wind after Thardus and Amorbis. Tuck your head, plant your feet and let it wash over you like water! Look, it\'s the two worms I use as stepping stones in every game they\'re in! Why is there a quick time event? Why are these mooks a boss fight?
And that\'s all just scratching the surface of why Samus feels weaker this time around, so I must admit one thing. In every game, compromising the suit while Samus is wearing it results in her death. She definitely needs it to survive the mazes. Still, from Super Metroid onward the implication is it takes more than the suit itself to win, that Samus herself is a hard ass. This starts with \"Super\" giving her abs and biceps, continues with Fusion having her out maneuver and overcome her own armor while wearing an inferior version, \"Prime\" having her take down wave after wave of squads replicating her own technology, \"First Hunt\" having her trounce a computer simulation of herself for fun, \"Echoes\" and \"Corruption\" having her contend with and usually beat her best armor upgrade being used be a previous final boss-several others used be minibosses, \"Zero Mission\" having her successfully infiltrate a space pirate vessel when her suit is destroyed while she isn\'t wearing it and then prove herself worthy of a better one to a storm god\'s potentially lethal test...lets admit one more thing. Every side scrolling game also had Samus outside of her power suit purely as a reward for doing well. Still, these do show up after doing well, presumably kicking much ass while avoiding same.
In \"MOM\" all but one scene of unarmored Samus is titillation, defeat, her whining, her making a nuisance of herself, or otherwise being an irrational drama queen. She does get some credit for escaping BOTTLE SHIP unarmored, and doing it willingly. That certainly doesn\'t make her look weak, and might have even been refreshing after everything else if it wasn\'t for the fact the game\'s narrative makes it clear it\'s just a stupid and completely unnecessary thing she chose to do because emotions.
It\'s a banal game, with pointless inverted shooting balance that manages to be both clunky and overly automated at once after \"Zero Mission\" showed you can streamline controls and maintain functionality, after \"Hunters\" and \"Corruption\" sought to increase interactivity. For reasons I do not understand it decided to mostly reuse sixteen bit designs for enemies but turn Samus\'s suit from something intimidating and robotic into a i-pod zentai with a penis cannon(believe me, I would have loved to see the Super Metroid or \"Zero Mission\" designs come back). It sought to completely change the context what the Final Boss fight Super Metroid even was(\"Why am I alive?\" Really? We saw exactly what happened, we weren\'t floating in the air, there was no dialog, nor was it needed, you were in the Super Metroid\'s mandibles for a minute before Mother Brain even got up and started attacking again, how do you screw that up?) and completely mutilated what was established in the manga(not that it was good to begin with, but the manga\'s Frankenstein to the Mission Earth that is the \"story\" told by \"MOM\"), then sought to basically recreate Metroid Fusion without the tight controls, dynamic environments or horror elements of it. Still, the removal of her steel nerves and stern determination are what really make Samus Aran weaker, and are what pushes reviews of MOM from disappointed paragraphs to door stopping break downs. What did Samus really have besides an iron reinforced backbone and unfailing courage even in the face of certain death? A few moments of compassion? Some nonchalant waves? Enough to prove she wasn\'t simply mechanical automation but merely a remarkably tough human being with a neat suit. \"MOM\" didn\'t just \"fill gaps\", it also took a sledge hammer to Samus\'s two most identifiable character traits. The player may have shat themselves in Phazon mines, but the Chozo lore expressed awe at Samus continuing her descent into the depths of the planet without fear. Any uneasiness about it was on you! Fusion has Samus outright state she dislikes taking orders. She complains to herself and then snaps directly at the computer when it gets on her nerves. Take those two things away and you\'ve taken away what a lot of people liked about Samus.
It\'s not as if this was the first, or the last time Nintendo or Metroid lost sight of core game play(\"Pinball\"-\"Federation Force\") and yet those are not deconstructed as thoroughly or with the nearly as much vitriol as \"MOM\" is. Could it be that they don\'t have Samus whine and whimper in front of an enemy currently doing nothing but make noise? That they don\'t have her unarmored crawling on her hands and knees while being lectured by a man we previously had no reason to believe was her superior? It\'s not like Samus was never beaten before or since, but MOM was completely out of character and against all established rationale, in its game play and even more in its cut scenes. I guarantee that the exact same scenario on both fronts would go over better with a new character or one already established to be more physically and emotionally fragile than Samus.
Leave a Comment:
Mixed Feelings
Other M is an okay game. I think it actually feels more like the 2D games than the Prime series, especially since its art style takes more cues from Fusion. The gameplay is pretty fun on the whole, with several mechanics that are hard to pull off but very rewarding when you manage it. I haven't really found myself wanting to go back to it much, though.
The plot's not much to write home about. There's a lot of disparate parts that don't come together properly or really relate to each other (Samus' conflict with Adam, the Deleter, MB) that give it a disjointed feel. The narrator sounding bored the whole time doesn't help. The authorization system was an understandable attempt at avoiding having to come up with yet another Bag of Spilling scenario, though having to get authorization for the Varia Suit bugged me.
That said, I don't quite get all of the controversy over Samus' character. Fans like to wax poetic about how Samus up until now was a stoic badass who always did things her own way and always gave authority the finger. But a lot of that seems to come from fans projecting onto Samus' lack of characterization in previous games. Of the games before Other M, the only ones that actually had more than an Excuse Plot or some Story Breadcrumbs were Prime 3 and Fusion; Samus was a Silent Protagonist in Prime 3 and Fusion was the game that introduced Adam, and showed that Samus served under and respected him. Not having characterization isn't the same as being stoic. I didn't find either of them terribly interesting or compelling in Other M, mind you, but it felt more like filling in a blank than throwing something out. I don't like that people treat Samus as being weak for having PTSD about Ridley. The game may show Samus as more flawed than the average Steven Segal character, but she's the only one who survives being attacked by the Deleter, she defeats Ridley after the latter curb stomps Anthony, and the game has a greater emphasis on cinematic fights and takedowns than its predecessors, so I'd hardly say that Samus seems weak.
In all: Not bad, worth playing once, not as good as its predecessors, but not horrible either.