Some of the comments in this thread make me think people just want Retro's creativity to be restricted to only Metroid. I guess people would rather have Retro working on Metroid Prime 567 than actually putting their own spin on other franchises like they did with Donkey Kong Country Returns, or god forbid actually create their own IP...
As for Other M, it was one of the weaker Metroid titles, although not the weakest; Metroid II, Metroid Prime Hunters and Metroid Prime 3 were weaker titles IMO. Other M itself was a very good game. The action was executed well and was fun to play, the controls worked very well in my experience, and the fact that Team Ninja was able to successfully create 2D/3D action hybrid with nothing but a sideways wii-mote was quite impressive. It wasn't perfect (motion controls hardly ever are), but it still worked and I must wonder how other people struggled with them. I had no issues going from point A to Point B, I was able to pull off any command I wanted without much difficulty, the movement was fine. The only time the controls could get iffy were when switching between 2D and 3D, but even then most of the time I ws able to pull it off well without much issue.
They did take a very different route with the Metroid franchise with Metroid Other M, although I don't see how that's bad. The game still had a Metroid-ish vibe to me from the settings in the game to the enemy designs, and I still got that satisfaction of finding new routes and discovering expansions that made past metroids so enjoyable for me. Other M was lacking in exploration sure, although Metroid Fusion took a more linear approach to Metroid, and a majority of the game had you going wherever the Adam AI lead you. Metroid Other M was actually alot like Metroid Fusion for me, albeit what Metroid Fusion did better was item placement, since in Other M a large amount of items couldn't be collected until the very end of the game, after the credits.
The story was disappointing for sure. I was fine with Samus's portrayel for the most part, and the deleter twist was pretty neat, but Anthony was a generic token black friend, the way they ended the whole MB thing was incredibly lame and anti-climactic, and then some other things like naming the main ship you traversed the "bottleship", the point where Samus hugs Adam's hat near the end while cheesy music played, or how Samus didn't activate her varia suit until the very end of that vocanic area were all really hurt the story. Would have been nice if the Ridley scene were less dramatic as well.
But Sakamoto was the one who handled the story and not Team Ninjaa, so even then that can hardly be pinned on Team Ninja. Outside of the disappointing story the actual gameplay was very good. I wouldn't mind if Team Ninja worked on another Metroid.
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