Metroid: Other M Is the Worst Nintendo Game I Have Ever Played
The concept of ‘ludonarrative dissonance’ is one of the most annoying ideas in the gaming industry. Mainly because it disregards the idea of analyzing video games as an unified whole by instead trying to separate story and gameplay, rather than analyzing them together. In any game the story is part of the gameplay, and the gameplay is part of the story. The dissonance argument is also often used by “critics” to give developers a pass for creating incoherent characters. But in some special cases those apparent contradictions aren’t contradictory at all as they reveal inherent biases on the part of the people who made the game, and one of the best examples of this is Metroid: Other M.
Many years ago Nintendo tried to make a cinematic action game with the help of Team Ninja, and to this day it’s remembered as one of the biggest failures in the company’s history. There is a potential good action game buried within the endless layers of bullshit that plague Metroid: Other M. Somewhere deep inside this monstrosity there is the seed of an idea to create a more straightforward and accessible Metroid game with a fast-paced combat system that’s inspired by hack and slash games.
It’s all for nothing though as all the elements in the game come together to create the worst Nintendo game I have ever played. It starts with really long cutscenes that are accompanied by very boring and unnecessary monologues spoken by Samus, and all her lines are spoken in such a dry, monotone and emotionless fashion. The voice acting is really grating and it was probably the result of poor direction. It doesn’t help that the story itself has terrible writing, even though it has some interesting ideas that never go anywhere.
The story also has a few moments where it’s hilariously bad, but most of it is just really boring and pointless, and even if you were able to tolerate the story Nintendo and Team Ninja managed to find a way to ruin the gameplay too. Although that’s mostly due to bad controls that were the result of the studios trying to combine retro mechanics with motion-control gimmicks, which leads to a rather poor and restricting control scheme that reduces the enjoyment of a lot of potentially good combat encounters.
The game does have some highlights like a few good bosses that show how fun the combat system could have been if it was handled properly, but most of the enemies in the game feel boring and repetitive, and you always fight them in small and blocky environments, which highlights one of the main problems with the game. The most glaring issue is the level design, not just because all the rooms feel small and lifeless, but also because level progression is completely linear, the game is so linear there is a game-breaking bug in the game that it’s triggered by backtracking.
Other M is also famous for its bad characters, not just Samus, since most of the cast is insufferable, although Anthony is the only one that’s somewhat endearing. The worse character by far is Adam, not just because he has little personality outside of being an annoying military commander, but also because of how his character is tied to one of the most controversial parts of the game: The ‘authorization system’, which basically replaces the unlocking-by-exploration system of the previous games in the most absurd way possible, and it seemingly destroys both the logic of the story and the gameplay.
The biggest lie in the gaming community is that there is a strict separation between gameplay and story, but the truth is that there is no such thing as “ludonarrative”, there is only narrative and all the elements in a game are part of the overall narrative, both game and story come together as part of one single whole. So the ‘authorization system’ used in Other M means that Samus can only use certain abilities in her suit when she is given permission by Adam, even when there is no logical reason for her not to use her own abilities, but this is not a contradiction at all because this mechanic clearly establishes that she is completely subservient to Adam’s authority.
Both gameplay and story come together perfectly through the authorization mechanic to completely destroy Samus’ character in the game and firmly establish that she is totally submissive to this man.
However, most of the story problems could have been easily avoided if Metroid: Other M was a prequel. If the game was set at a time where Samus was a rookie soldier under the Galactic Federation it would make sense that she followed Adam’s orders, it would make sense that she didn’t quite know how to use her suit, and it would make sense that the infamous Ridley encounter would trigger a PTSD attack since the trauma would still be fresh in her mind as this would be one of the first times she faced the space dragon.
The whole detective mystery story with Samus playing the role of a sleuth would feel more fitting if she was younger, and it wouldn’t be jarring that older soldiers had to save her several times. The whole tutorial bit with Adam would also feel natural as it would be an old commander teaching a rookie, and it would make sense that she doesn’t know how to use many of her abilities, not to mention that the isolation at the end of the game would feel impactful. The game even shows a younger version of Samus that’s seen in some flashbacks, which would be a perfect fit for a prequel game.
Although the obvious implication from suggesting that the game’s story and characters would make more sense if Samus was a child is that whoever wrote the story of the game sees women as inherently childlike, even when said women happen to be insanely strong bounty hunters who regularly fight against alien space dragons.
It’s a shame since there are some good ideas in here: the gameplay often comes close to close to being a good mix of shooter and beat ’em up, the music is pretty good, a few of the boss battles are fun, the graphics are pretty good for a Wii game, and the finisher moves are kinda cool. This could have been an enjoyable game, although changing the timeline of events wouldn’t be enough to fix the terrible writing, but some story changes and better controls could have improved so much. But in the end Metroid: Other M is just a boring, frustrating and borderline offensive game.
It’s also possible to speculate that the game was originally meant to be a prequel, and that this was changed due to external impositions, although the most likely explanation for the weird and bad story is that the people in charge just had very strange ideas about women.
