Spoilers for an old Wii game but whatever.
This is a game people have Hot Opinions over. And by that I mean everyone treats it like episode 8 of Star Wars and use horrible words to describe it and act like it had sex with their mother in front of them.
I've played some bad games in my day. Shovelware, Barbie games, horse girl games, Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly...and the game, as a whole, isn't Bad. Gameplay-wise, it's fine. Graphics (at least emulated lol) look pretty good. The cutscenes look good. Yes it's no Cyberpunk 2077 but it's aged well.
As a Metroid game, it has the classic enemies, the Ridley, the metroids, the Mother Brain, the ship is gonna blow up so you better run, the Alien and Dark Crystal vibes...no Chozo though, booo, but you can probably guess that I really like birds so I really like the Chozo. I think there's only one "new" item, which is a scatterburst for the beam.
But it's a 3rd person 3D game. Which you can switch to first person sometimes, but you can't move when you do. It's...not the best choice, but it's a Wii game. But you get used to it pretty quickly. Metroids are either 2D (side scrollers) or 3D first person (Prime). I like Prime because, as first person, you really get that feeling that you're alone. You don't even think of yourself as the person controlling Samus, you are Samus. But when it's 3rd person, it's harder to think that way. {and yes I keep switching between words and figures but this page isn't for perfecting wordage lol).
The thing that everyone hates, and what makes the Star Wars comparison apt, and the thing I do have issue with, is the story. Motherhood is the theme, which is kinda :/ to have that be the thing you give a Strong Independent Woman to have Emotions about. Samus feeling like a bad mom for da baby (metroid) dying doesn't make a ton of sense to me, because she handed it over to the Galactic Federation after 2. Rescuing it in Super Metroid was more about stopping the Space Pirates from doing evil stuff with them than "I must save my agender alien child." I never got the impression that she cared so much about it.
But her being traumatized about other stuff? Especially Ridley? That's good. I like that. I want to see more characters be fucked up from the stuff they've had to go through. I want to see them deal with it besides "I am willing myself to be better" or "someone loves me so I'm fixed now." Ridley killed her parents! And she kills him in Metroid (1) (twice in Zero Mission), but then again in Prime, and Prime 3, (and Samus Returns version of 2), and then Super Metroid. That's a lot! This fucker won't stay down! That would be really upsetting!
Another thing that she should really be fucked up over is how many planets she explodes and species she's put to extinction. You can argue the metroids need to be, but what about all the guys having a regular life on Zebes or whatever?
Other M is voiced, and it has a lot of cut scenes. Samus's VA has, like, no tone or inflection in the narration, it's a really weird choice. But she has emotions as the character in the story, so the VA can do it. I really did not care for the Galactic Federation guys there with you. And Adam saying "oh you can't use your stuff unless I give you permission" is a dumb way to handle the "you lose all your powers at the start" trope. Like you run around a volcano and taking damage and you have to wait for Adam to tell you to turn on your varia suit. why. why. I talked to my cister about this and she said it would work better if you were hacked or something and Adam had to do software updates to fix you. And that makes sense! Why didn't they do that!
Adam being the bestie but also father figure but also boss was ??? The relationship was really nebulous and ill-defined, but not in a good way. I think a lot of hate for this game is from jerks seeing a woman in a video game talking and having emotions and existing in a form that isn't just eye candy for a reward for playing the game good. But also to make Samus be so emotional over a guy we only heard about starting in this game, to the point she can't even use her power suit, is ??? to me. It's like when Twilight Sparkle got upset about her brother marrying some horse bimbo without telling her about it, because he's so important to her, but not important enough to mention until now?
The best part was the lore. It really sets thing up (in-universe timeline wise) for the Galactic Federation doing sus stuff in Fusion. I like the establishment that you can clone anything, even Ridley. And I like that a baby Ridley is an evil little furby.
But is this the worse Metroid game? I dunno, maybe? I don't like the original 1 and 2 because it's impossible to keep track of where you are and Ye Olde Games being that hard just is not fun. But Other M is playable. You know what you're doing. You can tell what things are and how to use new abilities and when to use them. But if you like those kinds of things, then this might be the worse game
Is this the worst game ever? No, not at all. It's functional, for one. A lot of bad games just don't even work, or are incomprehensible, or are so hard they're not even worth figuring out. They at least tried with the story. Effort was put into this game.
If I paid $60 for this game new when it came out, I'd probably dislike it a lot more. Especially in the "why did we get this instead of Metroid 4" way. But playing it now, for free, it's fine. If it gets re-released on Switch with modern controls and it's, like, $5 I might buy it. But it's not a game I'll go back to playing because it's fun or the fights are cool or anything. And it's not so bad it's good. It's just...whatever.
So yeah, eh outta 10.
