Release Date: August 31, 2010
Developer: Team Ninja / Nintendo
Director: Yoshio Sakamoto / Yosuke Hayashi / Takehiko Hosokawa

Rating: 3/5

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Presentation – The first isolation experienced in the game is how uncomfortable Samus’s thoughts made me feel. The player takes control after waiting through god-awful self-effacing cutscenes of Samus going on-and-on about her life. You now are immediately shown that Samus is a woman, that the silent protagonist angle is now gone.

The next isolation is on what I am doing: how I am going over Samus’s abilities in a training room — something radically foreign to the Metroid series.

This is a ton of retrospection / recollection to start off this new mission. My first impressions were that “this is third-rate stuff and not Metroid.”

After landing on the Bottle Ship, a derelict facility, there is a strong horror-vibe of not knowing what Samus will encounter. What music there is is subdued giving the game world a colder, stark feeling with more resounding sound effects, such as Samus’s running foot steps hitting on metal flooring. Samus’s armor, its orange splendor, looks perfect against the black halls. So do the energy shots she fires out.

Many different camera perspectives are shown: majority of which are panned shots of straightaways at a slightly tilted angle whereupon the dynamic fixed camera will automatically and smoothly slide over (on a locked axis) the further in the player goes down a passage. Doing so enhances the unnerving darkness of running by long intimidating rows of machinery and other visual aspects associated with the Metroid aesthetic. For more open areas, there is a zoomed out overhead shot, and for elevators and other tight spaces, an over-the-shoulder view. An adventure game search command is also smoothly incorporated by changing the view to first person and its utility is painless (scan area until you hover over the correct point – no repeated clicking on points of interest) — the perspective switching is really well put together. Very sci-fi.

Dark corridors, low health, quick death on both sides. When the action heats up Samus is relieved from living in her thoughts. Had the retrospection cutscenes and the tutorial preceding the Bottle Ship landing sequence been cut the impact of quickly moving from room to short cutscene would have felt more alive (and horror-inspired) but instead it feels like more waiting (or story-time).

The Wiimote is held horizontally just like an NES controller and you move Samus around using the D-pad in a 3D space. A neat design choice for producing smooth turns with the D-pad is by subtle auto-corrected running around structural bends in that Samus’s direction naturally curves instead of careening straight into the wall that your held directional input unassisted would send Samus into. This potentializes held running inputs into longer sustained durations. There’s a real sense of magnetic artistry in that type of speed control.

In the darkness of the facility are creatures lurking that creep out from various directions even dropping from ceilings to collide into Samus. Watch as Samus quickly pivots around shifting her arm cannon to zap oncoming bugs in succession as you tap the fire-button. Aiming is automatically done and is prioritized by enemy proximity and Samus’s faced direction to determine the target. In keeping with classic survival horror games, Samus must commit to engaging targets she is firing at; so, she can stand still or run towards the target while firing but cannot run away while firing at them.

While in Metroid Prime it was a novel experience going from a first person view to third person as a tiny morph ball, in this Metroid game the novel experience is a gestural motion of pointing the Wiimote at the screen whereby the perspective shifts into a scoped vision as the player locks on targets to fire off volleys of highly destructive missiles [finisher]. I quite like it that way since switching the point of view to first person and standing still gives off a feeling of enhanced power like quickly drawing a gun.

The switching to first person by pointing the Wiimote at the screen is initially awkward: there is a learning curve when it comes to switching between grip styles, especially in high pressure situations. First there’s the pointing at the screen, then you have to hold down the B-button to aim around, and after hovering the cursor over a target press the A-button for missile shooting action — all of this has to be done while being mentally cognizant of now off-screen potential threats. Most importantly the sudden pointing at the screen with the Wiimote in pressured situations requires you to be keenly aware of what direction Samus is facing before zapping into first person (as that is the direction where you’ll be zoomed in at).

Once you’ve got it down it’s a solid mechanic that justifies the Wii’s pointer controls. The basics of control are met: being able to reliably aim at selected targets, being able to comfortably do so, and being able to do so while performing additional actions. It enhances the sci-fi feel switching forms and between perspectives. The problem with the beginning of the game is that it throws in monsters that become invisible and seemingly teleport, which makes it more difficult to target them when switching to first person for missile action. Leave it to Tecmo to throw in hard mini-boss creatures right away when you are at your most awkward.

OBJECTIVE

Running into the Galactic Federation soldiers is the first major encounter. Samus joins them then everyone immediately proceeds to split up to investigate different sectors. The team’s leader, Adam Malkovitch, will determine where you need to check out by displaying said location with a marker on the map. This game’s focus is on stylish action and speed. Forget about getting lost or any major exploration as you’re on a direct course to point B. Whoosh!

ON/OFF track. Level design is oriented like a race track where there is a going the “wrong way” and little room for diversion. As such there is always something new to come upon; i.e., hanging on transporter trolley shooting missiles. Running in general is pleasant, the auto-parkour over downed organic terrain is smooth, and the segments where you have to time jumps have a nice Crash Bandicoot feel to them. The linear paths allow you to keep a steady movement flow. At its most prominent is “Hell Run”, a sequence where Samus must run in damaging heat. The QTE dodges in the mini-chase sequence there are smoothly implemented. I enjoyed how F-Zero GX’d it felt being able to restore health after essentially completing a time trial.

Running into a save room, making a pit-stop, the swirl around Samus that the camera does when saving — that’s sexy. And that is understating it: Metroid: Other M has the best-looking save room in videogame history from the door design to the white interior to the swirling saving animation. Exit out to return to the dark vacancy of hallways being lit up by bright colored energy blasts.

With the game being so streamlined into action it seems the change from series standard missile tanks giving +5 missile capacity increase and instead having numerous detours for easy-to-find +1 missiles expansions and accel charges (new powerUP that speeds up fully charged Charge Shot firing rate) is a sensible change in regards to keeping up the pace. Passages are prominently featured and serve to funnel Samus into rooms for combat.

Progression through the game is moreso felt by the amount of blood shed as opposed to areas searched (there is no reason for a map until the post-game). When you are required to search for something it is in a designated spot where Samus is locked in place forcing you to search the immediate area until you find the key area of interest to activate a cutscene.

NEW ABILITIES

Introducing SenseMove. Dodge enemy attacks by inputting any direction on the D-pad right before being hit, which sometimes will lead to unintentional dodge triggering. And you will get hit if you have bad timing, which happened to me on the first mini-boss who lashes Samus with its appendages. Commando roll dodges look sleek and the slight slow-mo effect is cool. “Punching” the D-pad as a button to dodge feels great and somewhat reminds me of the rapid-nature of Shenmue’s arcade punching bag machine. More button inputs would slow down player button-pistoning speed. Of interest is that slow enemies that drift or walk into you can’t be dodged via SenseMove.

Introducing Concentration. Refill missiles at any time, health when at critical levels — this is performed by holding the Wiimote straight up. My initial thoughts were “what the heck is health regen doing in a Metroid game?”. Perhaps only more bizarre would be adopting auto-regenerating health ala Halo. But Concentration only restores 99 units of health and puts you at great risk of dying because to activate it requires that you’re immobile for several seconds. As for missile regen, it’s fine because enemies don’t drop missiles (or energy capsules for that matter) and backtracking in such a linear game to resupply would be annoying. And again, it forces the player to be immobilized in combat creating tense moments, such as that one time where freezeguns are fired by Federation soldiers affording time to pull off Concentration in a boss fight.

Introducing Overblast and Lethal Strike. Close combat obliteration techniques. Invisible button prompts, which produce locked-in guided actions (auto-aimed); i.e., a quality that movies have, of being able to watch something complete itself; an uninterruptible nature. The jumping on a regular enemy’s shoulders and firing an energy blast and jumping away with your back to the explosion is cool. Throwing or blowing away enemies in one shot is fun. The charging of Samus’s arm cannon adds something to this whole process that makes it feel extra special that a regular gun or sword just can’t replicate. Given the opportunity to avoid a drawn out battle by quickly one-shotting adversaries decisively is very satisfying.

COMBAT

And for the beginning of the game, enemies really want to, can, and will kill you. They slap you around, explode on you, and make you angry when you die.

Early on when your health bar is small, enemies do significant damage to Samus with each hit. There also are action sequences that can trigger ‘Game Over’ in an instant. Even ordinary simple-minded enemies like the slow-moving spiked enemies known as Zoomers are cleverly placed on the terrain around a room’s entry point where they can drop down and sidle into you knocking you down a chasm.

There is a distinctive and organic way confrontations take place in this game compared to other action titles in how deadly creatures shift in-and-out of view: invisible lizards killing in rooms, in a mine shaft; armadillo creatures buried movements coming straight for where Samus stands; the tense feeling as smaller lifeforms clear out for larger ones, such as when Zoomers clear out making way for big encounters then later reappearing from jungle foliage after the fight’s conclusion when you are at critical health, which dramatically changes their presence from mere nuisance to death trap.

Shooting enemies that circle around Samus was well done with the auto-aim firing system compared to P.N.03’s where locked-on targeting of on-the-move circling enemies would miss with standard firepower. Over-the-shoulder Resident Evil 4-style games do not let you easily shoot revolving enemies; for one, the backturn is too slow to quickly dispatch enemies behind you, and two, even if you sped up the backturn animation the game isn’t designed, nor would you want, to be stuck shooting enemies that have you surrounded in a circle — it is designed to break out of enemies circling you. Another good reason for the auto-aim system here compared to a twin-stick shooter like Apocalypse [PS1] is due to targeting enemies who are at various, non-singular plane, heights. This results in Metroid: Other M having a combat system with faster and more on-screen effects (e.g. multiple enemies on screen, faster lock-on, faster aim switching, faster shot-rate switching speed). There is something very samurai-like of being surrounded by tough enemies in a small room, dodging them as they dive-bomb towards you or fire shots at you, and then retaliating with a huge charge shot.

Missile firing with lock-on eliminates trajectory complexity. Missile shots can’t be wasted or rewarded with aiming accuracy. One option: find time for opening ⇒ fire. The sensation of missile firing is enhanced by the first person view that distinguishes it from a powerful charge shot in third person. This adds more dynamism to the shooting visuals and complexity to the mechanics since concentrating a powerful shot that narrows your vision of what’s directly in front of you has an increased risk/reward factor. Skill in combat is centered around character placement and timing, on the ability to fire off missiles while your character is immobilized. Motion controlled first person aiming for missiles allows for fast aiming and makes sense for targeting given how pulled back the default third person camera view is.

The combat got more fun when I got the controls down. The fun factor kicked up again once the charge shot acceleration time decreases via powerUPs, which dramatically improves combat. The charge beam gauge further gives the game a feeling of acceleration by starting out as a single cell in the color blue and “revving up” all the way to a full shining golden meter on the HUD.

In regards to the new abilities they were worth it for two intense situations I found myself in using Concentration at 0 HP: First situation was where a large energy blast narrowed in on Samus’s location, and the second, a one-time situation, where a powerful enemy and Samus traded hits resulting in the enemy being dazed and Samus entering Concentration to recover health hoping to do so before the enemy finished her off. In combat scenarios, manually regenerating health is much cooler than auto-regen.

The first encounter with Zebesians has an artificial quality where laser attacks trigger SenseMove for easy and numerous invincible dodging. But in a surprising move after it appears Samus is too powerful to stop, the enemy AI demonstrates an improvement in learning by tactically retreating into narrow alleyways making it vastly easier to blast Samus and a tense situation in general.

Later on enemies becomes more susceptible to regular firepower without requiring missiles. A lot of enemies become transparently one-dimensional with their attacks. This results in enemies that are figured out rather quickly then steamrolled through. (The game punishes players who try to brute force their way through. I’ve sustained plenty of damage and deaths playing less cautiously.) The easiness of activating SenseMove proves too invinciblity-inducing to worry about getting hit by any enemy, although I don’t recall using it in a broken manner until late in the game where you are pretty much forced to. While stunting all over barely active enemies looks cool, it feels hollow. There’s a stillness to the (auto) action where despite all the chaos happening on-screen the user feels far removed from it all as if nothing is actually happening.

Herein lies the issue: While stunting over combat-seeking enemies feels cool, the typical free-wandering ones of normal-threatened inhabitation don’t, nor do these types of enemies maintain being an obstacle for the player to be enjoyably engaged with by platforming or dodging. After that first attack by the high-tech Zebesians the subsequent encounters are much easier, even dropping below the threat levels of fighting off bugs (i.e. normal-threatened inhabitation). They shouldn’t be, and the combat in ordinary encounters reverts back to a state of emptiness with the enemy difficulty dropping yet again.

This is a general theme for the game where certain things are done really well. This also ties into how the game overplays SenseMove mechanic equals ‘no unskillfull’ equals ‘pure cool’. Samus, ironically, performs too well. More invigoration of the environment via new arena types and stage mechanism was needed to create different feeling / threatening combat situations. Improved Charge Shot firing rate via accel charge accumulation, for instance, is prioritized and well-implemented and a noticeably increasing power; contrastingly, the increase of missile capacity is quickly shown to be superfluous in order to cohere with fast-action and a sense of innate power in the action genre.

BOSS FIGHTS

The game is rampant with boss fights. They’re quite a visual fest and are seemingly as fun as the lair’s design you fight them in, such as the lava-filled Sector 2. In there Samus does a cool reel-in takedown cinematic attack with the grappling beam against a boss. Another boss has her running up its body to jump onto its head. 

The vast majority of boss fights don’t use their vast numbers to oppress the player or their imposing size for encroachment. In Metroid Fusion the oversized bodies of bosses would severely limit movement options forcing players to quickly maneuver around the bosses’ motion or obtain a height outside the bosses range. If the player was unsuccessful in doing so Samus would get knocked about for big damage often into far more treacherous territory. In Metroid: Other M touching bosses and regular enemies does not hurt Samus unless their surfaces are clearly hazardous (i.e. spiky); a rarity. And with one touch of a button they’re easily evaded with SenseMove. And one thing about SenseMove compared to manual dodge maneuvering in prior Metroid games is that it will never overshoot you off a platform.

One particular boss fight has masterful-evolving violence taking place relatively early in the game: The Hive fight. Samus falls into an unwelcoming nest home to kamikaze wasps. Great sequencing of events takes place here. Watch your step while shooting at airborne wasps as their fallen colony members scuttle towards Samus. They can spit acid, latch onto, and explode on contact with Samus melting away significant portions of health; to then dodge now opened up plant pods raining down energy spheres, and then the queen appears.

It sounds tough, and it was at one point for me, however, the dramatic quality of this fight depends on if you get hit early on. Watching an energy tank disappear off Samus’s health when damaged is much impactful alongside the dodging around on low health in comparison to watching a third of your health bar (default energy tank) disappear in ‘Hard Mode’. Missile supply-wise, Samus is oversupplied with missiles one-third of the way into the game. Volleying off missiles shots is more time-consuming in Other M than other Metroid games, and the super missile shot (+5 missile cost) requires even more time. This could have led to boss fights where the player is standing still for lengthy periods of time firing off missiles, which would have diminished the fast-pace in combat. What happened instead of that were bosses that typically could only be damaged severely in certain (or critical) moments rather than under a continuous barrage of missile fire.

Many fights do boil down to lose once, win every fight thereafter. Fighting should be more challenging than that (and it is . . . on ‘Hard Mode’). Furthermore, the game is rather forgiving by giving you a continue option that lets you restart the boss fight. After a certain amount of boss fights, the fights start to feel mechanically rehashed despite the significant change of scenery — maybe after the first third of the game attacks seemingly become more telegraphed displays of claws raking the air and body-charging attacks. This negatively impacts established bosses in the series (e.g., Ridley, Nightmare).

Ridley looks the scariest he’s ever been as he flaps by in darkness at a leveled height across the screen always out of a clear view. But that’s in a cutscene, a cutscene’s intro to be precise. When he is fully revealed the cutscene drags on too long overexposing him and diminishing his frightfulness. He is not close to being as fearsome and cunning / unpredictable as portrayed when in battle; his attacks come off as contextualized from a humanoid action game boss making swipes at Samus and doing a fire wave that must be jumped over all taking place in a fairly standard, although darkly-lit, action ring. Only the minor cutscenes that play out when claw-swiped hit properly show ferociousness. SenseMove proves to be extremely effective in nullifying incoming attacks making the Ridley battle one of the easiest fights in the game.

The last battles change things drastically. Here the player will die over and over again until they miraculously understand what must be done to activate the ‘win condition’. This is survival horror to me: of catching the player off-guard*. Of course, the expectation of the player remembering a “forgotten” technique leads to a confused event; a situation like this occurred when I played Maximo [PS2] where the otherwise entirely unnecessary move that is the crouch attack is the only means of attacking a particular boss. This type of exploratory puzzlement was reasonable for safe ‘non-pressured’ spaces (e.g. learning about bomb jumping in Metroid or how to wall jump in Super Metroid to overcome what would otherwise be dead ends), but when it’s applied in Metroid: Other M to action events this type of puzzlement leads to great anger.

In my opinion, the game’s combat engine works better for more hectic action of group encounters than for a singular creature. One issue I have with the game is that minibosses get the correct treatment of Samus being locked in a room with a monster while several boss fights have her in a large chamber, which diminishes their inescapable attribute. Being able to dodge sideways opens up too easy an escape route whereas in the 2D games you were forced to either jump over or go under the large moving boss mass. The lateral motions of SenseMove are uncontested since enemies always activate it upon attacking with rare exception, plus the game avoids pressuring the player with dodging near-simultaneously occurring different attack properties.

CUTSCENES

While the game is designed around acceleration, it routinely decelerates the player with cutscenes. Cutscenes range from (1) short to long, (2) past to present, (3) introspective to extrospective, (4) monotone to evocative, (5) nonsensical to non-canon. That’s quite a variety of ways of presenting cinematics. And experiencing all of it in one package disagreeable portions and agreeable portions makes for a challenging experience.

1. Cutscenes bordering on short films are bad. In the beginning you may need some popcorn for the cutscenes. After that the cutscenes are more reasonable, but I still think their encounter rate should be lessened so they are more of a special occurrence like in classic Resident Evil games. A 10 minute cutscene right before the final boss is Metal Gear Solid-levels of absurdity. Short cutscenes can blend in with real-time action while long ones cannot.

Bosses lack the suddenness of confrontation due to their introductory cutscenes. To me cutscenes equal a time of safety; they ensure the player is never caught totally off-guard, although this game noticeably likes to attack the player the very second a cutscene finishes. Metroid Fusion did boss entrances way better. In this game the whole stop or cautiously advance to boss appearing to player moving (or reacting) is stilted by the cutscenes.

2. Cutscenes that slightly advance the story are okay. Looking into a room from a small window using the Wiimote pointing controls was immensely cool. Cutscenes that rewind the story unrelated to the condition of the present environment or antagonist are not okay.

3. & 4. Horror vs Melodrama: Part of successful horror is discovering pieces of the past. Instead of reading a quick excerpt from a science log or journal like in Resident Evil, the player gets overexplained to about the past. This considerably reverses the direction of the action by taking the player out of the moment; the player enters a backstory of the protagonist while mentally balancing the past events unbeknownst to the player of their present environment. Knowledge that cannot be put into in-game use.

Obnoxious voice narration. Samus is going on-and-on about her life. It is extremely irritating. This game should serve as an example of why Nintendo should avoid voice acting in their games. (On Day 2 of playing the game I realized I’d mistaken the problem to the voice acting — everyone’s voice delivery is great except our protagonist’s — but only for when Samus slips into her own insipid narration: self-effacing, uncomfortable, alien-like emotional sentiments to men.) Also, what is this Final Fantasy or Metal Gear Solid? It’s one thing to have a cinematic presentation to set things up like atmosphere and mood, it’s another to turn the game into a movie. Cutscenes serve as a prolonged downtime, which runs contrast to how action-packed the game is. Unbreakable sequences run counter to sequence breaking, a core component of Metroid.

Nintendo has great success with voice acting for 2nd party games like Eternal Darkness. I am just upset about shitty narration in this game. “My parents both died when I was at a young age. My squad leader was like a father figure to me.” — no one talks like this. It comes off in a very anime way of cramming information in your head in the shortest time possible. With regards to conveyance there was a painful transition from text to speech. Some things come off much more dignified in text than speech.

5. The game cutscenes make a point of diminishing Samus’s character every now and then. You’re performing super heroic displays of strength but get rendered totally ineffective on two occasions that have been talked about on message boards ad nauseam: When Samus comes face-to-face with Ridley and the last encounter with Adam.

The freezing up in front of Ridley reminds me of that one scene in the movie Alien (1979) where Parker and Lambert both meet a grisly fate. (A flashback cutscene establishing the circumstances surrounding Ridley would have greatly aided the story-telling as a flashed shot of kid Samus doesn’t achieve that.) And while it doesn’t feel good watching someone else save the day for Samus, the scene accomplishes a sort-of redemption act for both characters that leads to a pay-off ending. Now in Adam’s final scene, in spite of performing death-defying super heroic feats and having a suit that can withstand the severest of punishment, Samus is rendered totally useless by one shot from a stun gun weapon he is carrying. Not only does this bizarre power drop occur but the whole farewell scene is overly long, incredibly awkward and self-defeating with Samus in a pathetically weak emotional and physical state. After spending so much time following rules the scene of breaking them towards the end of the mission is surprisingly understated and of little satisfaction.

Providing contextual shifts to Samus’s world via cutscenes creates expansion (or new mindset) to the otherwise claustrophobic tubular environments, but this wasn’t performed adequately enough to obscure how relatively low the new ‘mechanical’ takes on her world’s environment were afforded to the player by the largely rationally-crossed man-made structural design of the Bottle Ship.

CONCLUSION

What leaping into 3D for Metroid should be in comparison with how it turned out to be for the Prime series was not fully realized with this title. Metroid: Other M goes through the full range of emotions from Samus and the videogame rating scale itself. Undoubtedly, this game has exquisite camera work; it definitely could have used that camera work in connection with actual scary moments instead of teases. No matter how linear the map may look the camera dynamism shows off a smooth full 3D-enveloping showcasing of the level design while also flawlessly incorporating familiar old-school 2D side-scrolling shots. I enjoyed the game’s fast pacing of always moving forward quickly blowing through enemies and frequently running through save stations eliminating energy capsules drops from enemies, which produces an air of immersive speed. Solid structure when it comes to stage & scenario cohesion, especially so with the ways combat encounters break out in the environment.

The different Wiimote gesture control scheme were quickly understood. It’s enjoyable punching a D-pad button to trigger SenseMove as the aesthetic mayhem enfolds around Samus. Simple input, faster pace. But with the guaranteed evasion of SenseMove and the ability to badass by charging up huge enemies there needed to be reaccomodated designs for several returning creatures in the series. Combat eventually becomes about how much a particular action itself is enjoyable and its repetition.

Focusing on making Samus and allies more understood / personable was at best a mixed bag since it heavily affected the game’s tone by adding cringe-inducing monologues — it’s important for Nintendo to make Metroid feel like their M-rated game while staying T-rated — essentially starting the game off in a recovery mode. A powerful message here is that Samus has the will to enter Concentration on 0 HP, which lead, in spite of their unlikely replication, to the most intense situations I’ve experienced in the game series in a long time.

With the exploratory post-game items hunt and the sharp increase in challenge of ‘Hard Mode’, the game reinvigorates itself twice. What’s left now to explore is ripe with the amount of one-off curiosities introduced. Samus, herself, has been explored enough though by this game.

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Scenarios

• The tutorial feels forced given that the player notably performs all the key actions beforehand in non-combat situations with one very important exception.

General Design

• The mini map is a highly unnecessary addition on the first playthrough as this game is a roller coaster of motion through linear environments.

Boss Design

• The brontosaurus tree mimic that shoots deadly energy spheres at you from an orb on its back seems like something better suited for Turok [N64]. Outside the very first encounter, there doesn’t need to be a cutscene preceding each fight.
• The first lava boss monster could have looked more imposing.
• Ridley and other serious encounters should have various opening attacks or approaches on Samus instead of always appearing in one spot after a cutscene.

Combat

• Completely rework Hoppers. Make their attack behavior be more threatening as an enemy and obstacle.
• Increase enemy AI / aggressiveness in general
• Add more undodgable stuff (crawling enemy, slow floating enemy, lava floor, etc.)
• Increase enemy synergy
• Add more use of ricocheting charge shot off sensor plates to hit enemies.

Cutscenes

• Introspective dialogue comes off better read in English subtitles and spoken in Japanese.
• The changed dialogue lines for the American release damaged the story, characterizations, and intrigue.

POST-REVIEW COMMENTARY

I chose to not compare to the most striking contrast: Metroid [NES]. This game almost takes any misjudged minor complaints possible from the original game and addresses it  (“Why can’t Samus aim downwards?” “Why is there no map?””Why are there dead ends?””Why are the passages initially samey and disorientating?”)

The horror direction here teases at being frightening. I can imagine the directors going: “We could make it scarier, but that’s not the direction we were aiming for . . . ” And it is a good question of why they removed the live-factor in freakishness from Metroid Fusion [GBA] by way of mini cutscenes.

There also is the question of replay value in turning fights into a singular puzzle piece to place rather than several moves to make as in a game. Or performing the unthinkable.

I think further expanding on those types of situations with future technology should be considered dangerous on the actual person playing the game.

Metroid: Other M‘s story rewrites the Metroid story causing confusion on what Metroid games are canon.

GAME COMPARISON LIST

* – Detective Famicom Club has a horror moment of removing the much-used ‘move command’. Prince of Persia: Sands of Time [GC] has a bug that disables activating a much-needed special ability in a big group encounter.

Myself – Detective Famicom Club, Killer 7, Metroid Fusion, Ninja Gaiden 2, Resident Evil, Resident Evil 4, F-Zero GX, Crash Bandicoot, Shenmue, Sonic Adventure, Devil May Cry, Metroid, Battalion Wars, God of War, Apocalypse, Breath of Fire V: Dragon Quarter, Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, Bloodrayne, Genma Onimusha, Bayonetta, Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes, Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance

Naysayers – DmC, Castlevania: Lords of Shadows, Castlevania 64, Ninja Gaiden 3, The Legend Of Zelda: Skyward Sword, StarFox Zero, Megaman 64, Parasite Eve: The Third Birthday