It's really not a big deal that there aren't any new power-ups, since the game was a return to the series' side-scrolling roots, thereby reinstating the Speed Boost and Shinespark that the Primes unfortunately had to miss out on, and re-adapting other ones to their original state, only with slight adjustments to accommodate for the 3D level design. I don't see how they're "simplified" at all. They're certainly easier to use than in the 2D games, but is that really a problem? The 2D games often made using power-ups somewhat cumbersome, and streamlining was a pretty big necessity -- one that Other M addressed ideally. They're also not any simpler than they are in the Primes, i.e. they're not without depth and complexity.
No new power-ups isn't a bad thing in itself, just a disappointment. If they weren't going to add anything new then they could have at least added a few more of the old, like the Spaser and the Hyper Beam. At east they would have fit the game's combat more than the Ice and Wave Beams. The ones they "adapted" for the game are a bad thing to me. The Ice Beam is a good example. In the original
Metroid and in
Super Metroid, the Ice Beam froze enemies so that you could use them as platforms. I think it was even necessary to do this at one point in
Super. It meant that the weapon had an influence over level design and puzzles and was a bigger part of gameplay than just an aspect of the combat. In
Other M it just makes your weapon do more damage. It still freezes things but only tiny creatures and anything in mid-air will fall, depriving the beam of one of its most interesting features from previous games. The way it is adapted in
Other M just makes it a more powerful beam attack and strips its other uses away. This is what I mean when I say things were simplified.
The Wave Beam is also less useful than it was in
Super, its unique ability only being used a couple of times to hit switches. In combat it just makes you do more damage, while in
Super it let you kill enemies on the other side of walls and whatnot. I'll put that one down to the use of 3D compared to 2D and the effect that has on level design but that just means that the Wave Beam wasn't a very good choice of power-up to bring back for this game. Super Missiles are in the same boat, only being used to open a couple of doors. You can use them in combat, sure, but with the way you have to stop moving entirely to use them it's really not worth the hassle. They went from being a powerful weapon to being a key.
I'll agree that
Other M streamlined the use of power-ups, since using them is quicker and simpler than in previous games, but I myself would say it was far from the ideal solution. I didn't like how the Ice and Wave Beams were just automatically and permanently added to your attack because it made them nothing more than basic upgrades, not new abilities. Cycling through the row of missiles and bombs isn't as easy as just pointing the Wiimote at the screen, but the fact that using missiles costs you your legs makes me a heck of a lot less willing to actually use them.
I just think that
Other M picked the wrong power-ups to bring back and did a really bad job of shoving them in there. Bringing back old power-ups isn't bad when they are power-ups that work for the new game, but given how
Other M is designed, the Ice and Wave Beams, Super Missiles, and even the Speed Boost just don't fit (I include the Speed Boost because of its dependance on long corridors. Even the Speed Boost areas of
Super didn't feel as forced as the ones in
Other M). They were poor choices for this game, and poorly handled to boot. This is why I think of them as a bad thing.
Combat is drastically different than what was seen in any of the previous games. It's designed with a "run-'n-gun" style in mind
Absolutely, it certainly is, but just because it was designed that way doesn't mean they achieved that. The first thing that jumps to my mind is how using missiles--a staple weapon of the franchise and one used extensively by most
Metroid players, I'd wager--actually stops you moving entirely. That does not fit in with the 'run-n-gun' style at all. It's the exact opposite, actually, a shooting gallery. The biggest problem with the combat for me was how it was one button (well two when you include the dodge). "Press 1 until your thumb falls off to win." The auto-aim is built into the combat and it drains any engagement from it because you aren't
doing anything. You don't have to think or watch out or be careful because just stand in range, hit 1 enough times, and everything will be dead.
The dodge mechanic threatened to make things a little bit interesting but once you realise that timing is not necessary then it just becomes another thumb work out. The dodge only happens when an enemy is just about to attack, but pressing the button too early has no consequence. You can just press it continuously and still dodge pretty much everything. Maybe that was a conscious design decision, but the point of a 'run-n-gun' style is to make combat exciting by making each fight an event. Reducing combat to two buttons that can be spammed
ad nauseum makes every fight boring and monotonous. The enemies are more aggressive but Samus is too, since there's no reason to not just keep hitting the shoot button like its going out of style.
In previous
Metroid games I have had enemies really give me a thrashing before and I've had to consider what weapons to use and how to approach situations. None of that was present in
Other M because, no matter what, I could just go in and turbo the 1 button and walk out more or less unharmed. That's why I think the combat is a bad thing.
This also translates into why you only get one missile per upgrade. Since enemies don't drop any and you can refill your tank at any time, giving us five at a time would be ridiculously OP. It's a change in design to fit the other changes made. There's not really a reason to consider it a flaw.
I agree that infinite missiles would have made a five missile upgrade too powerful, but my issue with upgrades only giving you one extra shot has nothing to do with the combat, that's why I put it in my little exploration point. My issue with them is that they aren't as much of a reward as they previously were. When the only reason to look for things is to find them, as it is in
Metroid, what you find has to be worth the effort. One extra missile just isn't worth it to me.
I used the example of
Zelda's Heart Pieces to show what I feel is an important difference. In
Metroid you look for things and then find them and that's it. You've called that "search and find" so I'll do the same. The reward for finding an Energy Tank is having an extra Energy Tank. Simple. Nothing wrong with that. What
Zelda does is give us other incentives to find the Heart Pieces. At the core, all they do is give the player more health, but the way they are found is quite different. While many are just found out in the world, many others are the prize for solving a puzzle while others still are rewards for completing side-quests, which are entertaining in themselves. There's more than just "search and find" and I feel that is necessary when the reward is quite small, as Heart Pieces are, since you need four to actually get a reward.
That's my issue with the Energy Parts in particular. They are Heart Pieces, in function, but they are Heart Pieces without the extra bit that makes finding a useless-on-its-own item worthwhile. There are nine Energy Tanks in
Other M, four of them are acquired from Energy Parts. This means that of the twenty-one Energy Tank related items hidden in the game,
sixteen of them are useless on their own. While you do find one more complete Energy Tank than you do split ones, the Energy Parts far outnumber the Tanks as hidden collectibles. This means that the vast majority of the time you spend building your Energy capacity (over 3/4 of it) is spent gathering things that have no value until you get three more.
When the reward in a "search and find" scenario, as it is in
Other M, is small I feel like I've wasted my effort because I didn't really get anything in return. One missile feels like when a child scribbles on some paper, shows it to their parent, and gets a pat on the head and a "Well done". Previous
Metroid games made it feel like being given a sweet instead. I prefer sweets to being patronised. I'm not saying that side-quests ever have been or even should be a part of
Metroid; I just want to feel like I'm being rewarded for my efforts like in the older games.
And the Wii Remote is used just fine. I do think it'd have been better to use the Nunchuk, but the controls function properly and are pretty much second nature once you get the hang of them.
The controls function and they don't take getting used to but my problem with the use of the Wiimote is not about how it performs but about what it allows.
Sroa Link said it well:
This game should have used the Nun-chuck and Wii-remote combination to have more buttons to work with.
That's my issue with the Wiimote. It gives us so few inputs that it is the root cause of the game's simplistic combat, controls, power-ups, and level design. Nothing demonstrates how the use of a single Wiimote restricts this game more than the missiles. To aim the missiles we snap to first-person but due to the layout and shape of the controller our only directional input is a small d-pad sat at the top point of the controller, just out of reach of the thumb without stretching. Rather than make players navigate in such an awkward manner they 'solved' the problem of moving in first-person by breaking your legs.
The lack of buttons (or at least well-placed buttons when the Wiimote is held sideways) also leads to having our Beam upgrades stack instead of being equiped in a menu since that would require another button and the only ones not being used by moving and doing things are in really awkward positions. It's just easier to have the Beams stack, but it also simplifies them and their use to the detriment of the game.
What's funny is that Sakamoto defends the use of the lone Wiimote by saying that technical restrictions, and the creative way around them, with the original game led to the Ice Beam, and he wanted to force the same thing to happen with
Other M. This is made funnier by the fact that the specific benefit of the Ice Beam, which came from those early limitations, was removed entirely in this game. You don't force creativity and Sakamoto shot himself in the foot to try to come up with ideas. He then promptly came up with none and passed out due to blood loss. I'm pretty sure I've called the Wiimote "The Death of Creativity" before and
Other M is just another title which stamps that into my mind.
) tells you to go to some place and do something, once you finish that mission, the chapter ends and you're taken to you next mission, or the end of that chapter that leads you to the beginning of the next if they just want the chapter/levels to blend in. This is pretty much how a lot of linear games in the market out there work.
