The Mutericator

^ That's pretty crazy, honestly. I'm really glad I still have the original copies of all three of those games, so I can try some of those once I'm done with refinishing Echoes and Corruption. Thanks for the heads-up!

My only real issue with Prime Trilogy is that widescreen, Wiimote aiming, and the default difficulty settings combine to make the game ridiculously easy for someone who has played it before. I mean, I knew it was going to be somewhat easy going into it, since I already more or less remembered everything, but I had no idea I would get through it without dying once, even on Veteran (normally I die all the time on Omega Pirate and at least once or twice on Ridley). Echoes is a bit better about it, probably since I don't remember it nearly as well (having not sequenced broken the hell out of it like Prime), but even its best enemies I'm finding rather simple - those horned things in Torvus Bog aren't NEARLY as ragequit-worthy as they were before. Aside: Shame, Retro, for subtly patching over some of the best sequence break spots in later releases of Prime and in Prime Trilogy. I'm keeping my original disc just for those.

Interesting. I have to admit, I thought you were trying to speak on behalf of the internet as a whole, when what you saw was only on the corners you visit; I noticed something of an opposite reaction from my corners, where hype for Other M was pretty much through the roof. I accept your apology, and hope you will accept my apology for an overzealous reaction. Au contraire. I don't by any means hate stories, I just hate bad ones that are forced on you like this one. And the Ridley scene is, at best, out of character even for the version of Samus portrayed in Other M.

None, none whatsoever. I've always stood by the belief that a good story can help a good game become awesome, but that it can't save a bad game and that a bad story can drag down an awesome game into merely good, and a good or decent one to bad (see: Other M). Games like Metal Gear Solid, where the story gets so in-depth and ridiculous that it's borderline impossible to play without getting involved in the story, are the antithesis of this. I'm not a particularly big fan of them, but I can't refute that they're good games and good (if confusing and over-the-top) stories. Games like Mario, however, prove my point - for a game to remain a game, it should have gameplay as its first and (almost) only priority. IF the player needs an excuse to play the game, then, "go rescue the princess" works fine, nothing more is needed (see: Mario, Castle Crashers, Link to the Past's intro). It's when directors and producers want to start integrating story and want to start telling some story they cooked up that things get complicated. Again, don't get me wrong - there are some REALLY good game storylines and plots out there (Okami, Majora's Mask), it's just that I feel a lot of them are either full of shit (Final Fantasy 7+) or that they really shouldn't be adapted to a game in the first place (movie-to-game transitions). So what's the happy medium? It's already been mentioned: the Metroid Prime approach, also used by Deus Ex, Morrowind, and Arkham Asylum to great success. Simply keep the backstory and story there, but don't force it on the player. Make the player seek it out. It gives the player a reward for exploring and taking risks to gain new information, and players who don't want that info are free to skip right by it, without hampering their gameplay experience whatsoever. Other M could have done it - Samus already has an established Scan Visor, used to pull out relevant (or irrelevant) info and trivia from all kinds of terminals, landmarks, and enemies. They already had first-person mode, one button press could have switched you over... but instead, we got in-your-face cutscenes that are unskippable until you finish the game once.

I've never seen a better example of missing the point. Sarcasm aside, you're ignoring that we aren't talking for a (made-up) group, we're talking as individuals who disagree with your baseless assumption. I was hyped for Other M, and I was disappointed terribly with it. Beyond that I can only tell you what people here in the OCR thread have said, but I make no attempt to speak for them or any other group of people the rest of us have never seen. You're doing the opposite, and projecting your feelings onto many with no cause to do so.

I can definitely agree with this, I've been thinking the same thing for a while now. This would have been average at best for a normal game, but for a Metroid game with an already-established formula, it's pretty terrible.

Until you cite a source that actually proves the point that YOU brought up, yes, it is bullshit. I hate to say it, but I expect there was a degree of trying to avoid the "Twilight Princess 8.8" scenario happening again. The "game from the future" bit on Kotaku felt particularly like bullshit.

Made-up bullshit, you mean.

What? What are you talking about? I was incredibly excited for a Team Ninja Metroid game, and remained pumped until the hands-on articles started coming out in February or so, which pointed out how story-heavy the game was. It just got worse and worse the more I learned, and the game itself was just as bad as I was worried it would be. Don't make shit up.

Even DRAGON QUEST, the poster boy for traditional turn-based JRPG's, fixed this when they rereleased IV and V on the DS.

Too bad that never came up. There was NO Wii bashing here, none. He never once made mention of console inferiority in the video, only how terrible the game is (hint: it would have been terrible on any console, except maybe the Nunchuck issue because that never would have been an option). From now on when people want to learn what I think of Other M, I'm just going to post a link to this video, because Yahtzee pretty well sums up everything I hate about it. ('Cept maybe the Team Ninja blaming, since, you know, most of that shit wasn't their fault.)

But this ISN'T REAL LIFE. It's a GAME, and I want to PLAY it. Not sit through watching my main character have panic attacks over some enemy I've faced 5 goddamn times. Look, I don't CARE what's realistic. The point is, this is a drag on the GAME that I came to play, and the cutscenes ruin the experience. Stop trying to justify a retarded cutscene made by some idiot who seems to think we give a damn what Samus thinks. She's there to let us explore a planet, not emote. It's like trying to justify those terrible laughing scenes in Final Fantasy X, but worse because JRPG's are SUPPOSED to have heavy stories. Platformers, Metroidvanias, and action games aren't.

Thing is, Dante wasn't a "pretty boy." He had the white hair, sure, but he wasn't some scrawny little teenage punk with a bad attitude problem. If people want something that isn't normal Dante, I can guarantee it isn't what we're seeing now.

I pretty much agree with everything Bleck's been saying and you've been ignoring. But there's no point in repeating it if you're going to ignore the problems - it's a reboot, Dante is now some punk kid instead of a professional, and THE WRITER SAID SO. That's good enough for me.

Too bad I did. Your insistence and assumptions really don't make your petty argument any stronger.

Second opinion: You're an idiot, it's a reboot. You don't turn a badass manly main character into a scrawny Edward Cullen-looking fag without rebooting the series.

The night they reveal Captain Falcon in Brawl! Whoa time portal to 2.5 years ago for a second there.

If you actually follow the forums, they update rather regularly, at LEAST once a month. I don't think running through the scripts ten thousand times is really necessary, but they are almost on track for the end of the year. http://forum.tales-cless.org/news/0/

Super Metroid's soundtrack = amazing. Metroid Prime's soundtrack = amazing as well, especially good old Phendrana Drifts. Mmmm... gonna have to go play through that section again now, methinks.

You're dumb. Sequence breaking gets you the crazy stuff EARLY. If I can walk into Brinstar and grab the Super Missiles, two Missile Expansions, and a Reserve Tank with ONE mockball, not to mention getting the Ice Beam with just as little effort, that is AWESOME. The challenge makes it harder in some areas, yeah, but way easier in others (Metroid Prime: Space Boots once you land on Tallon IV, double jump with the visor glitch to get the Missiles before fighting the even that first red-assed boss). In other words, you're completely missing the point of sequence breaking. It isn't to avoid items, it's to avoid going out of your way to get them (killing bosses and taking the time) in order to get other stuff early. Yes, it can be USED for low-item runs, but that isn't the express point (also low item runs are fun).

"Plot" is kind of a loose term here. In terms of following the plot, yes - Ridley takes the Metroid, you go to Zebes, you kill Ridley, you have final battle with Mother Brain over dead Metroid's body. But the bosses don't actually have to be fought in the same order - generally, Kraid comes first, because killing him nets you the Varia Suit, which in turn gets you Speed Boost, Grapple Beam, and Wave Beam (you have to kill Crocomire in there too somewhere). Killing Phantoon in the Wrecked Ship nets you the Gravity Suit, which gets you into Maridia and lets you kill Draygon, netting you the Space Jump (which presumably lets you down to Ridley). So yes, in terms of complete and total nonlinearity, no, you still have to fight the bosses in the same order (assuming we're following your rule of "no sequence breaking"). Still, it's a hell of a lot less linear than Go To Save Room -> Get told where to go next -> Get led on a perfectly linear path forward regardless -> get to Save Room, repeat.

"For a story to be bad it needs to have wtf moments." No. See: http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/960554-metroid-other-m/56305892 Also go back and replay Super, you don't get them in a fixed order, even without sequence breaking. YOU might, out of habit, but if you actually look there are the Spazer and X-Ray, both optional upgrades, as well as things like the Ice Beam (which you can get any time after the Speed Boost and before entering Maridia, as far as I remember). Team Ninja didn't do the writing or anything but the battle system, basically. Nintendo did most of the work and left that little detail to them. And it worked well, don't get me wrong - the battle system has a few kinks it definitely needs to work out, but it's still the strongest point of the game (not saying much, compared to the plot, the linearity, and the generally terrible characters).

Other M is a successor by removing free roam, adding invisible walls EVERYWHERE, and adding unnecessary and terribly written drama? No. I... I never thought of it that way. Good call.

Because the scene is being forced on me in order to play the game? Because worse, Sakamoto's flat out stated that he wants to make Metroid more like this permanently? Yes, Other M doesn't ruin the previous games, aside from the obvious retconning about Samus' attachment to the larva, but if this means there won't be a true successor to Super and Prime (no, not a clone, not Super all over again - a true evolution of the franchise in an appropriate direction, with emphasis on the things Metroid's always been about), then yes, I am going to get rather annoyed over it.

Don't even say that, Sakamoto will try to get Retro to rerelease Prime 3 with Samus breaking down crying like a wreck every time she kills one of them. Also anyone trying to rationalize Samus' emotional state needs to realize they are doing EXACTLY what we should NOT be playing Metroid games for: realism and overanalysis. Seriously, the Ridley scene is unbelievably stupid, but what's worse are the people trying to come up with a host of reasons to justify that scene's occurrence. It's a GAME. I am here to play things, not to care about the current emotional state of my character. Yes, I prefer silent protagonists for this exact reason. I hate it when games take themselves too seriously, and emotionless slates are a great way to handle that. Yes. Ironically, do you know what Final Fantasy 12, a game that came out 4 years and a console generation ago, had that Other M didn't? The ability to skip cutscenes.