Other M was a disaster. They completely went against the established character of the protagonist.
This is ESPECIALLY true if you read the manga that precedes Metroid/Metroid: Zero Mission. That actually gives Samus a surprising amount of depth in her character, considering the fact that she's mostly a silent protagonist.
Although, personally, I think Square Enix is getting better at making good, tasteful female characters these days (and I have two in mind: Lightning and Xion from FFXIII/FFXIII-2 and the Kingdom Hearts series, respectively.) Lightning looks attractive, but isn't overtly sexualized much at all and has a backstory for her character that gives her actual depth (she still is given the ass-kicking archetype, but in this case she's ex-military and has multiple reasons for acting the way she does, instead of just being the one who beats everyone to a pulp because she can like so many female characters do these days). Xion was a great character, good fighter, humorous at some times, serious at others, and really made you like her even in the end of the game not so much because of anything involving her gender in particular, but because of the way her character was built. Hell, her gender only really matters because they're playing off of Sora's memories with her as the plot device to do so (she IS supposed to embody his memories of Kairi, after all.)