Metroid fans still have no love for Metroid: Other M, the consensus low point in the otherwise celebrated franchise, but why is it so disliked?
With the recent release of Metroid: Dread on the Switch, many fans of the Metroid franchise have been revisiting the series as a whole. Spanning over 35 years of releases on Nintendo consoles and handhelds, the series has seen its share of ups and downs, but no title in the Metroid series has ever been so widely disliked as Metroid: Other M, which released in 2010 for the Wii. Despite introducing some new staples into the series and attempting to elevate the franchise's storytelling, Metroid: Other M continues to be remembered primarily for all the things it got wrong.
When it was first announced that Team Ninja, the studio behind Ninja Gaiden on the Xbox, would be collaborating with Nintendo to create Other M, fans were intrigued. Early footage and news of the game promised fast action, polished graphics, new mechanics, and a much more personal look into Samus Aran's character and some of her history before her bounty hunter days. Of all the Metroid games released, Other M would be the one to finally dive deep into character motivations within the evolving storyline. The pitch sounded good to fans, but the final delivery would leave gamers dissatisfied with many key aspects of the experience. Metroid: Other M tried to inject new ideas and mechanics into a series that had already formed some quite rigid conventions in regards to controls, game progression, and narrative structure.
The game's controls were mapped out in a way that the player would hold the Wii remote sideways, which more or less makes the controller into an old-school NES configuration. The idea was to make the game accessible and familiar to Metroid players from the NES days, while not leaning too hard into the Wii's motion controls. Instead of simplifying things, this actually proved to be a bit awkward and gave a bit of a shoehorned feeling to the controls. Using d-pad in an environment with multiple planes of movement just feels clunky, and while Team Ninja came up with a control scheme that got the job done, it lacked the total precision and refined feel that the Metroid series has always been known for having.
To add to that clunky feel, Metroid: Other M featured moments when the player would have to point the Wii remote at the screen to enter first-person mode. Switching views didn't feel naturally smooth, and Samus was unable to move in the first person view. The awkward first-person mechanics felt like a huge step back after the Metroid Prime Trilogy so expertly pulled off Samus' movements in full 3D with a first person view.
Another common rallying point for Other M detractors is that the game departed too far from the previous games' Metroidvania genre staple with the nearly entire removal of environmentally hidden upgrades. In past Metroid titles, the player's progress through the game world is gated by the power-ups Samus has yet to find and equip. If there's a ledge to a new area just out of reach, players would return once they had found the High Jump Boots. If a door couldn't be opened and it was a different color from other doors, that was a clue that another type of weapon was needed to enter. Metroid on the NES pioneered this explore and backtrack concept and it had been seen throughout each Metroid game in the mainline series all the way up to Other M, which instead chose to lock Samus' abilities behind narrative progression, not exploration. Metroid: Other M tossed the sense of discovery right out the window and replaced it with a bloated plot that didn't resonate with longtime supporters.
While there are other common complaints about the game, the plot of Metroid: Other M is really what bothers fans the most. Other M's story takes place between Super Metroid and Metroid Fusion. During Metroid Fusion, there were only mentions of Adam Malkovich, Samus' commanding officer during her time in the Galactic Federation army. In Other M, Adam is a hugely important part of the overall plot and he weighs heavy on the storyline. Early on the game, Samus finds Adam, along with some of her other former colleagues, in distress on a spaceship. After coming to their aid, Adam allows Samus to take part in their mission, but only under the agreement that she obey his orders along the way.
As the story unfolds, it's Adam that authorizes Samus to use her suit's power-ups, but only as he deems them necessary. The plot device of Samus being on limited lockdown really rubbed fans the wrong way. Samus, the most dangerous and accomplished bounty hunter in the galaxy, is seen to be taking orders from a man that is nowhere near her equal and whose judgment always feels in question. It just hasn't ever sat well with Metroid fans that Samus was seen being ordered around and held back by a man in uniform. And while Adam Malkovich is important to Samus and the Metroid story, his portrayal in Other M created a bad power dynamic. The entire plot was peppered with sexist overtones that threatened to erode Samus as such a strong and admirable character.
Other inconsistencies with Samus' character development in Other M did the game no favors when it came to fan reception. Samus, up until Metroid: Other M, had always been portrayed as efficient, fearless, independent, confident, and completely in control of her body and mind. Samus isn't the galaxy's greatest warrior by chance - she honed herself to become the ultimate weapon. When Other M put Samus in need of saving or saw her melting down out of fear, gamers just couldn't accept that without a huge roll of the eyes. Samus' treatment in Other M would be akin to Captain America just running and hiding from a fight in Infinity War out of fear - some things are just too out of the already established character's traits for fans to accept.
Under the weight of the inconsistencies with Samus' character, the lack of exploration, the oddball control scheme, and just some general weirdness, such as the game's fixation with a baby theme, Metroid: Other M just felt like too much of a sidestep for a Metroid franchise mainline title. Despite Nintendo's efforts to market and push the game's sales through the holiday season, Other M underperformed heavily and user reviews on the game reflected disappointment. With the recent sales success of Metroid: Dread, it's easy to see that fans are open to risks and new ideas being brought into the series, but certain aspects of the series are staples for a reason. One can look back and admire the intentions of bringing more plot and higher production values into the series with Metroid: Other M, but fans are simply never going to see the title as anything but a black mark on the franchise.
