Metroid: Other M is a 2010 action-adventure game for the Wii, developed by Tecmo Koei’s Team Ninja and Nintendo, with the animation studio D-Rockets handling the cutscenes, and published by Nintendo. It sits between Super Metroid and Metroid Fusion in the series timeline. You play as Samus Aran, a bounty hunter investigating a derelict space station called the Bottle Ship alongside a Galactic Federation platoon. The IGDB critic aggregate across 5 outlets puts it at 7.8 of 10.
Trailer, via IGN.
A Wii Remote Held Sideways
The control scheme is the most interesting thing about Metroid: Other M, and also the thing that causes the most trouble. You hold the Wii Remote horizontally for third-person play. Samus runs, jumps, fires her arm cannon and rolls into a morph ball that fits through narrow passages and drops energy bombs.
Point the remote at the screen and the camera snaps to first person. You can look around, lock onto targets and fire missiles. You cannot move. That restriction is deliberate, and it creates a rhythm the game commits to: fight a horde of flying enemies in third person, then snap to first person to destroy their spawn points.
It is a bold idea. It is also exhausting.
The Sense Move and the Overblast
Metroid: Other M is the first game in the series with a melee combat system. Well-timed button presses trigger special techniques. The Sense Move lets Samus dodge enemy attacks. The Overblast has her jump onto an enemy and fire a charged shot at point-blank range.
These moves only work when an enemy’s health has been reduced to a certain degree. That gating keeps the melee from trivializing regular combat, but it also means the flashiest actions arrive late in every fight. The game wants you to feel powerful. It makes you wait for permission.
The environments are three-dimensional. Movement is not limited to a two-dimensional plane, though the game unfolds in a linear manner. The in-game map highlights your next objective. Puzzle-solving and platform jumping fill the space between fights.
The Bottle Ship and Its Sectors
The main environment is the vessel interior, known as the Main Sector. From there, the ship opens into gigantic spheres called sectors. The Biosphere is a lush, tropical region. The Cryosphere is an arctic environment. The Pyrosphere is a heated, lava-filled area.
That structure gives Metroid: Other M a clean visual identity. Each sector announces itself immediately. The problem is that the linear map and the highlighted objective work against the exploration the series is known for. You are rarely lost. You are rarely curious about what is behind the next door, because the game has already told you where to go.
Adam Malkovich and the 07th Platoon
The story is where Metroid: Other M takes its biggest swing. After awakening in a Galactic Federation facility, Samus departs for space and picks up a distress signal from the Bottle Ship. Soon after landing, she encounters the Galactic Federation 07th Platoon.
Among the platoon are Anthony Higgs, an old friend from her military career, and her commanding officer, Adam Malkovich. After Samus saves the platoon from monsters, Adam allows Samus to cooperate in their mission, on the condition that she follow his orders.
That condition is the engine of the plot. Samus and the 07th Platoon head to the Exam Center in the Biosphere, where the game says the Bottle Ship was the site of bioweapons research.
A Traitor Called the Deleter
After being attacked by a large lizard-like creature, Samus is ordered to follow the monster to the Pyrosphere, but is quickly directed to the Cryosphere to search for survivors. While there, Samus encounters a young woman. The two are attacked by a soldier piloting an industrial robot.
Samus realizes there is a traitor among the 07th Platoon and decides to call him the “Deleter” until she learns his true identity.
The monster she has been tracking turns out to be Ridley, the dragon-like creature, in an earlier stage of its life. Anthony draws Ridley’s attention and challenges him, but is seemingly killed.
The game gave significant focus on plot and characterization, with extensive usage of cinematics and voice acting. Metroid director and series creator Yoshio Sakamoto approached Team Ninja to develop the game, and the development team employed a simple control scheme to appeal to modern players.
What the Cutscenes Cost
That focus on plot is the most divisive thing in Metroid: Other M. The cinematics are elaborate, and they are frequent. They give Samus a voice and a history, and they tie the game directly to Super Metroid and Metroid Fusion.
They also stop the game constantly. The story is criticized by critics and fans, and the reason is not hard to find: the game hands Samus a commanding officer and then asks her to defer to him for most of the runtime. The player has the arm cannon. Adam has the authority.
This is a real design choice, not an accident. But it sits badly against a series about a lone hunter operating on her own terms. The cutscenes are well made. The characterization they deliver is the part that does not hold.
Sales and the Series After
Metroid: Other M received generally positive reviews from critics, who praised its elaborate cutscenes, graphics and action-oriented gameplay. It received honors from several publications. It was the third-best-selling video game in Japan during its first week of release, and the ninth best-selling game in North America during September 2010.
Sales were still disappointing for a flagship Nintendo franchise. No original major Metroid games were released for years afterward. That gap is the clearest evidence that Metroid: Other M did not do the job Nintendo needed it to do, whatever the review scores said.
The Verdict on Metroid: Other M
Metroid: Other M is a game with a real idea and a real problem. The idea is the two-perspective control scheme, and it works more often than it should. Switching from third person to first person mid-fight is awkward, then tense, then genuinely satisfying once you internalize the rhythm. The Sense Move and the Overblast give combat a vocabulary the series did not have before.
The problem is everything wrapped around that idea. The linear map and the highlighted objective drain the exploration. The melee gating keeps the best moves behind a health threshold. And the story, which the game spends so much time and so many cinematics on, asks the player to watch Samus take orders from Adam Malkovich for hours.
Ranking what Metroid: Other M gets right and wrong:
- The Sense Move and the Overblast, which give combat a real sense of timing.
- The sector design, which gives each area of the Bottle Ship a distinct look.
- The cutscene production, which is genuinely elaborate for a 2010 Wii game.
- The first-person missile mode, which is tense but immobile.
- The linear map and highlighted objective, which undercut exploration.
- The story’s treatment of Samus, which is the game’s biggest failure.
The IGDB critic aggregate across 5 outlets is 7.8 of 10. That reflects a game that is better than its reputation and worse than its ambitions. The combat system is worth the trouble. The story is not. Metroid: Other M is a spin-off/side game in the series, and it plays like one: a bold experiment that stands apart from the main line.
KEY FACTS
– Release year: 2010
– Developer: Tecmo Koei’s Team Ninja and Nintendo; D-Rockets handled cutscenes
– Publisher: Nintendo
– Platforms: Wii, Wii U
– Genre: Action-adventure
– Perspective: First person and third person
– Modes: Single player
– Series placement: Between Super Metroid (1994) and Metroid Fusion (2002)
– Score: 7.8 of 10 (IGDB critic aggregate, 5 outlets)
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