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+----- Thread: Metroid: Other M (/thread-6989.html)
RE: Metroid: Other M - PrettyNier - 04-03-2010
uh
the argument isn't "super metroid"; he asked what I thought was a good metroid game - and I responded.
Super is the epitome of the series, for many reasons ranging from its thoughtful progression, flowing and interesting level design, concise and deep control, the attention to detail in all respects and the cohesiveness of all of its "parts", including the narrative (amusingly enough most people would say SUPER METROID DOESN'T HAVE A NARRATIVE). The game can be tackled from so many different perspectives and in many different ways and rarely will the game be "broken" by these differences. It is both hyper-technical and euphorically wonderful - appreciatable by both the type who like to wander around and explore a game and sink in, absorb its world, and by those who like to condense the game into a technical "objectively best" (or so they believe, until later someone creates an even better route: unlike zero mission, there is no pre-designed idealistic objective "best" speed-run route) path comprised of split second actions and reactions. It is a game to spend hours in wandering the waters of maridia, and a game to spend minutes in speeding through it in a hyper technical frenzy; and it approaches both sides with the same kind of consideration and attention to detail. Its level design was made intentionally to satisfy both ends.
in other words - the experience of playing the game (I would say "gameplay" but thats a retarded word and doesn't convey what it should convey), which is indirectly tied to every aspect of its creation, is a cohesive whole. The music is good because it is good music and because it compliments the areas it is used in. The sound effects are good because they compliment the actions that create them; missile explosions sound "crunchy", flipping through the air has a whirl to it, Kraid and Crocomire howl with a frightening, alien air to them. The visuals are good because they tie into and relate everything else in the game - they set the tone, they convey the environments (and as a result the level design), they compliment and create the context for the music and the sound effects; explosions do more than sound chunky, they look chunky - every time you fire a super missile that collides into something, the screen will shake. etc. etc. etc. etc.
I suppose the best way to put it is, Super Metroid is not a collection of purely self-sufficient things created to be what they are and then left at that, put together because "well, thats what you're supposed to do"; Super Metroid is a messy pool of mud. A conglomeration of things all diluted into eachother. Everything is designed to reflect everything but themselves - they are designed to accentuate every other factor of the game. The level design is not a series of obstacles, the level design is a natural extension of the environments themselves - which are natural extentions of the music, sound effects, and visuals - and the context for the character itself. Thats another factor. The character.
In too many of the Castlevania games as of late, Portrait of Ruin being the biggest offender, you are a demigod that can do countless things from shooting straight up into the air, flying, dashing, sliding, double jumping, what-have-you. its all meaningless when placed into the context of the game itself. The "level design" generally consists of meaningless boxes with a platform or two, occasionally one that is too high so you need to double jump, and enemies with behavioral patterns that have not evolved since Super Castlevania IV or Rondo of Blood. You literally plow through everything because nothing is really designed to account for your new-found abilities except for a few long vertical shafts, higher than normal platforms, and the usual one-hit-wonder ability of the game - like DoS's puppet master soul, or Portrait of Ruin's slide ability, Frog and Owl transformations, and the oddity of jumping on your partners back to gain a slight boost in jump height. They're all ultimately useless and basically serve the same function as a "key" from Zelda.
Super Metroid doesn't suffer from this. Everything in the game is designed to account for the abilities that you have - nothing is useless, save for possibly the spring ball and - if you're talented enough - the grappling beam. The environments (level design, and the enemies which are often extensions of the environments) are just as connected to - and dare I say, reliant upon - your capabilities as your capabilities are to the environment, and there are no "one hit wonders". everything can adequately be used; you almost never have to be reminded that you can do something, and the only ability that is truly excessive, that is, infringing upon another abilities function, is the spin jump. But honestly, I usually feel more comfortable wall-jumping. You can shine-spark up a room, or you can walljump, or you can freeze enemies and hop up them - you can probably even bomb-jump up, if you wanted. Maybe you can even use the grappling beam to swing yourself up and around. Almost all of the rooms have multiple functions and multiple "routes" to get through them like this.
The "gameplay" is what it is supposed to be, but often isn't in games - an interaction between the player and their surrounding context. There is an ever present sense of friction, of responsibility, of cause and effect. If you run straight ahead in a direction, your speed will build up; once it has built up, if you immediately turn around, your speed will not carry over. You will not charge in the other direction at full speed, the speed must be transferred. This friction is part of what makes this game so exciting to play, both when you do - and don't - understand the physics. Walljumping requires that you jump against a wall, and then push against the wall while hitting the jump button nearly simultaneously - it directly corresponds to the action in question. When you use the grappling beam, you have to swing yourself and utilize the phyics, become a part of and understand the to and fro, the push and pull - you don't automatically fly to your destination. Every action is dealt with personally and directly. There are no ludicrous quick time events where you push a single button and fly through a complex series of events and actions that you could never hope to do in-game.
In Super Mario 64, when you grabbed Bowsers tail and swung him around, you had to hold the button (iirc) and spin the joystick in accordance to his motions. Super metroid is kind of like that. In Other M (and as is the case for a lot of games), the entire process appears automated. push a button, watch a series of events unfold - push another button, watch another series of events unfold. its equivalent to turning a page in a book as opposed to being the character in that book.
It's a jarring disconnect between the avatar and the player. It relegates you to an observer, not an arbiter, and ultimately thats the entire point of being a game - an interactive experience. You are an arbiter, you have a direct say in what happens (to a degree), you control a character. You don't play a game to watch a movie, or flip through a slideshow; you play a game to do something, albeit a virtual something; you play a game because it is a proxy for human experience and human emotion. thats what the medium is and that is what it best expresses because there is no other medium that is capable of expressing that - and super metroid is by far one of the best examples of what the medium is capable of doing in this regard.
heh.
no, I'm not really expecting anyone here to actually fully read through that - although I would be delighted and pleasantly surprised if they did (and responded). there is actually a lot that I didn't say, as well. i never really touched on the subject of the visual narrative nor did I really delve into detail and provide specific examples of things like the level design or how you can tackle things from multiple ways and not "break" the game. I also didn't really contrast super metroid with other things in games to emphasize the point that much, or properly define everything I was saying; there's still a lot of context left over.
either way uh
you asked for it django you better read it okay |:
RE: Metroid: Other M - Vipershark - 04-03-2010
well djanjo you got your text wall.
RE: Metroid: Other M - PrettyNier - 04-03-2010
im not sure why I wrote the text wall when I technically started responding to kojjiro, though, as opposed to when I directly responded to django.
either way, he got it, and its just as applicable in that context as it would've been as a direct response to him
RE: Metroid: Other M - Kitsu - 04-03-2010
Giz, you deserve an award. I now completely understand the basic reasons behind the clash of the Super Metroid fans and the Metroid Prime(2 and 3)/GBA fans.
... That was... wow.
So, do you think that Other M is therefore traveling in COMPLETELY the wrong direction, then?
RE: Metroid: Other M - GaryCXJk - 04-03-2010
Not to rain on your whole monologue, but the only reason Super got in front of Metroid in Super Metroid was because the game came out on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, also known as SNES or sometimes Super NES, perhaps even Super Nintendo.
RE: Metroid: Other M - PrettyNier - 04-03-2010
heh. i hope you're not actually try to imply that the original Metroid is a better game than Super Metroid.
Quote:So, do you think that Other M is therefore traveling in COMPLETELY the wrong direction, then?In many aspects, absolutely; in others, I'm not entirely positive just yet.
I would be lying if I said that I didn't see anything about it I liked - I like moving the wiimote at the screen to shift perspectives; its interesting and intuitive. The visuals are also, obviously, very nice. Unfortunately, the music seems pretty awful so far and there seems to be none of that friction or responsibility in the control and environments themselves. The "level design" seems to be pretty nonexistant, relegating the environments to being pretty things to look at, or meaningless, void arenas. they exist purely to provide context for the fighting, and in doing so they have forgotten how to do anything else. Everything exists as its own thing within a thing, not as a bunch of things that are inseperable from eachother.
And if the trailers are any indication, then the german supplexing seems to play out more like quick-time events or fatalities in mortal kombat as opposed to actual, involved fighting.
In general, I feel the focus of the game - that is, to tell a "personal" story and create lots of cool action - is misguided. It exists in opposition to the other elements that made Super Metroid the marvel of game design that it is - the visual narrative and the level design. It takes away from the level design to create more fighting, and it takes away from the visual narrative (that is, the story that is "told" through your own actions and your interaction with events, as opposed a generic "cutscene") by creating this cutscene intensive, "personal" story. A storyline is fine, but there are some things that are better left untouched, and some things that must be handled with taste.
And I deplore the shift from a cohesive subtlety to an unfocused bombasticity that this game seems to be taking.
RE: Metroid: Other M - Omegajak - 04-03-2010
Hmmmm...It's interesting what you can find out just by asking. I think personally Metroid: Other M, is exactly what it's title is trying to convey. It's ANOTHER archetype of Metroid. It's not here to to try and pass itself off as Super Metroid. In fact, I've always personally thought that Metroid games in themselves are like Final Fantasies but in connected way.
Each Final Fantasy can stand on it's own feet. It needs no sequel minus the estranged sequel to X (I myself enjoyed it.) Every Metroid like a Final Fantasy holds properties from the previous ones, so maybe this new direction is just like Final Fantasy XIII a chance for it to try new things and maybe re-invent it somewhat.
RE: Metroid: Other M - PrettyNier - 04-03-2010
its not so much that its different and changing things, its more that
its changing good things and replacing them with bad things.
RE: Metroid: Other M - Alpha Six - 04-03-2010
Hey Giz, about that whole "quicktime events" thing, this is Team Ninja we're talking about here. Never in a Ninja Gaiden game has there been quicktime events for any sort of attack, or anything of the sort.
The level design in Ninja Gaiden is also very well done and you can actually find yourself stuck at times because the levels are practically free-roaming-- especially in the FIRST Ninja Gaiden, when you can backtrack to most level sections almost whenever you want. I think that you don't have to worry about much with that.
RE: Metroid: Other M - Omegajak - 04-03-2010
(04-03-2010, 10:04 PM)Gizmonicgamer Wrote: its not so much that its different and changing things, its more that
its changing good things and replacing them with bad things.
We have very little to go on. I think your setting up the idea of what every Metroid game SHOULD be like and trying to force it that carries the name. Which is why, I was talking about Final Fantasy, a lot of the time you get curve balls, drastic ones, the same as the Sonic franchises and while most people agree not all of the were good choices it means that the team is evolving. They DON'T want to keep doing the same things, otherwise it'd be better spent in terms of time; building a machine that would make a new area for Samus to explore and hunt a species and fight off alien Pirates.
RE: Metroid: Other M - PrettyNier - 04-04-2010
I understood what you were saying about Final Fantasy, which is why I made my statement - I wasn't referring to stylistic preference, I was referring to general game-play and game design concepts.
i touched upon them already; the level design from what we've seen thus far, the utter lack of friction and awkwardness of motion (poor control), etc.
(by the way, I also appreciate Fusion, which is a pretty different game than Super (it uses a similar base, but goes in a completely different direction) so your "every metroid has to be super" argument is kind of wrong)
Quote:The level design in Ninja Gaiden is also very well done and you can actually find yourself stuck at times because the levels are practically free-roaming-- especially in the FIRST Ninja Gaiden, when you can backtrack to most level sections almost whenever you want. I think that you don't have to worry about much with that.idk, backtracking/free-roaming alone doesn't make it good so I'd have to see
for now I'll take your word for it though
RE: Metroid: Other M - Omegajak - 04-04-2010
(04-04-2010, 12:04 AM)Gizmonicgamer Wrote: I understood what you were saying about Final Fantasy, which is why I made my statement - I wasn't referring to stylistic preference, I was referring to general game-play and game design concepts.
i touched upon them already; the level design from what we've seen thus far, the utter lack of friction and awkwardness of motion (poor control), etc.
(by the way, I also appreciate Fusion, which is a pretty different game than Super (it uses a similar base, but goes in a completely different direction) so your "every metroid has to be super" argument is kind of wrong)
It's not, just because you appreciate something doesn't mean you wouldn't rather it have been more like Super if you say it's not the case I'll take your word for it. Also, the video is probably just like Metroid Corruption in regards to how the control scheme and how 1:1 the gameplay. By that I mean, it's a poor representation, and is possible to change. I feel like you being like Viper Shark and other are being with Sonic 4, signing off on something before getting the chance actually experience it.
Speaking of Corruption what was your whole take on the Prime series again? You thought it was an accurate representation of how Metroid is done in a 3D environment or...?
RE: Metroid: Other M - Alpha Six - 04-04-2010
Sonic 4 and Other M's discussions are completely not comparable at all due to the fact that Sonic 4 has been leaked in its entirety, and we don't know a whole lot about Other M.
RE: Metroid: Other M - Omegajak - 04-04-2010
What does it having to be leaked have to do with how people were bitching before it was leaked? I believe you remember my tirade then? My constant "No one's opinion matters at this point, and the bitching needs to get diced up and tossed into Lake Michigan"?
RE: Metroid: Other M - PrettyNier - 04-04-2010
Quote:Speaking of Corruption what was your whole take on the Prime series again? You thought it was an accurate representation of how Metroid is done in a 3D environment or...?The first one was excellent.
It got gradually worse from there; Echoes and Corruption are miserable. I haven't had much experience with them, but I've seen and experienced and heard enough to know that they're not worth experiencing anymore.
the worst part of echoes: the poor design choices involving the dark aether and the miserable obsession with keys (read: bad level design, etc.). Corruption is just downright stupid, through and through, and in order to see that all you have to do is play the opening of the game and watch some of the idiotic cutscenes: like the one with the monster sitting on your ship beating it down, or the one where the boss falls off a platform, into space and then gets hit by a passing ship and explodes. In all of my experience with the game I cannot think of a redeemable factor in it.
Quote:I feel like you being like Viper Shark and other are being with Sonic 4, signing off on something before getting the chance actually experience it.I'm still going to play it, and I'll still make my final judgment there, but that doesn't mean I can't have an opinion on what we've seen thus far.