Nintendo Wii Review: Metroid: Other M

Often when I look at the cool toys today's youth gets to play with, I think of how great it must be to be a kid today.  It's a feeling only enhanced when I focus my sights on today's videogames.  Games today are so much more immersive, so much more seamless, and can truly be wonders to behold.  Perhaps though it was Sir Isaac Newton who explained that best by stating "If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." 

One of the greatest videogame reveals ever – and something I distinctly remember learning for the first time – occurs in the original Metroid, when you find that this person who has been blasting their way through level after level, destroying everything in their path and folding up into a pretty sweet ball and dropping bombs is a girl.  Whether or not it should have struck anyone playing as a major reveal, I think, almost universally, it did and is a classic videogame moment.

Now, of course, everyone (at least everyone who plays videogames) knows the name Samus Aran and a lot of Samus' story.  Although the games in the franchise haven't followed a linear timeline (later titles have backtracked to earlier moments in the series, filling in blanks), we all have a decent idea of who this bounty hunter is, and is something we're now learning even more about.  The newest Metroid game, Metroid: Other M, while it may take place after the events of Super Metroid and before Metroid Fusion, does spend a lot of time telling us of Samus' backstory, and tying in the new bits fairly well with the old ones.

Rather than getting sent off on a mission at the beginning of this new title, Samus, still depressed over the events that occurred at the conclusion of Super Metroid (the game opens with a new cutscene depicting them), hears a distress signal which she follows to an old space station.  There, she meets up with some nice folks she knows from the Galactic Federation and is quickly off helping them get the systems up and running and generally figure out what's going on.  Plus, as you may have expected, the space station is full of baddies – some familiar, some new – just itching to be killed.  The specifics of that story though we're not going to ruin for you here, you'll need to play the game to learn exactly what's happening.

Article Author: Josh Lasser

Josh Lasser, formerly known as "TV and Film Guy," and complete with a Masters Degree in Critical Studies in said areas, gives his opinions on TV, Film, and Entertainment in general. All of which he does in a shameless attempt to try to get paid to do the exact same thing. …

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