me.letsPlay(MetroidOtherM).getPart(1);
Alright, I'm armed with a new controller, so let's get started!
Let's Play: Metroid Other M, Part 1!
When we last left off, I'd given up in mild frustration because the WiiMote refused to work properly. After some screwing around with it, and testing it on other games, I discovered that the WiiMote was in fact broken - I don't know which part of it didn't work correctly, but I know it would not register shakes (tested on Super Mario Galaxy). The solution to this problem? Buy a new WiiMote. |D It lights up, too, because I'm a sucker for gimmicks like that (and it was cheaper than Nintendo brand).
With new controller in hand, I manage to actually get through the tutorial with little difficulty. Afterwards... we get more monologues, courtesy of our hero. To summarize: she whines and complains about how the baby metroid is dead, and then reports that she finished the mission (i.e. Metroid 2 and Super Metroid). Time passes, Samus is still angsty, people forget about metroids and Space Pirates. Then she gets a "Baby's Cry" distress call - called such because it's meant to draw attention. She chooses to investigate for no apparent reason.
Say it with me...
So she stops at this derelict space station, and the controls are passed over to the player once again - which is good; it means she's stopped her monologue for the moment. There's another ship there, and after some examination, it's revealed that it's a Federation ship, which of course piques Samus' curiosity. Advancing a few corridors, Samus hears an explosion and rushes forward, taking aim at whatever's around the next corner...
... which turns out to be the Federation people from the ship in the hangar. What a shocking twist. Possibly more shocking is that one of them recognizes Samus and calls her "Princess". Uh, what. Samus narrates that this is Anthony Higgs (possibly spelled wrong on that last name). That's it. That's all we get. No explanation why Mr. Higgs still has a face after calling Samus Aran Princess for years. Instead they pan over to Adam Malkovich, who fans of the series will recognize as Samus' old C.O. - a fact which she helpfully narrates to us in case we didn't know. And here's where we get the first hint of what would appear to be a major theme: Samus bitching and whining about how she used to be young and inexperienced. Spoilers: there's plenty of it in just this chunk.
Anyways, the explosion turns out to have been them trying to blow open the door and failing. So Samus, at the egging on of Anthony, blows it open with a missile. Immediately after the game is so kind as to inform us that Samus has decided not to use missiles or bombs until Adam authorizes them. Well that's just great - in previous games she's given all her upgrades back, or faced serious damage at the beginning of the game, explaining why she can't use everything from previous games. This time? She's just choosing not to use them until Adam gives the word. Great. v_v;
So advancing down several corridors, eventually Samus catches up to the Federation team clustered around a researcher's corpse - I assume researcher because he's dressed in the stereotypical white lab coat, and because that's just the sort of thing that fits with the genre Metroid falls in. A bug scuttles out from underneath the corpse and one of the soldiers - named Lyle, apparently - goes a bit berserk, running up to it screaming "Get away from me!", punting it across the room, and then shooting it out of the air with a machine gun. Yeah, Lyle apparently has issues. After that little stunt, Samus is about to insist on Adam allowing her cooperation - because that's something she's been so keen on in the past. Before she can, though, a swarm of bugs comes climbing out of the walls, up to the ceiling and amass around a giant eyeball. The purple ball of goo drops down to the ground and becomes a boss fight.
So we shoot at the bug blob thing for a while, and, surprise surprise, it's not very effective. At least the soldiers are helping out, unlike what you'd get in most games. After a bit, Adam authorizes the use of freeze guns - which makes me wonder why they have them. The typical canonical reason for freeze guns is metroids, but those are supposedly all extinct (ignoring the ones on the research lab in Metroid Fusion). If they're supposed to be used for non-lethal force, then wouldn't they have been pulled out first, and then have the use of lethal force authorized after those didn't work? What's the logic behind that?
In any case, Adam also authorizes the use of missiles on Samus' part - which seem to be quite a bit more effective than the freeze guns. Eventually the group kills the thing by freezing specific parts of the giant beast, and then blowing the frozen part up with missiles... which makes zero sense, given that it's not made of amorphous goo, it's made of a swarm of bugs. Why would freezing a part of it matter? The "eye" of the beast turns out to be yet another, larger bug that Samus blows up. After the fight, Adam comes up to Samus, asking for her cooperation - making it seem like it was his idea all along. Of course, he also says that this means she's going to have to take orders from him, too.
Then we get another flashback, this time to Samus' days in the Galactic Federation. She reminisces about how Adam would always end his briefings with "Any objections, Lady?", his one point of humor, and she, being a cold bitter bitch, would always respond with a thumbs down - whereas the standard was a thumbs up. She goes on to explain why, that she was looked down upon for being a woman in the Galactic Federation Army, that she's angsty because of her past, that Adam was the only one who could understand her, yadda yadda yadda, blah blah blah. She outright calls him a father figure. Anthony is introduced here as one of her fellow soldiers. And once again, she brings up how young and naive she was back then.
After that little flashback, Adam gives his team and Samus a debriefing of the current situation, and we get a whirlwind tour of the red shirts. Lyle Smithsonian on demolitions, Maurice Favreau in engineering, Anthony Higgs (hah, I did spell that right) on heavy firepower, James Pierce with communication, and K. G. Kisawa as recon. I expect at least three of them to be dead by the end of the game. Anthony might live under major character protection, or might be first as the token black guy. Place your bets now.
Samus is directed to go to the System Management Room in order to restore power to the station. She's authorized to use bombs and missiles, and will be informed of more authorizations as time goes on - but Adam makes a big deal about how they have no intention of authorizing Power Bombs, since they're way too destructive. This is after they told us how to use them in the tutorial. So... how much you wanna bet that we won't be getting those back until almost the end of the game? >>;
Nothing much of note happens on the way to the Systems Management Room, but once Samus arrives, she's forced to fight off two large hives of bugs - leading me to believe that the major villain of this game is bugs. Time for a bug-hunt. After taking care of the hives with some missiles, Samus gets the power back on. When she returns to the briefing room - for lack of a better term - Adam tells her to go into Sector One since Lyle, who was originally assigned to that section, has run off ahead to "secure a route to a facility of interest". I'm calling it now; Lyle's dead next time we see him.
We proceed to the Main Elevator, which I take to mean that most of this game is going to take place in this space station. It has elevators to three main sectors, numbered one through three. If that's all there is, then this might be a short game. I suppose it depends on how big each sector is. Onwards to Sector 1.
... a.k.a. Plant Land. That's not a good sign. Nothing good ever happens in plant land in a Metroid game - too much brush for the wildlife to hide in. Of course, as I quickly learned, there doesn't need to be brush for a chameleon boss to hide in. After blowing a couple of those into smithereens, Samus travels deeper into jungle land. There's a couple of one-way slides with thorns, etc. Armadillo monsters that give me a good excuse to use specialty moves.
Eventually we take a detour around a Super Missile door to get to the Breeding Room. Right, that doesn't sound ominous at all. Inside, we find another corpse - this one apparently killed by something smaller than the others, at least according to Samus' narration. Also, apparently, a "dark intelligence" in the room. But there's no boss preventing us from leaving, so we walk right back out wondering what the hell the point of that was. No really, we end up backtracking to a door that was previously locked... and it's still locked. It's not until we turn to try and go back - up the one-way slide, mind you - that something happens. A rustling in the bushes, and out pops...
Awww, so cute! It'll probably try to kill us later! ^~^
Then Adam interrupts to say that he's unlocked the door that was previously locked, meaning that detour was entirely pointless. The fuzzy thing stares at Samus eerily as she leaves the room. Walking through said door leads to the great outdoors, filled with blue skies and trees an- ... wait. This is a space station. And we've just found the holodeck. I mean, sure, the rest of the rooms have been fully terraformed, but a sky? We couldn't possibly have that, now could we? Anyways, we turn off the holodeck to be able to actually see the door and unlock it. This leads to... an even bigger holodeck - which would be more impressive if not for the obvious observation window hanging in mid-air.
After futzing around in that room for a while in order to turn off the holodeck and going through a few more passages, I get to an elevator shaft. Climb to the top, and launch a missile to clear some debris - and the elevator drops a bit ominously, revealing more debris to clear and a chameleon boss climbing up after me. Only one logical thing to do now! Shoot out the other support, and watch... as the elevator plummets, crushing both Samus and the alien. Whoops.
DeathCount++;
So the second time around I do it more intelligently, and hide in the nearest recess before I shoot out the support - successfully dropping the elevator on the alien's head. Awesome. Another passage a bit later has clear walls, and on the other side I can see a giant brown quadruped with a long neck that shakes the ground with every step. I can clearly target it with my weapons even though I'm on the wrong side of the glass. Probably going to fight one of these suckers later, joy. v_v;
Backtracking a bit - as apparently required - I run into a few things that need power-ups I don't yet have, a Missile Tank that I fail to get, and eventually get to another tunnel. And then I'm charged by a giant fucking snake. What the fuck, a boss in a tunnel? But no, it's gone as quickly as it came. Again, another thing I'll probably be blowing up later on.
Eventually I make it to a room where Samus is attacked by security robots. What? Why? Why would the robots of the station be attacking Samus? I mean, I get it - it's a video game, there has to be some enemies, and they can't all be bugs - especially since this boss drops the Diffusion Beam when you finish it off. But still, I don't think this ought to be a fight Samus has to face - just have Adam disable the things, and borrow the Diffusion Beam attachment.
Item Attained: Diffusion Beam
Causes Charge Beam shots to scatter on impact.
After that, some more bugs attack, and then Samus can restore power to this section of the sector. But on the way back she gets attacked by the Giant Snake Boss we saw earlier. Yeah, it's not much of a challenge. Shoot it with missiles when it pops out, then shoot it some more, then give it a finishing blow.
We get launched by a morph ball launcher - and this is one helluva launcher. I swear, it launches Samus through a good hundred yards of tunnel. Eventually it takes us back to the main path where we can continue into a room where the holodeck is already turned off - this time we need to turn it on so that we can see the weak spot in the wall. Jumping through leads us eventually to the Biological Experiment Floor - which I'm sure is perfectly 100% safe. In the middle of said floor is a giant tree with a spiral path leading up it. At the top of the tree, there's a hole to jump inside. Dropping down leads us to another bug hive - this one with tougher bugs, qualifying it as a boss fight. Missile the support branches, Diffusion Beam through the minion bugs, and then missile the hive bug itself. Piece of cake. After it's dead, the fuzzy thing reappears out of nowhere - and Samus narrates about it. Turns out the thing just wanted some honey.
Such a cute little soul eating monster, yes it is~! ^~^
A little bit further, and we get to do my absolute favorite thing to do in a Metroid game: go underwater without the Gravity Suit. I just fucking love moving a whopping three feet per minute. I so thoroughly enjoy only being able to jump two inches off the ground. I wish the entire game was like this. Even better, there's a water level puzzle in the second half. >>;
... after that hellish section, we come to holodeck number four, featuring rain, trees, and a suspiciously large and open area. Sure enough, once the holodeck clicks off, the short stubby tree in the middle unfolds itself to be one of the giant things that I saw earlier through the glass - quadrupedal, brown, giant glowing weak spot on it's belly. Pretty typical stuff. Occasionally it inverts itself so that the weak spot is on top instead of on bottom. How do you kill it? Shoot it lots, don't get trampled. Kill it, and not but a few rooms later there's another one. Fucking joy. After you kill that one, you have to get to a control panel in the top of the room. There's a ladder within jumping distance of the ground that leads directly there, but does Samus use that? Of course not, she's too good for ladders. Instead she hangs off a moving ledge as it moves across the room, kicks off of it onto a higher platform, goes into morph ball mode to fit through some access conduits, and eventually get to the ledge by circling the entire room. Because that makes sense.
And that's where I'm going to leave it for now. Join me next time where I probably end up finishing Sector 1.
Status:
Energy Tanks: 2
Energy Parts: 1
Accel Charges: 1
Missile Tanks: 11 (21/21)
Power Ups:
Play Time: 03:07:21
First | Previous | Part 1 | Next | Last
Let's Play: Metroid Other M, Part 1!
When we last left off, I'd given up in mild frustration because the WiiMote refused to work properly. After some screwing around with it, and testing it on other games, I discovered that the WiiMote was in fact broken - I don't know which part of it didn't work correctly, but I know it would not register shakes (tested on Super Mario Galaxy). The solution to this problem? Buy a new WiiMote. |D It lights up, too, because I'm a sucker for gimmicks like that (and it was cheaper than Nintendo brand).
With new controller in hand, I manage to actually get through the tutorial with little difficulty. Afterwards... we get more monologues, courtesy of our hero. To summarize: she whines and complains about how the baby metroid is dead, and then reports that she finished the mission (i.e. Metroid 2 and Super Metroid). Time passes, Samus is still angsty, people forget about metroids and Space Pirates. Then she gets a "Baby's Cry" distress call - called such because it's meant to draw attention. She chooses to investigate for no apparent reason.
Say it with me...
So she stops at this derelict space station, and the controls are passed over to the player once again - which is good; it means she's stopped her monologue for the moment. There's another ship there, and after some examination, it's revealed that it's a Federation ship, which of course piques Samus' curiosity. Advancing a few corridors, Samus hears an explosion and rushes forward, taking aim at whatever's around the next corner...
... which turns out to be the Federation people from the ship in the hangar. What a shocking twist. Possibly more shocking is that one of them recognizes Samus and calls her "Princess". Uh, what. Samus narrates that this is Anthony Higgs (possibly spelled wrong on that last name). That's it. That's all we get. No explanation why Mr. Higgs still has a face after calling Samus Aran Princess for years. Instead they pan over to Adam Malkovich, who fans of the series will recognize as Samus' old C.O. - a fact which she helpfully narrates to us in case we didn't know. And here's where we get the first hint of what would appear to be a major theme: Samus bitching and whining about how she used to be young and inexperienced. Spoilers: there's plenty of it in just this chunk.
Anyways, the explosion turns out to have been them trying to blow open the door and failing. So Samus, at the egging on of Anthony, blows it open with a missile. Immediately after the game is so kind as to inform us that Samus has decided not to use missiles or bombs until Adam authorizes them. Well that's just great - in previous games she's given all her upgrades back, or faced serious damage at the beginning of the game, explaining why she can't use everything from previous games. This time? She's just choosing not to use them until Adam gives the word. Great. v_v;
So advancing down several corridors, eventually Samus catches up to the Federation team clustered around a researcher's corpse - I assume researcher because he's dressed in the stereotypical white lab coat, and because that's just the sort of thing that fits with the genre Metroid falls in. A bug scuttles out from underneath the corpse and one of the soldiers - named Lyle, apparently - goes a bit berserk, running up to it screaming "Get away from me!", punting it across the room, and then shooting it out of the air with a machine gun. Yeah, Lyle apparently has issues. After that little stunt, Samus is about to insist on Adam allowing her cooperation - because that's something she's been so keen on in the past. Before she can, though, a swarm of bugs comes climbing out of the walls, up to the ceiling and amass around a giant eyeball. The purple ball of goo drops down to the ground and becomes a boss fight.
So we shoot at the bug blob thing for a while, and, surprise surprise, it's not very effective. At least the soldiers are helping out, unlike what you'd get in most games. After a bit, Adam authorizes the use of freeze guns - which makes me wonder why they have them. The typical canonical reason for freeze guns is metroids, but those are supposedly all extinct (ignoring the ones on the research lab in Metroid Fusion). If they're supposed to be used for non-lethal force, then wouldn't they have been pulled out first, and then have the use of lethal force authorized after those didn't work? What's the logic behind that?
In any case, Adam also authorizes the use of missiles on Samus' part - which seem to be quite a bit more effective than the freeze guns. Eventually the group kills the thing by freezing specific parts of the giant beast, and then blowing the frozen part up with missiles... which makes zero sense, given that it's not made of amorphous goo, it's made of a swarm of bugs. Why would freezing a part of it matter? The "eye" of the beast turns out to be yet another, larger bug that Samus blows up. After the fight, Adam comes up to Samus, asking for her cooperation - making it seem like it was his idea all along. Of course, he also says that this means she's going to have to take orders from him, too.
Then we get another flashback, this time to Samus' days in the Galactic Federation. She reminisces about how Adam would always end his briefings with "Any objections, Lady?", his one point of humor, and she, being a cold bitter bitch, would always respond with a thumbs down - whereas the standard was a thumbs up. She goes on to explain why, that she was looked down upon for being a woman in the Galactic Federation Army, that she's angsty because of her past, that Adam was the only one who could understand her, yadda yadda yadda, blah blah blah. She outright calls him a father figure. Anthony is introduced here as one of her fellow soldiers. And once again, she brings up how young and naive she was back then.
After that little flashback, Adam gives his team and Samus a debriefing of the current situation, and we get a whirlwind tour of the red shirts. Lyle Smithsonian on demolitions, Maurice Favreau in engineering, Anthony Higgs (hah, I did spell that right) on heavy firepower, James Pierce with communication, and K. G. Kisawa as recon. I expect at least three of them to be dead by the end of the game. Anthony might live under major character protection, or might be first as the token black guy. Place your bets now.
Samus is directed to go to the System Management Room in order to restore power to the station. She's authorized to use bombs and missiles, and will be informed of more authorizations as time goes on - but Adam makes a big deal about how they have no intention of authorizing Power Bombs, since they're way too destructive. This is after they told us how to use them in the tutorial. So... how much you wanna bet that we won't be getting those back until almost the end of the game? >>;
Nothing much of note happens on the way to the Systems Management Room, but once Samus arrives, she's forced to fight off two large hives of bugs - leading me to believe that the major villain of this game is bugs. Time for a bug-hunt. After taking care of the hives with some missiles, Samus gets the power back on. When she returns to the briefing room - for lack of a better term - Adam tells her to go into Sector One since Lyle, who was originally assigned to that section, has run off ahead to "secure a route to a facility of interest". I'm calling it now; Lyle's dead next time we see him.
We proceed to the Main Elevator, which I take to mean that most of this game is going to take place in this space station. It has elevators to three main sectors, numbered one through three. If that's all there is, then this might be a short game. I suppose it depends on how big each sector is. Onwards to Sector 1.
... a.k.a. Plant Land. That's not a good sign. Nothing good ever happens in plant land in a Metroid game - too much brush for the wildlife to hide in. Of course, as I quickly learned, there doesn't need to be brush for a chameleon boss to hide in. After blowing a couple of those into smithereens, Samus travels deeper into jungle land. There's a couple of one-way slides with thorns, etc. Armadillo monsters that give me a good excuse to use specialty moves.
Eventually we take a detour around a Super Missile door to get to the Breeding Room. Right, that doesn't sound ominous at all. Inside, we find another corpse - this one apparently killed by something smaller than the others, at least according to Samus' narration. Also, apparently, a "dark intelligence" in the room. But there's no boss preventing us from leaving, so we walk right back out wondering what the hell the point of that was. No really, we end up backtracking to a door that was previously locked... and it's still locked. It's not until we turn to try and go back - up the one-way slide, mind you - that something happens. A rustling in the bushes, and out pops...
Awww, so cute! It'll probably try to kill us later! ^~^
Then Adam interrupts to say that he's unlocked the door that was previously locked, meaning that detour was entirely pointless. The fuzzy thing stares at Samus eerily as she leaves the room. Walking through said door leads to the great outdoors, filled with blue skies and trees an- ... wait. This is a space station. And we've just found the holodeck. I mean, sure, the rest of the rooms have been fully terraformed, but a sky? We couldn't possibly have that, now could we? Anyways, we turn off the holodeck to be able to actually see the door and unlock it. This leads to... an even bigger holodeck - which would be more impressive if not for the obvious observation window hanging in mid-air.
After futzing around in that room for a while in order to turn off the holodeck and going through a few more passages, I get to an elevator shaft. Climb to the top, and launch a missile to clear some debris - and the elevator drops a bit ominously, revealing more debris to clear and a chameleon boss climbing up after me. Only one logical thing to do now! Shoot out the other support, and watch... as the elevator plummets, crushing both Samus and the alien. Whoops.
DeathCount++;
So the second time around I do it more intelligently, and hide in the nearest recess before I shoot out the support - successfully dropping the elevator on the alien's head. Awesome. Another passage a bit later has clear walls, and on the other side I can see a giant brown quadruped with a long neck that shakes the ground with every step. I can clearly target it with my weapons even though I'm on the wrong side of the glass. Probably going to fight one of these suckers later, joy. v_v;
Backtracking a bit - as apparently required - I run into a few things that need power-ups I don't yet have, a Missile Tank that I fail to get, and eventually get to another tunnel. And then I'm charged by a giant fucking snake. What the fuck, a boss in a tunnel? But no, it's gone as quickly as it came. Again, another thing I'll probably be blowing up later on.
Eventually I make it to a room where Samus is attacked by security robots. What? Why? Why would the robots of the station be attacking Samus? I mean, I get it - it's a video game, there has to be some enemies, and they can't all be bugs - especially since this boss drops the Diffusion Beam when you finish it off. But still, I don't think this ought to be a fight Samus has to face - just have Adam disable the things, and borrow the Diffusion Beam attachment.
Item Attained: Diffusion Beam
Causes Charge Beam shots to scatter on impact.
After that, some more bugs attack, and then Samus can restore power to this section of the sector. But on the way back she gets attacked by the Giant Snake Boss we saw earlier. Yeah, it's not much of a challenge. Shoot it with missiles when it pops out, then shoot it some more, then give it a finishing blow.
We get launched by a morph ball launcher - and this is one helluva launcher. I swear, it launches Samus through a good hundred yards of tunnel. Eventually it takes us back to the main path where we can continue into a room where the holodeck is already turned off - this time we need to turn it on so that we can see the weak spot in the wall. Jumping through leads us eventually to the Biological Experiment Floor - which I'm sure is perfectly 100% safe. In the middle of said floor is a giant tree with a spiral path leading up it. At the top of the tree, there's a hole to jump inside. Dropping down leads us to another bug hive - this one with tougher bugs, qualifying it as a boss fight. Missile the support branches, Diffusion Beam through the minion bugs, and then missile the hive bug itself. Piece of cake. After it's dead, the fuzzy thing reappears out of nowhere - and Samus narrates about it. Turns out the thing just wanted some honey.
Such a cute little soul eating monster, yes it is~! ^~^
A little bit further, and we get to do my absolute favorite thing to do in a Metroid game: go underwater without the Gravity Suit. I just fucking love moving a whopping three feet per minute. I so thoroughly enjoy only being able to jump two inches off the ground. I wish the entire game was like this. Even better, there's a water level puzzle in the second half. >>;
... after that hellish section, we come to holodeck number four, featuring rain, trees, and a suspiciously large and open area. Sure enough, once the holodeck clicks off, the short stubby tree in the middle unfolds itself to be one of the giant things that I saw earlier through the glass - quadrupedal, brown, giant glowing weak spot on it's belly. Pretty typical stuff. Occasionally it inverts itself so that the weak spot is on top instead of on bottom. How do you kill it? Shoot it lots, don't get trampled. Kill it, and not but a few rooms later there's another one. Fucking joy. After you kill that one, you have to get to a control panel in the top of the room. There's a ladder within jumping distance of the ground that leads directly there, but does Samus use that? Of course not, she's too good for ladders. Instead she hangs off a moving ledge as it moves across the room, kicks off of it onto a higher platform, goes into morph ball mode to fit through some access conduits, and eventually get to the ledge by circling the entire room. Because that makes sense.
And that's where I'm going to leave it for now. Join me next time where I probably end up finishing Sector 1.
Status:
Energy Tanks: 2
Energy Parts: 1
Accel Charges: 1
Missile Tanks: 11 (21/21)
Power Ups:
- Diffusion Beam
Play Time: 03:07:21
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