Published by Nintendo

Rated “T” for Teen.

Contains animated blood and violence.

The Japanese have quite a fondness for delicate heroines and that’s exactly what we’re given with Metroid Other M. The armor is now fully peeled back on Samus Aran and she’s revealed to be an introspective young woman who cares a great deal about her actions, but looks for guidance on such issues from others. She may be decisive in the heat of battle, but in the bigger picture seeks out a father figure to grapple with her uncertainties and finds one in Adam, her former commanding officer from the Federation military. It’s a relationship that tends to present her as a daughter with a strong impulse to rebel, but who so desperately wants permission to do so first.

This is a far cry from the Samus who’s been in my head these many years and I’m sure in yours too. I admit, watching her passively wait to be given permission to use each of her powers by Adam takes away some of the respect I have for the bounty hunter, but it’s such a change to see her presented as a character in a strong story, not just the main figure in all the action, that I was willing to go along with it. I’m ready for a Metroid tale, one that’s interestingly told regardless of the choices, and through her narration, memories, and interaction with a squad of soldiers that join her, Other M manages to come through with that.

The game’s new nature stems from Nintendo placing the franchise into new hands. Team Ninja is best known for their sensationally heightened graphics, mature themes, and overclocked difficulty levels. What may have seemed like an odd, if very interesting, choice has worked out fairly well. Yes, Samus is quick to strike a pose and performs leaps and special take-down moves with ninja-like speed, but the game adheres loyally to the puzzle-like levels and intrigue-driven suspense of Metroid as a haunted space adventure.

Where Team Ninja has created a challenge is in the controls. They love complicated systems and intricate game mechanics and although I can tell they’ve made an effort to try to keep the difficulty level lower than in their Ninja Gaiden series, the constant switch between side-scrolling, first-person, and third-person modes makes for a difficult learning curve best suited for hard core players only.

Different modes offer up different weapons and as clumsy as it is at times to change the way you hold your Wii Remote to make the switch, many of the battles happen at such a speed that there’s little time to orient yourself to the new perspective. Several weapons are mapped to the same button and I found it too easy to accidentally fire a missile instead of a charged beam, to morph into a ball instead of activating a heal and it’s enough to cost you a fight and force you to repeat sections again and again.

The changing perspectives does play well with the game’s puzzle-like level designs. The third-person mode delivers a haunted house feel as you’re sent to explore claustrophobic chambers while the side-scrolling mode let’s you leap up elevator shafts and swim through flooded halls with all the sense of the original game from the 80’s.

Team Ninja are amongst the best creature and boss battle creators in the business and it’s here where they’ve made valuable changes, dropping the now too-familiar pirates and metroids for an entirely new adventure aboard a ship full of puzzling creatures that scream, shimmer, and roll their eyes in a mixture of reptilian skin and bestial manes of fur. The first time you feel the ground shake and see tall, elephantine creatures that roam with pop-bubbles of energy fluid under their bellies, there’s an ominous sense of being in a foreign place, of entering somewhere very, very alien, and of not knowing what you’ll find next.

Ultimately this is what won me over, Other M’s edge-of-your seat exploration. There’s a wonderful sense of moving down halls that are haunted and strange, of finally unlocking a troublesome door only to have it open into some place wondrous. I keep thinking back to the first chamber that did that for me. I opened the door and suddenly found myself in a coniferous forest, looking up at the looming trees while a light and pleasant patter of rain fell into view. The trees were decorated with quaint little platforms and curious chicken-wire cages, as if they were telegraph poles for some native tribe. A Meccano-like system of bridges connected each and once you found the opening and dropped into the network as a morph ball, it sent you rolling through the rain like a theme park ride, whipping through curves and hopping up between levels. It reminded me of the MYST games, actually, and it’s that sense of creativity and imagination that drives the game’s rewards. You have to keep playing, because if you stop you’ll walk away with a very strong sense of having missed out completely.