When I think of Team Ninja making games, I think of Dead or Alive, Ninja Gaiden, and bounding cleavage. What do those things all have in common? Scantily clad women. What do we know about Metroid?
Samus is in a suit. A METALLIC FULL BODY SUIT.
So when I saw this trailer – I was shocked. Sure, we’ve seen Samus out of her suit before in Zero Mission and whenever players died in the 2D Metroids, but we’ve never seen her before in civilian clothes.
Okay, I can deal with civilian clothes, but are they rewriting the series?
It seems like the powersuit isn’t some Chozo legacy for her. Instead, we see it constructed onto her. What is this? The Starcraft II teaser? And now she’s some agile killing machine capable of decimating hordes of enemies in some form of ridiculously styled gun/whip play. Samus lassoes over Space Pirates and fires a missile directly into their maw and continues on her merry destruction. I’m all for crazy action games – but Metroid isn’t supposed to be one. I’m not sure if these are cut-scenes, quick-time events, or what-not, but the game does not look to be immersive. I remember playing Metroid/Super Metroid and feeling the utter terror of being marooned alone on a desolate world where everything was hostile. It was creepy. To add to that hostility, Samus could only fire and jump with upgrades to grapple swing and eventually space jump. Samus is mobile, but she still felt like a tank. Now, she’s lassoing things, whipping, and decimating them with ease. The first Prime game nailed the atmosphere – it was creepy, dark, and seamless (except for some minor transition scenes). The seamless experience is absolutely necessary to be immersive.
Unfortunately, the new Metroid seems to eschew that atmosphere and immersion for pure action. It seems Samus moves on a mixture of a 2D/3D plane. She leaps right and left but also forward. At one point, she’s even running toward the players. But suddenly, we are given a first person perspective. They seem to be taking the Ninja Gaiden battle system and applying it to Metroid. She seems to still fire similarly to previous 2D Metroid games, but that doesn’t congeal with her newfound nimbleness in leaping over enemies and blowing them away. The new Metroid blends in too many alternate gameplay mechanics to really provide any form of immersion. It provides on style rather than atmosphere – eschewing the lonely ruins Samus explores for pretty action. Team Ninja has taken my favorite Nintendo series and turned it into a remnant of its Hayabusa clan. That saddens me.
Comment by BlueZero – Welcome to the new Metroid
I see Team Ninja creating a much more physical Samus. What do we know about the Wii and third person games? They are going to be waggle filled with no cohesion and easy difficulty. Team Ninja will bump up the difficulty for hardcore but they are going to create a short game since players can’t be entertained by almost every action being “physical”. Expect lots of metroid jiggling to happen as Team Ninja will allocate 50% of the processor to breast physics, even for things that don’t need it! Samus’ metal can will be gyrating even though her suit should be firm metal. Just think of all the jiggling when she enters “morph ball” form.
All I need to say is that the best Internet comment I’ve read is that Team Ninja develops woman with two independently alive breasts each with their own brain.
Also the developers will bring along clunky first person control, which is a staple of the series now. This will be an instant failure for the game. You know you loved painfully aiming arrows in Ninja Gaiden; just think how difficult it would be to fire the arm cannon sans Wii remote.
At least we are getting voice acting for Samus. Please bring on full voice acting for the game Nintendo.
