[quote name='apterous']I for one enjoyed Other M's gameplay and found it very similar to the Super Metroid and Metroid Fusion. 7/10, not perfect and weird story choices but good classic Metroid fun and great effort.
I thought the atmosphere was much closer to Super Metroid era games than the Prime shooters. Also, I agree with your point on the story elements and suit authorization being clunky, but... when has Metroid been about story? "Oh noes, all the cool parts of my suit I had in the last game are spread across this space station / small section of planet / cave system *yet again,* and I need to navigate it in an obtuse way to gather it all together." The biggest sin there was that they tried to find a way to get that mess to make sense rather than just ignoring it like all other Metroid games.
I personally think the Metroid games hardcore fans should avoid are the Prime series. Get your crappy FPS genre out of my metroidvania exploration game.[/QUOTE]
We'll just have to agree to disagree. I thought the Prime game did a great job of translating the "feel" of Metroid to first person, and it doesn't play like a traditional FPS for the most part, with a lot of platforming and puzzles. As for your story point, that's a double-edged sword. Yeah, it wasn't a focus before beyond basic lore stuff, so it SHOULDN'T matter what they did, but they made Other M very story heavy and it was just terrible. The way Fusion handled a more story-focused game should have been emulated instead of so many long cutscenes and THE BABY THE BABY THE BABY.
As for gameplay, it just isn't as tight as the controls of Super, Fusion, and Zero Mission, the overall level and boss design is lacking, and the lack of exploration options really killed it.