MadOdorMachine said:
3. Can you think of any other game that requires as drastic and constant change of the control set up as this? I can't think of one and there's a reason for that.
The game has a control identity crisis. It doesn't know what it wants to be. It's trying to be a third person action game, but the developers hampered themselves. I enjoyed the game, but it has some very, very huge flaws. It's the equivalent to a kid on the playground and saying "I'm only going to play on the swing. Forget the slide, forget the monkey bars, forget climbing ropes, etc. etc. because the first time I ever played on the playground, I rode on the swing."
In your effort to prove that the intellectual concept of this game's control scheme is inherently irrational, you are effectively trying to pull a fast one: just because no other game has done this yet, does not by default mean
it shouldn't be tried.
"Well gee, this game with a new idea is something I've never seen! How uncouth! Clearly this designer doesn't know what he is doing."
The problem is that you seem to be determined to see the game as something it isn't. You want it to have controls it doesn't /need/ because you're sure there's something it's not doing, that it could be doing.
Except the entire game and the way it plays is built around the fundamental idea of its controls. It makes me think what you actually want, is a game that is not Other M - it's not the controls, it's not the apparently difficult psychological leap to /just pointing at the screen/ when you want to naturally /point at things to look around/.
If you mapped visor look to a button, and used the nunchuk to look around and strafe left and right, this would change the gameplay as much as Gears of War controls would change Resident Evil 4. This entire argument reminds me of RE4 in fact, and that when it came out, a certain number of people refused to accept that you did not have the ability to strafe left and right with the analog stick while shooting your weapon. That the gameplay was inherently designed around stopping, drawing your weapon, and shooting, was by their lights bad design and irrational. Because they imagined only one way that a shooting game with a targeting reticle could and should play.
The fact that Team Ninja originally may have wanted to use a nunchuk does not by itself mean that the design of the game is "compromised" because of what the designers were experimenting with. I'd all but guarantee that the first instinct of the guys at Team Ninja was to envision a conventional strafe and shoot game, such as Metroid Prime itself in fact.
What has happened here is that the "high concept" of trying to make a game that uses the Wiimote as a NES pad that can also be used as 3D device forced the designers to, wait for it, think creatively and come up with new ideas, and a unique strategy to combat. There is this idea in design theory that limitations can, when used correctly, create better design. I do truly believe that's what happened with this game. They came up with some unique, fascinating, and downright /fun/ ideas because of what they were asked to work with.
I am not invoking the GAF hivemind when I say this, because yes, I know, everyone here has their own gradient of opinion... but: I get a hearty belly laugh at reactions to new ideas like Other M presents because the enthusiast gamer, in general, has a habit of affecting an air of boredom with the status quote and demands fresh new experiences that make him think in new ways. Other M is not even /all that crazy/, and is merely predicated on a simple and cunning use of the Wii controller, creating an experience that is new, is fun, and could not be replicated on another platform, and doesn't compromise itself as a polished and nuanced game in the process. (Try holding Move like a NES pad! Psych!) It is the
textbook definition of what people have been crying for on the Wii for the last four years.
And when they get it, some people just got to bitch that it's not god damned right because they got to wrap their head around using the wiimote as it was intended to be used, as it was ergonomically designed to be used, as the game itself is designed to give you the opportunities to use it comfortably within fast moving gameplay when you learn how to play.
It isn't perfect. This is not "RAH RAH OTHER M IS THE BEST GAME EVAR!" I'm just trying to get the dent in my forehead out that the desk left - not just from some sentiments in this thread, but in other places where there is a hotbed of whining about being asked to pick up a minor new skill required by a moderately clever game.
Oh f**k I'm sorry thread I just ate my Wheaties this morning and will go away now. Going to beat the freakin' game :lol
