Burny

Yeah... He was just asking questions and not trolling at all.

I don't want to spread rumors, but I'm speculating that MAYBE our save files will become useless due to the Halloween update. Notch has a note somewhere, stating that players shouldn't get too attached to their savegames, as updates might invalidate them. This particular update has two things, that might make changes to the save-format necessary. This hell-world thing probably needs portals spawned in caves etc. and somehow needs to be saved. Then there are biomes, which I imagine will make also it necessary to generate a new map. Does anybody have any information about what will happen to the savegames?

Major Halloween update coming.! - Hellworld for fast travel - New difficult monsters. - More light needed to keep you safe in the deep. - Torches die after some time. Can be reignited with flint & steel. New lanterns burn permanently. - (Scary?) Fishing! - Craft watches. - Biomes, more music, better sound. We're probably going to die a lot.

Virtual Handheld FTW! Also, they better won't translate that price 1:1 to dollar and then to euro. This would basically kill my desire to get one on launch. >:|

Was that supposed to be an intentionally bad version of "Das ist Spekulation"? Don't know where they got the notion, that the 3DS will be released in Japan on November 11th or that it'll cost "around 200€" at launch (sounds rather realistic). They haven't exactly claimed that Mario Kart and Layton will be launch titles either, also their wording seems to imply it. Overall, the article is a bit like explaining the 3DS for dummies.

@flameboy: Watch the trailer I posted. Imagine classic SP without the ability to remove and set every block at will but the need to craft the proper tools to do so (and quite a few other things), plus limited health. Now imagine the world will be overrun by monsters during the night.

I knew practically nothing about minecraft. Two weeks ago this excellent series of articles on Rock, Paper, Shotgun actually persuaded me to pay for the alpha. Haven't regretted it in the slightest. However, I've found it hard do convince other people to get it by describing the game alone. The homepage doesn't help. One of my mates even thought this was a theme-park game, due to the video of notch testing his "roller coaster". 10€ usually put people off, too. But this is so worth it. ^^ Found this fan-made trailer today and it actually explains a bit better, what you're up to in the alpha: This is my current home (yes, the tower was supposed to be that askew ): The bridge will lead over the sea to the land beyond, but is still in construction. I've managed to fall down several times already. :/ Had to spend half a night swimming away from a skeleton the first time... From the tower's top, I have a rather good view of the valley behind: It's really amazing how scenic these generated levels tend to be. ^^ Oh, and this is rather funny.

Was that in the second clip supposed to be a troll or a giant? Don't know how trolls are depicted in the Scandinavian mythology, but from the "standard" fantasy fare (LotR, Warhammer) I had the impression they were supposed to stand two or three times the size of a human. The thing in that clip looked rather like the northern version of a modern Godzilla movie.

Have you bothered reading the description of those particular comics when you cited them? They seem to have as much relevance for the Metroid universe, as Smash Brothers Brawl has for the Sonic Franchise. This has however (a bit at least), and what did fans at that time get? I distinctly remember reading the words "protector of the galaxy" within the first couple of pages. Maybe she's throwing regular house parties after all? Have you bothered to read up a bit on the mangas as well (those aren't books to me any more than comics are)?These actually have relevance to the Metroid universe beyond the games' "stories" and due to that, more likely than not, saw involvement of Sakamoto. That's about as much reading up on Samus, as I care to do. From what I have learned, I don't see where Other M changed anything in anyone's face. I've also learned that Nintendo published rather silly comics at the time... Should really take the time to watch Other M's cinematics in a row. Maybe I'll even replay the game after I've finished Super Metroid.

@LostOverThere: Didn't mean any offense there, no matter how you meant that. The notion of the elven youngling we know as Link in combination and is rather a fun one. By "comics" you hopefully mean the manga and not this. No, they're neither books nor in-game. Anyway, I'd fail miserably at writing a Metroid book. Probably wouldn't even manage to explain convincingly why the IKEA of the future only sells doors, that have to be opened by heavy firearms. Seems a tad bit unpractical to me. :p Should I ever write a book though, you're welcome to correct my spelling. If you just want to mess with characters, you'll have to write you own one, I'm afraid.

Metroid? Getting into a book? With the overwhelming amount of in-game information about Metroid's characters and its universe up to Other M, this is has been more like writing your own book, hasn't it? If it relieves you: They probably can't destroy the character as badly as you and LostOverThere would have them. So far Nintendo have successfully refrained from presenting us with a totally generic deep-voiced badass slayer type of character and luckily I cannot imagine them breaking that habit. :p

Oi, what happened to WiiWare? Voice Chat? No friendcode rubbish?

Only if "everyone" was naive enough to fill up the gaps left by the game's characterization with their own imagination and assume their image of Samus was the true image of her. They haven't and that's it. And I'm rather sure that spreading out Samus' characterization as a being with human feelings towards Adam over another decade of Metroid games wasn't an option, when they decided to start with it in Other M. Personally, I found another way for getting "accustomed" to the games: Loving the series less and enjoying the games more for what they are. That way I can still gripe about the parts of the games I didn't like without having to overblow any criticism into "How Nintendo killed Metroid". Because that would a bit more than disrespectful towards a lot of talented people who spent the last 2+ years of their time creating an outstanding game and whose biggest crime was not to make it the way I would have done it. And Other M is an outstanding game. It plays smooth as silk, it tells it's story expertly, the voice actors are great (if you've ever played a non-German game with German voice actors or watched an anime, you'll know what bad voice acting sounds like), the controls are great (I'm not even a good video gamer and could practically handle the controls in my sleep, what does that make all the whining "experts"?) and it does things very different from any other Wii game. Yet, the lowest scores it received would make me believe this game was an unplayable mess of bugs and sloppy game design, as that's what I expect from a 2/5. Although there is one grievous bug, what those people criticize at the core is: It's not like Metroid _____ and Samus is not the way they imagined her. Big. Fucking. Deal. :P If I wanted to play a game that's like Metroid ____, I would play exactly that. And neither them nor me had ever any business in determining what Samus' character is like.

I blame people for denying the inventors of a character to decide how that character develops. That's the point. Don't ask me, ask Sakamoto & co. If they say she has a darker side as a bounty hunter, she has. If they say she hasn't, then she hasn't. They haven't said it in the games and I'm not aware, that they have in the comics either. "Brash, money-hungry, and fiercely independent" doesn't mean cold blooded killer who hasn't had any human feelings at some point in her life.

And I wasn't aware, that you and so many other whining fans invented the Metroid universe and therefore know - better than those wannabe Metroid creators at Nintendo - whats going on in that universe and Samus' head. Also, I have yet to see Samus hunt/kill people. During the time I spend playing Metroids, she mostly seemed to kill monsters with precious few personality and to hunt items. That's just one more of those little inconsistencies in the Metroid universe, that people whining about inconsistencies in Other M seem to have overlooked for more than a decade... Were they all too busy imagining how those few pixels of Samus on the (S)NES are a total badass Killer? Funny though, from time to time you stumble upon one of those "Are video games art?" discussions. Every time such a discussion comes up, you'll find that blogs like IGN & co. write overblown articles about how video games are so art. On the other hand, once the people behind "Game with a lot of Fans 7" try something slightly different than in "Game with a lot of Fans 6", there are those, who would make you believe that two shades of color beyond gray and brown are already too much artistic freedom. I wonder how large the intersection between those groups of people is?

While I get your points, I wouldn't say the story doesn't live up to the franchise. That is because it never has had any sensible story in the first place, neither in the Nintendo developed Metroids, nor in the Prime games. The more time you spend picking their "stories" apart, the more you'll realize that they're over-the-top Sci-Fi thrash at the core. And for me your suggestions aren't helping to make Other M's story less so, I'm afraid. So far the games just gracefully neglected to narrate a coherent story, which let a lot of room for interpretation. Reading a bit through all the hate towards Other M, it's obvious that a some fans ended up using this room to interpret all kinds of depth into the story or character traits into Samus, that probably even the game's creators wouldn't have dreamed of. I'll admit however, that I care much more for finding the next morphball sized hole with a blue thing in it, that mysteriously increases your missile storage, than for the reason, why the galactic federation feels the need to clone every monster Samus has come across in a Jurassic Park like space station and use it as bio-weapon. If I'd fuss over such minor logical flaws, I'd have stopped enjoying video games a long time ago. That said, the development teams should actually rely on some professional writers or at least consult one, once they start to flesh out the stories more. For future iterations of Metroid I'd just wish, that they would let Metroids, Ridley Clones and various other classic enemies rest and moved on to something else. This would free them of the obligation to find some silly excuse - no matter how plausible - to bring all these monsters back. Much more important however, from a gameplay perspective it would mean that the players were confronted with a lot of unknown things, which might really add to the sense of exploration.

Layouting with tables.... *urgh* Not with mere (X)HTML. If you want the image to swap permanently, you'll have to use some kind of javascript.

There is lots of creepy music/sound/whatever. But it lacks the melody and isn't really pronounced. Plus, the game's sound is very quiet. To hear it distinctly, I have to crank up the volume of the monitor to a level, that wouldn't be bearable in other games. When the Wii's disk drive makes more noise than the game, there is something wrong. There is lots of dramatic music during the fights, too. I'll have to correct myself on one point: If Nintendo put more effort into fleshing out stories of these future games, I could do very well without CGI cut-scenes. Somehow I just like in-engine cut-scenes better.

I'm noticing the same areas. Well, mostly the visuals of the outdoor areas, in terms of playability I think they're fine. Just what you call "effort" and "detail" in the levels, I call level design. As areas in Other M are far larger than those in Prime, I doubt the same level of detail in terms of texture resolution and geometry was even possible. Most areas in Prime are fairly small, even the large ones. In Prime, the character moves very slowly, you see the levels from a 1st person view so everything appears rather large, the textures have a fairly high resolution and the level geometry is quite complex so you rarely move in a straight line for long. Combine that and the levels appear much larger than they are. This is really a testament to the quality of the level and game design. Compare that to Other M, where Samus regular speed has more in common with flying than running, the levels are fairly straight and you mostly see her from a distant 3rd person view where everything appears smaller and you'll notice that Other M's rooms are rather huge. Just think about many details in Prime's levels, that you wouldn't even be able to recognize in Other M's standard perspective. But there are developers who work with low polygon count and relatively low texture resolution and still achieve great looking results (mostly Blizzard), so there is where I see the lack in effort and maybe even ability from Team Ninja. Also, I highly doubt the partly lacking design can be attributed to working with two perspectives, because implementing the control system shouldn't take that much time and it was done early in the development, as some levels were already playable in 2009. Being able to look at the levels from a 1st person perspective just doesn't make textures, that aren't very beautiful when viewed from a distant 3rd person perspective, look better. :P Overall I'm enjoying Other M greatly, despite a couple of quirks. I don't think the "outdoor" levels are a feast for the eyes while the industrial space station levels look a lot cooler. Camera work is superb though and movement + combat is absolutely smooth. Overall the controls re-imagine the classic sidescrolling games very faithfully. Aside from Samus' (over the top) melodramatic moments at the beginning, ingame and CGI cut-scenes really give the game's story some meat. I'd definitely like to see more of those from Nintendo, when the time for the next Metroid and maybe even Zelda comes.

Metroid Prime games. Environments in 2D Metroids are hardly comparable. I agree that the outdoor area's design could use a bit more attention to detail, but we shouldn't forget, that most areas in Other M are far larger than anything in the Prime games and there are mostly no loading times between rooms.

I'm talking of the people who were "spring chicken" when they played WW or TP before they played any other Zelda. These people have a different perception of the series, because they didn't see it evolve in the context of gaming technology at that time. E.g. they won't miss things in TP like the plethora of sidequests found in MM, but they have come to expect the presentation of story sequences they found in TP etc. Also, the Wii's more than powerful enough for a Zelda game that rivals OoT. The question is much rather if the developers know how to make that game. Unfortunately just doing everything like OoT did, won't cut it anymore, as OoT did it first. Even more so, as we're going to have a remake of the game that did it first in a modern technical context.

Lemme guess: You've played each game in the series and after realizing it wasn't like OoT, you decided it was inferior to OoT and maybe even that you didn't like it at all. There's the problem.Essentially with Zelda games you'll often observe that younger players tend to stick to the first entry of the series they played as their favorite Zelda game. So there are enough people out there, who'll claim OoT isn't the best Zelda game but WW or TP etc., even if they've played OoT at some point. I'm in the same boat though, although I'd say I prefer MM a bit over OoT. Despite that i found WW and TP to be great games, if you look at them separately. It's just that the wow-factor has gone and you'll tend to notice many little or not so little things that you preferred in Zelda game ___. Therefore, I'm all for a change in SS or any sequel, too. I wonder if the changes to the Zelda formula in SS only extend to the controls... It's just that Nintendo has deliberately refused to demonstrate anything about the game aside from its controls at E3. This might be for the better actually. As for OoT 3D, I'm perfectly fine with a portable 1:1 content remake in 3D, running at 60fps. If I might have a wish, it would be that they published it exclusively as a download title for up to 15€ in order to kick-start their 3DS online service (which hopefully won't be an insult in terms of usability again). But I highly doubt that'll happen, seeing that Nintendo are so very reluctant to embrace online services. I don't trust all their promises that the 3DS will be better, yet.

I've read somewhere, that people who've had trouble with SSBB's dual layer disk may be having trouble with this one too. There seems to be a lense cleaning set out there, which is said to help. Either it's that or your disc is actually screwed.

You're probably right, which means I wouldn't exactly rush to get this. If this were NSMBW engine ports however, even without multiplayer... :3

Why? The reactions come from fans with a range of tastes often as wide as a tooth stick. Meddle with "their" game and they take it as a kick to the nuts.