Very interesting trailer, but I'm no fan of Team Ninja.  Hopefully Nintendo will keep them under a tight rein.  This trailer mixes gameplay with cinematics so heavily that it's hard to tell exactly what perspective (or perspectives) this game plays from.  Still, I'll say I'm looking forward to this until I'm given a reason not too.

http://media.wii.ign.com/media/143/14354733/vids_1.html

My first thought was, "If Team Ninja's producing this, why aren't Samus's boobs bigger and jigglier?"

I'm sure given Nintendo, they told Team Ninja to keep it in their pants.

Also, isn't it a bit weird that in the early years of Metroid we got one game per console, but Nintendo seems much more interested in the IP - epecially after there not being a N64 incarnation.

Looks pretty cool. I don't understand what type of gameplay mechanics it'll employ just by looking at it, but it looks really, really nice, as per Team Ninja's usual level of quality.

I can't wait.

This trailer actually spiked my interest in Metroid again, while the Prime series didn't even tempt me one bit (not enough to even rent any of those 3). 

Though it's not due to Team Ninja's past, as I haven't followed however many remakes of Ninja Gaiden they've done to make me give a shit about Hayabusa's character, but they seem to be making an nice effort here with Samus so far.

I haven't been excited about playing a Metroid game since the SNES, so this trailer was good news to me.

Oh, Carl. To each their own, but I think the first Prime is one of the best GCN games. Maybe this trailer will spike your interest in the old games enough to check them out!

This is good news but why can't Nintendo develop a Metroid title?  Was the last one seriously Super Metroid?  Not that Retro studios didn't do a marvelous job with Prime (I'll agree with Zane that MP1 was probably the best game on the cube) but with each new third-party developer it seems like they're straying a bit further from the story/canon. 

... I am stoked about fighting Mother Brain again though!

No, the last ones were Metroid Fusion and Metroid Zero, both worth checking out as well. Yoshio Sakamoto is just too busy with his Wario Ware and Rhythm Heaven series games, with the occasional odd game like Card Hero DS (which isn't even seeing the light outside Japan). It's a shame that beside his team the former R&D1 (which was basically responsible for most portable and gimmick games by Nintendo) completely fell apart after Wario Land 4.

I agree with Zane about Metroid Prime series. I didn't like 2 or 3 that much, but I think they deserve a second chance, and I can certainly see why some folks disliked the change of pace brought on by the switch from 2D platformer to first-person.

We'll see, though. All boob jokes aside, Team Ninja knows how to make good games.

After reading the below 1up interview, I'd have to say my interest in this in increasing.  I do hope they let Kenji Yamamoto continue to do the music though.

http://www.1up.com/do/previewPage?cId=3174587

-Game takes place between Super Metroid and Metroid Fusion
-This game is NOT the rumored Metroid Dread (http://kotaku.com/5277377/nintendo-new- … roid-dread)

The thing that sticks out to me is that

1. Her suit is back to being turbo yellow.

2. Her captain or whatever named Adam is still alive (That guy that called her lady)

I look forward to this. So help me god if Team Ninja messes this up!!!

I'd be slightly more excited if I knew this Metroid game will result in another Metroid soundtrack being officially released. Other than that, Samus is lookin' pretty good with all those flashy moves.

Bingo! That makes two of us.

I wouldn't hope for too much, given Nintendo's astonishing track record for not putting out OST releases these days. It'd be nice, though.

Am I the only one who thinks this looks absolutely horrendous? The gameplay itself looks as un-Metroidish as can be, and the hint of cutscenes just turns me off. What I loved about the original 8- and 16-bit games was that the whole game experience was so organic, intuitive and non-verbal: no other human characters, no conversations, no damn cutscene soap-operas. Even such a primitive game as the original NES Metroid from 1986 managed to create a feeling of isolation and creeping dread because it really made you feel like you were alone in a vast, hostile, and unnatural alien world, without any human elements to rely upon. Its one of the aspects that made Metroid so unique and beautiful. This looks like any random half-assed sci-fi soap-opera mixed with generic 3D action gaming. I wonder what they were thinking when they turned over such an atmosphere-based series as Metroid to Team Ninja.

And yes, I know I'm totally making a hen out of a feather by way of a two minute video, but that trailer just gave me really bad vibes.

That's what I thought about the Primes being FPS, a first person shooter seemed very un-Metroidish to me, so at least this is somewhat side-view this time.

I do see how your angle is mainly about the lonely atmosphere though, while I'm looking more at the genre of gameplay angle.

Nope.   It seems very un-Metroidish and I am just waiting to see vids of Samus with jiggly boobs.

I'd classify Prime as a FPA (adventure). The perspective is very different than Super Metroid, but the gameplay style is strikingly similar. Lots of puzzles and maneuvering around in the environments. The series didn't put more emphasis on FPS style play until Prime 3.

Holy shit, Daniel K. I couldn't have worded the reasons for my love of 8 and 16-bit Metroid better. High five!!

Yeah, Daniel's comments are pretty spot on, and as a fellow old-school Metroid fan I can only hope that what we see in the trailer isn't representative of the general gameplay. Some explosive boss fights and some areas with high intensity is fine by me, as long as the game stays true to the original concept of solitude and exploration. Prime proved that Metroid can work in 3D, so I'm keeping my hopes up

Sounds like Yoshio Sakamoto is actually more involved than in the Prime series so I'm cautiously interested again.

Actually when I first played Super Metroid, the whole "empty caverns, not even enemies" thing at the beginning was one of the creepiest things I've ever seen in a video game...

So true. This is why Super Metroid currently takes me "best game ever" trophy.

Those of you with all the Team Ninja comments... do remember that a large portion of that team left when Itagaki jumped ship from Tecmo.  I'm not even sure what that development team IS anymore.  Also, I read somewhere that one of Nintendo's own teams is working with them on this (R&D1?), so that gives me some hope.  My biggest hope is that there's still a lot of exploration and non-fighting.  That kind of thing doesn't make for an exciting trailer, though, so we're just going to have to wait and see.

Another random thought... with so many outsourced projects, what are all these Japanese companies' own teams actually doing?  Nintendo is farming out tons of stuff, Konami seems to want to give everything that isn't Metal Gear to a Western developer, and has ANYTHING Square has released this generation been internally made?

Very good point, and something that's struck me as well. I'm especially worried about Konami. They used to be my absolute favourite game company, but the last few years they've just been so tepid and lame. Hardly any new daring projects, outsourcing most of their best series to other companies, and just showing a general lack of that great creativity and innovation they were so well-known for during the NES/SNES/PS1 days... WTF is up with Konami these days? Did they get so rich they could afford to give most of the staff a few years vacation, or something?

Otomedius G for both Arcade and 360 was developed directly by Konami...  Not that it counts for us living outside of Japan...

The game industry is increasingly moving towards the Hollywood distributor & studio model simply because it's more cost effective.  Designing a game and physically coding a game are two very different skill sets, and it may no longer be cost effective to have them both under the same roof.

This new one looks cool. That woman at end seems interesting. I wonder if it's a clone or not.
The camera angles are kinda jarring for a bit, almost like not pure 3-D.

At the bottom of the Japanese Metroid website, there's a graphic for Metroid: Another Side STory.
But it's got a pic of a space pirate instead so most likely from the SP's perspective.
Don't know if it's a game or just a vid though.

So, is anyone playing this?

I haven' finished it yet, but I'm kinda torn on it, I guess.
On one hand, I really like what they've done to the combat, it's very fast-paced and action-packed, and you really have to stay on your toes.
You can tell it's by Team Ninja since it kinda feels like they want you to fight in close quarters, instead of staying at a distance shooting.
You can also tell it's by Team Ninja because it's kicking my ass into next week. I don't even want to think about how many times I've died.

On the other hand, I don't like how it's paced.
Far too many times you'll hit a dead end, and you'll have to track back only for some event to happen in a room you already visited.
It keeps confusing me by locking me into rooms to fight enemies and then NOT giving me something but just expecting me to walk back the way I came. It seems counter-intuitive and, frankly, kinda boring.
I also HATE the bits where you are forced into First Person to look for something really damn tiny in the environment. They totally take the speed and fun out of the game.
And that's pretty much all there seems to be to the puzzles as well.

I can recall the Prime series doing some really great and clever stuff with the morph ball, but in this game the morph ball is just a way to move through narrow corridors and nothing more. It feels like there's something missing...

So in other words, yeah, great combat, some awesome boss fights, but lousy pacing and puzzles.

PS: The new way you "unlock" your abilities is retarded.
I had to slog through an entire lava filled area struggling to stay alive while my health gauge drained, only to be "authorized" to use my Varia Suit at the very end. F*ck that sh*t.

I'm debating whether it'll be worth a play, but my mind is already telling me that it's just not going to FEEL like metroid with all that close quarter combat. 
Maybe later, but I won't feel like I'm missing anything either.

I was reading reviews onnline, and I thought this one was good (although keep in mind,  I have not played the game):

"I bought this game with an open mind,knowing that it was going to be different from others in the series.I don't mind that,I don't mind change in a series such as this, I view it as a good thing assuming it is done well.So when I read negative things about this game, I erroneously assumed that it was just die-hard fans of the series that just couldn't accept the change, and that their bias led them to overlook a good game.I was wrong.Very wrong; The game just isn't that good.

The game starts with some very nicely rendered FMV scenes complete with voice acting (barring comparatively minor sound bites, this is the first Nintendo game to feature voice acting, meaning it has an actual script) however the voice acting is average at best in the game,bordering on horrible for certain characters.

Without spoiling too much, Samus answers a distress signal from a space station, and while there happens upon her old buddies from her squad in the galactic federation, including her former commander.These are terrible characters with no personality,as well as being so unbelievably generic as to be indistinguishable form one another, except of course the black guy and the asian guy, who are so stereotypical it's laughable.

In past Metroid games,as you explored the world(s),you would find along the way,various upgrades,namely new beams for Samus' arm-cannon,grappling hook,as well as upgrades to her suit itself.This was a staple of the games as well as the characteristic music that would play when you found those items.

That's where this game falls apart completely.This game throws away that classic colleciton aspect, in favor of a premise so outrageously stupid and contrived that it completely spoils the game and casts a veil of absurdity over the whole thing.It is This:As you arrive on the spaceship,and meet up with your old gang,it is made apparent through a cut scene that the commander has authority over Samus,who has all her abilities available to her, but she agrees to only use them as he authorizes them,and accordingly they are dispensed every so often as their immediate need arises.This is is just a horrible idea that is executed even worse.Samus is always fighting somehting in this game so why wouldn't she want to be well equipped, and why wouldn't her commander want her to be well equipped?Even more ridiculous yet is you must await authorization of the Varia suit which serves no purpose other than to protect Samus from extreme heat in the lava areas. So she wont turn on a feature to prevent her flesh from melting just because it isn't authorized.Among the game are other examples of that nature. I know it doesn't really effect the gameplay really, but as I said earlier it paints the game in such a ridiculous light that it's very hard for me to get over it.

Onto the controls:In the 3rd person perspective aspects, you hold the Wii remote sideways, which actually works very well, considering you are using a 2 pad to control Samus in 3d.Her movements are very fluid and easy to pull off which is nice.However that is only half the game, the other half is first person.At any given time when you flip the controller and point it at the screen, it shifts into a first person view from Samus' perspective.You can aim up and down and 360 degrees but you can't move around, as if her feet were cememented to the spot.This actually works well alot of the time, allowing for a unique novelty.Unfortunately there are other times where the action is just way too frenzied and there are too many enemies around for this to be practical and I found myself taking damage during the switch because there just wasn't enough time to aim and fire.Also for some ridiculous reason you can only use missles in first person.

There are some very annoying segments that bothered me alot; one of them is when you finish a cutscene, you will sometimes be locked into first person mode, and you can't move until you find a particular object and scan it, sometimes it is so particular it is almost impossible to find.

Another is that occasionally there are some 3rd person segments which do not control like the rest of the game; the camera zooms up behind Samus, and her speed is reduced to a crawl; she may not jump or shoot even.Just walk around.These segments are wholly unnecessary and why the developers included them at all is a mystery to me.

The sad thing is that those problems aside, the game is great. It's very fast paced and the action is excellent, and the graphics, while certainly not the best, can be very vivid and pleasant to look at, with some very pretty areas.The music is somewhat bland I guess but it never becomes annoying.The tragedy is that had the things I complained about been removed, as well as with perhaps scrapping the first person view altogether, this would have been a really great game, but with them, it's basically unplayable."

I've only played for about an hour, but I've already had enough of the self-serious, first-person voiceover, ham-fisted introspection, and gratuitous backstory.  I suppose I appreciate that Team Ninja restrained its T&A impulses, but the plot is still self-indulgent and leaden.

It's hard for me to imagine that there had been a clamor among Metroid fans for an overwrought examination of Samus's psyche, so it seems as though Nintendo has just supplied an overlong answer to a question that hadn't been asked.

In regards to

and

I haven't played it yet and have no desire to, but I could see this coming for a long time. The very notion of trying to strap some sort of dramatic story or character study on a series like Metroid that thrived on it's non-verbal appeal to begin with is just ridiculous. This rot began in Metroid Fusion on the GBA. Don't get me wrong, Fusion is a great game, but the parts where they tack on a contrived backstory by way of the computer that guides Samus's missions was horrible, and it foreshadowed what seems to have been taken further in Other M. Seriously, Metroid is a great series, but its hardly gotten to the place it holds in the hearts of gamers by it's "incredible narrative", and that won't change even if Nintendo hired an all-star team of writers headed by Shakespeare himself or something. I guess I can just quote myself verbatim from this thread from over a year ago:

You are absolutely correct that trying to shoehorn a conventional narrative into a Metroid game was a fool's errand.  But the story isn't just a poor fit; it's affirmatively bad.  I would rather have had the half-assed space opera that you predicted.

Fusion does feel completely different because of this, but for some reason I actually liked the story revolving around "the computer" even though it really put a cap on exploration. It was flawed, but ironically it was the only thing keeping me in that game because the level design sure as hell wasn't.

Despite not having a Wii I have to say I was somewhat interested in how this prequel was going to continue that narrative, and while I'm disappointed to hear it bogged down the game, I really can't say I'm surprised.

Samus' favorite album: http://www.amazon.com/Ok-Computer-Radio … 403&sr=8-1

I like what Sean Fausz had to say about the game: http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/videol … roidotherm

This is one title I was ready to completely ignore, especially when the GCN Metroids were FPSes.

Though, I can't help feeling that Metroid: Other M's trying to imitate Halo, especially with the epic plot, cut scenes, soundtrack, and graphics.

I mean, look at the original Metroid, and the graphics, it's like, what the hell is everything supposed to be?! You're on an alien planet, and absolutely nothing is familiar. The GCN Metroids, and this game, you can strictly tell that something is supposed to be metal, or ice, or lava, or whatever-else-have-you.

It may not be the Metroid we grew up with, but I'm still confident about it being a good game, and I'm eventually going to pick this up, once I finish up the games I already have piled up...