Points for prescience, then, but none for giving players a proper, classic Metroid game for DS. Hunters is basically a smartphone spinoff that shipped several years before such things even existed. However, “what it is” turned out to be a generic multiplayer shooter wearing Metroid clothing, running on a woefully underpowered handheld system, centered around the use of a clumsy virtual touch-screen control pad. Players take control of Samus in a single-player campaign or play as one of several different bounty hunters in a head-to-head competitive mode, running around claustrophobic alien environments and attempting to gun down as many other rivals as possible. Hunters, on the other hand, was precisely the kind of game that everyone expected the Prime titles to be before they played them. Nintendo made a big deal about Metroid Prime not being a “first-person shooter.” This was partially to assuage the fears of fans who assumed the series was going to transforms into a mindless run-and-gun game, and partially because, well, Prime actually didn’t focus much on shooting. Metroid Prime Hunters (Nintendo DS, 2006) Other M turned out to be such a massive misfire and a flop with fans that it practically killed the series: Nintendo’s only Metroid output in the decade since has been a single spinoff and a lone remake. It casually reduces heroine Samus Aran from the stoic, hyper-competent warrior fans love to a bratty, timid girl-child. As an action game built around quick reflexes and evasion, the game has its charms, yet the story is irredeemable. There’s no looking to the plotline to redeem the game, either.

Other M transforms Metroid into a highly linear, fast-paced shooter with few opportunities for real exploration, no sense of freedom, and a painfully contrived character progression gimmick. But as an attempt to revitalize a beloved franchise, it demonstrated a shocking failure to capture what actually draws fans to the series.

“ Robo-Lady’s Surly Shooting Adventure in Space”), it would have been fine.

Had Nintendo shipped this under an unrelated title (something like. It’s not actually a bad game, but it’s a devastatingly awful excuse for a Metroid sequel.

Scraping the dead-last barrel-bottom of the Metroid franchise, we have the massively disappointing Metroid: Other M.

Super metroid zero mission snes map