GoNintendo 'End of Day' thoughts - Are you down with Metroid: Other M's controls?

Time for me to go get some rest. This week is dragging a bit for me, but at least it’s going well! A slow week with no problems is just fine by me. I hope your week is going without issue as well! Soon enough we’ll be at another weekend, and we can all kick back and relax! Let’s work through these two days to reward ourselves with that weekend! Thursday is first, and I’ll be ready to work after some sleep! See you all in a few, short hours.

I know that there are a lot of you that haven’t gone hands-on with Metroid: Other M just yet, and that’s perfectly fine. We can all discuss this one, even if you haven’t played the game at a public event. We’re boiling down the controls experience to their most basic level. It’s not something you need to go hands-on with to talk about. I want to know how you feel about the idea even before you jump into the game.

Metroid: Other M is taking a very old-school approach to the Metroid series, when it comes to controls. Sure, there are tons of old-school inspirations in gameplay decisions and other areas, but it’s the control method that takes things back to the days of the NES. Sakamoto was very adamant about Metroid: Other M being controlled by just the Wiimote alone. Plenty of staffers at Team Ninja felt that this wasn’t possible for all the gameplay mechanics and moves they wanted to work in. Obviously, it took some time to convince the team otherwise, but Sakamoto wasn’t going to have it any other way.

Now we have a Metroid game that features a complex set of moves and actions, but a very bare-bones approach when it comes to button presses. You really don’t have that many buttons to work with on the Wiimote. Between the direction pad, the 1, 2, minus, plus, A and B trigger, you wouldn’t think that you could pull off a modern-day action game. From what we’ve seen, it looks like things are going to work out just fine. It has taken some very interesting design decisions to make things work out, but what we’ve seen certainly looks impressive.

The question is, will it all come together when we’re playing? Will the lack of multiple buttons and thumbstick control end up hurting the gameplay experience? Could a dumbing-down of the controls actually take away from the fun? Do you guys think Sakamoto was right in his push for simplified controls, or do you feel this move wasn’t warranted due to the people that will be playing this game?