Congratulations California Aug 04, 2010 10:35PM PST

for telling Big Brother to go fuck himself and stay out of everyone's bedrooms.
As for what this has to do with videogames, Samus Aran is clearly a lesbian. So there. (And yes internet, I'm kidding. Although it wouldn't be too surprising.)
I've been playing a lot of Metroid recently, since everyone seems to be preparing for Other M. Somethingawful has a let's play thread that's supposed to cover the trilogy of Prime which I've been watching, 1up had that Metroid feature, Gameheroes had a top 5 Metroid games recently and I've been replaying Prime.
Now, everyone seems to think they should be cautiously optimistic about Other M, but some of the reasons are a bit odd to me.
A lot of people are saying that this is a weird way to portray Metroid, and that they're more comfortable with it as an FPS, but let's think for a second. When Prime was announced, people screamed because it was developed by an unknown studio (in Austin, TX by the way, go my birthplace and current residency) and it was a first person shooter, which was a HUGE departure from the original series (or would have been had Retro not done such a fantastic job being true to its source material). This game, on the other hand is about as close as you can get to the original concept without going the HD update (i.e. Bionic Commando) route and remaining 3D. The gameplay shown so far just looks like a full 3D version of the 2D games, with a touch of FPS in lieu of Prime. not to mention, that jamming the enemy's hole with your gun thing looks sweet.
Another complaint is Team Ninja's obsession with boobs. Two things: Nintendo's still producing it, so calm down. There'll be boobs because she's a girl, but a stalker voleyball simulator isn't happening under Disney-for-Games' watch. Secondly, it's not like the woman wasn't stripping as a reward since the start, so it's not like Team Ninja's boob obsession is completely out of line with the series, even if I'd personally like a better reward than a 2D model of Samus in her skivvies for beating a game in under 2 hours.
Finally, there are complaints about too much story. This one I can appreciate, since while there have been cutscenes and some exposition since Super Metroid, it's usually pretty scarce and keeps most things a mystery. However, Fusion was one of my favorite games in the series because of its exposition (even if Adam was annoying) and that mystery is only making me more curious in her story. Personally, I'm a fan of cutscenes as a reward for advancing through games, and not to mention this whole series is kind of a rip-off of Alien, so sci-fi shlock story shouldn't ruin too much. I get that the trailers seem like the story will be too "loud and obnoxious" to retain the eerie feeling of Metroid, but from the gameplay I've seen it looks like you're still largely on your own and I can use a bit of loud action sequence every once in a while.
So while I don't have a Wii, I'm still excited for Other M. What do you guys think?
Also, I'm planning on doing my next blog/blog series maybe over ranting about something wrong in every genre of videogame. Tell me what you think of the idea, and leave suggestions for that in the comments.