Metroid: Other M (Wii) Preview - PAGE 1

Nintendo's Canadian branch has begun building hype for the launch of Metroid: Other M, and last Thursday evening they held a preview party in our city to showcase the new title ahead of its release at the end of this month.

In addition to members of the press (including us, of course) and retail (like Best Buy), Nintendo actually had volunteers pulling random people off the streets near the party's venue at the Caprice nightclub in downtown Vancouver, inviting them to give Other M a try on the demo stations.  It made for an awkward and amusing sight to see the bewildered reactions of passerbys grilled on a game franchise they may not have even heard of, but the poor bloody infantry out front did actually manage to snag some of them casual types.

Yours truly ended up having to wait in line alongside them all the same, so the event was less media-centric than we had expected, despite the fact that a majority of the visitors were invitees informed of the engagement by email.  Once inside the venue, visitors had a chance to meet Nintendo reps who were on hand to provide an introduction to the franchise and demonstrate what's new about Other M.

In addition to the new gameplay features which we'll briefly touch on in a sec, they also highlighted how Other M promises to bring series heroine Samus to life like never before through the game's plethora of cutscenes, centered on her interaction with other characters in the Metroid universe. 

In fact, Other M has no issues peppering short scenes frequently throughout the actual game, at least in the early portions.  These sequences are delivered from Samus' point of view, so if you ever wanted to hear her monologue, complete with flashbacks to her past in the Galactic Federation army (did you know she served there before an "incident" forced her to become a bounty hunter?), Other M has got you covered in spades.

As an interesting aside, when quizzed by reps during the presentation about their gaming experience, few of the attendees were what we would consider frequent gamers, and even fewer knew anything about the Metroid franchise; I think I was one of only two in the audience who acknowledged to knowing anything about the Metroid games!  It was a VERY casual gaming crowd that night to say the least, but they didn't have any issues trying out the game for themselves when we were at last given the opportunity.