Metroid: Other M
From: Nintendo
For: Nintendo Wii
In this adventure, bounty hunter Samus Aran tracks a distress call to the Bottle Ship, a giant space installation that includes a variety of habitats and specimens of many hostile alien creatures.
The interior shows signs of damage, and dead researchers are found - something has gone wrong here.
Samus encounters a squad of Galactic Federation soldiers and decides to work with them, taking orders from their commander, Adam Malkovich, who tells her where to go, what to do and even which of her weapons she can use - mostly series standards such as missiles, super missiles, power bombs and ice beams.
The Diffusion Beam is new, and it scatters a charged shot over a large area.
Set after the Prime games and Super Metroid, Other M takes most closely after Metroid Fusion, the series' Game Boy Advance outing from 2002.
Malkovich was in that game too, but as an artificial intelligence, not in the flesh.
Samus, as a character, has had objectives assigned to her before, but it's strange to see this usually independent character taking direct orders, and it feels somewhat out of place (she's clearly tougher than any normal soldier).
She also usually doesn't talk much on her solitary missions, but in Other M's unskippable story sequences she shares inane inner monologues, and the lines from her soldier companions aren't much better.
Hopefully the next game in the series will either have better writing or less talking.
Still, even as it breaks with tradition in some areas, this is still a Metroid game, and the series mainstays are mostly intact.
Items and power-ups are hidden in walls and floors or behind obstacles that can only be defeated with the right equipment - such obstacles also bar the way at some points, so the game gradually opens up as Samus is authorised to use her various weapons.
The game takes place mostly in corridors and small rooms, though some areas open up more.
The camera angle in each chamber is fixed, but Samus can switch to a first-person view at will to look around and fire missiles.
The game includes some new moves for the bounty hunter - she can dodge incoming attacks, which also provides an instant charge for her gun; she can hop on to some enemies' heads to blast them; and she can charge up an attack to eliminate a downed enemy.
