Wesley Fenlon | Not with a bang but a whimper.

Growing up a diehard Star Wars fan enamored with the grave and thoroughly cool Boba Fett, the glamorous profession of the bounty hunter wasn’t to be taken lightly. It’s not a job for the likes of Duane “Dog” Chapman — it’s serious, alien-scum-catching business, where no job is too tough when there are credits to be had. Maybe that’s why I’ve always approached Metroid with a degree of skepticism. For all the similarities they share — armor, slotted visor, deadly gadgets, an air of mystery, and a propensity for conversational brevity — Boba Fett and Samus Aran don’t quite line up. Where Fett intimidates with that gravelly voice and charges astronomical fees to exact harsh justice, Samus…saves the galaxy?

The E3 announcement of Team Ninja-developed Metroid: Other M coupled with my recent completion of Metroid Prime 3: Corruption has resulted in a lot of Samus on the brain. The more I think about Samus, the harder it is to consider her a bounty hunter — but maybe that’s not such a bad thing. Under Nintendo’s direction, the Metroid franchise sported a paper-thin storyline, with hardly a scrap of background information given to flesh out the wholly original galaxy Samus traverses. Retro Studios, on the other hand, has pushed Metroid in a cinematic direction, introducing more cutscenes to the series and using the scan visor to provide a wealth of knowledge on the species and history created for their games. Metroid Prime 3 employed voice acting in the series for the first time — but more importantly, it gave life to the Galactic Federation, with soldiers, battleships, fighters, and plenty of reading material about their history and technology.

Read the rest of this entry on GameSpite »