Metroid Other M is the Highlander II of Metroid. It's terrible in its own right, and it's a blot on everything that came before it.

The gameplay is probably the best thing about this, and it's simply bad. The Concentration mechanic is ill-advised, switching to first-person viewpoint is awkward at best, using a D-pad for 3d movement doesn't work, and the whole thing flirts dangerously with Fake Difficulty. The scanning sections are frustrating pixel hunts; Metroid Prime got scanning perfect, so it makes no sense for Other M to fuck it up this badly! The best thing about Metroid, the nonlinear exploration-based gameplay, is completely absent; it's as linear as it can get. The 'authorization' mechanic, of course, is grating and inconsistent, and leads me into my next point: the story.

It's terrible. The characters are either one-dimensional or completely unlikable; Samus sounds like a lobotomy victim (and they passed up Jennifer Hale for the voice actress!), Adam is a total jackass, and nobody else has any real depth. The symbolism has all the elegant subtlety of the lesser works of Seltzer And Friedberg; the game goes out of its way to hit you over the head with it. Samus endlessly restates things that are terribly obvious; at several points, the game will pause after an action sequence for a cutscene that flashes back to the action sequence!! The Deleter subplot, which is stupid in its own right, is barely resolved, and has no significance on the plot as a whole.

Even more insultingly, Samus gets chickified into a whiny, codependent dishrag. She seemingly can't do anything without needing the help of her male squad members; her getting ambushed by adolescent Ridley once might have been forgivable, but her freaking out over seeing him alive and well is infuriating. She's killed him how many times already; this shouldn't bother her! Everything about her oozes misogyny.

Perhaps this would be less insulting, if it wasn't for Yoshio Sakamoto's involvement. He's said that this was the correct characterization of Samus; he wrote and directed quite a bit of this. Fuck off, Yoshio Sakamoto! You worked on Super Metroid, you should be better than this! Other M is awful, and I hope you get run over by a street sweeper!