Yeah the authorization part was my least favorite aspect of the gameplay. It gets especially awful later. Pretty much the major reason why I don't think the game deserves any perfect scores (and it didn't get any from professional reviews - rightfully so). Since Corruption was my first Metroid game, the mere idea of Samus following direct orders from a GF superior wasn't so new to me at all, though, and it's not too hard to understand why Adam is "upset" with Samus.
I'll also mention that I got Other M with an army of wildlife documentaries, and I treated the game as a simple extra that happened to go really well with the documentaries. You can clearly see that I didn't care much for the characterization aspect of the plot.
For the record, both Metroid Prime and Super Metroid seemed to be quieter than most games I play when I replayed them last year. Imagine my surprise when I found that Other M fit into the same category. I was baffled by how little a departure Other M truly was from the rest of the series - IMO the game still does the usual Metroid stuff well, but fails spectacularly at trying to cover new ground, which is probably why I felt that way.
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Currently Playing - StarCraft: Brood War