Part 1
We begin with random explosions, Samus curled in a fetal position (and symbolically for a few seconds resembles a fetus omg omg), and then more random explosions. Whoo-hoo. We're in for such good times.
It turns out that this is Samus, who asks in what has to be the worst voice ever, "Why am I still alive?" and cries out for the baby metroid from Metroid 2 and Super Metroid. This is a 3D rendition of a scene from Super Metroid where Mother Brain kills the hatchling and then gets absolutely stomped by Samus, which is pretty good. For those not in the know, Metroid: Other M takes place between Metroid 3 and Metroid Fusion.
oh and Samus I totally had more energy tanks than you did when you go into first-person mode here, your memories of Zebes are flawed with lack of exploration
Suddenly Zero Suit Samus wakes up in some sort of lab. A quarantine area, with what appears to be a scientist from Half-Life.
"Let's try showing some emotion. Slowly now."
No really, Samus sounds so incredibly bored of what's going on.
"I laid Mother Brain to waste. And the explosion that followed destroyed planet Zebes"
How did that make any sense to begin with anyway? In the first game Mother Brain has some sort of time bomb set but Zebes is fine afterwards. In Super Metroid though Zebes completely explodes. Was Mother Brain just made of explodium? Did the space pirates just put nuclear weapons everywhere and design their boss as a load-bearing one?
Samus mentions that the explosion also got rid of her long-standing nemesis, Ridley. It is good to know that he'll never be coming back to life again, ever. Nope, 5th "death" is the charm in this case.
Samus calling the metroid "the baby" is already irritating me. In the other games she refers to it as the metroid hatchling. Why is she bothering to refer to it this personally now? I understand some attachment (it led to one of the best moments in the series after all) but this is still basically a random alien creature that gave you a slight sense of motherhood. Oh, and nearly killed you but I guess that's a symbolic feature of motherhood too sometimes.
"They're waiting for you Samus. In the test chamberrrrrr..."
Samus proceeds to the test chamber and we get to show off the tutorial basics here.
"Allow adequate room around you during power bomb play."
Oh Nintendo, you're so zany. And immersion-breaking. I love you already.
"Looks like you took quite a bit of damage."
0? The hell? I didn't take any.
"Never again would I encounter the baby. Never." Yes, that tends to happen when something dies!
Samus then receives a distress signal called the "baby's cry" and goes to investigate. I'm sure this will have nothing at all to do with the damn baby she keeps going on about. Nothing whatsoever! Samus locates a ship (called the "Bottle Ship", oh yeah is that ever nice and subtle) at the distress signal's location and begins to investigate. I end up in first-person mode and my screen is so dark that I spend about 4 minutes looking around for what I'm supposed to focus on before I find the galactic federation symbol on the ship in front of me.
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Geologists will date anything.