First, I uploaded a bunch of pictures from New Bern, where we spent Labor Day weekend with the in-laws.

Second, I’ve had the opportunity at work to play with Seadragon, a plugin-free library for displaying very high resolution images. It works just like Google Maps, only sexier. (Check out the example on the page I just linked too—zoom in on the top-left-most set of pictures in the big picture.) As I mentioned before, I’ve been using Microsoft Research Image Composite Editor to stitch panoramas together lately, and it has the ability to export images as tile sets. I decided to try it out, and the results are below.

First, I gave it some images of Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park that I took on my honeymoon. It does a much better job of stitching the pictures together than Photoshop did five years ago (see the old version for comparison). It somehow adjusts the brightness of each image based so that you don’t get some parts of the image darker or brighter than the others (even if you took every image in auto mode). You might also note that there are two Stephanies in this picture—she moved between pictures. This one is 24.0 megapixels:

Next up is a 103.7 megapixel panorama of Oak Island, NC, which I took at the beach in June:

And lastly, I have a 138.1 megapixel image of the Tryon Palace gardens in New Bern, NC, which I took last weekend:

Over the years, I have reduced pretty significantly the number of reviews that I post on this blog. Mainly, this is because I don’t think I’m particularly good at reviewing things, and there are certainly plenty of people who are far better at it than me. But a few people have asked me specifically about Metroid: Other M, so here goes.

Metroid: Other M is my least favorite Metroid game.

I take that back, Metroid Prime: Hunters still holds that distinction. But I don’t really consider Hunters a Metroid proper, if you will. I think of it more as a side project that is only slightly more Metroid-y than Metroid Prime Pinball.

But back to Other M. The writing in the game is as bad as the writing in the title. (I’m still not even sure who or what the “other M” actually is.) They made Samus into a weak, emotionally fragile two-year-old in an adult’s body. I mean, we’re talking about intergalactic bounty hunter Samus frickin’ Aran here! After everything she’s been through, you’re going to tell me she takes orders from people? That she ever hesitates when she has a shot at a bad guy?

Also, cutscenes with the cybersuit on? She can make some or all of her suit dissolve at will, so why not at least take the helmet off during cut scenes when there is no danger? It looks ridiculous, like if you saw Tom Brady walking around Wal-Mart in full football uniform—cleats, pads, and helmet. It also makes it so you usually can’t tell if Samus’s lips are moving, so you don’t know if what she’s saying is dialog or internal monologue (she narrates her thoughts throughout, sometimes even in the middle of a conversation with other people).

I’ve heard the combat praised, but it seemed to mainly consist of running around waiting for your charge beam to charge, while constantly tapping the d-pad (tapping the d-pad when an enemy attacks will dodge the attack). I get the feeling that Team Ninja originally wanted it to be more difficult, but Nintendo told them to scale it back a notch. (These are the people who made the notoriously difficult Ninja Gaiden, after all.)

The game also eliminates most of the sense of exploration by telling you exactly where you must go, and locking the doors that don’t lead that way. To make it worse, it feels like there is a boss or miniboss about every fourth room. It’s not until the very end of the game that the doors are actually unlocked and you are free to explore. Sorry, Team Ninja, but that’s just not Metroid.

The departure from the series that annoyed me the most, however, was something seemingly minor that I didn’t see discussed in any reviews: enemies do not drop energy pellets. It is especially annoying early on, when you don’t have much health and some enemies can take over half your energy in one hit. You have a checkpoint at every boss or miniboss, and if you die you start over right there, so it’s not that big of a deal. But I’d prefer shooting little enemies or projectiles during the boss battle to pick up extra energy, rather than dying and starting over.

All that being said, it’s not a bad game. It’s just not that good either.

Disclaimer: I am someone with the Metroid item collect music as my ringtone. I may be teh bias.

Here are two short videos from our Labor Day weekend in New Bern.  First, we have Stephanie and her mom playing with some 18th-century toys. This is the kind of thing kids did to pass their free time before video games.

And second we have a video of Emma “sweeping the yard.” I guess they didn’t have rakes back then? Also, I introduce Emma to a philosophical discussion, continuing the work of Mark Twain, as to how to discern between work and play.

A few months back I saw a YouTube video (embedded below) simulating what the sky might look like if Earth had rings like Saturn. I think it’s pretty cool, but when I thought about it later I realized that we probably wouldn’t think anything of the rings in the sky if we had them. Imagine, if you will, that the Earth had no moon. In that alternate reality, I would probably be blogging about a simulation of what it would look like if Earth had a moon. But in our reality we don’t pay much attention to the moon. Anyway, enjoy the video.