Samus finally gets an actual personality, and the impact of this on the series is Other M's biggest triumph.
In this game, Team Ninja takes us back to the older mostly 2-D level designs. While Metroid Prime certainly had it's good qualities, to play as Samus, you need to see Samus. Moving jumping, running, climbing, wall jumping, and more with grace and accuracy. The controls are fairly excellent, with the only sore point being the need to occasionally point the wiimote at the screen and enter a first person mode. When just examining the environments, this is not so bad. It's when you have to do this in the heat of battle to kill an enemy with a missile attack that it becomes problematic.
It's just not terribly well implemented, and it can be very tricky to do at time when you point and realize the enemy has swiftly side stepped and is on top of you, not in front of you, and you have to dodge and try again. It feels like something they were forced to implement just for the sake of using the wiimote pointer. On the plus side though, they added a slick dodge move, used by pressing a direction on the d-pad just as you are about to be hit. It's a cool addition that really adds flair to the combat, and gets across that Samus is not supposed to be a tank.
The story is solid, it's an interesting way of getting Samus into mostly familiar surroundings, but with a twist, and the character development is pretty good, especially the dynamic between Samus and Adam. It gives the game a surprising emotional impact. It lasts a reasonable time the first play through, and opens up to be revisited with new powers and abilities after the main story is finished, and even that manages to tie into and add onto the story in a touching way. Metroid: Other M is a great game that any one with a Wii should definitely check out.