Without skipping a beat, the Space Marines and Samus open fire on the Brug Mass, but most of their shots ricochet off the Brug Mass’s glistening, lubed up shaft. The Space Marines all stand in one spot like idiots, while Samus circles the room, looking for a clean shot. While she’s circling, the Brug Mass slaps at the Space Marines with its tentacles. After several of her shots bounce off the Brug Mass’s body, Samus tries to target the monster’s single eye, but it winds up to slap her across the face before she can charge up her arm cannon. She sensemove-dodges out of the way, and one of the Space Marines yells, “This ain’t good! Nothing’s working!” Yes. The one-eyed monster is really giving them quite the beating. So to speak.

Realizing that the situation is getting dire, Adam yells to his team that they are authorized to use their Freeze guns, and yells to Samus that he’s also authorizing her to use her missiles. Samus’s arm cannon glows as she reactivates her missile launcher, and we cut to the inventory menu to get a refresher on how missiles work. It’s essentially point and click; all you have to do is fire while locked onto an enemy in first-person mode. The downside to this system is that you have to do some Wiimote-waggling to get into first-person mode, meaning that you have to choose between mobility and power: Samus can’t fire missiles when she’s moving around in third-person mode, and she can’t move while she’s firing missiles in first-person mode. When it works it’s a pretty neat system, but the problem, in my experience, is that it doesn’t work perfectly, and Samus usually ends up facing a wall or getting attacked from behind when she tries to use her missiles. And, honestly, that’s a fairly charitable description.

Back in the battle, Samus continues her strategy of circling the quivering Brug Mass, this time waiting for the Space Marines to use their Freeze guns to freeze it on the spot. …But they don’t seem to get that aspect of the plan, and are perfectly content to just sit around with their thumbs up their asses while the Brug Mass continues its rampage, so Samus takes matters into her own hands, firing a missile at the Brug Mass’s eye. It roars and tries to slap Samus with one of its tentacles, but misses and gets snagged on the floor. Seizing the opportunity to do something helpful, Adam instructs his men to concentrate their Freeze gun fire on the tentacle so that Samus can shatter it with a missile.

Talk about your cold shoulder. *rimshot*

As commanded, the Space Marines all coordinate their shots to freeze the tentacle, encasing it in ice, and Samus blows it up with a missile. The Brug Mass writhes in agony and uses its remaining tentacle to sweep the floor, knocking the Space Marines off their feet. As Samus circles the room, waiting for the Space Marines to get their act together, one of the Space Marines climbs up the Brug Mass and tries to shoot at its large eye, but he gets knocked off before he can take the shot. I figured out later that this was supposed to be a hint for Samus to do the same, to try and leap up onto the Brug Mass to deliver an overblast to its eye, but I missed this cue during the actual fight. Oops.

Instead, Samus again gets sick of waiting for the Space Marines to do something helpful, and fires another missile at the Brug Mass’s eye. This time, she remains locked on to the Brug Mass long enough for her scanners to compile a health bar for the boss, which appears that the top right corner of the screen. It’s purple and pulsating, of course. The Brug Mass takes another swing at Samus, who dodges out of the way, and it gets its other tentacle stuck in the floor, too. The Space Marines freeze the snagged tentacle again, and Samus blows it up with a missile.

Now that it’s been stripped of its tentacles, the Brug Mass is approximately 35% penisier. It can’t sweep the ground with its tentacles anymore, so the Brug Mass leaps at the Space Marines, sending them flying and knocking itself off balance in the process. I’m so glad I don’t have to worry about any of the Space Marines actually dying, because they seem to be really good at getting wailed on. While the Brug Mass is struggling to get itself back up (so to speak), Samus fires another missile at its eye. This causes it to fall over again, and the Space Marines freeze the base of its shaft so that Samus can destroy it. When she does so, the remaining Brugs collapse into a pile and the Brug Mass’s eye gets launched across the room. For the first time, we can see that the eye is actually another Brug, much larger than the others, and it has a giant eyeball on its back instead of a shell. I think if you dilly-dally around and don’t kill this Brug, the Emperor Brug, right away, it climbs back into the Brug Mass again, but I don’t know for sure because Samus dispatches the Emperor Brug with a single missile. Which is actually kind of anti-climactic. I didn’t even get to make any “erections lasting for four or more hours” jokes.

With their leader reduced to a pile of green goo, the swarm of Brugs dissipates, crawling back into the walls of the Bottle Ship. In the background, we can hear the Space Marines sounding off, and the camera pans around Samus. In the reflection of her visor, we see Adam approach her. “Samus. Looks like I’m going to need to ask for your cooperation on this mission.” He’s right, but really, the only thing Samus has done so far that the Space Marines can’t is fire missiles at things. Maybe they should just invest in a piece of equipment that can do that instead of bringing in a civilian?

“But!” Adam continues, “I’m also going to have to ask that you follow my commands. You don’t move unless I say so. And you don’t fire until I say so.” Ugh, Adam is such a control freak. It’s almost like he thinks he’s Samus’s father. Samus should be able to make her own decisions! She’s not a child! Nobody understands her!

Hee hee, ‘brief’

In a sudden leap to flashback mode, we see Blue!Adam addressing a platoon of soldiers. He asks, “Any objections, Lady?”, which, sexual harassment lawsuit waiting to happen, no matter who is on the receiving end of that question, and the camera swings around to reveal that he’s talking to Butch!Samus. I guess this flashback is from Samus’s days under Adam’s command. Samus wankeses that “the thumbs-up sign had been used by the Galactic Federation for ages,” and we see that the other soldiers in the line are giving Adam the thumbs-up signal. Butch!Samus scowls and gives a thumbs-down, and as she does so, she explains that she was “known for giving the thumbs-down during briefing.” She’s such a complex character. Adam doesn’t really react to Samus’s insubordination, which is a little weird, because the only thing we know about him so far is that he’s really into people yielding to his will.

Samus wanks, “I had my reasons, though…” and then doesn’t really explain what those reasons are. I guess she’s keeping it a secret from herself again. She continues, “Commander Adam Malkovich was normally cool and not one to joke around, but he would end all of his mission briefings by saying, ‘Any objections, Lady?’ He was joking, but others weren’t. At the time I felt surrounded by people who treated me like a child, or used kid gloves because I was a woman.” During this monologue, the camera pans past all of the soldiers in the line, when it gets to Samus, we can see that she’s like two feet shorter than almost everybody else. Which doesn’t really add up because in her Power Suit, she’s the same height as Anthony, the hulking black Space Marine. Where do those extra two feet come from?

Still going on about how it sucks to be a young lady in the army, Samus says, “with Adam, I was grateful for the nod… my past has left me with an uneasy soul, and as a result, it touched me on some level that Adam would acknowledge that past by calling me something delicate– like ‘Lady.'” So, when other people teased her about being a girl in the army, it was sexism, but when her boss did it, it was an acknowledgement of her troubled past? Whatever, Samus.

Oh my god she’s still going. Driving the point home, Samus wankeses that her “thumbs down was a twofold response– a sign of derision at being called a lady, and a signal of my complete understanding of the mission orders.” Oh Butch!Samus, you’re so ironic. As the camera pans past the soldiers — one of whom is Anthony — again, this time showing them laughing at Samus’s thumbs-down gesture, she notes that “the other soldiers were always willing to support me with easy smiles despite the fact that I clearly had so much yet to learn.” Wait, so they were friendly, then? And not actually bullying you because you’re a lady? This makes no sense. Even though we just saw him on screen, Samus tells us that one of the other soldiers was Anthony, and that “in the face of his well-meaning behavior, and that of the other soldiers, my response was to become increasingly bitter.” Oh my goodness, Butch!Samus is so emotional. What I just got out of this entire cutscene is that she was a bitch to her colleagues in the military because, as a woman, she felt inferior, and even when the other Space Marines were nice to her, Samus interpreted this as teasing. But then when her boss actually teased her for being a girl, she paradoxically took this to be a signal of their deep emotional connection. Ugh, women.

If you look at this picture while you read, it’ll be just like watching this cutscene.

We cut to a different flashback, with Butch!Samus strutting through a glass tunnel in a futuristic city, you know, one that’s reminiscent of Esthar, or Star Trekified San Francisco, and she tells us “I was a child, always with something to prove. A chip on my shoulder. And I was angry.” It’s really nice that the game developers wanted to devote so much time to providing a background for Samus. I wonder how having Samus psychoanalyze herself won out as the best way to add depth to her character. Samus tells us, “I felt that if I let my guard down, I would be easily broken. And beyond that, I was scared.” See, all of these things that Samus is telling us, they could be shown instead of told. But hey, it’s not like I paid fifty bucks for this game and expect it to be of higher quality than a fan-fic I could find on the internet for free.

Samus slows her roll and looks out over the futuristic city. “Even in the naïveté of my youth, I could see in Adam’s joking manner how close he felt to me. Adam knows my past. And he knows me better than anyone else.” Again, all things that could be shown to us. Even if it had to take the place of this stupid sequence where Samus is just standing by herself looking out the window.

“Confession time,” Samus drones, “Because I was so young when I lost both of my parents, there’s no question I saw Adam as a father figure.” Ok, some of that one they actually have shown us, what with Samus’s obsession with Adam’s approval and Adam’s penchant for being controlling. Samus, it’s not a secret that you have daddy issues and are projecting onto Adam. I know it, we all know it, dogs know it, okay? You don’t need to tell us. We cut to Blue!Adam working at his desk, and the camera fixates on a framed picture of Samus and some dude posing together with Adam brooding in the background. Samus wanks, “when I rebelled against him, I knew I could get away with it. And his paternal compassion in the face of my rebellion reinforced the special bond I felt with him. I understood well that chances were slim that I would ever find anyone that understood me like Adam. And yet… when the time came I still left his side. I was so young.” Samus, sweetie, that’s like, a natural part of growing up. Leaving the nest. Leading your own life. Although it would be funny if you were still living in Adam’s basement, like every other failure to launch of my generation.

‘Likes long walks on the beach and explosives. Dislikes bugs and chatty broads.’

Whew! With that steaming heap of back-story gracelessly dumped in our laps, we rejoin Samus and the Space Marines in the Bottle Ship. Adam reminds his crew that “exactly what transpired here on the BOTTLE SHIP is still uncertain. Here’s what we do know: the equipment we thought had been destroyed is operational again, and we’ve seen casualties attributed to an unidentified and lethal creature.” Is he talking about John Doe? I thought it was pretty clear that the Brug Mass killed him? And now we’ve killed it, so…

Oh! The camera moves to reveal that Adam has situated himself in the command deck on the bridge, and is looking down over his platoon of Space Marines. I’m sure he finds it very fulfilling to have so many men under him. “The situation is critical,” Adam continues, and he tells the Space Marines that their job is to gather all the information they can about the Bottle Ship, while also fanning out and looking for survivors. “Consider this site extremely dangerous,” he adds, like they didn’t just get attacked by a giant space penis. The only real problem, however, is that there’s “all-pervasive” wireless interference mucking up the Space Marines’ intercom systems, so once the Space Marines split up, the only way they’ll be able to communicate with Adam is by using a navigation booth. I’m sure that won’t be a problem for anybody.