I made the terrible mistake of playing the Gamecube version. There is obviously a great game at the core of this, but aiming feels so bad. The game actively fights your ability to aim up and down, then bombards you a few hours in with jetpack space pirates that require you to stand still, hold R, aim up, lock on, and pray you stay locked on, because you just took half a lifebar of damage. Aiming down feels equally shitty, the camera resists you so hard. While impressive for their time, these controls have aged about as poorly as the N64 Rare shooters. Also, if you ever die in this game, not only must you deal with lengthy backtracking, but also re-scanning everything you scanned up until your death, which I'm not fuckin' doing.

The first few hours of this were so good. Metroid Prime 3 on Wii controlled perfectly, and the Switch remaster probably addresses a lot of my complaints. I'd really like to replay this again someday on superior hardware.

I…I uhm… I think this game is kind of….not great? I know I know, I’m sorry ok, I don’t mean to be a contrarian or anything just for the sake of it but…this was…actually kinda mid 😬. Ok, hold your pitchforks and torches for a second there. This is not hate bait and it’s certainly not me slandering a 20 year old video game for not adhering to my modern gaming standards. It’s a review written by someone with zero nostalgia for this title. Someone, who, so far, has only played Super Metroid and this game in the franchise. All I can do is give you my honest and true thoughts based on my first playthrough, for better or worse. So, let’s start with the positives.

I’ll admit that Metroid Prime has merit. Just like in Super Metroid, Prime puts a heavy emphasis on atmosphere, vibes, and immersion. The moment I landed on Tallon IV, I took it all in. I looked around, studying the local flora and fauna and – quite literally – scanning the environments. The game world immediately had this eerie feel to it; like something happened here that wasn’t supposed to happen. The wildlife is aggressive, the waters are poisoned and even the very reeds that grow on the ground try to harm you. In the beginning of the game, you’re pretty much left to your own devices. You have a vague idea of what’s going on based on the introductory level but once you’re on the planet, Metroid Prime leaves you alone and clueless for a while. And I loved it. Traversing this world and trying to figure out what happened and what the actual goal of the game is, was my favorite part of Metroid Prime. I especially liked the way the lore was presented here. Scanning artifacts and reading about the history of the Chozo was awesome. These scriptures depict the Chozo’s experience with an alien object that had crashed on their planet and how it impacted the local flora and fauna. But also, how it impacted them. Without spoiling anything, this had a dark twist that I didn’t expect to see in a Nintendo game, it almost felt Lovecraftian to an extent. Scan by scan, you learn more about Tallon’s indigenous people but it doesn’t stop there. Without spoiling too much, there are other forces at play here and you learn more about them too. And it was honestly all very interesting and well-written. The game definitely managed to intrigue me with its mystery. Uncovering the truth and assembling the narrative pieces into the mosaic that is the story of this game felt really rewarding, especially in the first hours of the game.

Thankfully, the overall gameplay complemented this in various ways. I like how Samus controls in this game. Running around, turning into a Morph Ball, jumping…it all feels great and fun. The transition from first person (Samus) to third person (Morph Ball) is super fluid and it creates this flow of running around, shooting some enemies, turning into a ball to traverse a narrow tunnel, back to first person and so on; it’s fast-paced and it really felt like the developers put a lot of effort into polishing the level design so it all works. Shooting itself was fun too. Locking onto an enemy, charging my beam and firing away or blasting fools with my bombs never really got old. The game required me to use the controls to their fullest. Simply shooting everything in my path wouldn't do the trick; I had to strafe, wait for the right attack window, use the right weapon and so on. It was simple but not mind-numbing which is all I can ask for in a game like this.

Ok, so the story was interesting and fun to uncover. Movement and combat were fluid, fun and challenging but not too challenging. So far so good. Uhm, you want more positives? I got more. The game’s map. I.love.this.map. It reminded me strongly of Vagrant Story, which is always a good thing, but it was way more functional. I wish more games would present their 3D worlds on maps like these. I always knew where I was in a level, how to get from there to other places, what obstacles were in my way and so on. It was beautiful. One minor point of criticism maybe: I wish I could put some markers on the map or that more elements were displayed like those magnet tracks whose locations I couldn’t memorize. There’s definitely some stuff that I missed because I couldn’t mark anything on the map, like destructible rocks that require a specific weapon you only get in the late game. Also, there was one section in the game with multiple layers stacked on top of each other and the map kind of didn’t help me to get my bearings there. That was the one instance where using the map felt like a chore. Other than that, the map was amazing and helpful, peak map design, folks.

Alright, what else, what else, more positive things to say… Visual variety! There’s quite a large variety of aesthetic themes throughout the sections of the game like magma, ice, sand and so on. Each section has its own feel to it which is heavily amplified by the game’s music which is also great. Very eerie and subtle tunes that give off this dark and foreboding vibe. Again, atmosphere is Metroid Prime’s strong suit and it’s heavily carried by the game’s audiovisual design.

Oh, something else I liked. The hint system!!! See, every time you walk around aimlessly for some time, you get a message on your HUD saying that some anomaly was identified somewhere and that you should check it out. It also places a big fat marker on your map so you basically always know where to go to progress the main story. The hint system is fantastic; it gives you time to explore but nudges you in the right direction when you’re lost. This game is more than 20 years old, why haven’t other Metroidvanias (do we call them Search Action games now?^^) incorporated a system like this? It’s a countermeasure for frustration which I wish I had in games like Hollow Knight.

Ok, I think I’m done. See? I don’t hate the game! I pointed out various qualities that speak in favor of Metroid Prime. But uhm…yeah, well there’s no way out of this anymore. Let’s talk about all the ways, in which Metroid Prime frustrated the hell out of me.
My biggest issue with the game is the sheer amount of backtracking that nearly sucked all of the fun out of the experience. I don’t have a problem with backtracking in search action games. They all have it to some extent due to the nature of these games. You explore the world, come across unsurmountable obstacles, go somewhere else and come back once you have the necessary tools to progress. The existence of backtracking alone does not make or break a game. But it’s how you implement it. It depends on whether traversing the same areas multiple times and fighting the same enemies over and over again can still be fun. It’s of the utmost importance to keep things interesting, fresh, and rewarding for the player, even after the 10th time, they clear an area. So, how does Metroid Prime achieve that? I dunno. It doesn’t really. Sure, it places new enemy types in the same locations from time to time but that shit gets old reaaally fast. You see, in a well-made search action game, fighting the same enemies over and over again can get tedious but usually, you are always rewarded for that with XP, currency or other items. But that’s the thing about Metroid in general; what do you get for killing the same kinds of enemies again and again? Pretty much nothing. You get energy, missiles, you charge up basically. But once you have refilled all your stuff, what does it matter? It doesn’t feel rewarding at all. At first, and we are talking about the first four hours of the game, I found the backtracking to be mostly acceptable. There was one moment relatively early on when I really had no idea where to go and it was kind of my fault; I should have been more attentive to my surroundings and I should have trusted the hint system that I was in the right spot. As I said before, the hint system alleviates most of the frustration of getting lost. Still, even without getting lost, backtracking became a major ingredient of the Metroid Prime formula as the game went on. Even if you know exactly where to go, the game will have you run through the same areas multiple times. See, that’s another thing I like about other search action games; most of them give you the option to fast travel, at the very least via teleporters that have fixed locations in the game world. Why is that not a thing here?

Honestly, the late game is super backtracking-heavy. Combined with constant enemy respawns, the last portion of the game was such a slog. This is too bad because there is just no reason for this. Collecting 12 McGuffins and thereby traversing the same world for the 50th time, killing the same enemies over and over and over again…why? I feel you can cut this 12h (the in-game timer is lying to you) slog into a tight 7h experience that would have been paced more evenly and just… so much more fun. If I’m being completely honest, the last portion of the game, which consists of searching these 12 artifacts, is so ass, I can’t even. In theory, I like the idea of hunting for key items based on vague descriptions which mostly only nudge you in the right direction but still require you to figure out the rest on your own. I like the idea but I hate the execution. More than once did I stand in front of a locked gate, supposedly the one leading me to the next artifact, only to realize that it was locked from this side and I needed to go aaaaaall the way around to the other side.
There is one anecdote, I would like to share which is emblematic for my frustration I had with the late game, so slight spoilers I guess: I had one last artifact to collect. From its description, I was pretty sure where to find it. So, I went to the desired location and of course, the gate was locked, some vines had grown over it. I scanned those and the game told me they were susceptible to fire. So, I used everything I had at my disposal to open it but alas, my efforts were fruitless. I took a mental note however and returned to the main path of the story. Later, I received the flamethrower and my mind immediately tingled “Remember those vines? The locked door? Go there!!!, Go there now young adventurer and burn them all away!!!”. So, I did exactly that. I shot flames like crazy which depleted my entire stock of rockets. And again, the vines remained and I had to leave. So, again, like so many times before, I walked aaaaall the way around to the other side and what did I see? My path was blocked here too, this time by runes. In order to activate them, I had to blow up some protective shields with bombs….bombs…wait a minute…I didn’t have any bombs. I wasted them all with those impenetrable vines. So, here I stood like an idiot shooting bugs, hoping they would eventually drop enough bombs so I could finally progress to that damned artifact. When I got my first five bombs after a couple of minutes(!) of mindless pest control, I blew up the first shield and scanned the rune. Ok, one down, one more to go. I felt confident and I thought to myself: “Why not just leave the room, kill some monsters outside, get back in and shoot the second shield, easy as that”. So, I went outside, but there were no enemies nearby. So, I walked back in thinking to myself: ”Just five more bombs, won’t take too long”. And what did I see? The first shield was back up and again, I had zero bombs. My controller has never been that close to being thrown out the window. I don’t know how much time I wasted with this. This entire last section concerned with the artifact-hunt was atrocious. Even though, I was making progress, it felt like I was playing for two hours and had nothing to show for it. Keep in mind, that, at this point in the game, there were no new locations. It was all backtracking. Man, I nearly quit the game right there. Again, simply adding an option to warp from one savepoint to another would have helped so much. Is that a thing, Metroid games just refuse to implement for some reason? I’ve only played Super Metroid so far and I understand that that game didn’t have any fast travel but why not Metroid Prime? At this point, I truly just feel like they wanted to stretch the game for no reason.

That’s another thing, I need to bring up. Constantly, and I mean, coooonstantly, Metroid Prime artificially slows me down in one way or another. There were so many sections in the game where I felt like the developers were just mocking me by throwing some weird obstacle my way that was just tedious to deal with. Let me give you a small example, so slight spoiler for a segment mid-game. There was a section where I had to traverse a submerged tower by jumping from one platform to another. In between, there were some tentacles hassling me, trying to prevent to me from ascending further. This section in itself was rather tedious. Being slapped in the face by a tentacle that pushed you down into a watery dark pit rarely feels great. The thing is, once I reached the top, I stood in front of another locked door. The way to unlock it was to jump all the way down again and activate three switches. This was pure playtime stretching and it felt awful. The game does that from time to time and I don’t understand why this was necessary. I mean, Metroid Prime sends you all across the entire world multiple times anyway, it’s long enough as it is. I don’t need to have not one, not two, not three but like 12 rocks in my way that I need to blow up one by one to feel like I’m making progress. And then there’s another playtime stretcher - the bosses. Honestly, bosses, especially in the early game, were pretty cool. Each one had their own gimmick and the fights were designed around those. They weren’t too hard but definitely challenging and enjoyable. The more I progressed in the game, the longer the boss fights became. By the end, they got so bullet-spongey that I just wanted these fights to be over. However, I’ll admit that by the very very end, the last few bosses were actually kinda cool. But still, boss fights were surely not a highlight for me and they didn’t make the game more interesting or enjoyable as a whole.

I feel bummed out. Admittedly, I went into this with expectations through the roof. Many people, whose opinion I respect, love this game to bits. Many Metroid fans consider this to be the peak of the series. But it ain’t for me. I’ll say that the first four hours of this game were a blast. The atmosphere gripped me, the lore intrigued me and the gameplay was so fun, it put me in a flow-state that only a handful of games manage to put me into. But four hours in a 12h game are only one third. When the rest of the game feels like a slow-paced mess filled with backtracking, monotonous exploration and tanky boss fights, what does it matter if it started strong? I still don’t get over the fact that Metroid Prime has no warp function. In a game with such an emphasis on backtracking, it would help so much. I think, this was weaker than Super Metroid, which I liked but also didn’t love. Maybe the series just isn’t for me? Maybe I should just stick to the “vania” side of things, and not so much to the “Metroid” part? Does my journey through Metroid end here? I don’t know. I have no answers here, only confusion and despair :D Thank you for reading.

Look, this is a terrific game. It's an incredible translation of everything Metroid to a 3D FPS. I think the environments still look great today, and thank god for a console fps willing to give you a lock-on. As you get all your classic abilities (and some new ones), it makes for a great power fantasy of playing this awesome, acrobatic, unflappable bounty hunter.

I do think I like this game a little less than most though, because after playing through the majority of the series I think Metroid (and Metroidvanias in general) works better in 2D. The environments are awesome to explore the first time through, but towards the end of this one (and prime 2) I always lose some steam doing the backtracking around the big 3D environments. I think Prime 3 fixed this issue mostly by having more fast travel. And much as I'm sure I'll have a great time with Prime 4, I'm already pretty satisfied by having gotten Samus Returns and Dread in the last 7 years, and I can only hope they have another 2D game in the works.