This review contains spoilers

This is gonna come out very shoddily written, but I just wanna vomit my thoughts somewhere. Probably the saddest four-star rating I've ever given, Metroid Prime is a game that I have been waiting to play for a long time and, despite it being great, fell a bit short of my expectations for it. Being a huge 2D Metroid fan and just a videogame enthusiast in general, I was unbelieveably excited when the announcement for this dropped, specially since I had tried the GameCube version, didn't quite dig the controls, and told myself "I'll play it when they re-release the Trilogy on the Switch." The Trilogy wasn't re-released, but, holy cow, what a remaster! This might just be the best looking videogame on the Switch, and it would be awesome just for it to look like this, but it also runs at silky smooth 60fps. Incredible. My first impressions of the game were fantastic, but I was less impressed as the game went on. The first 3/4 of the game are very fun. Though the settings and the visuals are incredible, the puzzles are nice and the level design is honestly near-genius, the game can pad quite a bit. The exploration is cool, but being a Metroid game, it rightfully requires backtracking. However, the backtracking on this game gets worse and worse the more you dig in. Switching weapons to opening different doors is a hassle, and I don't understand why they couldn't have just mimicked the way of the 2D games, where you use a certain weapon for a certain door the first time, then you can use it with any weapon. While in 2D games Samus is fast and slick, she feels heavier and clunkier here. I liked this in the beginning, because it makes Samus feel bulkier, but it also makes her feel soooo sloooowwww... The worst thing about backtracking: the annoying enemies, always on you, spongy as hell, sometimes unavoidable. The moment I thought I had collected all the Artifacts and then realized I had to come back to the Phazon Mines to return for the last one which I had forgot, I didn't pick up the game for two days. Lastly, I found the Meta Ridley boss fight quite boring, and the Metroid Prime one a bit gimmicky, though the True Metroid Prime bit with the Hypermode was awesome. In the end, this neither left me with the impression I was playing a masterpiece, like Resident Evil 4 did (a game that received similar amounts of critic praise and released for the same console original), nor did it strike me personally as strongly as Metroid Fusion or Super Metroid did, for example. I'm honestly just sad I didn't enjoy it as much as every one else seems to have. I'm not so hyped for Metroid Prime 2/3 or 4 when it releases - I hope I'm proven wrong. Overall it's a great game though, and I'm glad Metroid is more alive than ever; I just wanted to vent my end-game nitpicks here.

Reviewed on Jan 25, 2024


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