Okay, fuck this game. Somehow, once upon a time when I was about 14 years old, I used to actually like Metroid Prime Hunters. What the hell was I smoking? 24 year old me could seriously use some of that. This is legitimately one of the worst video games I have played in my life, and I say that with no exaggeration. There are no redeeming qualities here; the most positive things I have to say about this game concern the things it doesn’t completely butcher, which are mostly just things the series in general does well, and Prime Hunters is still underwhelming on the whole in those areas.

First, the single biggest problem: this game is physically painful to play. I could not play it for more than an hour without my right hand cramping up from supporting the DS with my ring finger and pinky while using the stylus, because the only worthwhile way to control this game is to aim with the touch screen. Constantly. In addition to the pain that comes with constant use of the touch screen, the jumping controls are really clunky, requiring you to double tap the touch screen, the slowness of which makes platforming an inconsistent drag and turns the jump into a completely useless maneuver in combat. Any game that causes me this much literal, physical pain, and with this poor of a control scheme, is immediately not worth playing in my eyes unless it does something truly exceptional.

Spoiler alert, Metroid Prime Hunters does a fat fucking zero exceptional things. Exceptionally bad things, maybe, but the closest elements to anything I could call “good” are okay at best. I guess it has a vaguely nonlinear progression path, because you can do a few steps out of order (the world itself is, however, extremely linear and has very few shortcuts). The core idea of getting powerups to progress, which, mind you, is present in literally every game in this series, is a decent one, even if it’s watered down heavily in this game due to beams being the only powerups that you obtain. The atmosphere is good for a DS game, but, admittedly due in part to hardware limitations, it’s still not great.

To explain the last thing the game doesn’t completely butcher, I have to explain what I’ve decided to call the “combat sandwich”. Essentially, there are three elements that factor into the experience of combat in an action game. On the end closest to the player, the controls. In the middle, the actual systems and abilities afforded to the player. On the other end, the enemy or encounter design. We’ve established that the controls are terrible, but the game doesn’t really do anything outright wrong with the middle part of the sandwich. Mind you, it doesn’t do anything notably right, either - it’s very standard first person shooter fare, with some mildly differentiated weapons and ammo that doesn’t ever really matter because of how easily replenished it is. It’s unremarkable, but inoffensive. Unfortunately, the last part - the enemy design - is this game’s second greatest shortcoming.

There is almost nothing worthwhile in the way of enemies here. There are exactly two enemies in the game that are approaching passable status: the lava giant and the jumping enemy with the weak point under it. This is as creative as it gets, and these enemies each show up a grand total of twice throughout the entire game. Every single other enemy ranges from “nothing” to atrocious. The Hunters, despite being the titular foe of this game, are barely worth a mention. They’re a slog to fight, frequently have unavoidable attacks (Sylux’s literally just hits you, there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it except stay out of range, which is boring as hell), and even though if they kill you they can apparently steal your octoliths (this game’s big MacGuffin, of which you have to collect eight to fight the final boss), this literally never happened to me because I never died to one.

Probably the biggest offender here are the guardians. All versions of this enemy move randomly and erratically, making them inconsistent to hit, and most versions also fire quickly and erratically, making them impossible to consistently avoid. There are a few versions of them you encounter sparingly which shoot more slowly and can be dodged by simply strafing side-to-side, but these are the minority. What I’ve just described would make for a miserable encounter on its own, but then the game decides these enemies are God’s gift to gamers and throws them at you at least five times per level. Did I mention that every time they show up, they lock the doors and force you to fight them? The best enemy ever designed would still get old after being forced to fight it upwards of forty times over the course of the game, and these abominations suck to fight even once. Fighting them this many times brought me the closest to not finishing a Metroid game I have ever been. It turned this game into a truly horrible experience.

When you’re not dealing with Guardians, “nothing” enemies with no other strategy of avoidance than to strafe sideways, or the Hunters, you’re fighting bosses. Two bosses, to be specific, occasionally given slightly different abilities, and always a tedious, drawn-out, frustrating mess to fight. The game repeats its two boss fights four times each; they sucked the first time, and they suck every time thereafter. Every time you defeat a boss, you’re forced into an escape sequence, which usually involves fighting more fucking guardians or maybe one of the shitty Hunters as you trek back through the mostly linear path to your ship. The final boss isn’t any good either, requiring you to shoot it in its shoulders, which have unclear hurboxes and are a pain in the ass to hit, with the right weapon, telegraphed by the color of the boss. Its secret phase two, which is unlocked by entering a secret combination using some panels in phase 1, forces you to run after it around the arena while it does fuck all to hit you. It’s a mess.

As previously mentioned, the levels here are astonishingly linear. You can hop between the four planets at will, sure, but there’s little in the way of interesting structure. Basically the only real shortcuts you get are teleporters back to your ship, which are deactivated during the escape sequences anyway, making them irrelevant for any routing that actually matters. Most of the “puzzles” just involve looking for the right button to hit, or the right thing to scan, or the right alcove to slip into, and rarely require any amount of critical thinking.

It’s worth noting that the game has a multiplayer mode, which was frankly the real selling point of the game back in the day, but which is irrelevant to my review as the online functionality has been deactivated, and no one I know owns the game in order for me to test it out. Apparently it was a decent portable version of Quake, but I’m hesitant to give the game any credit for this mode, as I’m primarily concerned with reviewing it as a single-player experience.

The platforming segments are dogshit, the combat sucks across the board, the atmosphere is underwhelming even if it’s good by DS standards, the movement mechanics are basic, routing and interesting world structure are effectively nonexistent, and the game is mind-numbingly repetitive for its entire runtime. I legitimately have nothing positive to say about Metroid Prime Hunters. The best moment was landing the final hit on Gorea, and realizing that my suffering was over. If I never have to play this game again, it will still be too soon.