4/5 ★ – PhatBaby's review of Metroid Prime.

I don't think you really need me to echo that this is good. It's Metroid Prime. If you're friends with someone who likes Metroid, there's a 90% chance they've leaned over to you, drunk in a bar, during a conversation with no contextual relevance, and muttered in your ear about how much they love being the cool space lady with fat-ass shoulder pads, shootin' jellyfish with teeth and turning into a little pinball, but in 3D. That being said, I had a full phase in COVID where I literally just played 2D Metroids for about 2 months, and I fell in love with them. Beat them all and would count a good few of them among my favourite games ever. They were such addictive little gems to explore, with so much aura and fun secrets, and pretty much every single one had a unique hook that had me hootin' and hollerin'. When I finished Fusion, I tried Metroid Prime, and man, it just didn't hit. I played a good stint, but dropped off. Taking a second crack, I finally understand why it just wasn't satiating me quite right. I've had such a long break from the series that coming back made me realise Prime isn't just "3D Metroid," but its own take on the formula. And I liked that take, especially now I'm not caught in my feels, wondering why Samus moves like she ate too many burgers and set her aim sensitivity to grandma mode. It is Metroid, but way more Zeldary at times. So much so that it felt like a first-person pre-BOTW Zelda joint at points, just if Link had a blicky that shoots lasers and the game glued its dungeons together and removed the hub world entirely. And when I clocked onto that, man, I had way more fun. I miss that style of Zelda dearly. I've been saying for years that Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom were phenomenal, but I'm shakin' in my lil' booties thinking that Nintendo's gonna bring out the firing squad and execute the tried and true Zelda format. Prime felt like discovering an old-school 3D Zelda I haven't played yet, and I loved finding some new gizmo, spending 20 minutes or so fucking with it, then being able to go back through and get whatever was inside each room that made my brain short circuit because I couldn't figure out what I was missing (90% of the time, it was the fucking grapplehook. They edge you with that shit for so long that I popped off hard when I finally found it). Do I think it's as perfect as the Prime sickos declare it to be? Definitely not. The enemy spam is HORRENDOUS at points, dear god. I'm trying to solve this puzzle. Does having bees up my ass crack, constantly respawning, add literally anything to this equation? Oh, and the backtracking in the endgame for Chozo artefacts? Why did old Nintendo love that shit so much? They did the same thing in Windwaker, and it made me snooze as a child, because it's basically like: here's an endgame quest that's boring as fuck. Go do that before you have fun again! The bosses can also be way too tanky, even if they're pretty easy, which just means repeating the same beats for 10 minutes until they finally end. And, man, are we really adding anything to the game by not putting some form of basic fast travel here? What does it add by making me continuously spend five to ten minutes speedrunning through the fucking pirate base area, which is a disorienting nightmare of invisible dudes who will not piss off, pitch black areas you have to use your blinding heat vision to navigate, and repetitive combos of the same ass rooms that take ages to climb? Nothing? Then give me a single location in each dungeon I can teleport to in the endgame. I gain nothing from this. But overall, it's still a damn fine wine. I prefer the 2D games, personally. Dread was a banger, and all the ones leading up to it were equally goated. But hot damn, when Samus rolls up in her dripped out ship, oozing sheer sauce, racks up her gun, flashes those damn fine shoulder pads, and you're shootin' shit alongside banger music? Zoo wee mama, we're havin' fun out here! Plus, was very nice to play a game that let me explore without constantly asking if my hand is cold and needs some suffocating holding to warm it up. I'm hitting up Prime 4 over Christmas, so get ready for a full paragraph on how I inevitably fucking hate the new sidekick dude who wants to plants his little lips on my cold hand and roughly squeeze it till the point it's clammy and gross, all the while whispering "lemme guess, he's right behind me, isn't he" and a selection your other favourite Marvel movie quips...