3.5/5 ★ – Supergamerguy's review of Metroid Prime.

Although I ended up liking this one, my biggest and most frequent emotion here was disappointment. This game is held so unfathomably high by both series fans and those who grew up with Gen 6 consoles, that it was hard to imagine anything here could go wrong before playing this for the first time. Well, my playthrough did not turn out how I expected, and it's easiest just to summarize my thoughts in a list (rather than ramble on for several paragraphs). Pros: - Beam variety (Wave Beam offers a larger beam spread and passes through barriers, Ice Beam freezes opponents for a good while, and Plasma Beam burns enemies over time; even the Power Beam is still useful for Super Missile shots later on) - Environmental design (generally aesthetically pleasing, with great use of color and creativity within the various biomes for each area) - Lock-On system (usually accurate for targeting one enemy in particular and/or keeping track of frantic movement) - Upgrades (each new beam, suit, and missile/energy tank felt like a significant contribution to Samus's abilities) - Rotating map system (usually felt smooth and provided a noticeably detailed rendering of each area, including markers for important location types) - Ridley boss fight (fair, well-balanced, and challenging) - Some music tracks (Tallon Overworld, Chozo Ruins, Phendrana Drifts, and Wrecked Frigate Orpheon in particular are amazing) Cons: - Boss design (often punishing, lengthy, and had far too many invincibility periods; later bosses also forced extensive visor usage to see weak points) - Scanning (no reason to force visor switching and a decent scanning time when a button prompt would have been quicker and more intuitive) - Beam switching (slow and inconsistent, in Primehack at least; same goes from switching to any beam after firing a missile) - Beam doors (no reason to keep a beam door locked to one particular beam after the first time it's been opened; some doors don't even correspond to the beam a player would have likely been using to fight enemies in the room they're exiting) - Beam-specific pirates (see beam-switching above for the majority of the downside; otherwise, these enemies are overly plentiful and repetitive by nature) - Considerable backtracking (harder to justify when in a 3D space, as opposed to other Metroid titles in a 2D space; notable annoyances include more directions to remember in a 3D-plane and some platforming elements resetting) - Visors (Thermal and X-Ray Visors were quite unpleasant to look at for more than a minute at a time) - Separate missile refills and save stations/energy refils (why not fill everything up at a single save station?) - Half-Pipes (physics felt inconsistent and height was often lost after performing the same inputs as a previous set that worked) - Fission Metroids (self-explanatory) - Enemy respawning (not the fact that enemies respawn at all, but specifically that they will respawn before you've even left an area; many enemies will respawn if you're even 2 or 3 rooms away) - Timed puzzles (always annoying to get right to the end and have the timer expire) - Artifact Hunt in late-game (cheap padding at it's finest) - Lack of save stations/refills in Phazon Mines (already one of the hardest areas in the game, due to the number and variety of enemies) - Some music tracks (Frigate Orpheon, VS. Parasite Queen, VS. Space Pirates, and Phazon Mines in particular are horrible) This game is worth at least a good try for any action-adventure enjoyers, but I think fans should unstrap their rose-tinted goggles goggles over 20 years later and open their eyes to the less-than-perfect truth.