4/5 ★ – caleb_mercer's review of Metroid: Zero Mission.

Unfortunately I have not played the original NES Metroid so I can't rate Zero Mission as a remake, but I can definitely rate it on its own merit. Zero Mission is the Metroid formula at it's simplest. Its a great scaffolding for the rest of the series to build from. My favorite aspect of gathering new power ups and backtracking was discovering a solution to something I wasn't even aware was a problem. For example, when I got the Varia suit and was able to go in acid without taking damage I hadn't even considered that there were several hidden paths in the acid. The art is really great to look at, and I didn't notice even the slightest of graphical glitches or bugs in general. My only two complaints would be the fight with Mother Brain and the epilogue. To be frank, the Mother Brain fight is way harder than it needs to be; and not in a fun way. The epilogue has a lot of stealth which is not what any of the rest of the game (or franchise) is about, it's a big change and not all that fun. A smaller complaint is that as Zero Suit Samus you just approach small gaps to crawl under them automatically, but this can create frustration when you are just trying to back up to a wall for a jump and you end up crawling into a tunnel. These are relatively small complaints in the scope of the game though. Otherwise, Zero Mission really is a fantastic game. I completed it on a blind playthrough in 3:59:33 with a 57% item collection rate.