I felt like Federation Force was one of those games I had to play online before the 3DS shut down, because its reputation among Metroid fans intrigued me. It was tough since everyone I asked to play it with wasn't interested, couldn't do it, didn't have the time, or straight up flaked out. It's mostly understandable, but it still hurts my feelings. Fortunately for me, rito and some strangers online were crazy enough to join me so that I could experience the game as it was intended.

Yeah, you can definitely tell Nintendo dropped this to shut up the Metroid fans. I wanted to like this game because the concept of a 4 player Metroid is interesting, but instead it feels half-assed. If you want to be put to sleep, play this game's missions and you'll be knocked out. Nothing cool ever happens. You just get dropped into a planet, do some lame puzzles, shoot some shit and watch boring cutscenes. The shooting doesn't fare much better. The stiff controls and weird aiming (which is something you shouldn't have in a first-person shooter) just makes the experience more dull than it needs to be, and I probably would have been more lenient to Federation Force if the shooting aspect was fun and moving didn't feel like your suit was filled with fuckin' cement. The game isn't worth playing for $40, let alone zero.

there's just not much to this game for me. it controls pretty weirdly, the missions are at their best okay and at their worst really tedious and unfun. it doesn't help that it's all we got from metroid after a pretty hefty hiatus but I don't agree with the "if it was a new IP/not metroid it would be regarded better!" sentiment I've seen because I think it's just a straight up boring and not very good fps game. not the worst thing in the world and most games are fine with friends but absolutely nothing to write home about.

I couldn’t finish this one, I’m sorry. I played this not too long after Prime Hunters, and I just couldn’t get through another game around as bad as that one. Granted, this time it was for totally different reasons; it controls worlds better, it doesn’t cause me physical pain, and its enemies aren’t quite as repetitive. It’s just that this game bored me almost to tears. I got through the first five missions and realized how little fun I was having, and that made me realize I don’t care enough to finish it. I really tried, but I have too much self-respect to continue playing.

Having not completed the game, I can’t comment in detail on most of it. Judging by what I was able to find online, I didn’t even get through a third, and the thought of playing more than three times as much as what I’ve already played makes me a bit sick. Having said that, I’ll go over what I disliked so much about the parts I did play.

The biggest problem with this game is its steadfast refusal to do anything interesting whatsoever without shooting itself in the foot. There’s a bit where you have to lure some giant monsters into cages, but they have finicky AI and it’s really irritating. The game rewards you for completing missions quickly, but it’s nigh-on impossible to do so on your first go round while also completing the bonus objective and scoring enough points for the completion time bonus to actually earn you an extra badge. There’s no way in HELL I’m replaying any of these missions, so the idea of going back to try for a better score is a bit moot. The game has a loadout system, but it rarely matters much what you take at the start because everything you need is obtainable in the level itself. There’s a perk system, but one of your perks is pretty much always taken up by the “extra stats if you’re solo” badge, the second slot didn’t feel especially impactful on its own, and the third slot isn’t obtained until incredibly late in the game, at least on a solo playthrough.

The combat here is just boring. It’s mostly the same as the console Prime games, without any of the interesting enemy design those games occasionally have, and without the atmosphere, exploration, and navigation that makes those games enjoyable in spite of their basic ass combat. It’s not even a particularly well-presented game, with a flat, generic chibi visual style, and a forgettable soundtrack.

Exploration is pretty much nonexistent thanks to the generous map and mission-based structure of the game. You don’t collect powerups that meaningfully change how you play as you go through the game. The world structure is as simple as it gets, and level design is super linear for the most part, with nary a shortcut to speak of.

It’s true this game is designed around co-op, but a game designed for multiple players that’s not even slightly fun when played solo isn’t a game worth playing co-op. Eventually it’ll become much harder to play co-op once online features become unavailable, so this point will also be rendered moot in time.

There’s just not much to say about this game other than that it sucks, and you probably shouldn’t bother with it. It does nothing notably right, lacks the Metroid series staples that even Hunters didn’t completely butcher, and is overall just kind of a worthless game. If it weren’t a Metroid game, I would feel the same about it, but the fact that resources were wasted on this instead of an actually interesting Metroid title stings a little extra. I don’t care at this point whether it’s better or worse than Hunters, all I know is I’m just too bored by it to even finish it, which is the most damning criticism I can give.