It's nice to finally play one of the most famous games in one of my favorite franchises.

I've been a huge fan of 2D Metroid ever since I first played Metroid Zero Mission back in 2012. I love almost all of them, and each one has a distinct rhythm to it that never fails to captivate me. I think a large part of it is due to Samus' kit being so iconic and fun to use. Power ups like the shine spark, screw attack, and morph ball all make it so that the act of controlling Samus never gets old.

When starting Prime I was really worried about how that flow would be affected in a 3D space. A Metroid game being good to me relies on 2 key factors, control and pacing. So seeing that the control was completely changed to be a first person shooter, I was nervous that the feeling of Samus would not be as solid as the 2D games. I was super wrong though.

Samus controls like an absolute dream in this game, and the added duel stick option in the Remastered easily makes this the definitive way to play the game. The new camera shift actually makes combat a lot of fun to engage with in this game, which the developers clearly knew because this Metroid game has a larger focus on combat. There are multiple different beam types that you can swap on the fly, which create a great sense of flow that you dont typically see from a Metroid game.

The main downside to this camera angle is that it doesn't really allow for some of my favorite upgrades like the speed booster or screw-attack to exist, but I was honestly ok with it for this game. Areas feel a lot less platforming heavy, and the added boost ball ability still made moving through areas a breeze. It had a bit of a learning curve, but by the end of the game the boost ball had joined the ranks of one of my favorite abilities in the series.

Moving on to that second criteria for a good Metroid game for me, the pacing of this game is utterly fantastic. The balance between finding new areas and backtracking to old ones is a very tricky one, and I think Prime mostly nails it. By the end of the game I knew each area like the back of my hand, and I never really tired of backtracking to them (until I attempted 100% but we'll get to that.)

The atmosphere and music are incredible too, which isnt a surprise since its fucking Metroid Prime. However, the part that surprised me the most was the story. I actually found myself really engaged with it, and the way it was told diagetically through using the scan visor was really damn smart. It brought me back to my first time exploring and scanning text on planets in Outer Wilds, which made me realize that the translator in that game was probably heavily inspired by Metroid Prime (same with the parallels between the Phazon and Ghost Matter tbh).

My only real complaint with the game came from a lack of QOL features with its map. Modern Metroid does a really good job of allowing you to mark areas on your map that you want to return to, and also showing you how many items are left in each area, which makes backtracking easier. Prime doesnt have anything like this, which makes the endgame grind for 100% extremely tedious and boring. The pacing of the game got completely destroyed in the last 2 hours of my session, mainly because I kept wandering around in circles looking for the last 5% of items.

Overall, there is a reason that Metroid Prime is an absolute classic and seen as the epitome of the series. While I don't enjoy it as much as some of my favorite 2D outings (Dread and Zero Mission), I do think it has quickly risen to being one of my favorite Metroidvanias of all time.

....I just really don't like what the Remastered did to Samus' face. It's in that state of the uncanny valley that I REALLY hate.