people keep wanting to dig deeper and deeper into undertale, its metatextuality becomes an all-consuming force in which all themes of undertale have to be about undertale because undertale is about undertale, but no!!!! the game has things to say about stuff other than itself and i’d argue that its only interested in itself as a metaphor for much more material themes. it juxtaposes treating the game as a lived in world full of characters versus treating the game as pile of content not to say “treating games as piles of content is bad” but as a metaphor about why living out our, like, actual lives as strictly instrumental is bad.

readings of it being exclusively or even primarily about fandom or the way we interact with games are so limiting. It's such a loving and emotionally honest game and reducing it to a snake eating its own tail makes me sad.

+this and re4 make gcn the go-to for best-of-all-time tank controls. obviously it's cheating a little bit here since you can toggle into strafing at any time, but I think it accurately captures the feeling of super metroid: just a wee bit clunky, but satisfying in its own way.
+another gcn-era relic: cutting-edge visuals on nintendo hardware. part of this is because of smart constraints on room sizes, but even bigger areas never drop in quality. runs at a smooth 60fps too!
+incorporating samus' visor into the UI is done so effectively and effortlessly that I'm surprised more developers haven't keyed in on this. it helps establish her sense of identity even without dialogue, and the reflection of her face in the glass is always stunning.
+having the temple + artifacts open from the get-go was a really smart choice. I didn't run into that many before the endgame but whenever I found one early I felt rather accomplished!
+hint system was honestly a smart move here. there's a lot of jumping back and forth between regions, and with the map not giving a lot of insight into where various "locks" are placed, it was good to get some insight into next steps.
+the morph ball translates so perfectly into 3D that I'm shocked they got it first try. legitimately fun to roll around in it, and including bomb jumping puzzles was a neat addition.
+environmental variety is absolutely on point, especially when it comes to memorable landmarks. I suppose part of this is because about half of the rooms in the game are loading hallways (god did my wii sound like it was choking playing this) but even revisiting old areas I never felt lost or confused at my location. each chunk of each region realizes an internal narrative and relation to the world around it that really hits the mark, especailly in phendrana drifts.
+I was surprised at how well the platforming was handled in this game, especially since the gravity jump boots are obtained so early on. given how constrainted the field of view is it's surprising how natural it feels. being able to switch to strafing in the air is also a clever moves on the devs part.
+scanning is such an inspired addition, both in that it's highly optional and yet allows for easy story-telling potential without moving into proper cutscene territory. the space pirates' commitment to methodical and structured evil is a little too on-the-nose, but their legitimate fear of samus and their own observations of tallon iv yield a surprising amount of depth. being able to scan enemies to quickly understand their behavior is an excellent strategy for a game like this as well.
+overall the first half is meticulously crafted and perfectly captures metroid's solemn exploration in 3D. gaining insight into the death of the chozo's civilization, wandering their ruins, solving small puzzles, and encountering each new area without significant threat is almost relaxing, which I rarely experience in first-person shooters.
+I honestly prefer having puzzles for most obtainable items rather than the more common movement-based challenges of the 2D series. there are so many unique contraptions around tallon iv that encourage creativity and experimentation!
+frigate orpheon is an all-time classic game opening, and such a smart way to acclimate the player to the controls before their kit is wrested away from them.

-a defining part of metroid to me is the power scaling: the annoyances you'd face traversing through hallways of creepy-crawlies melts away when you can tear through whole areas with the space jump and the screw attack. enemies are temporary obstacles in most cases to avoid backtracking from becoming stale. here, the game will throw stronger enemies into certain rooms as the game progresses, and you lack the same sort of all-encompassing firepower as in previous iterations. makes backtracking more of an annoyance than it should be.
-beam-switching is a core mechanic in the second half of the game and I hate it. if switching were snappier I would be less opposed, but it's cumbersome and sometimes unresponsive. it also inordinately unbalances enemies: ice pirates are trivial to eliminate since they can be frozen, but the regular beam pirates only take damage from your standard pea shooter, and thus are much harder to deal with. having to switch them constantly for doors is a bit of a hassle too.
-power bombs are effectively useless outside of opening doors. so much wasted potential. in the room right after you get them there's four security turrets that seem to imply the power bomb would be useful, and yet they aren't!
-late game pacing really suffers. there's a point where you get the x-ray visor, the power bomb, and the grapple hook back-to-back, and it makes it difficult to tell what should be used next. this is esp an issue for x-ray visor: there really needed to be a way to tell when it should be used to find hidden platforms (looking at you metroid quarantine A)
-having to return to the temple to get more hints for the artifact hunt is unquestionably a timewaster. making a full round trip to collect everything would have been much more satisfying than having to do it in two.
-the map really needed better visualization of where various locks are. there's too much to commit to memory!
-x-ray visor as a whole... was this supposed to be used to locate hidden items? because for the most part walking around with it on made me feel like I couldn't see two feet in front of my face. this is something that also should have been included in the map! tho I got 66% which is def better than some of the other metroid games I've played.
-boost ball sucks to use imo. takes a while to charge, and the game is really picky in the half-pipes about not having your thumb on the analog stick when you release the boost
-strafe-dash feels unresponsive. imo it comes down to controller limitation, since having it overide strafe-jumping is annoying and it would have made a lot more sense with a dedicated button (making it accessible without lock-on).
-not a single good boss. every single one far wears out its welcome, lacks moveset variety, and forces the player to wait around to open its weak point. ridley may be the most offensive one to me: he's always been a total slugfest, fire off your weaponry as fast as possible and dodge when you can. here I felt like I spent so much of his fight waiting for his mouth to be open or for him to fly closer to the ground.
-the special moves for each beam type are not very useful in combat given how easily they can miss and how long they take to charge up. wavebuster I at least used on wave pirates occasionally (even though they chug missiles like crazy), but I never used the ones for ice or plasma in a practical setting.

I wasn't sure how to structure this review initially... to tell the truth, I picked this game up much more seriously after a series of anxiety attacks led me to quit smoking weed cold turkey. this has been my rock as I've dealt with the withdrawal symptoms, and my daily accompaniment to relax the onset of anxiety, restlessness, insomnia, and constant aches and pains. it's also a game that is deeply nostalgic to me, as my dad played this series regularly when I was a child, and I often would poke around each one myself. I was never adept enough as a child to progress much further than chozo ruins, but returning now made me feel at home, able to absorb myself into samus as we push through a vast wilderness filled with quiet contemplation.

the above is why the second half saddens me so much: every qualm and quibble I have came into such sharp focus as the finish line drew near. it doesn't surprise me -- it's in a long line of obviously-rushed nintendo titles from the GCN era, and retro especially is known for their egregiously poor work policies and crunch -- but it left such a sour taste in my mouth that I can't help but document all of the annoyance and frustration it heaped upon me as I've physically recovered. I can hardly call it a bad game, but it's a shame that the joy this game brought me in the last week has been blotted out by other aspects that perhaps didn't need to overshadow how quintessential the start was. regardless, finally having this game behind me feels like a bit of a turning point, and I can't help but feel almost giddy having two more of these to play in the upcoming months.

no schmovement + linear + cringe + ratio

Prime takes its series to new heights in atmosphere, environmental storytelling and polish, but also sacrifices a little too much of Super Metroid's sweaty energy and genius level design structure for my tastes. Morphballing over bumpy terrain, side-stepping around Space Pirates and double jumping between platforms is fun, but is it as fun as it could be when every room is a tiny self-contained box? It sucks ass how you can get the Ice Beam, see eight Ice Beam doors on your map and then realize that seven of them are dead ends.

The wide-eyed little gamer in me hopes Retro will take inspiration from more loosey-goosey schmovement sandbox FPS games like Quake, Titanfall 2 or Halo Infinite for Prime 4. As it stands though, I can appreciate this more rigid Ocarina of Time-style take on Metroid for what it is!