The opening here does a great job at getting the mood of a horror game. Abandoned, clearly ransacked spaces and building dread. The game never really approaches a sense of mood that controlled again, and I think that's a slight shame. Past the opening, the exploration is the clear highlight, with lots of sequence breaking opportunities, and a pretty open map that can be exploited well. I loved the feeling near the beginning of being dropped into a massive map, with no real guidance of where to go and in what order. I think there's pretty big issues that hold it back a bit though.

Speaking of pretty big, you're huge. Samus' hitbox is massive, and it only further encourages you to just tank through all of the pretty middling boss encounters, which is still almost always the optimal strategy. The tool switching is annoying, and the movement is a little stiff, particularly with wall jumping being really annoying to pull off with any consistency. I think it's really a testament to the great visuals and fun hidden secret finding (which doesn't require you to shoot in the dark a bunch for the first time because of the visor) that I still think this is a really solid game despite all of its issues.