Metroid prime strikes me as very interesting because you can tell the designers really struggled with adapting the shooting and platforming of metroid in 3d on a controller. This struggle informed the rest of the design from the platform distances to the simon-says enemy design. In short, the game has platforming while fighting flying enemies which would be a pain to deal with on a control system like halo. Which is why the lock on was introduced. The lock on especially kneecaps the games' combat and in the first game particularly turns every boss fight into just mashing. There's no challenging platforming or movement mechanics like other metroids. tbf this is about as good as you can get to adapting the feel of something like super metroid in first person, but it doesn't hide the fact that the prime games are just very shallow first person shooters that don't really challenge the player in any meaningful way. Enter prime 3 which introduces motion controls that hugely streamline movement and combat. This collection adds motion controls to the first 2 games and further highlights just how mechanically vapid these games were. The removal of many skips from the gamecube version is also worth noting.

Reviewed on Dec 14, 2021


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