A truly great game marred by lockups, stuttery framerates in critical moments, and stupid boss fights. I played through all of normal mode, and most of hard mode.

First the good:

The graphics, sounds and interface are all excellent, with a few exceptions. Rolling into a ball and the few short ball maze areas are great fun, I could play an entire game of just that.

Samus' shriek as she dies is entertaining, which is good because you are going to hear it quite a bit. Much is made of her near-invulnerability and nifty suit, but I am here to tell you, they are practically useless against the enemies in this game, which I suppose is as it should be. Making a game with an invulnerable main character would be somewhat pointless, but by making her so strong they then have to make the game exceedingly difficult to provide any real challenge.

The jumping puzzles are fine, as good as they can be in any FPS. I hope we don't see too many more platform-style fps games, because it gets tedious, but Metroid handles this just fine. I also liked the design of the creatures, they were varied and interesting. The space pirates looked a little wierd, it took me awhile before I could figure out some of their features, but they are tough opponents. I even liked the design of all of the bosses, including the ones that frustrated me so much near the end of the game.

The sound effects are quite nice, and memorable. I can't get the sound of nearby items out of my head after playing MP all day. The weapon sound effects are also very good. I also love the sound of the morphing-into-the-ball effect.

The bad:

The music is grating and I turned it off fairly early on. The only songs that didn't annoy me very much were the Main title screens and the Tallon Overworld theme. Everything else gets painful after awhile, and since you run through the same 5 or 6 areas over and over and over you will probably do like I did and just turn it off. The boss battle music specifically is fucking horrid.

The boss battles themselves range between entertaining and infuriating. This may be true to Metroid's roots, but perhaps the transition to a first person perspective aggravates it or something. All I know is, the final few bosses are just cheap. The Omega Pirate in particular is the hardest boss in the game, as he can just absorb anything you fire at him, with a few short gaps between the shield he projects and the violence he inflicts on you, whether it be pummeling you directly or at range.

Its frustrating moving through an entire game with some moments of difficulty just to reach a boss battle that is made to stretch playtime not stretch fun. Artificially extending the length of a game by making you fight through the same 3 boss battles a countless number of times is not good gameplay, its lazy programming.

The game does have glitches, it locked up on me a couple random spots, and looked like it was going to do it in others before snapping back to normal.

The framerate is anything but smooth in a few key battles, and when you are fighting for your life the last thing you want to do is squint through choppy framerate.

The idea that you will only encounter certain monsters or loggable items once and then never again is somewhat frustrating as you can make every effort to be thorough, but if you miss just one you get to start over entirely. This doesn't sound too bad, until you hit the end of the game and realize you forgot to scan a certain wasp in the first boss fight of the game. =

Much was also made of the seamless world, moving from place to place without loading times. This is hogwash, as the game will make you stand in front of a closed door while it loads the room ahead of you and empties the room behind you. And the elevators between areas (which is a lame idea in and of itself) are just dressed up loading screens.

I am disappointed in Metroid Prime, as it came so close to being such a great game. Late-game laziness and the few glitches here and there really put the lie to all of the great flawless game of the year reviews out there. I am sure some will call this review a troll, but its just disappointment in a game that came so close, has been lauded by so many, but falls short.