Metroid Prime/YMMV

"This is an Elite Space Pirate. Elite Space Pirate Description 3."
 * Anticlimax Boss: Metroid Prime itself in the first game. While the first part of the battle is quite challenging due to Prime's insanely high stamina and very prolonged length of the fight, the second phase is insanely easy, as the strategy is reduced to dodging shockwaves, switching visors and waiting for Prime to drop a batch of Phazon so you can zap him with it, rinse and repeat. While the latter spawns Metroids to hinder you, a power bomb and/or the phazon puddle beam makes quick work of them.
 * The last Metroid Hatcher in Corruption cannot be fought until you have the Nova Beam, which enables a one-hit-kill on all Metroids. You'll also have the X-Ray Visor by this point, which enables a One-Hit Kill on the Metroid Hatcher itself.
 * Demonic Spiders: Chozo ghosts in Prime, durable, resistant to everything but power beam, and they have a nasty habit of going invisible and moving. Though dealing with them becomes almost laughably easy once you get the X-ray visor and can track them even while they're warping.
 * Wave Troopers in the first Prime. Ice Troopers can easily be killed with the charged ice shot + missile trick, Power Troopers can be knocked around with Super Missiles, and the Plasma Beam is powerful enough to cut through Plasma Troopers. However, there's no easy way to deal with Wave Troopers; stunlocking them only works if there's one of them, the Wavebuster is Awesome but Impractical, and regular shots are very weak. On Hard, too many Wave Troopers spawning can easily screw you over during the Omega Pirate fight.
 * 8.8: In Gamespot's review of Corruption, points were deducted because the control scheme was so good that it made the game too easy, and that it wasn't Halo.
 * Ensemble Darkhorse: Rundas, the ice-based hunter from Corruption.
 * Ghor and Gandrayda, the other fellow hunters from Corruption, too. Of the eponymous Hunters, it is Sylux who gets the most attention, mainly to the lack of gender-specific pronouns while addressing it, as well as its Mysterious Past and ill-will towards the Galactic Federation (and Samus by proxy). The most prevalent theories are that.
 * The Rezbits, in spite of their irritating behavior, from Echoes as well, for being a fun enemy with a cool design and a creative attack.
 * Admiral Dane seems to be gaining popularity, where he is generally considered more likable than Adam. His Large Ham tendencies and being a Cool Old Guy helps. The Memetic Mutation surrounding his arrival on the Pirate homeworld and Memetic Badass that ensued as a result certainly help.
 * Fanon Discontinuity: Many fans act like Hunters never happened.
 * Fridge Brilliance/Hilarious in Hindsight: Given the events in the first Prime, there was way too little time for the Pirates to truly reverse-engineer Samus' beam weapons realistically. Then Zero Mission came out, and the sealed beam weapon turns out to be the Plasma Beam. The Pirates were working off the weapons she used during her assault on their Zebes base!
 * How did the Chozo manage to hide power-ups for Samus' armor on every planet she happens to visit? They were a hyper-advanced civilization who could see the future, that's how. The Prime logs tell a cohesive story about why Samus finds power-ups wherever she goes, involving ascendancy of the Chozo and their foretelling her arrival: All the upgrades and information left on Tallon IV were specifically left there for her. In Corruption, the Chozo are said to give technology to other races as gifts. Indeed, some upgrades are found in shrines and one was even near a "friendship monument" between the Chozo and Bryyonians.
 * The later also explains why there are so many places around the area requiring Samus' tech to navigate. The native species recieved them from the Chozo as a gift and used them themselves, naturally the one Samus finds is useful in pretty much every Chozo contacted planet she goes to.
 * Another one involving the Chozo: notice how their logs at one point mention "anyone who defiles our holy places shall know our wrath, unfettered and raw." There are a couple of possible exceptions, but those Nightmare Fuel infused Chozo ghosts show up almost exclusively in areas that were considered sacred to the Chozo. This might even imply that even in when stuck in limbo, and after having becoming quite violent, there's still something of their original selves left.
 * Why did Samus go to Aether again? Because the Federation received a distress signal from its marines. Why were the marines on Aether again? They were chasing a signal they intercepted from the Space Pirates. How did they intercept that signal? Dark Samus destroyed the Pirates' jamming apparatus. What does Samus do once she's on Aether? She unlocks, defeats the guardians and generally frees the way to all the most Phazon-rich areas on the planet. Echoes was an entire plot by Dark Samus to get Samus to deal with the Ing while Dark Samus just strolled right behind her and snarfed down all the Phazon it could find.
 * If Dark Samus had not done these things, Samus would not have gone to Aether, which means the Ing would have succeeded in replacing Aether with Dark Aether, bringing about the total destruction of all life on Aether and the Luminoth. After Samus won, Dark Samus decided to step it up and just take over the Space Pirates so she could use them as Mooks.
 * Fridge Horror: The Ing could have possessed Samus at any moment between her landing and her seizing the Energy Transfer Module. That, mixed in with Back From the Brink above, means that the Ing were defeated through sheer blind luck.
 * Considering this, remember that Ing Possession generally makes the host more powerful. Imagine a horde of Ing overrunning the galaxy in a fleet of hijacked Luminoth, GF, Space Pirate, and (thanks to Samus' gunship) Chozo tech. With a possessed, even stronger than usual Samus leading the army. The galaxy wouldn't stand a ghost of a chance.
 * Before the second Dark Samus fight (taking place on a huge tower), you can look out the window and see two Phazon crates on a ledge. After the fight, a weakened Dark Samus falls off the tower. When you come back down, the crates are gone...
 * Game Breaker: The Plasma Beam would be this if it wasn't for the fact that many late game enemies are immune to it. It still destroys anything you may fight before then, though.
 * In Echoes, the Light Suit and Annihilator Beam completely destroy the threat posed by Dark Aether, to the point where it's actually safer than Light Aether.
 * Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Much of the Japanese series' fanbase is based in America, which might be why the 3D revival of the series was given to an American development studio.
 * Also, the series had a great deal of critical acclaim in America, but was poorly received in Japan. This can probably be explained by how Japan doesn't hold the FPS genre in high regard.
 * Goddamned Bats: Among many other enemies, the titular entities certainly fall into this category, particularly in their last appearance in Metroid Prime before the final boss.
 * Good Bad Bugs: Apparently, the team didn't think players would try to scan the projectiles from the Omega Pirate's cannons.


 * The Scan Dash, which lets you get the Space Jump as soon as you land on Tallon IV as well as an early Plasma Beam, and, when Meta-Ridley lands while his wings are still functional, a Boost Ball to the chest will ground him. These two were removed from the Player's Choice and Trilogy versions of Prime.
 * Hell Is That Noise: The screech the Chozo Ghosts make.
 * Internet Backdraft: Metroid's transition to 3D and to first person, and Echoes' inclusion of multiplayer. Also brewed up flame wars over whether the Prime series are a first person shooter or an adventure.
 * Memetic Badass: "Admiral Dane is so tough he can stand in acid rain and not get hurt". Note that he does this by using a spaceship as an umbrella.
 * Memetic Mutation: Science team has vapor for brains.
 * "That seems... inefficient."
 * Most Annoying Sound: Whatever that noise is when you lose one of the Demo Troopers in Corruption's Escort Mission.
 * For the skittish types, it also doubles as incredibly creepy.
 * Most Wonderful Sound: The "recording to logbook" voice, at least for completionists, as well as the item collection fanfare, which is this for any Metroid fan.
 * My Real Daddy: After Metroid: Other M completely splintered the fanbase, there's a part of the fanbase who consider Retro Studios the better contributor to the series than Yoshio Sakamoto.
 * Paranoia Fuel: On your way to the seeker missiles in Prime 3, you pass through a bunch of stasis tanks containing metroids, knowing full well that you may have to free them when you get the item. Helpfully, when you do release them, they try to kill you with your own genre savviness.
 * Player Punch:
 * Ruined FOREVER/Tainted by the Preview: Metroid Prime was the first victim of this in the series, what with it being a FPS Metroid. This was most of the fan response to Prime between when it was announced in 2000 and when it was released in 2002. Then the game came out, and people changed their minds significantly.
 * Scrappy Level: Phendrana Drifts in Prime and Torvus Bog in Echoes count for some. The lowest level in Phazon Mines in Prime may count as well; it depends on the player's skill and how quickly it occurs to them to turn on the Thermal Visor, though it also depends if they're playing the EU version where it's impossible to avoid being damaged by the security drones. Metroid Prime Trilogy making the first two games a bit easier fixes the problem all around.
 * The Crashed Frigate in Prime. Irritating enemies? Check. Numerous 'door energizing' puzzles? Check. A massive water area with no warning that you need the Gravity Suit until after you fall down the Reactor Core, necessitating a long, long, long, long, long, long, LONG, LONG, LONG platforming sequence with clumsy controls just to get out? Check
 * Great music though.
 * Scrappy Mechanic: One-off scans. These are always irritating when searching for the fabled 100% completion, particularly when they're things you'd never expect or parts of bosses. Echoes improved things a little for bosses by telling you what percentage of the boss' scans you had, but still had a few easily-missed ones like the infamous Ing Webtrap.
 * Corruption and all the Trilogy rereleases carry over scans from one playthrough to the next, alleviating some of the frustration.
 * As far as Echoes goes, the entirety of Dark Aether can be very overwhelming: At the start of the game, Samus loses health incredibly quickly whenever she's outside a safezone, and the safezones need to be triggered manually to remain active. This causes the Dark Aether sequences to turn into a series of mad dashes from one safezone to the next, carefully waiting one run after the other so that Samus' health can regenerate between battles. Thankfully, the Dark Suit alleviates the speed at which Samus loses her health, but the constant loss of health still contributes at least partially to the below-mentioned Boost Guardian's difficulty.
 * Also from Echoes, all beams except for the standard Power Beam require ammo. This makes it a little aggravating when enemies and boxes shot with the Dark Beam leave behind ammo for the Light Beam and vice versa. In areas like Dark Aether where pretty much every enemy is vulnerable to the Light Beam and the Dark Beam is almost useless, this can lead to huge frustration when you run out of ammo for it and can't pick up any more. The Annihilator Beam even uses up both kinds of ammo (though thankfully, enemies had a chance of dropping both kinds of ammo upon defeat with it). This mechanic was removed from Corruption and only missiles required ammunition.
 * Undocumented (in either the game or the manual) fact: you can shoot any of the many containers lying around with one kind of ammo and pick up some of the other. Switch ammos, hit another, repeat.
 * Special Effect Failure: In the original NTSC version of Prime, the Sheegoth boss is introduced in a scene that makes Samus' model invisible so it can walk out into the room impressively. This works right up until the Sheegoth tries to attack the invisible Samus while the cutscene is still going on. Obviously it didn't get the memo.
 * There is a mirror in one of Chozo Ruins's rooms, which has a pixelated "reflection" of Samus. In reality, it's just a barely animated pre-rendered sprite. Then again, it could have been impressive when the GC version came out, but the freedom of movement the arm cannon has in the Trilogy rerelease makes it a bit too noticeable.
 * Tainted by the Preview: Prime being 3D had a mixed reception from fans (it - mostly - ceased when the game got released).
 * Tear Jerker: In Corruption,.
 * That One Boss: Thardus, Omega Pirate, Spider Guardian, Mogenar... And Ridley is hardly a fair fight, in any game.
 * Hilariously enough, the Pirate Commander is one of the easiest bosses on lower difficulties and one of the hardest bosses on Hypermode difficulty. Worse yet, if you lose you have to do the Escort Mission over again.
 * The Boost Guardian from Echoes is probably the most infamous boss. It's probably ended more games than all the others combined.
 * The Spider Guardian also gets plenty of hatred
 * Rundas throws a bunch of hard-hitting and hard-to-dodge attacks, while Samus is only at maybe 3 Energy Tanks.
 * That One Puzzle: A bunch. The Seeker puzzle in Echoes, the de-energized doors in Prime, and that awful rotating tower in Prime.
 * They Changed It, Now It Sucks: What every fan's reaction was when Metriod Prime was shown to be a FPS type game. Nowadays, only a Vocal Minority will still shout the trope name.
 * Including multiplayer for Metroid Prime 2 and making Metroid Prime Hunters focus more on multiplayer had many fans up in arms.
 * When Trilogy was released, it was shown that the particle effects when you charged your beam before firing was removed from the game. Word of God states that it was too buggy to make it work correctly due to the new control scheme allowing players to move the arm canon in many angles (Primes 1 and 2 had the arm canon move very little, which was what the particle effects were coded on). Of course, fans complained about the change.
 * They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The eponymous hunters from Metroid Prime Hunters would have been a lot more memorable if their backstories actually had any impact on the main plot.
 * Uncanny Valley: Gandraya. Aside from her creepy humanoid appearance, there's also the scene where she.
 * Samus' face in the first two Prime games was accused of this as well.
 * Visual Effects of Awesome: Two major ones in Prime; bright lights actually reflecting Samus face in her suit visor, and the fact that when you turn on the X-Ray visor, you can actually see the bones in Samus' arms. Not only can you see Samus' hand in Prime, but you can clearly see that her hand takes the shape depicted for each Beam mode; a clever addition.
 * When using the Ice Beam with the Thermal Visor on, your gun is blue-red-purple instead of orange. Because its the Ice Beam. And the ice shots themselves are black. That's some hardcore cold.
 * Not to mention the entire Arm Cannon freezing over when you charge a shot.
 * The reflections of Samus' face in Prime 3 are also pretty well done, and as the game goes on her reflection changes to a point where it becomes unrecognizable.
 * The games ran on a heavily modified version of the Unreal Engine 2, notorious for rarely going over 30 FPS. All three games run at a consistent 60 FPS, crossing over into Genius Programming.
 * The games ran on a heavily modified version of the Unreal Engine 2, notorious for rarely going over 30 FPS. All three games run at a consistent 60 FPS, crossing over into Genius Programming.