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I have just gotten the Power Bombs.

Currently: Ankle-deep in mechanical moans and groans, cutting the tension with a knife deep inside the hostile catacombs of Phazon Mines,...

and ultimately,...

... wondering why I've only played through this game a few times, waiting in a dusty Save Room.

Damn, Phazon Mines is one of the best levels. It's the most tense and strenuous level I've played in anything in a long time, almost reminds me of Resident Evil in some ways. I want to stop because I've done so much, but I just can't.

Damn, this really is a AAA game. It's been so long.

And, thus, I enter... endgame.

Something moved. What was that noise? Is something coming? I don't feel too safe walking down this dank corridor ..... wait, how many missiles do I have? Do I have enough? I haven't found a missile supplement in a while ..... should I keep going? Will a Metroid pop out at me? Do I really have enough missiles? Is it worth it to run back to the ship and recharge, or should I just blast a few enemies and hope for a few refills? What if oh God a Metroid AHHHHHH.......

Questions like these attack the first-time Metroid Prime player on all fronts without mercy. At the outset, intrepid bounty hunter Samus Aran touches down on the planet Tallon IV to a cold reception from the local sparse vegetation. Seeing only one direction to go in, you must wend your way through what initially appears to be a single-path cavern. However, the road quickly splits into paths culminating with lava, new areas, and ultimately terror. Once the trusty path diverges, the player loses all sense of gut instinct and direction. That mental divining rod snaps in two, the mouth goes slack, and you have no words to explain the sudden shutdown of half of your brain.

Ah, Metroid Prime. It shouldn't have even happened, I would have thought. From the get-go, it was looking to be terrible. Taking an exploration platformer and turning into what would have been a game-breaking format, and having some unknown American company that nobody ever heard of make the whole damn game,...

I can't believe it. I doubt even Nintendo developers themselves could have done a much better job at something like this.

Uh, well, yeah. I'm about 4 hours into Metroid Prime, just picked the Ice Beam up, and I'm doing pretty well. Over 100 missles, all necessary Morph Ball augments, the Varia suit, Wave Beam, Thermal Visor, Super Missiles, Wavebuster, and a few other things.

It's making me remember why Metroid Prime was such a hit in the first place.

I just finished Metroid Fusion, and I've already touched down on Tallon IV in Prime.

It took two days, that was because I started it, got into Sector 2, and left the rest for today. My time was 3:03. My time for Super Metroid wasn't that far past that, either.