Well, the important advantage BotW has/had is that it’s chiefly openworld, not the kind of claustrophobic puzzlemaze that Metroids have done, and actually when BotW tried to do dungeoneering it fell on its ass
Trying to be both intense of level design and non-prescriptive is challenging basically everyone still
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Sorry, to be specific I mean the applicability of abilities outside of “tiles” - previously climbing used the hookshot on “hookshot points,” whereas in BotW supports the verb everywhere except one specific kind of surface. Metroid Prime follows that Ocarina of Time convention e.g. spiderball may be used on spiderball tracks. I would be very excited to see them move to a more simulationist model.
BotW still has hard (lateral) progression gates behind the spells and harsh environments so I think they could apply it to Metroid environments. They might even have more processing power to play with if it’s primarily subterranean.
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not sure where they fall on the axis of artifice vs nature but one of my favourite things in metroid prime are the bombus. they seem well fitted to all the shafts and tunnels that for better or worse constitute much of the gameworld, plus purely geometric enemies just rule
a cool detail i didn’t notice for a while: they become electrically attracted toward you while you hold down the button for a charged shot
(oh yeah pic 1 is an example of a structure that has absolutely no right to exist, but i love it just for being such a cool, stylish, fluid transient vignette)
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one thing i’ll give it is there was that surprise tunneling centipede boss early on which gives you the charge beam upgrade, where if you didn’t kill it the first time, there were several different places where it could reemerge and attack you again. implementation was w/e but i liked the idea of a roaming enemy that didn’t have to follow the map layout you used, to spice up exploration
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Smarter probably wasn’t the best world, and it’s a larger topic than I want to delve into, but I consistently found entries like Super, ZM, and AM2R more fun to explore than other entries in the series, even if they’re not necessarily better. I think some of it comes down to the combat design, which can be a slog in 3D and SR, and is punishing by design in Fusion. I also find the gridlike tile structure easier to intuit and more interesting in puzzles than the 3D style of scanning things. Sorry if that’s not a very useful definition!
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imago 
is really the only thing i like about zero mission. insects are one of my fav things about metroid and the recurring imago appearances are one of the only parts of zero mission that feels like it builds well off fusion, where the worms undergo a similar metamorphosis 
. i’m sure there’s similar stuff in some of the others but idk, i cant remember any of it
fusion is the best
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the final boss of Metroid Prime: Federation Force is big samus (see here)… what does this mean for prime 4?
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What a concept and “shoot the ball for 10 minutes.”
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fed force is very committed to the blast ball concept. you blast so many balls. blast them alone or with friends. blast them into bowls, into goals, into holes — blast them balls into smithereens. just the hottest place to get your ball blasting action fix
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Samus Returns is currently the 4th best selling game on the 3DS eShop, just behind Pokemon Bank (???), Pokemon Crystal, and Team Kirby Clash Deluxe.
Following that, Super Metroid is at 37th, Metroid 2 is at 46th, Metroid 1 is at 78th, and Metroid Prime: Federation Force is at 311th place.
Truly, the market cannot abide the blasting of balls.
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Bigger Samus Theory
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the coolest thing about zero mission is how it sanctions sequence breaking, but this also kind of ruins sequence breaking.
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Super Metroid including walljump as a mechanic and then never actually requiring it outside an animal tutorial area, and having upper norfair damage you pretty fast but not that fast without Varia, is sanction already it just doesn’t rub your nose in it
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The problem comes down to why we need to break away from a sequence in the first place. If we approached a model of creating a pointillistic set of sequences that make up and equally validate the overall arc of the game, then there would be little need to sanction any sequence to convey the overall theme of the game.
The solution then lies with how to encrypt such shifts that are memorable and symbolic without being contrived of such deviations from one sequence to the other.
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While we’re on the subject, what’s with the Mercurysteam games adding doors that only open with the charge beam. Now it’s another hard lock and key instead of an optional combat tool.
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The charge beam doors feel like they exist to throw off your groove.
Like, literally, I’m not even joking. They feel like punctuation in a way that the other beam doors and missile doors don’t. You’re almost always going to hit them with an uncharged shot first, and then stand in place for a second to charge a proper shot. That pause they make you do adds an anticipatory beat to the game. (IIRC usually there’s either something modestly significant behind them, or they act as a latch to a one-sided door.)
I think this is what we get after rejecting the gospel of the 5-missile door.
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I mean super metroid did this with both super missile and power bomb doors, and prime added plasma/ice/fire doors too 
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man it was dumb how power bombs would open power bomb doors, but not regular doors, even though bombs did, and power bomb doors would turn into regular doors after you opened them once
i blame this for why i didn’t figure out the glass tube
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It only made sense in NES Metroid really. Missiles open all doors, bombs break all blocks, period. And your regular beam breaks all the same blocks, it’s simply that you can’t aim down.
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