Metroid Prime Federation Force Deserves to be Remembered 

Everyone has a different experience on the internet, so I don’t want to make it out like you’re wrong for feeling this way. I do want to say that from my personal experience, I’ve consistently seen a persistent and intense hatred for this game even within the context of judging it as a spin-off game. The cancellation petition shown at 1:13 indicates more than a simple lack of interest to me. Merely sharing this video online has shown me a wealth of negative feedback on other sites, yet no negativity here on the video itself. I’ve not yet received any dislikes or negative comments on the video itself, only on posts sharing the video. That indicates, to me, that many of the people sharing negative feedback couldn’t even bothered to click on the video or watch it. They just saw “Federation Force” and responded negatively. From my experience, that seems to be the experience with discussing this game online. It may not have been what people wanted at the time, but I think especially now with the series well and alive I think everyone should try this game.

@@FlatulentFetus ah well dang that sucks , imagine hating mario rpg because it's not a sidescrolling platformer

​@iamLI3 the problem with Mario rpg is that if feels bad to play. Story is fun and they got the combat system right eventually with superstar saga, so it has a place in Mario history. IMO of course.

I'm not reading all of that (sorry, I had to do the meme)

Thanks bunches! This video was very experimental for me and went through a good amount of re-drafting and learning video editing and production. Right after posting the video I found myself regretting numerous things. Like when I’m talking about Planet Excelcion I say the environments outside of the facilities isn’t very memorable, yet there’s this outstanding ice structure on-screen while I say this. I was perhaps too harsh on that and on the game’s music. Listening to the tracks outside of playing the game as I edited made me end up appreciating much of the music far more than I did when I scripted the segment on music. There was about 5 months between scripting and editing so I actually had a much more positive perspective on certain things that I was initially more neutral on. I feel I could have said a lot more than I did, such as the many cut segments. I initially had segments discussing things like the game’s Box Art, but I completely accidentally skipped right over it in the editing process. I also wanted to discuss my initial exposure and first impressions with this game at launch, but straight up forgot to include that as well. One big thing I learned from making this video was that you’re always going to have a million little things that you’ll notice about your own work. I have to just pay no mind to the things I’d change and remind myself it’s fine as is of course. I’m the only one who is likely to notice these little things. It’s much better for me to simply appreciate the video as it is. I’m honestly just a little surprised that my video seems to be the only long-form in-depth video on this game. I think that just indicates how slept on this game really is. And I absolutely have to play this game at least one more time online. Whether it’s Blast Ball or the campaign, I gotta get at least a little something in before the official servers close. Thank you for your feedback. I hope to keep the ball rolling and get around to reviewing additional Metroid games in the future.

I have no qualms recommending this game, but I do want to point out that some commenters have made good points about how this game isn’t as mechanically varied on a solo run. Fewer players means less opportunity to experiment with different aux items, and makes for a slightly less interesting experience. I personally still had great fun even on Solo, but definitely try to get people together if you can. Since Citra online servers are no longer active thanks to that lawsuit thing, you’re going to have to try direct connecting via Hamachi. Official 3DS servers shut down just last month and fan servers are still in development so your only multiplayer option on original hardware is local play.

@@FlatulentFetus Duly noted, thanks!

I can list a few examples of some potential lore issues from future releases. Metroid usually just retcons stuff with, like, Zero Mission introducing concepts like Samus being from Zebes and all. That completely changes the way I look at the entire series basically. There's a decent number of things between the 2D games and Prime that don't quite feel like they mesh together, but even the Remaster of Prime seems to address a few such as with Samus's suit coming off with a new animation. Another example would be the oddities with Zebesian Space Pirates being mindless creatures that are given intelligence through Mother Brain. Mother Brain dies at the end of Zero Mission and yet the pirates seem to maintain their intellect. And it raises questions about the Prime space pirates and their relation to Mother Brain, especially with Prime's scan logs talking about the pirates of Frigate Orpheon being in orbit of Zebes during the events of the first game. So I guess to answer your question, it's just a lot of little things that feel like they might be contradictory. I agree that the MercurySteam games aren't really contradictory, but they do change quite a bit about what we know concerning the events of SR388. I really enjoy the additional lore provided by the MercurySteam games, but not so much in the case of Zero Mission. I talk about this a bit in my Fusion video at the end, but I happen to think that Zero Mission in particular, alongside that Manga, do make changes to the lore that feel kind of lame to me personally. Also I too think Federation Force is, like, a C tier. I think it's a fantastic co-op action game, but I strongly prefer the traditional Metroid experiences. No matter how well Federation Force executes on its ideas, no spin-off is going to compare especially favorably to the mainline games.

@@FlatulentFetus I actually did see a bit of your fusion review, but haven’t gotten around to fully watching it. I genuinely think lore wise, Ridley being the one that killed Samus’ parents and in general being so connected to her is probably the biggest mistake of the series. None of the games, nor the manga, really justify this sort of importance for ridley, and I feel like it was added just for the sake of making Ridley seem bigger than he is. Might be a hot take but in general I actually find Ridley to be one of Nintendo’s weakest villains. I do agree that there are some discrepancies between Prime and 2D/Sakamoto though, particularly with the chozo. Also on the topic of the Zebesian thing, I think Other M is unfortunately the most guilty of lore contradictions, and while I don’t think it’s as much as manga say it is, it’s still filled with it to the point where my suspension of disbelief is broken. Going back to fed force entirely, there’s one aspect I actually like about the game’s story. Mission 17’s bonus mission of reclaiming a Metroid Egg, because it’s just this small little thing that’ll end up having massive ripple effects considering sylux at the secret ending steals the damn thing. I love when Metroid will have moments that are seemingly incidental, only for it to cause a domino effect into something more drastic. This bit alone makes me excited for Prime 4.

I can agree that Prime places focus away from combat and certainly has plenty of other things going for it. Federation Force was simply focused with other priorities. I can go more into that when I some day get around to reviewing Prime, but here I’ll just say that I really respect and enjoy the strengths of the Prime trilogy as well. I’ll also agree that your described scenario with solo mode does sound a bit familiar to me. In the video I called Slow Beam the perfect co-op item, but I didn’t mention that it’s far less useful when playing solo. It requires specific mod chip enhancements to be worth it on solo in my opinion. I’m curious if you brought along AI Combat Drones?From my experience, those allowed me to get a bit more experimental with my all platinum medals solo run. Instead of mostly Repair Capsules, I would bring tons of missiles. And yes I have to stress the importance of mod chips - they are a literal game changer. About Samus’s characterization, I think it’s perfectly valid to feel as you do. Purely from a writing standpoint, one could be disappointed with Samus playing the role of damsel in distress. Regardless of what justifications are provided, merely doing it at all is unlike what we’ve come to expect. I couldn’t tell you exactly why, but for whatever reason I am simply unbothered by that. I actually instead adore it. I usually dislike when the Metroid games fall into female stereotypical tropes for Samus, such as her taking off more clothes with close-up panning shots such as with Fusion/NES/Zero Mission. But for whatever reason, I find this instance in Federation Force to be more tasteful and well executed. Such a banger of an ending to me. Again I totally respect your view though. We can at least agree the game is overall great. Thank you for the feedback and I appreciate your enjoyment.

I appreciate your comment and thank you for your thoughts here. To address your disagreements, I’ll first say that this video wasn’t really meant to delve too deep into the Prime Trilogy. I’ll eventually make a video about those games wherein I can provide a more thorough version of my thoughts. For now I’ll go through your points and provide my thoughts. Hopefully I can try to better explain myself to make my thoughts more clear. For the Shadow Pirates/Cloaked Trooper oddity, I’ll say that what makes the Cloaked Troopers different from the Shadow Pirates, among other things, is the fact that there is no Thermal Visor. There is exactly 1 Shadow Pirate that the player could possibly encounter in Prime before locating the Thermal Visor. This one trooper seems to be unable to go invisible. So this means that every instance of a Shadow Pirate being invisible in Prime is immediately solvable by activating Thermal. So the dynamic between player and enemy is not that of careful observation, but rather just pressing a single button to solve the problem. No such affordance exists in Fed Force - players must keep their head on a swivel to account for where the Cloaked Trooper may reveal itself. Cloaked Troopers may not have come up with the idea of being an invisible enemy, but they offer a gameplay experience simply not there in Prime. Without fail in Prime, you will always equip Thermal. Why would you do anything else when the easiest solution is also the most effective? For my Missile segment, I believe I said something about how the Missiles in Fed Force work well specifically within the context of the wider arsenal available to the player. In Prime, the slow rate of fire of the missiles feels disappointing because the missiles do not do enough damage to make up for that slow rate of fire. They’re a limited resource, and yet they are a lower DPS than most of your other weapons. So it’s not just that they’re slow, it’s that they’re too slow to be as weak as they are. I contrast them against Prime’s exploit that allows them to be fired very quickly because in that case it’s the opposite problem. They melt nearly everything away without a second thought. As I said, they are either not worth using basically at all or the go-to samey strategy that requires barely any thought. In both instances the problem is that they are poorly balanced. If you were to compare them to missiles from, say, Super Metroid, then you’d notice that Super’s missiles seem to fire much faster. But they have no tracking and do way less damage to enemies in the second half of the game. There are numerous ways to better balance missiles so that they are not the go-to strat like in Prime 1 or almost useless like in Prime 3. I show a clip at 23:53 of me locked on to a Pirate but I aim the reticle away from the pirate. My missiles miss because I’m not aimed at the pirate. I should have used this clip in my missile segment as well, and I should have shown a bit more evidence to show that missiles do indeed miss in Fed Force far more often than they ever did in Prime Trilogy. At 39:05 you can see that in Prime 3 I’m locked onto the enemies and aiming nowhere near them - yet my missiles consistently land anyways. You can also see this at 37:35 when the Jump Guardian is running sideways to get away and yet my missile manages to still hit. These clips kind of show what I’m getting at, which is that Prime’s missiles are not balanced in that they are either too slow or too fast. And they require very little thought to actually use since you don’t need to wait until the enemy is still or place any care into how you aim. Federation Force fixes both of these issues by slightly increasing rate of fire and reducing their tracking. I never said I wanted missiles to be quick, what I actually said was that I wanted them to be balanced. Fed Force accomplishes this not by simply taking Prime’s missiles and making them quick as you describe in your comment. If they did that, then you’d have Prime 1 missiles. I already went over the other ways I thought missiles we’re improved, but hopefully that clears up that specific part. About the dodge move, I do have a visual on screen at 30:17 in which I mention that the Fed Force dodge moves are improved, not new. I never stated that they were brand new moves, so I’m not sure where you got that from. But to try to explain why I think the dodge is improved in Fed Force, I’d say it’s for a couple reasons. The projectile speed in Fed Force is overall lower than those found in Prime. The Power Shot isn’t quite as fast as Power/Plasma Beam, and doesn’t have aggressive tracking like Wave Beam, so players are far more likely to miss a fast-moving target in Fed Force. Dodging also completely displaces the weak point on the pirate, meaning that a player has to adjust their free aim not only to attempt to zero in on the weak point but also to lead their shot to account for the travel time in order to land their hit. Compare that to Prime where there is no weak point or interesting utilization of free aim, so you therefore barely even notice the dodge at all. I also want to point out that in my example footage, you can see that the dodging pirate manages to cover way more distance than any Prime pirate can with their dodge. Which, alongside free-aiming, just further adds to that idea that you need to adjust your aiming according to the situation. The bosses segment - I use the Incinerator Drone as the go-to example of poorly designed bosses a few times because it encapsulates everything about many of the Prime Trilogy bosses that many take issue with. I’m not sure what you mean when you say that I apparently know that he isn’t an “actual” boss and therefore am being disingenuous with my point. Because I think he very clearly is an actual boss. He has boss music, a boss health bar, a boss arena, and more. He’s absolutely an actual boss. I suppose I’ll get into it more when I someday review the Prime games, but for now I’ll say that I feel that many of the Prime bosses do not evolve or barely evolve in interesting ways. Fed Force’s bosses consistently change in interesting ways, and only a handful of the Prime bosses manage to compare to them when it comes to at least phase variety. You mentioned that Thardus does indeed lower the player’s visibility with fog when he reaches a certain point in the battle, and he then goes on to remove that fog. Fog that doesn’t matter in thermal visor, which the player is already using anyways. But as far as his phase variation, instead of introducing any new attacks he just rolls more often and throws more rocks at the player. He’s not actually doing anything that new, he’s just doing what he already did from the start but faster. I’ll give him some credit for having at least that and the fog move. But I don’t think Thardus has nearly as much phase variation as most bosses in Fed Force. As for most of the other bosses you named, I can say I agree that those bosses also have a great phase variety within their fights. I don’t really think either Dark Samus fight has as much as most anything as Fed Force, but I can agree that there are a handful of fights in the Prime Trilogy that do indeed evolve as the fights continue. There are certainly bosses that even exceed the phase variety on offer in Fed Force, such as the Quadraxis and Emporer Ing. Credit where it’s due, those are some of the 2 best bosses in video games period. One issue with many of the Prime bosses, however, is that most of them either don’t or barely evolve at all. Such examples include Metroid Prime Core, Hive Mecha, Incinerator Drone, Flaahgra, Elite and Phazon Elite Pirates, Omega Pirate, Plated Beetle, Sheegoth, Parasite Queen, Jump/Bomb/Boost/Grapple/ Guardians, Dark Samus 1-3, Dark Alpha Splinter, Alpha Blogg, Korakk Beast, Metroid Hatcher, Beserker Lord, Defense Drone, or Dark Samus in Prime 3. So many of these bosses have extremely basic or nonexistent ways of evolving as the fights continue. So a lot of those more interesting and varied boss battles in Prime end up feeling like exceptions rather than the status quo. Not every boss in Federation Force is better than any boss in Prime Trilogy, but I’d say that Federation Force has much more consistently well designed fights and therefore a much higher batting average. And lastly about Super Missiles and Hard Mode. My issue was that Super Missiles, like Missiles, are so effective and easy to use that they require almost no thought and offer no dynamics. Fed Force supers travel very slowly and are a rare resource, whereas Prime’s Supers are the cheapest and highest damaging attack with near perfect tracking. Ice Spreader is comparatively useless because it’s twice as expensive and does less damage than the Super. There’s no strategy at play with choosing carefully when and where to use Supers in Prime, nor any aiming required. Again, it’s an issue of balancing. Again I’ll say thank you for your comment, and I hope I’ve provided more context and a deeper look into why I feel how I do about these specific aspects.

I'll just simply comment on what you said about the Remaster's controls, the original Prime's controls are considered outdated (even though I personally don't have a problem using them), the modern controls were necessary in order to make it more bearable to play for more people. Hence as to why there are people that prefer the Trilogy version of Prime 1. It would have been baffling to see them remastering the game and keep the same control scheme from before.

Your second favorite? I’m interested to hear which is your favorite. For me I’d say that Federation Force is actually one of my lesser favorites. I absolutely adore it and think it’s tremendously well designed, but I simply prefer a more traditional Metroid experience and therefore place it somewhere in the middle of my ranking the games. Which is really good considering that it’s competing directly with many games I’m deeply nostalgic for such as Metroid II. It’s quite unfortunate that you’ve not experienced the full extent of what Insurrection has to offer, because as the video says that’s my favorite mission. Perhaps it’s best that it’s one-of-a-kind because it allows for the solo player, such as yourself, to not miss out on too much when deciding to play by yourself. I firmly believe that planet Bion is, like, the textbook definition of what makes Metroid’s environment design so appealing. That’s a huge reason why I find myself puzzled by the relatively common criticism this game faces for supposedly having generic environments that lack Metroid’s familiar elements. I’d say the literal opposite is true of all 3 planets in the game. Your comparison to the Clone Wars is literal genius. I’m so jealous I didn’t think of that because I would have absolutely added that to the video. Eloquently said. I can’t even add much to it because you said it all. I hate to once again not have much to add, but I 100% agree with your thoughts on Samus’s capture and characterization, as well as what Prime 4 could learn from Federation Force. There’s a lot uniquely fantastic about Federation Force, especially within the context of the entire series. I absolutely adore the Prime Trilogy, but there’s nothing I want more from Prime 4 than to combine Fed Force’s strengths with the strengths of the Prime Trilogy - even if accommodations must be made to suit a more traditional Metroid experience. That and some version of sequence breaking would blow any video game out of the water as my favorite. I appreciate your feedback and enjoyment of my video. Hopefully there’s more Metroid reviews on the way.

@@Leee275 Both Metroid Prime Remastered and Metroid Prime Federation Force offering the original style and modern style controls is best-case scenario as far as I’m concerned. I can certainly agree that if either didn’t offer control options, I’d be disappointed.

Damn another Red Shirt enjoyer?? You dont see those every day. I love playing as the more grounded and vulnerable cannon fodder class of characters. Especially the ODST's, not only do they have some of the coolest looking sci-fi military gear fiction, they're also badass underdogs in their own universe, all the expectations of a spartans with a fraction of the power and a sense of humanity that gives them so much more to lose when the stakes are high. Felt the same way about Clone troopers from star wars too, OG Battlefront 2 was my crack as a kid.

@@sasaki999pro Love me some troopers. republic, clone, heck even the odd storm sometimes. (I love you random cool Scout trooper in Rebels that did that sick bike jump but was way over his head!) Captain Fordo has had an irreversible impact on what I think is cool from the moment I watched the OG Clone Wars Cartoon.

Amen

i found it, idk how i missed it i love it

Timestamp?

That’s part of why I don’t get the whole “tone deaf” argument. I think Nintendo’s marketing did something tone deaf, but choosing to develop Federation Force in the first place was especially not tone deaf when there’s also a mainline game in the pipeline. I think even announcing Samus Returns first would have helped, though it also may have been problematic for having both games release on the same system.

Or when a game is so beloved that some people feel entitled to tell others that they’re not allowed to criticize/dislike it.

Yeah I agree with all of this. Federation Force certainly isn’t immune from criticism, but it’s definitely unfairly maligned for some silly reasons.

He picked the name to pretend to be some random online guy to mess with us. Then he just kinda forgot to change his name back until later.

as for the mech design, i would say change the Head design, cause all it looks like is a up scaled Ged Fed marine from MP2 with a MP3 Weapon

For weak points they are in prime 3 but you needed the X-ray visor, it allowed you to rapidly deal with pirate commandos and Metroid hunters. to me this mechanic should have been the whole game. as for primes combat that varies in the trilogy, prime 1 (remastered) when you shove it on hard is actually not as easy to play unless you take it slow (which I don't) Pirate attacks do significant amounts of damage on hard, to the point of actually making pause, the Phazon Mines actually becomes a slugging match were I run out missile ammo pretty quickly.

I’d also argue that what a specific group of pirates from Prime 1 want is completely irrelevant to what a separate group of pirates may want. These guys are a different species from the ones in Prime 1, and are thus likely a completely different group. At the end of the day, even if they did want only the Power Suit, Master Brain gets the final say. Also worth considering that Samus’s suit is bio-mechanical, increasing the likelihood that the pirates could find out the hard way that you cannot simply remove the suit - as shown in Fusion. Just some thoughts on why I think it’s believable for the Pirates to ultimately decide against killing Samus.

Good question. I’d think it’s because they’ve consistently shown that they’re willing to go extreme lengths to obtain power. They’re dealing with 2 tremendous threats, what better way to deal with them than to pin them against each other? During the events of Prime 1 they showed that they were interested in Samus’s equipment, but an even greater opportunity is provided with Master Brain’s mind control. Controlling Samus wasn’t necessarily something every pirate would unanimously agree on - it’s likely that Master Brain made that decision itself. Just because the pirates have this hatred for her, I don’t think that therefore means they’d pass up on such a rare and incredible opportunity.

@@FlatulentFetus I see

You gave the video a shot and weren’t convinced. Totally fine if people don’t like the game, but I appreciate that you at least heard me out.

Your comment was so low effort that it failed to convey anything beyond your ineptitude to formulate insults and/or arguments. Do another take.

@@FlatulentFetus Where is the insult? Take some genuine advice or don't, but don't play the victim. If you think burping into the mic like some caveman is humor, then go ahead, keep doing it. If you think I insulted Federation Force though, then go ahead and believe it. That game was a borefest and I very much understood your defense of it, I just don't agree. In the video you acknowledge that while you disagree, you understand that many of the points people make are not something you can objectively refute. The artstyle is unfitting, the music is bland, the way Samus is handled is lazy, the way it ignores exploration or atmosphere are very obvious. Most of your arguments boiled down to "Yeah, but it is still a fun game". Sure, if you had fun doing some co-op missions with friends that's cool. But you could have done that with ANY squad based multiplayer game. This is supposed to be a Metroid game and it simply doesn't feel like one.

“Forgettable” is an insult to the game, that’s the insult. So is “caveman.” You put more effort into making an actual point here, but you’re still blatantly misrepresenting my video. You’re trying to reduce every one of my points to “It’s still a fun game”. Who do you think you’re quoting? Also interesting to say this was “supposed to be Metroid” because that exact point was addressed in the video already. Again just wiffing entire massive segments of the video to instead make points I already went over.

@@FlatulentFetus If you don't want to be treated like a caveman don't act like one. No no, just because you addressed a point in the video doesn't mean you actually countered or refuted it. I just summarized the overall point of your video, crystallized by your arguments. And it really boils down to "Yeah, but it's a fun game". Sure there was more nuance here or there, but let's not pretend that's not the actual core of this video. I had more fun playing Hunters multiplayer endlessly than doing any of the missions in FedForce more than once. Despite your claim that the combat in this game is somehow the second best in the franchise and people generally acknowledging that Hunters was clunky. Shows that combat is not the be all end all of a Metroid game, yet that is literally all FedForce is.

Your strategy here is to try to gaslight me about what’s in my own video? You “summarized” a 100+ minute video into one phrase, and you’re trying to insist to me that I never refuted those exact points in the video. Maybe if you throw some buzzwords in like “actual core” then I might buy it. It’s gonna take a little more than the argumentative equivalent of “nuh-uh” to convince me that something in my video - isn’t in my video. If nothing else, I appreciate you feeding the algorithm.