Reviewing Monsters - Metroid Prime [Enemies]

I've finally finished playing Metroid Prime. One of the games that really struck me back when I was younger was Metroid Prime 3: Corruption on the Wii... but I've never actually gone and played the rest of the franchise. 

Until recently, anyway, when I got the remastered version of Metroid Prime and eventually completed it. It's really interesting going from more modern games with their conveniences like autosaves and whatnot to a game like Metroid Prime with save rooms, limited ammunition, copious amounts of backtracking and enigmatic clues that you can sometimes miss. I loved it, even if I loathed the half-pipes. It is a bit quaint looking back at it, but Metroid Prime is a huge shift in the genre. 

Anyway, for those who don't know what Metroid is, it's Nintendo's space game! Bounty hunter Samus Aran dresses up in a badass outfit with a cannon-arm and giant shoulder-pads, and in her initial debut, go around exploring planets and trying to stop evil Space Pirates and the outbreak of the monstrous energy-draining jellyfish aliens called Metroids. She's also tied to the long-lost bird-like Chozo people, which are essentially the 'long-dead elf-like ancient species' of the series. Metroid Prime takes place after the events of the first game, and the fight has Samus fight the remnants of the Space Pirates in a space station above the planet Tallon IV, experimenting both on Metroids and also Tallon IV's mysterious energy called 'Phazon'...

Samus arrives, and just like any scientific facility experimenting on aliens and monsters, the experiments break out. After the prologue Samus lands on Tallon IV and has to explore the planet and its ruined civilizations, finding the horrifying truth about Phazon while putting down the Space Pirates' operations. Oh, and collecting new weapons and missile expansions, of course. 

It's a typical sci-fi plot, engaging enough to be built upon for the next couple of games (the Metroid Prime trilogy) but most important about these games is that Samus Aran goes around scanning all the weird creatures that she comes across, and we get little database entries. Most of these are there to give some clues as to how to beat them, but I've always loved that we get a little 'pokedex' for the alien monsters of Tallon IV!

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Parasite

I'm going to go through these in a very rough order of how the codex lists them. The parasite that's just named 'Parasite' is a fun creepy alien bug. It's got a body that's like a segmented worm, but the front end of its body tapers into a head with multiple green eyes, two (just two!) insect legs, and an interesting mouthpiece that's got two massive mandibles and a regular set of monster chompers. 

Despite their name, Metroid Prime doesn't actually show a Parasite bursting out of anything Alien-style, but they just swarm and kill the silly Space Pirates on the station that's been experimenting on them. The codex entries do note that these aren't exactly the normal state of the Parasite, but one that has been exposed to the Phazon energy. The codex notes that the size, additional poison sacs, and even the second ring of mandibles are all attributable to the Phazon exposure. That's pretty cool. 

As the first enemy that Samus Aran faces in Metroid Prime, this is quite a simple alien monster -- but a pretty cool and sufficiently alien-looking one!

Ice Parasite

For the most part I’m following the game codex’s order, but I’ll cover some of the repaint monsters next to their originals. The Ice Parasite would be found in the Phendrana Drifts, the icy area of the game. It actually looks a bit more different, with less pronounced mandibles (which the codex did note is a Phazon experimentation result) and a giant shark-like ice dorsal fin. 

The Parasites are noted to be able to adapt to any environment ‘within three generations’, which I thought is a nice, slightly more realistic way to portray the ‘this creature can adapt into any environment’ trope so common in sci-fi. The Ice Parasite isn’t super dangerous, just annoying cause it gets in the way of your exploration and can knock you off of ledges. It’s also a creature that doesn’t respawn after you kill it, meaning that if you want to have 100% scan completion (and who wouldn’t, it’s a bestiary to complete!) this is one of the few monsters you might miss. 

Plated Parasite

Found in deeper parts of the Tallon IV are the Plated Parasite, which I assume would be the ‘natural’ state of this species considering how it and the Ice Parasite have this body layout? It looks very cool, with its main head being this eyeless, almost featureless mass of rock-like growths that expand into three points. The red highlights make it look pretty cool, too. The Plated Parasite moves on two bony legs, and depending on the artwork, it either has two or four mandibles. 

The Plated Parasite is also completely invulnerable to most of your weapons… except for the Morph Ball. One thing that makes the Metroid Prime games unique (and such a cute nod to the original side-scrolling games it was based on) is that Samus can morph into a ball and solve pseudo-2D segments of the game. The Parasites can really ruin Samus’s day by knocking her off of her platforming attempts!

Auto Turret

Pop-up turrets being an enemy in these sorts of games aren't a surprise, and I'm just including the Auto Defense Turrets here for completion's sake. They pop up and shoot you with lasers! But only in areas where the Space Pirates have set up a base -- always love it when the game designers actually put in some logic to where they put their monsters in a game. They break more easily with missiles, which is a nice tutorial to needing specific weaponry for different enemies. Also, sometimes there are switches that Samus can scan to shut off the turrets. Neat!

Mega Turret

Bigger turrets would be found in the Space Pirates base, with energy shielding and stronger weapons. Some of them can still be easily hacked, though.

Zoomer

Metroid Prime is essentially a soft reboot to the franchise, although there are a couple of classic monsters from the 2D side-scroller games that did make it to Tallon IV. You can tell that the Zoomer was originally designed to be one of those ‘crawl on a dungeon, hurt you when you run into it’ sort of enemies. The 3D graphics made the Zoomer a bit more elaborate, highlighting its more beetle-like anatomy. It’s got a bunch of tiny legs, pincer mandibles, stalactite growths all over its rocky shell, and my favourite aspect is its giant cluster of eyeballs (noted by the codex as ‘a basic nerve center’) above its mouth. It looks a lot more impressive in the concept art, but the models translate it relatively well as well!

While the Zoomer will hurt Samus if she runs into it, they blow up easily with blasts from her basic weapon. It is a basic enemy, and likely to be one of the first you see when you touchdown onto the rainy forest basins of Tallon IV. 

Geemer

Identified as a ‘mollusk’, the Geemer is a red version of the Zoomer, but with only three eyes and spikes that can retract and extend. The Geemer is noted to be an ‘evolutionary offshoot’ of the Zoomers, and are effectively invulnerable when their spikes are extended. 

There’s not a whole ton to really say, but it is a nice showcase of how Metroid Prime handles ‘repaints’ and ‘variants’. It’s an old enough game and a long enough game to need these variant creatures and model reuse, but I felt like they did a good job at justifying most of them and making them feel like sensible evolutionary adaptations in Tallon IV’s various biomes. 

Sap Sac

We’ve got flora entries as well! 

The more forested/vine-encrusted areas of Tallon IV has these vibes with engorged orange nodes resembling amber around the vines and roots. These Sap Sacs have ‘chemical reactions that produce a violent explosion when agitated’, which means that, in video game terms, the Sap Sac are this world’s explosive barrels. 

The codex notes that the Sap Sac was nearly eaten to extinction by herbivores due to its irresistible odour and sweet nectar, and only the evolution of this explosive chemical sacs saved it. That’s a cute little detail! Again, the lore entries aren’t the most elaborate or epic or whatever, but I really like the worldbuilding as they explain some of the more ‘video-gamey’ parts of this alien world. 

Aqua Sac

In underwater areas, instead of Sap Sacs, we get Aqua Sacs! Which look less like clumps of nectar and more like giant water droplets. They also explode, and act as deterrents towards predators.

Bloodflower

On the surface, this is just a weird flower that opens up and launches poison blobs at you. A simple flower enemy, and there was one Bloodflower that keeps respawning in a corridor that I have to venture back and forth a lot. The design of the Bloodflower is interesting, though, especially when you take a look at the base of the plant, with the cluster of green vines. There are three snake-heads there, which appear to be nothing but decoration — the only part of the Bloodflower that animates to attack Samus is the main flower itself. Cute little detail! The codex describes these as ‘mouth-nodules each with a rudimentary brain cluster, and the ability to spew toxic fumes’. I guess they attack Samus if she gets close, but I never tried to get close to the Bloodflowers!

The Bloodflower’s toxins are noted to be poisonous even to the Bloodflower itself, and the way to defeat the Bloodflower most efficiently is to wait until it ejects one of its giant projectiles (spore clumps), and shoot it and blow it up next to the Bloodflower, showering it with its own toxins. That’s an interesting way to do it; many organisms that produce deadly toxins carry them in very specialized sacs and glands, and it does make sense that turning them back on the monster would also hurt them. 

Seedling

A good portion of the Tallon IV areas — and by far my favourite — are rainy jungles, plant-overgrown temples and natural chambers built into cliff-faces or giant plants. The forested parts of the Tallon Overworld is something you go back into a couple of times even after going through the thematic volcanic, polar and ‘evil villain base’ areas, and so a good proportion of the newer enemies in the Tallon Overworld are still themed after creatures that would live in a tropical rainforest. 

The Seedling is an interesting creature, where it has the lower body of a snail; but it’s a lot more flat, and the ‘shell’ seems to be partially melting and holding its shape sort of like some kind of a fungal growth; like a puffball or something. It’s bright blue with a lot of veins around it, and it shoots out spikes. The Seedling is described by the codex as a ‘plant-based ground feeder’, and like the Zoomers and Geemers, the Seedlings move across walls and ceilings and shoot homing needles. This is one of the few video game gimmicks not actually explained by the codex — I buy that the plants in Tallon IV have evolved so much that they transform into ambulatory snail-like creatures that carry giant seed-pods and launch thorns at enemies. But the homing aspect of it is where I draw the line!

Scarab

The so-called ‘Scarab’ doesn’t actually resemble a real-world scarab beetle at all, but this is Tallon IV and not Earth. The Scarab has two beetle-like wings on its rear end that is in a closed position, it has a single glowing eye, and its ‘head’ is a set of horns with one pointing forwards and two pointing sideways. It’s an interesting design, and a nicely simple one. It’s actually worth noting that the three-pointed beetle horn look is somewhat similar to the more natural Plated/Ice Parasite above, as well as the Plated Beetle below, so maybe there’s some kind of convergent evolution factor that favours this three-pointed insect head layout? 

The Scarabs can embed themselves in solid rock, and you’ll mostly see an entire swarm with their proboscis/horns pointed down and their abdomens pointed up, like rows and rows of dangerous flowers. These Scarabs act as a massive swarm, and “think nothing of sacrificing themselves for the safety of their swarm”, and charge out and self-destruct if Samus approaches. Most of the time, even if Samus doesn’t start blasting, this behaviour leads to the destruction of the entire selfdestruct-happy swarm, so it probably isn’t the most practical survival evolutionary adaptation. 

I’ve always felt like the Scarabs are just the tech team flexing at the time that they could animate and process a whole swarm of independent creatures, as you’ll encounter these guys moving as a seamless scuttling swarm in pipe-like corridors, which does look quite impressive. 

Beetle

One of the first outright hostile monsters in Tallon IV that will make it a point to attack you instead of just hindering your passage is the Beetle. Like the Scarab, there’s only really a superficial similarity to what the word means for someone from Earth. I do like that the silhouette kind of resembles that of a Hercules Beetle, but some of the horns are  reinterpreted into a massive, bird-like beak. It’s a weirder and weirder bug alien the more I look at it! It’s got six insect legs, a giant beak attached to a vaguely brown insectoid head, with four beady eyes. It’s got two extra protrusions aiming backwards which might be rudimentary wings? Or perhaps those are the appendages that they burrow through the ground with? Oh, and their ‘shell’ is a combination of the dorsal protrusions seen in some beetle with some details that resemble a beetle’s harder wings.

The Beetles hide under the ground and burst out whenever Samus gets close to them, aggressively charging and scuttling across the battlefield to attack. Pretty cool space bugs! 

Ice Beetle

Another repaint! The Ice Beetle is, well, a subspecies of the Beetle that has adapted to the frozen tundra of the Phendrana Drifts. I like the purplish-gray colours, but I especially like that the abdomen carapace has taken on the consistency of ice. This is actually an ice that is ‘grown’ by the beetle and aids it in digging. It’s neat!

Plated Beetle

Initially encountered as a mini-boss and later just showing up as a regular enemy (Metroid Prime does this a bit) when you’ve advanced enough in the game, the Plated Beetle shares most of the anatomy of the regular Beetle enemy… but with the addition of a massive, eyeless helmet on the front end. It looks even metallic, and I like the horns on the borders of the giant shield-face as well. I wonder how the Plated Beetle eats, though? It attacks enemies by charging and impaling them like a rhinoceros, that’s easy to see, but I wonder what’s happened to the beak-mouth and how this creature gains nutrition. In addition to its invulnerable front end, the Plated Beetle’s abdomen is now engorged and glowing red, being an obvious weak point. 

Not much to say, it’s a cool bug monster even if it is a bit obviously a ‘video-gamey’ enemy with an obvious weakness. 

  

War Wasp

I like the War Wasp’s design a lot. These creatures build hives all over the Tallon IV temples, and sometimes they will keep spawning from these nests on the walls (which you could destroy with your missiles). The War Wasps takes the general body shape of a wasp, and adds a fair bit of detailing to make it feel alien. The two different concept arts — one for the original game, and the other for the remaster that’s based on the models that made it into the game — go very different ways at interpreting the War Wasp’s design. The original concept art has a set of beetle-like hard wing-covers that are reinterpreted as horns in both the in-game model and the newer concept art; while the monstrous mandibles are interpreted as a bird-like beak in the newer model. The beak does help to make the War Wasp look a lot more alien, and as much as I enjoy accurate arthropod anatomy, I like that they took the effort to make this an alien bug moreso than just a really weird bug. The bird-heads might also even tie in to the enigmatic Chozo race, which we do know are bird-headed so there might be some convergent evolution or genetic manipulation going on here. 

I do like the much more serrated-looking original concept art abdomen, though, compared to the streamlined, simpler one. 

The War Wasp is noted to have a venomous stinger ‘capable of shearing steel’, which I guess explains why these guys could damage even Samus in her Varia Suit. Like the Scarabs, they defend their hives with no regard for its own survival. Unlike the Scarabs, the hives being often visible in their chambers does make this behaviour a lot more understandable. 

Ram War Wasp

Two variants of the War Wasps show up as part of minibosses in Tallon IV, and have slightly different behaviours. Them only appearing once also makes it extra hard for players who are looking for a 100% completion rate for the codex. 

The Ram War Wasp, encountered as summons of the ‘Hive Mecha’ miniboss, is described as having a ‘true hive mind’, with perfect coordination as they zip around and circle their enemies at high speed to strike them from multiple sides at once.

Barbed War Wasp

Barbed War Wasp, which show up in another miniboss fight, has the ability to launch its stinger at its prey,  so it has some extra tricks up its sleeve! The Barbed War Wasp is noted to be highly aggressive, and has the capability to regrow the stingers seconds after being launched. The stingers also contain acidic compounds meant to pre-digest prey. 

Not much to say, it sure is a cool little variant. 

Eyon

These guys are weirdoes. The Eyons are attached to the temple walls, and you could dismiss them as some kind of golem-esque guardians left behind by the ancient races as some kind of ancient technology that are functionally just laser turrets. Sort of like the Beamos in Legend of Zelda. 

But the Eyons are explicitly identified as immobile organisms, entirely composed of ocular tissue. That’s so weird! So these are just… eyeball barnacles? With the ability to shoot laser beams? Eyons, being entirely eyeball in anatomy, is sensitive to light and will angrily close shut and let you pass if a bright light (i.e. your plasma blasts) ignites nearby. A weirdo! 

Plazmite

I always enjoy older games who have the chance to sneak in extra little non-hostile enemies. Not everything must be out there to try to kill you! The Plazmite can hurt you, though, and I do like these non-hostile enemies acting as hazards as well. The Plazmite looks like an engorged, non-flattened fleat, flying around with large wings with its distended red belly. I do like the design!

The Plazmite’s biology has it gather around sources of heat and it thrives on the energy present in the locations that it frequents. And when threatened (or shot) they will explode in a burst of the thermal energy they have collected! Again, a nice combination of combining video game tropes but also giving the monster a nice little in-universe sci-fi reason to have those adaptations. 

Shriekbat

Can I just say how much I love that this is a ‘bat’? The Shriekbat does hang upside-down from the ceiling, and the way it behaves is kind of like a video game bat enemy. They will detach and then spin around and try to impale you (and usually die if they miss you). But the anatomy! The Shriekbat’s most obvious features are the two giant wing-claws that are attached to the main body by ‘upper arms’, but the wings are pointed forwards and shaped like the pincer horns of a stag beetle. The main body even looks very insectoid, with a chitin-like detail, two mandibles, and a giant central eye. And it’s got a pair of cute little bat feet to hang from the ceiling. 

A very cool space monster design, I actually think the Shriekbat might be my favourite out of the lesser enemies. Their bodies also have a particularly high temperature, making it possible to spot where they are roosting if you’re using one of the gimmicks, a thermal imaging visor. 

Ice Shriekbat

The Shriekbats have also made it into the tundra areas… which honestly, does make an interesting bit of sense that more of Tallon IV’s natural beasties like the Parasites, Beetles and Shriekbats are able to make their way and adapt to the cold. The tundra’s probably a lot easier for them to adapt to than freaking lava. 

Pretty model, I like the icy effects on the ‘blade-wings’ of the Ice Shriekbat. 

Tangle Weed

More plants! The Tangle Weeds are just… well, weeds that sway around. They slow you down if you move through them, which doesn’t actually hurt you but might make you more vulnerable to larger organisms. It’s noted that the Tangle Weed’s tiny barbs are meant to trap potential meals, but aren’t the most effective against a larger lifeform like Samus. They retract into the ground temporarily — like the feeler-arms of a coral polyp — if Samus shoots them, but they’ll pop back up after a time. Cute!

Venom Weed

And as you’d expect, there is a more dangerous, deadlier version called the Venom Weed. They glow red, which is handwaved as an in-universe adaptation to lure prey in with their brightly coloured leaves. Venom Weeds can actually slow and harm you, as they feed by killing prey animals with toxic barbs, then rapidly decompose anything that falls within their midst. 

Blastcap

Another cute little nuisance is the Blastcap, which is just a weird, double-layered alien mushroom that puffs up and explodes if you accidentally bump into them. I like the ridged details on the cap of the Blastcap! It’s another one that’s kind of an obvious video game hindrance, although I do like the addition of some extra plants (fungi, I know…) into this world’ bestiary.

Reaper Vine

Now here’s a plant that can attack, although you can’t really defeat it. Reaper Vines pop out of holes in the wall of the temple and attempt to strike at you. The design is cool enough, a long, elongated vine with a giant organic scythe at the end, and what looks like an eyeball. The concept art makes it look like ‘merely’ a plant growth, but the codex does identify it as a singular eye… with a very limited range of vision, which is why it’s only active if you’re close enough. 

Stone Toad

These are weirdoes! The original concept art looked a lot more alien, while the finalized model (and the new art for Metroid Prime Remastered) added two cute googly eyes that made the ‘toad’ look a bit more obvious. 

The Stone Toads just look like weird gargoyles that stand in place, and they don’t really move around — which made it a bit surprising when the codex actually identifies them as creatures. The Stone Toad has only two limbs supporting it, and most of its body is made up of a giant maw covered with four tusks (which looked more tentacle-y in the original concept art) and four glowing orbs on the hangar-bay-like lower jaw. 

The Stone Toad’s immobility is noted to be part of its adaptation to be able to ‘remain still for days’. It preys upon creatures smaller than itself, and inhales them whole… and what do you know, Samus Aran’s morph ball form is the exact perfect size to be inhaled whole by a Stone Toad’s mouth! A Stone Toad continues to damage Samus in its mouth, but detonating a bomb makes the Stone Toad regurgitate Samus. A pretty weird little enemy. 

Oculus

A very Zelda-looking enemy, the Oculus is this weird turtle-shell or beetle-shell with eight legs, and a big orange eyeball on the center of the creature. The Oculus is completely invulnerable, and also exudes an electrical field just for shits and giggles. Samus basically needs to snipe the eye whenever it opens. 

I always like me an eyeball monster, but I do feel like the Oculus could’ve had a bit more in its codex entry to really make it stand out. 

Chozo Ghost

The Chozo are an ancient race of highly spiritual and technologically-advanced bird-people that essentially serve as the ‘ancient civilization’ of this universe, taking in the role that would traditionally be given to elves in a fantasy setting. A different Chozo clan adopted Samus Aran, I believe, and that’s the reason why her strange Morph Ball ability could interface with a lot of the ancient Chozo tech in these abandoned temples. The Chozo of Tallon IV had lived in harmony with nature before the great disastrous meteor carrying Phazon came, and they had been trying their best to curb the corruption of the natural flora, fauna and ecosystems around the Phazon Meteor. 

You never meet the Chozo throughout any of the three Prime games, which is a very smart decision that makes the Chozo feel a lot more mysterious. But the Chozo Ghosts do appear, and they are annoying! Briefly hinted by some very confused Space Pirate logs before you first meet them, the Chozo Ghosts are almost robotic-looking bird-headed humanoids with slender limbs, taloned feet, and they are completely ghostly — phasing in and out of reality and only being vulnerable to certain types of your beam attacks. They also teleport all over the place, and their teleportation ability is particularly irritating to deal with until you unlock the X-ray scanner. 

The Chozo Ghosts protect the religious sites, which is what you’d expect for a bunch of specters, but end up becoming hostile to anyone and everyone that enters these locations due to being driven insane by Phazon energy. I wonder how much of the ghosts existing like this can be attributed to there just being spiritual creepiness in the Metroid universe, or if it’s also something attributable to Phazon? 

Grizby

It’s a Grizby! The Grizby is an interesting one, a multi-eyed bug with a multi-layered carapace. Identified as a ‘subvolcanic carrion feeder’, the Grizby is one of the less aggressive enemies in the volcanic Magmoor Vents. They’re just happily going around scavenging whatever food is left behind by larger predators, and interestingly its carapace has been fused together by superheated air. So does that happen to all Grizbys, or is it just a flavourful way to explain a Grizby’s evolution? 

Burrower

First found in the volcanic areas are the Burrowers, which hide underground like the Beetles and constantly pop in and out to attack and spit blobs of venom at you rapidly. The Burrower remind me a bit of like weird spiders or ticks, although the anatomy is a bit different, particularly with the seeming lack of eyes and the two pointed tails on its back. The Burrower is a bit easier to track with some of the heat-seeking or x-ray visors. 

I don't have much to say about this one, although it is cute to see a different type of hunting method from one of these alien insects. 

Ice Burrower

And we've got the Ice Burrower, which is the icy version of the Burrower. Not much that I haven't already said about the regular Burrower; or other icy variants. 

Puffer

This is a bit of an interesting 'hazard' monster. The Puffers arebasically a realistic, faceless 'Koffing' from Pokemon, being an 'unstable gas-filled organism'. It's got a central body that looks like a multi-segmented rock of sorts, but the little puffing pipes do kind of look somewhat like coral protrusions if you squint. Puffers are filled with lethal 'meta-viprium' gas, and float around to look for food. 

The Puffers are extremely fragile but also 'aggressive hunters' (what do they feed on?) and they are happy to unleash a toxic gas cloud to bring down their killer. I feel like as much as I get the game design need of an enemy like this, that they tried to explain a bit more about the weird biology of the Puffer! I wished there was more in that flavour text that really highlighted this creature as a 'weird alien animal' instead of just a hazard.

Plated Puffer

The Plated Puffer is a subtype of Puffer that was explicitly mutated by Phazon exposure, giving them extra armour that needs to be cracked open by concussive weapons.

Triclops

The Triclops doesn't actually have three eyes, but it does have three horns... and no other insectoid facial features. It's got a bunch of blue neon lines running down its body, including a maybe-eye or maybe-mouth in the center of those horns. Again, this is in keeping with the interesting aesthetics of a lot of the three-pronged horns of other Tallon IV creatures.

Found primarily in the lava-filled Magmoor Caverns, the Triclops is described as a hunter-gatherer, collecting small creatures or foodstuff and depositing them elsewhere for later consumption. Its fangs are strong, and Samus almost exclusively only encounters these things in the Morph Ball sections. they can deal a surprising amount of damage with their pincer-jaws, and can't be easily killed -- only encouraged to temporarily let Samus go for a while. 

Magmoor

The titular Magmoors that the Magmoor Caverns are named after are giant magma-dwelling wurm-snakes, with a massive maw full of long teeth, and multiple eyeballs. We only really ever see the front end of their body as these monsters coil up and launch fireballs at Samus. There's nothing too exciting about this as they're otherwise rather simple enemies (they're weak to ice) but do provide a nice spectacle among the common enemies .

Interestingly, despite their multiple eyes, Magmoors are specifically noted to be blind, navigating with echolocation and smell. Are those eyes, like, the 'sonar receptors', then? 

Puddle Spore

The interestingly named Puddle Spore is a weirdo. It actually looks quite impressive, being a giant bivalve monster that is encountered in lava lakes. It's got a lot of creepy red eyes on its top half, and there's just something quite impressive as it lifts its jaws; connected only by a strand of muscle within the clam body. The concept art makes it even more cool looking, with some extra details and a more menacing proportion. 

The actual behaviour of the Puddle Spore is the opposite, however -- a good hit to its exposed tongue causes the poor, terrified clam monster to flip upside down, revealing its flat underside that Samus can use to hop around and navigate lava pools. Puddle Spores don't even really have a proper damaging attack, other than dropping Samus into the lava if she stays on top of a Puddle Spore as it's trying to reorient itself. 

It does, I suppose, make perfect sense for a giant lava clam to be mostly non-hostile. If it's anything like its terrestrial counterparts, it's probably a quiet filter-feeder or something. 

Crystallite

Found in the icy Phendrana Drifts, Crystallites are basically more literal versions of the Pokemon Bergmite! A living little critter that skitters around on little bug legs and having a giant ice spike as its main body, the Crystallite has bug eyes and a couple of bug mandibles! I actually like this design a bit more than Bergmite, especially with the idea that it's a weird ice bug monster. 

Crystallite shells reflect beam weapons, and you need missiles to break its cute shell. You monster. I like the description about how this bug-like creature is described to hang upsie down in an ice cave during its larval stage, and moisture runs off its body and forms the hard ice shell which just remains for the Crystallite's entire life. 

Pulse Bombu

The Bombus are energy life-forms, looking like oversized molecule models. The Bombus are only harmed by electrical energy blasts, and are completely impossible for Samus to beat during her first encounter with them. The Bombus have an instinctive attraction to other charged energy sources and will actually be drawn to Samus if she starts charging her beam weapons... and zapping poor Samus in the process. It attacks by 'shedding' excess energy like how a bird would eject droppings. 

Scatter Bombu

A variant of the Pulse Bombu that otherwise behaves similarly is the Scatter Bombu, which launches a couple of tendrils of energy as it rotates around in a tunnel or vent, making it harder for Samus to navigate certain parts of the world. 

Not a whole ton to say here, but I do like the Bombus' lore more than the Puffers because we at least get the explanation of its nature as an energy-based creature and one that feeds and ejects whatever energy it can't currently use. 

Flickerbat

Flickerbats fly above the skies of Phendrana, and while the name calls them a 'bat', they look more like alien manta rays, or just a weird organic spaceship. Its main body is a blue-shaped affair with orange highlights, but there's a "head" with a "proboscis" made up of a light-blue material. Flickerbats flicker in and out of visibility, making it a bit hard for you to initially realize that there are creatures moving in and out of sight instead of just it being part of the weather. 

X-ray imaging helps, but the Flickerbats aren't even hostile, only damaging Samus on thevery rare and unlikely event that she's at a high enough altitude that one of these creatures would run onto her. Flickerbats are described to use sonar to navigate, hunting small insects that float on air currents. Again, pretty cool and extremely neat to have a non-hostile beast in the bestiary!

Baby Sheegoth

Found in the icy areas and probably one of the most powerful enemies outside of the Space Pirate bases there are the Baby Sheegoths, which resemble armless frog-dinosaurs covered in ice. They've got a nasty-looking maw, two theropodal legs, and a head and dorsal area covered in ice. The ice on its back end is actually the weak spot, and Sheegoths specifically grow these shells to protecttheir vulnerable back. Okay! Which, of course, means you have to sidestep and continue firing to destroy that ice shell to reveal the pulsating red flesh beneath. 

Baby Sheegoths sometimes hide under snow, and they can unleash blasts of freezing ultracold gas. 

Sheegoth

After killing many of her babies, at one point the adult Sheegoth serves as a bit of a miniboss (before becoming somewhat rare enemies in other parts of Pheldrana). the adult Sheegoth is much larger, with a more detailed and monstrous maw. The ice around its head is gone to reveal its three pairs of eyes, and its back ice has sprouted into a giant mass of icy spikes. 

Adult Sheegoths are so powerful that they are invulnerable to beam weapons, and they can absorb any energy you shoot at it via their ice and fire them back at you. However, after using these breath attack, the adult Sheegoths end up ventilating and makes their mouth are vulnerable. It's a bit harder to aim as the creature moves around all the time, but its underbelly is also vulnerable.

The gimmickry does deviate a fair bit from their baby counterparts, and I kind of wished that there was a bit more of a combative, battle gimmick continuity between the baby and adult Sheegoths. Both baby and adult Sheegoths are extremely agile, though, and often the problem isn't bringing it down, it's dodging the attacks of the multiple Sheegoths in the room just to take a good aim at the beast you're trying to kill. 

Anyway, I like this guy. Very good alien-beast design.

Jelzap

Underwater creatures, now, and while there are many regular fishies that move around in the background, the Jelzap is a strange fish shaped like a reverse-Y. That's not special, and neither is the massive maw that the Jelzap has. No, what's special is that the upper and lower bodies of the Jelzap actually separate from each other when it opens its mouth, as it charges a giant glowing ball of energy. It's such a strange, 'video game monster' vibe -- no real world creature in real life can separate as such and still be considered a single organism. 

The flavour text notes that the Jelzap is made of "electrically bound skeletal halves", and the brain in the upper jaw is connected by electrical impulses to the heart and digestive tract. And somehow, this unconventional and funky body layout has made the Jelzap the top predator in the planet's aquatic food chain. Okay, you weird shark half-and-half!

Tallon Crab

The Tallon Crab is just a cute crab! They are only a problem when moving in swarms, and essentially have the same AI as the Scarabs... but are a lot cuter! The barnacle-crusted red shell and even the Kingler-esque fiddler crab arms are expected, but the crab looks so weird with the three green alien eyeballs, and only having a single pair of legs!

Aqua Reaper

This is an interesting one! The Aqua Reaper is encountered in the underwater areas, and is clearly just a mass of octopus tentacles arranged kind of like a Star Wars Sarlacc. They don't really move out from where they are, and behave similarly to the vine-based Reaper Vines -- only that we see clusters of four or five at a time. 

The codex notes that it's a "powerful aquatic tentacle, part of a submerged organism". Okay, fine, so it's part of a giant octopus or Cthulhu or something. But the codex also describes it as having a "rock-dwelling cousin", which is a bit interesting. So either the Reaper Vine isn't actually a plant and is some kind of weird octopus mollusk creature living in rocks, or the Aqua Reaper is some kind of giant undersea plant. 

Glider

Another one that's meant to help move around, Gliders are giant flat slabs of creatures with a vaguely rocky dorsal side, and three giant eyes pointing downwards on eyestalks. Or at least, they might be eyes. Gliders are docile creatures with 'unusual magnetic properties', explaining how they can float. They kind of remind me of some of the goofier D&D creatures like Cloakers and Lurkers! 

The Gliders are viable targets for Samus's grapple attachment, due to its magnetic field. While we don't see any modern civilization in Tallon IV, the codes notes that Glider Grappling is a sport. Huh! 

Space Pirate

The Space Pirates are a race of evildoers that recur throughout the various Metroid games. They’re a generally all-purpose villain race that are responsible for a lot of the experimentations on Metroids, Phazon, and other kinds of aliens and plot devices throughout the franchise’s history. In this game, Samus arrives first on their orbital space station, and her first encounter with the Space Pirates has them all injured by the escaped alien monsters; and it’s not until much later in Tallon IV that she starts discovering Space Pirate bases on the planet. 

I both love and hate the design of the Space Pirate base as well, where unlike the rest of Tallon IV, there’s only maybe two save stations in the entirety of the Space Pirate base, making it extra frustrating to explore since this is a game without automatic respawn points. Great for the challenge; but annoying because I don’t quite have as much time for gaming nowadays. The stupid Space Pirate base and its lack of save points probably extended the game by one-thirds of my total playing time. 

There are also a lot of fun black comedy in the Space Pirate log entries, because they are sociopathic and don’t care about the wellbeing of their minions in their experimentations.

Somewhat uniquely for an iconic villain race, each Metroid game (or sub-series) has its own unique look for the Space Pirates, handwaved as the Space Pirates coming from different clans or doing bio-modifications on themselves. Metroid Prime’s Space Pirates are a pretty fun design, being mostly bipedal with a vaguely reptilian head attached to an oversized shoulder-and-torso, with gangly insectoid limbs. Most of the trooper Space Pirates are equipped with an arm-mounted galvanic accelerator cannon, and a deployable arm-scythe. 

Anyway, I like the silhouette of these assholes. It’s a pretty all right alien space monster, looking ‘buggy’ without going straight into just being an insectoid monster like a District 9 alien. 

Shadow Pirate

There are a lot of Space Pirate variants, particularly as you enter the bases. The codex actually splits them apart a bit based on area, but as with most humanoid enemies I really don’t have much to say about a lot of the Space Pirate variants that I haven’t already said; so I’ve clumped all the pirates together. 

The Shadow Pirate is purple, a lot slimmer, and as a cool cyclops-eye and… antennae? They are invisible, forcing Samus to use her heat detection visor to locate them. The Shadow Pirates don’t have ranged weaponry, cutely described as their stealth gear draining so much power that they can’t use the cannons effectively. 

Flying Pirate

The Flying Pirate is what it says on the tin, it’s a Space Pirate with a jetpack. They are also fully armoured and their armour look like a robot… but that beaked helmet also gives the impression of the Chozo, doesn’t it? The Flying Pirates are a bit more fragile, but make up for it by their fast, speedy movements in the air. They are vulnerable to missiles, and if you defeat them they will try and divebomb Samus in one last suicide strike. 

Aqua Pirate

The Aqua Pirates are a full-on reskin of the Flying Pirate, but found in the underwater areas of the game — specifically, a half-drowned portion of the Space Pirate station from the prologue. They have cute little bubble effects as they move through the water, but otherwise behave similarly as the flying variants. 

Power Trooper / Wave Trooper / Ice Trooper / Plasma Trooper

The Troopers take over as the elite enemies in the Space Pirate bases, essentially being the same design but with different colours. They have one sick-looking sickle sword arm, have a body encased with a somewhat chitinous exoskeleton (which actually makes me think of the final boss below) and have a head-helmet that looks like a mouthless rhinoceros beetle. It’s a neat, slick design, even if the neon colours do make them look a bit goofy next to each other. 

The cool thing is that the Troopers were created after Samus Aran started coming and scaring the ever-loving shit out of them. The Space Pirates attempted to reverse-engineer Samus’s Chozo-designed weapons, specifically her four beams, granting the Troopers the same elements as her four different beams. A flaw in design, however, makes each trooper susceptible to their own respective weaponry. In-game these are annoying, but I do really like the story of Samus being so scary and so effective that the Space Pirates scramble to try and reverse-engineer her weapons and abilities to use as their own. 

Sentry Drone

Used by the Space Pirates are the Sentry Drones, which I thought were really cool! They are mostly originally encountered in a folded-up form that looks like a weird teardrop with a central circular eye, but when they detect you they transform into a far more impressive battle mode with two wing-like protrusions, and two arm-like claws with machineguns. They are vulnerable to Samus’s electrical weaponry, and they actually initiate a security lockdown that forces you to fight the Drone and destroy it before moving forwards. 

They are extremely annoying because of these (a very valid way to conserve health and missiles is to just speed-blitz through the many, many rooms you need to backtrack through). It is a very valid reason to employ the ‘defeat all the enemies in the room before the door opens’ gimmick that many other dungeon-style games use, though — in Zelda they never really explain just why it’s the case!

The Sentry Drone is also able to scramble your visions, and there are at least a couple miniboss versions of the Sentry Drone that can turn invisible. 

Aqua Drone

Found in the aquatic parts, I like that the Aqua Drone’s ‘battle mode’ isn’t just a copy of the Sentry Drone but instead the arms/wings are attached to the main teaerdrop body sort of like a bondola. Like its non-aquatic counterparts, the Aqua Drone is also vulnerable to electric attacks. 

Tallon Metroid

And here we go with the poster-child of the franchise, and its titular name. Metroids are floating jellyfish aliens with four pokey tentacles — interpreted here as tentacles ending in bony claws — and a translucent head with three fleshy orbs that bring to mind eyeballs. The Metroids are particularly dangerous because they clamp onto living things and suck the life out of them! Samus can dislodge them by turning into her Morph Ball form and detonating a bomb to shake them off; or use Ice Beams + Missiles to break the Metroids — the latter not actually being told in-game in Prime and relies on knowledge from older games. I thought that was cute. 

The Metroid Prime take on the Metroids is ever so slightly different from the classic look, but it’s also handwaved as the Metroids that Samus met have been introduced by the Space Pirates to Phazon and they feed on it. Yep, let’s just introduce one highly-potent alien that was a galactic threat into this strange, unpredictable energy that has destroyed the local Chozo population. Nothing will go wrong! Pretty nice little sci-fi plot, of course. 

Hunter Metroid

I am quite surprised that the team didn’t go a bit more in-depth and make more Metroid variations, but we’ve only got two (three, counting the final boss) in this game. That’s a nice bit of restraint, and does ensure that most of the Metroids we see that break out of the Space Pirate containment tanks are the ‘classic’ one. Other games would establish the Metroids as being a bit mutable, but I’m hugely not a fan of the other Metroid forms from Metroid II. I do like that while they didn’t change too much of the design, that the Hunter Metroid here still looks like ‘a’ Metroid. 

There is a mutated, more squid-like variant called the Hunter Metroid. The main body of this Hunter Metroid has elongated a bit, and the mouthparts are now arranged in a circular pattern. It’s also got two longer, extendable blade-tipped grasping tentacles like that of a squid… except instead of just grasping you, these also have the Metroid’s regular energy-siphoning abilities. 

I actually think these are easier to deal with than the regular Metroids, since they tend to be a bit more obvious when they attack from afar (whereas the smaller regular Metroids can zip out of your vision if you’re not careful and get a lucky potshot). 

Fission Metroid 

These assholes. Fission Metroids look basically the same as a regular Metroid, but more colourful. Upon being damaged, they split into two smaller Metroids, each with different colours. And each sub-Fission Metroid have an invulnerability to most weaponry except for one of Samus’s four beams. There is a room leading to the final boss where we get an endlessly spawning hive of Fission Metroids, while you have to jump up and platform across the giant room. I don’t like them. 

The mutation is noted due to the sheer concentration of Phazon within the Fission Metroid’s forms. Okay!

Lumigek

It’s a transparent gecko! You can see its brain and lungs and veins and everything. 

The Lumigek is found only in a couple of spots in the final part of the dungeon as Samus enters the meteor impact site and faces off against the swarms of Phazon-corrupted Metroids and the final boss within. The Lumigeks… are just hanging out there, non-hostile as the scuttle around in swarms. They do radiate Phazon energy that might burn you a bit, but otherwise I find it adorable that the design team made up this one last creature as a nice final piece of wildlife even as you move to face the final threat. 

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