M is for meticulous...

Well that's thirty-two down... but not quite...

I finished the story line of the game, but there is an epilogue portion where Samus goes back to the space station just before it's to be destroyed in order to retrieve something (I'm not sure what yet). During this part all the floors on the map show what percentage of items you have collected, so I'm betting that 100% on all of them gets you the true ending (like all Metroid games have an alt ending).

The story took several odd turns, and all the objectives I thought I would have were not there. On the way to the cloning area I had to have a boss fight with an oddly familiar machine, it was only when the face plate came off that I remembered that it was Nightmare from Metroid Fusion! I guess that explains what it was doing in that garbage dump, the federation must have tried to salvage it.

When Samus gets to the Metroid cloning area she is tazed by her commander to stop her from going inside since the metroids are cold resistant and there is no way for Samus to kill them. He also explains that he is listed as the head of the project only because he had written a report that said how such a project was too dangerous and would not work, but some people followed it any ways. So the commander then goes on into the section of the ship himself as a suicide mission and blows it up. The VA for Samus actually shows a lot of emotion in this scene and she's actually really good!

Next I went to kill Ridley, but somethign beat me to it already. I find another survivor who runs away, and leads me to a large test chamber, and then a huge door opens showing a huge 8 eyed alligator like head...

IT'S A QUEEN METROID!

I couldn't believe that they finally included a queen Metroid in a newer game! Only other appearance they have had was in Metroid II, the next closest thing was the Omega Metroid in Fusion (which could be related to this one). The fight was really hard because it was not clear what I was supposed to do, the queen had no weakness and would keep spawning baby Metroids. Finally I found that I had to freeze and blow up the babies faster than they spawned and then the Queen would change form, growing a row of crystal spikes across it's neck and breathing fire. Then after destroying the crystals with cluster missiles it fell over as the station, which was on a collision course with the federation home planet, stopped suddenly. The fight got frustrating again because the only course of action was to morphball into the queens mouth, but samus would then quickly die. Only after looking through the pause menu that I noticed that super bombs were enabled, with no announcement (thanks for telling me game!) so I then super bombed the queen into dust.

So then I caught up with the survivor, who revealed that she was actually the real head of the project, and that the woman I met earlier was actually the bio-android body of the AI of Mother Brain (and here I was expecting a room size robot brain)! It turns out that the AI was put into a body so that the baby Metroids could imprint on her like the one did to Samus in II, but through the bonding with the Metroids the AI developed emotions and started acting more human. When fuzzy baby Ridley started killing people the scientists saw things were getting out of control and tried to get rid of the AI, who up to now saw the head scientist like her mother. Felling betrayed and confused the AI used her telepathy (the trait of Mother Brain they wanted to reproduce) to control all the experiments on the station to attack and take over. Her plan was to then crash the station into the federation home planet and release all the metroids (from the Queen she bio-engendered), teaching them a lesson for trying to play god, but Samus and the rescue team messed up that plan.

In the final interactive segment the AI summon a swarm of super beetles (who were hiding as wall decorations the whole game) just as the federation shows up to "clean up" the issue. All hell breaks lose and Samus' controls are locked in first person view, but no matter how many missiles I fire the beetles don't die. After several game overs I notice that the AI is still standing there at the back of the room among the chaos, so I target her, but before I could get a shot off her "mother" freezer her with an ice gun and the soldiers shoot her like crazy. Just before the federation goon can sweep everything under the rug, Samus' friend on the rescue squad show up (having escaped death by freezing a lava monster) and explains that his mission takes priority and he's taking Samus and the survivor to safety.

No big fight with Metroid clones, but I get to fight Nightmare.
No big fight with Ridley, but I get to fight a Metroid Queen.
No big fight with Mother Brain, but the twist was awesome.
No mad escape from the self-destructing station... well not yet...