So Guess What Happened This Weekend.

I finally finished playing through Metroid Prime 3! I've had the game since I think the Christmas before last, so that makes uh, something like 17 months. Yeah...
Anyway, I'm too lazy to write a full review, but I thought it might amuse a few people to read my rant about the last level:
The last level is disappointingly short, and the boss battle was frustratingly long. The first thing that happened was that I had to fly my ship -oh wait, I apparently don't get to fly the ship in Metroid - uh, watch the autopilot of my ship take me to Planet Phaaze, the source of all Phazon. So I and a bunch of other ships show up and there's some kind of generic orbital battle sequence, and I fly myself - er, autopilot or whatever - down to the surface. Very Serenity-esque. I wonder if Samus was chanting "I'm a leaf on the wind, watch how I soar" the whole way down...
So I get down there and take a peek around, marveling at all the trippy glowy colorful blue stuff, and then have what appears to be a heart attack. 'Cuz there was too much radiation or something. The practical effect is that I lose all the energy tanks I spent the whole mission storing up and get stuck in perpetual Hypermode. Which is pretty sweet, I guess, until I turn around and find that my ship "can no longer recognize [me] as Samus" and won't let me save. >:(
So I run around through some claustrophobic tunnels full of tentacles and whatnot and end up having to play Wak-A-Mole with a door. Apparently the door itself is indestructible, but it has these little polyp things that pop out now and then, which if you shoot in the half-second before they disappear will lose health on behalf of the door or something until you can go through. Or you could just do what I did and be in Hyper Ball Mode and just electrocute all of them as they come out. Heeheehee.
So I run around through some more claustrophobic tunnels full of tentacles and whatnot, getting grabbed by some obnoxious monster now and then, until I run into this big planty thing with a baby Leviathan in it. Aww! How cute. Now let's kill it. Because everyone knows Samus is a baby killer. And when it's dead I fall into a conveniently large and safety-rail-less hole, where I run into Dark Samus. ("You again!?!")
So I'm giving Dark Samus the beating she deserves when she decides to be all wank and float up in the air, generate some sort of magical bubble around herself, and GROW BACK HEALTH. WTFnofair. Not that it's very effective. Turns out that I can shoot her and lower her health faster than she can recover it, so she's still a n00b. Also she likes making these nice little columns that give me health. But then of course she gets more wank and clones herself twice. But of course only one of them is the real Dark Samus, so I'm glad I got all that practice playing Freddi Fish and learning how to remember which clam the whatever-item-it-was-I-was-trying-to-find was in. And then after a little while she realizes that we're not getting anywhere and brings along her handy reinforcement...
A big brain on a stick. So it throws some colorful junk at me and such, but then it really starts cheating when it summons THREE MORE DARK SAMUSES. >:C So I have to fend off those and try to shoot its soft spot and so forth, but then it still doesn't die. It just breaks off the stick and becomes a flying brain shooting lasers at me!
After about six or seven tries I managed to survive all three bosses and has win. And then the planet explodes. :O
But of course there's the obligatory cheesy ending:
Random but purportedly important military dude: "But what about Samus?"
Random but unimportant military dude: "No contact, sir."
Aww.
And then I come flying along giving the camera a nice cocky thumbs-up, yay!
Credits.
Greatest Metroid game I've ever played, complete with an ending worth ranting about. And of course not because it's the only Metroid game I've ever played, of course not.