10 Years Ago, Nintendo Released the Worst Metroid Spin-Off Possible and Fans Still Haven’t Forgotten

The Metroid series has been a fan favorite franchise among Nintendo players since the early days of the publisher’s home consoles. Despite that, the series hasn’t gotten nearly the same amount of attention or releases from Nintendo over the years. That’s made every stumble in the franchise all the more galling, especially as other Nintendo franchises get plenty more chances to grow and evolve and expand. That’s why Metroid Prime: Federation Force still stands out as the worst entry in the series, even a decade after it debuted.

The multiplayer Nintendo 3DS game dropped many of the key aspects of the franchise and delivered a multiplayer sci-fi squad FPS experience that would have been lackluster even without the weight of the expectation. However, the long wait between new entries in the game and the ways the title failed to replicate the core appeal of the larger series doomed it to one of the worst reputations in the Metroid franchise. That’s how a bad spin-off transcends that position and becomes something far more loathsome for the fanbase.

Ten Years Later, Federation Force Is Still The Worst Metroid Game

First hitting the shelves on August 19, 2016, Metroid Prime: Federation Force suffered for plenty of reasons. Taking place after the events of the Metroid Prime trilogy, the game shifts focus away from Samus Aran and onto the Galactic Federation’s Federation Force. The commando squad is set on a mission to face off with space pirates. Similar to Metroid Prime Hunters, the game leaned more heavily into the first-person shooter aspects of the game over the exploration or tension. The game focuses on a squad of four commandos, which can either be CPUs or embodied by other players.

This shift away from the established formula, coupled with the large gap between Metroid releases, left fans frustrated by the sheer announcement of the spin-off. Especially after 2010’s Metroid: Other M had become a contentious release thanks to its storyline and presentation of Samus, Federation Force failed to ever turn fan excitement around. Each trailer released online was met with a poor ratio, driving negative reactions and comments far more than earning positive ones. The bad reception to the game even played a role in Nintendo’s infamously rough 2015 E3 appearance by Nintendo, which came at a low point for the publisher before the Switch and Breath of the Wild came out.

The game wasn’t a complete bomb critically, but most publications were mixed on the game — with the clunky visuals and blocky gameplay failing to impress. The game was ultimately a major stumble for the franchise, with some of the worst sales of any game in the series. Even beyond the poor reception it faced from critics and fans ahead of, and then after release, Federation Force stands out as the worst Metroid game because it doesn’t feel like a Metroid game.

Federation Force Doesn’t Feel Like A Metroid Game Should

It’s almost impossible to overstate the importance of Metroid in the history of video games. While exploration in large open-world settings had been introduced, Metroid‘s labyrinth-like map was full of hidden challenges and secret rewards that encouraged genuine exploration. It was one of the early games that defined how exactly the action-adventure game worked, putting emphasis on the power that comes from exploring an unknown world and mastering it. It was something that naturally flowed into every other element of Metroid‘s design, whether that be the moments of tension and horror at finding an unknown challenge or the power fantasy that comes from uncovering a lost weapon and trying it out on enemies.

By contrast, Metroid: Federation Force just felt like a sci-fi shooter. It didn’t have any real sense of tension in the expansion of the setting, with few inventive approaches to combat or clever puzzle-solving. It was a squad-based shooter in a standard sci-fi setting without any of the strange and memorable touches that have always helped the Metroid series naturally stand out from the rest of the genre. Even beyond replacing Samus with faceless sci-fi heroes, the gameplay experience just felt like another shooter instead of a Metroid game. Especially when the series was in the middle of a drought of releases, Federation Force felt like an extra slap in the face.

Other M had come out five years previously and frozen the series in place, only for Federation Force to fail not only to revitalize the franchise but also to keep it stalled for another couple of years. It’s likely why fans responded so harshly to the game right from the jump, as it felt like a betrayal of the brand in the name of creating something that felt far more in line with the standard Halo clone than a Metroid game. It simply didn’t feel like the kind of game that Metroid has always represented. While Federation Force might have at least just been a forgettable game if it had been its own title, the fact that it was presented as a Metroid game but featured no real Metroid elements makes it all the more disappointing.