• The new weapons sucked. Partly because they were bland, but mostly because they used ammo. I found myself sticking with the basic power beam through most of the game. I tried using the other weapons occasionally, but they were not powerful enough to be worth burning the ammo, except in boss fights. This meant I never got the feeling of suddenly being more powerful from having obtained a new weapon, because for the most part I never actually used those new weapons.

• Apparently Retro caved to the people who complained about the retraversal in MP1, because MP2's world is a straightforward hub design with one central zone and three zones connected to it which you complete in order... whereas in MP1 the zones were connected organically and you had to travel back and forth between them frequently. I actually enjoy retraversal, so I was disappointed that they removed it.

• A lot of the enemies were really annoying and tedious to fight. IMO, no enemy which you have to fight more than 10 times should take more than 10 seconds to kill, but MP2 had several of these. Also, perhaps the single most annoying and tedious enemy in the game -- the cloaking pirates -- is actually a mandatory fight when you enter certain rooms. The doors actually lock until you complete the fight, where the fight takes upwards of a minute. Arg! And you'd think any mandatory, door-locking fight would be a one-time thing, but no: every time you return to certain rooms you must fight these guys again. WTF?

Some random points I did like:

• The "safe zone" mechanics in the dark world were interesting... though they slowed the game down.

• There's one enemy that has an attack where it infects your suit with a computer virus, and the effect is really awesome. The screen becomes fuzzy, grayscale, and *choppy*, in such a way that it actually looks like something is wrong with the game... you are then instructed to reboot your suit by holding certain buttons. When you reboot, you see text scroll by showing all your suit systems and items coming online. I thought it was really well done. (Sadly, I quickly stopped liking the enemy that does this attack as it is one of the overly tedious ones.)

• The puzzles were really well-done. Perhaps even a step up from MP1. I'm not sure.

• The boss fights were pretty good.

• Most of what I liked about MP1 was back.

Anyway... as I said, still an excellent game. Metroid Prime 3 is next! I'm excited to try a good FPS using the Wiimote.