YMMV / Metroid Prime: Federation Force

• Animation Age Ghetto: Due to the "chibi" graphics and inclusion of the Blast Ball mini-game, some fans felt that the game was targeted more towards children than previous Metroid games, despite the game still receiving a "T for Teen" rating in North America, like the rest of the Prime subseries.
• Anti-Climax Boss: The final boss battle has been heavily criticized for being a lot more tedious than challenging, and the fact that the final boss is a Brainwashed and Crazy Samus, which sounded like it could make for an amazing Final-Exam Boss fight where she uses all of her arsenal against your team... but instead she's locked into her Morph Ball form, and the final battle ends up being a glorified Blast Ball match except as a boss battle.
• Audience-Alienating Premise: Most fans of Metroid generally point to the exploration and sense of isolation as the series' hallmarks, so an installment that ditches all of that for a more action-oriented, Co-Op Multiplayer installment that doesn't even star the main character became a hard sell for them. It being five years since the last installment in the franchise, which itself was widely regarded as the worst entry in the entire series, only aggravated the issue. Even among those who didn't mind the idea of a spin-off game and weren't part of the intense backlash were apathetic to it and criticized the timing, feeling the premise would've been harmless at worst otherwise. Upon release, the game received mixed to poor reviews, and became the worst-selling game in the series by a wide margin.
• Broken Base: In the years following its release, once the game was no longer viewed as an abhorrent Franchise Killer, the fandom became divided on how good the game actually was when divorced from the timing and context of its release. Some have come to view it as a fun co-op title that's pushes the 3DS hardware, enjoy the additional worldbuilding of the Metroid universe outside of Samus's perspective, and note it has the polished presentation expected of the series. Meanwhile, others still regard it as the worse game in the franchise next to Other M, with solo play not being as well-balanced as squad play, feel the more cartoony aesthetics diminish the series' usual horror-adjacent atmosphere, and dislike that Samus not only has her role as protagonist sidelined in favor of Federation military grunts but feel that the circumstances surrounding her being the final boss shares "lack of agency" issues that make Other M so loathed.
• Character Rerailment: Although her appearance is brief, there's no trace of Samus Aran's controversial characterization in Metroid: Other M. It also helps that the Galactic Federation defers to her intel and treats her with respect like in Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, instead of coldly treating her like an outsider like Adam and the Colonel in Other M.
• Critical Backlash: A lot of fans consider the game's initial overwhelming negative reception to be unfair and outright ridiculous, born primarily from the poor timing of its release. While just mentioning the game still garners some measure of knee-jerk hate and ridicule even years after its release, general consensus is that the game is actually So Okay, It's Average at worst.
• Fan Nickname: Metroid Prime: Federation Commando, because it's the closest there is to a sequel to Star Wars: Republic Commando.
• Fanon: As a way of invoking Worf Had the Flu, some fans offer the explanation that Samus was still recovering from the effects of Phazon corruption during the events of this game. This would make both her being captured by the Space Pirates and her unchallenging Final Boss battle easier to swallow.
• Game-Breaker:
  • The humble Ice Beam is effective on virtually every enemy in the game, including bosses, which makes it the perfect tool for getting an enemy to stand still while their weak point is exposed and doubling the damage of your regular shots. This is especially effective on the final boss. Combining the Ice Beam with a missile will also help gain a high score on missions thanks to a whopping 300 point bonus for Literally Shattered Lives.
  • The Samus amiibo skin makes all Missile ammo packs contain 10 missiles each, and since missiles only take up one unit of weight, it's possible to carry nearly a hundred missiles into a mission.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Due to Samus herself being the final boss, some people have joked about how the game has you kill Metroid (in reference to people who think that Metroid is the name of the main character), despite Samus not dying in the game.
  • Due to the backlash and low interest the game got, many people assumed that the series was going back into hibernation or might even be dead for good, despite Tanabe teasing another mainline Prime game during this game's press cycle. With Metroid: Samus Returns releasing the following year, with its reveal being preceded by the official announcement of the aforementioned Metroid Prime 4, looking back at the bevy of videos and forum posts lamenting that the series is dead and Nintendo no longer cared about it now look more like fan overreaction than anything else.
• Mis-blamed:
  • From the moment of its reveal, the game received immense criticism and the assumption that it was an original concept with the Metroid name slapped onto it to drum up sales. However, the game's producer first got the idea to explore the Federation side of the Metroid Prime universe during the production of Corruption.
  • Some fans blame Yoshio Sakamoto for the reason Samus isn't the protagonist of the game, citing his supposed possessiveness of the character, "hatred" of the Prime series, and overall questionable decisions during the development of Other M. In reality, not only did he have no involvement with the game at all, but he also has no hate for the Prime series, viewing them as perfectly valid side-stories. He would even go on to reference the Prime series in his next game. The real reason given for Samus not being playable is because producer Kensuke Tanabe had wanted to do a game focused on the Galactic Federation and, as a multiplayer game, it wouldn't make sense for four Samuses to be running around anyway.
• Older Than They Think:
  • The Super-Deformed art style featured here didn't start with this game; the original NES game had a chibi style (though mainly due to graphical restrictions) and the official art reflected this. An early version of Zero Mission would have used a similar style, but this got changed to a more realistic style in the final release.
  • This isn't the first use of the Prime title that makes it an Artifact Title nor the first shooting-focused spin-off of Metroid; Metroid Prime: Hunters, released between Echoes and Corruption, had no appearance from the eponymous creature (except in the First Hunt demo for some reason) or Phazon, and it even had a greater focus on shooting rather than exploration and puzzle solving.
  • Kensuke Tanabe had wanted to make this game since 2009. He didn't do it then because the Nintendo DSi didn't have the graphical power he needed.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: This game is almost never mentioned without talking about the firestorm it caused upon its announcement, as it had the misfortune of being a multiplayer spin-off announced for the franchise's 30th anniversary, at a time when the franchise's future seemed uncertain and fans were demanding a new game that went back-to-basics after the much-maligned Other M.
• Scrappy Mechanic: The Blast Ball game mode. It's essentially soccer in space, requires six players to play, and can be played on a friend's 3DS through Download Play. Despite being a side mode, the main game nonetheless forces the player to partake in it as part of the overall tutorial, as well as during the Final Boss.
• So Okay, It's Average: After the aforementioned controversy surrounding the game's very existence, the general consensus is that Federation Force is more-or-less this: a decent spin-off with acceptable execution of its gameplay ideas and a handful of interesting story concepts.
• Spiritual Licensee:
  • The main missions are the closest players will get to a sequel to Star Wars: Republic Commando.
  • Blast Ball is like a first-person, mech-based Rocket League.
• Tainted by the Preview: With Metroid's 30th anniversary on the horizon, and 6 years having passed since Other M, fans were hoping for either a classic 2D Metroidvania or a surprise Metroid Prime 4 to make up for the disappointment of that title. So when the next game of the franchise to be announced was Federation Force, a cartoony Gaiden Game Spin-Off with Samus in a supporting role while the main focus is placed on the Galactic Federation army, the backlash was swift and furious. Additionally, the game's "Blast Ball" mode was shown during Nintendo World Championships before the game's official reveal, which had the unintended effect of making the game look too generic to pass for a Metroid title. It reached the point that the trailer on YouTube received over 34,000 dislikes in only 24 hours, and a petition was drafted to cancel the game.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: The final boss of the game is a Brainwashed and Crazy Samus who has been enlarged to giant-size, but the actual execution of the idea is underwhelming. What could have been an exciting fight with several distinct phases where a giant Samus unleashes her entire arsenal upon the Galactic Federation Marines, reminiscent of the SA-X encounters from Fusion (only on a, well, larger scale) is immediately thrown out of the window as Samus is Mode Locked into her Morph Ball for the entire fight, making the whole encounter into a glorified round of Blast Ball.

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