Earler, some were taking about the metroid prime. I am a very thorough gamer, and would like to think I am pariculaly skilled, and I did not find the metroid boss battles to be all that hard. I agree that they are amoung the funnest, best done bosses ever, however. Just as Prime stands out amoung games partially because of the visors and cannons still being useful throughout the game, the bosses stand out as truely testing a variety of skills. All have patterens, and most become harder a time goes on (old school, and very fun, and they made it work.), but they still involve you using your variety of techniques more than almost any other first-person game I can think of. Against the Metroid Prime, for example, you obvoisly need to jump and dodge, but in the first stage you need to keep switching weapons, and plenty of incentive is provided for you to use your combos, and even the morphing ball is neeed to dodge its body slam. In the seond phase, your visors get plenty of work, and possibly your beams (personally, I usually power bomb or phazon beam the fission metroids). Super Metroid's ending (and I don't just mean the credits - I mean everything after you get the space jump) was one of the most emotionally drawing I have ever seen. Prime's may not be as much, but the idea of samus getting an ultra-powerful beam is used here well. Now, you need to actually do something to get it (it's not automatic) and once you do it does not gurantee that you will win, you need to get it more than once. So, you still get all the excitement and sense of accomplishment you get from such a great-looking, sexy beam, plus you need to keep on your toes. A great idea.
Mind if I get even more off-topic to graphics? Am I the only one here who thinks the graphics in the fial battle of metroid prime to be some of the best ever? The environment is the perfect, disgusting (that is a GOOD thing), well-textured place for such a fight, and the metroid prime is modelled well in both forms and has nifty looking attacks. In the second phase, the visuals may be even better. Prime looks neat in all visors, and in your combat visor, you may agree with me the metroid prime may very well be the neatest, nifftiest transparency ever!!!! The luminesence and lighting effects in this game are great as well, and the metroid prime's body and attacks - not to mention the utterly orgasmic-looking phazon beam - are also some of the best lighting I have ever seen.