You're... Comparing Metroid Prime with Super Metroid...?
Retrostudios didn't make Super Metroid.
While comparing to Super Metroid, and having owned that game for several years, or like me for 12 years Metroid Prime might not be the best game ever. When comparing it to many other games made the same year, or maybe other games made in the same year and within the same genre, (I can't say anything about the latter comparison since I can't think of any game like that, except a James Bond game made for the gamecube, I believe 2001 or 2002, but I didn't like that one very much.) it's a really good game.
Anyway, I've played both Super Metroid and Metroid Prime too much, going near world record times in both games, which should mean I know both games very well, and I do think I do.
I've finished Super Metroid several times the intended way before I even knew about sequence breaking or anything like that. Metroid Prime on the other hand I've only done so once, the first time I ever completed it. To me, non of these games are fun when playing in such manner, but it is the non-intended things that make the games interesting, and Metroid Prime brought this to a whole new level, since many unintentional things would lead to drastic changes in gameplay and how fast you could complete the game.
The only reason I love these games are because I can sequence break them, knowing Metroid games are playing them. Playing Metroid Prime without knowing where to go, or where this or that door leads, and having to backtrack because you can't sequence break it really does suck.
Then you might not like that Samus puts up her hand after being hit by something directly, but it's not like she steps on a bug and proceeds with covering her face with her left hand. It's only on direct hits, and in other games worse things have happened. Also, about the heat vents causing altered view like that, I do like it, and if you feel you can't see what's happening, maybe you could wait for 5 seconds until it's gone, or start using your glasses even while playing videogames. If nothing happened you'd probably whine about that though.
Also, the map is there for a reason, you could use it to not get lost, and it's not like every room of the game is an S-shaped corridor.
Also, I don't know if you've heard about this, but you can run past monsters, you don't have to kill them over and over again, it doesn't benfit you.
The field of view might be small if you've played quake with a FOV of like 130 degrees or something like that, as I do. Play the game through a couple of times and you'll get used to it. It's not going to change. And you don't have to use the X-ray visor from the point you get it until you complete the game, try up on the D-pad, if you don't like it, use it as little as possible. And the thermal visor sucks, I agree, but the lights go out just so that you can try it on, maybe it was the best idea they had, I don't know. (Get the ice beam before getting the visor and you can exit right through the door to the right)
Instead of playing during the day, do what you would've done during the evening on the day, and play Metroid Prime during the evening, and it's not that dark. Try playing survival horror games, you usually can't see shit, and the reason of that is because the makers don't want you to, maybe it's the same here. I would probably have thought that the people at Retrostudios were retarded if they put lights in a lake or in a broken ship that doesn't have any power.
I'm not gonna comment on the hud, you've got enough comments on that already.
Then maybe the controls just aren't for you, go play another game. Many people love this game, and most other thinks it's an okay game for being what it is.
I've not written this in any attempt to counter what you've written, but maybe there's something inside me that still hopes that you can see that the truth is that you don't like this game, for reasons only you know and that the game doesn't suck balls, but your experience with the game does.
About the last thing you wrote with this cute little picture:
I'm not sure about how serious you were, but it's possible to turn off the hint system, and as you wrote earlier in the same article, the helmet, and the hud is on the sides and on top of the screen not in the middle of it. The last difference is that Super Metroid wasn't a first person adventure.
I don't know, stay away from Metroid Prime... It wasn't a game for you.
I know the game, and I'm good at it, and that's because I liked it. We're different, there's probably something, or some game you like, but that I don't. But that doesn't make it suck.
I might be wrong, who knows?
-- guess who can't turn his head.
Samus sez: LOLZ WHERE R I??
DAMN I WISH SUPER METROID WAS MORE LIKE DOOM 3, THEN I COULD HAVE A FLASHLIGHT TO SEE WHERE THE FUCK I"M GOING. ALL THE ROOMS LOOK THE SAME. BLACK. LOLZ
