Great gameplay and awesome boss fights doesn't hide the fact that the story and game structure is absolute rubbish
Firstly, I've never played a game where the cut scenes annoyed me this much. Every time I opened a new area I was hoping that I wouldn't trigger a new cut scene. So much of the story and dialog seemed like it was copied right out of some b-movie. I'm going to pretend that this game has nothing to do with the official Metroid canon, cause if I don't they've managed to destroy everything that I imagined that Samus was. This game makes her out to be an obnoxious, confused and scared little girl with a bored voice.
Another point of the story is that you no longer find new abilities; instead the commanding officer tells you when it's ok to use them. I didn't think it would bother me, but after a while it started to bother me. When I've spent the last 30 minutes slowly dying by the heat from the lava, and then suddenly the commander says "oh, you better start using your heat protection", well that just feel incredibly stupid. Why on earth would he not let me use the equipment that I actually have so that I have a better chance to survive the mission? It's a completely forced plot idea that's ridiculous. What's worse, when you know that you don't have to find new abilities, there's very little reason to explore. Sure, you might find one or two extra missiles, but considering you can now reload them yourself whenever you want, it hardly seems necessary. When I completed the game I had found about 30% of all the hidden items and I still had no problem beating the final boss.
Now, even though I've complained a lot about the story and structure, the actual game play is really excellent. The controls work much better than I expected and the fights are fast and frantic. Especially the boss fights are really great and varied.