Great atmosphere and gameplay that feels smooth and has a character with awesome abilities.
Often you'll be doing run and shoot style gameplay.The enemies will range from little alien parasites that float and fly towards you and can harm you if they touch you and there's some tougher enemies and some tough or huge bosses and some of the bosses look like very dangerous and vicious alien creatures.Sometimes you will need to find weak parts in the ship that you can blast open with bombs and you can roll into a ball to get into some narrow areas.Samus will also need to use her jumping abilities and she can grab onto ledges and she'll need to find her way through the ship and other environments.Samus's first weapon is some type of energy gun,but she will later gain the ability to use missles(but can only carry a limited number of them)and she will gain the ability to use bombs(she can use bombs an unlimited amount of times but bombs have a small blast radius and are not that effective during battle).Near the end of the game she will gain an ability that makes her able to make energy come around her body and harm any enemy that touches her when she jumps.You'll also need to use ice missles to freeze certain types of alien vegetation that are blocking paths in the starship so you can get past them(because if you touch them,they'll harm you)and they cannot be harmed by normal weapons.There's also environments that have extreme temperatures and will continously harm Samus when she enters them.
There's also sections where you'll be attacked/chased by a powerful clone of Samus and these sections where you'll need to escape from the powerful Samus clone will make you perform platforming sections very efficiently if you want to get away from the Samus clone.
You can and will need to upgrade your suit so Samus can gain better abilities.You'll also gain the ability to jump higher,which Samus will need when she needs to jump to areas which are up very high.
The bosses make you use strategy and careful timing to beat them.
The atmosphere in this game plays a big part in what makes it such a great and intense experience.The interior of the starship has a dark and cold feel to it and the alien worlds look very hostile with the red sky and purple/brown rocky terrain and weird alien vegetation.Some sections of the ship have organic matter growing on them,showing that the aliens are starting to take over the ship.
The sound effects for when Samus jumps and flips goes well with her high tech suit and the weapons sound very high tech.
Overall,the game is a great experience in terms of atmosphere and gameplay.