There she goes; there she goes again
The analogy to Iron Man is both a good and a bad comparison. On one hand, you have Samus, Nintendo's most fearsome warrior this side of Mario's turtle crushing escapades, blowing up pirates and blasting away local flora and fauna like eco-friendly just went out of style. On the other hand, Iron Man is about the persona of the titular character - the super hero, the lone ranger, the man and the struggle and the fight. Metroid, in all of its various iterations, as never been about the struggle of Samus. It's been about the environment, and the player's interaction with the environment. Her back story may be there, but its auxiliary to the player's role as Samus as she explores Planet X for Crashed Ship Y and discovers Super Weapon Z. The Metroid Prime series, in particular, has never been about blasting bad guys to smithereens (which is why the DS spin-off, Hunters, felt so out of place). It's always been about learning how the environment works, and staying alive and getting what you need from this world that will go on perfectly fine without you.
Everything that Metroid Prime as a series has done has been done to build up the environment. The visuals, while ageing, still evoke wonder from the unique and awe inspiring art designs that communicate a sense of place. The audio is low key, offering a moody atmosphere and one of the best surround sound mixes in the business, delivering alien cries that allow the level design, placement of enemy spawn points and the art of the alien planet to all mesh into one spectrum. The cutscenes and the plot, minimal as they may be, serve only as something to find - a goal within the I Spy picture, a picture that invites staring and watching and experiencing. The Wii controls are wrist breaking but certainly better than the Goldeneye-esque single-stick affair the Gamecube used, allowing for more nuanced control and easier "oh wait what is that?" sort of moments that Prime specializes in. It's all about presenting the world and then allowing the player to roam free.
Metroid Prime 1 is the purest form of this distillation, and because of that it stands as the series' best. A game that has not aged a single hair in eight years, it takes Super Metroid to the fullest evolution possible, and I consider it one of the greatest games of all time. The new Wii controls are the only detectable change from the original Gamecube release (despite gaming "journalist" cries about a "downgrading" of the graphical quality), and they make the combat far more involved and a little more fast paced. Metroid Prime 2 Echoes was an extension of this formula, becoming harder, demanding more of the player, and complicating the stakes - the faster combat is a benefit here far more than it was in Prime 1 because of all of these things. Both games benefit, but Prime 1 seems a little less touched by the alteration because the purity is hard to corrupt.
And speaking of Corruption: Prime 3 still seems like the odd egg out for some reason. The level design is less seamless. The plot is less subtle. The combat is far more obvious (though also easier than in Prime 2). Having been designed around the Wii motion controls from the beginning, the game feels less like Prime 3 and more like an alternate Prime 1: what could have been the original Metroid Prime had it been influenced by Halo and developed like the Hunters DS game. Gamers who find the quiet exploration of Prime 1 or 2 disconcerting will be far more at home with Prime 3 - it seems like Retro Games' attempt to make the Metroid Prime series a little less vague hand waving and little more jabbing someone with a finger with a very loud voice. It's fun and it's bright and it's certainly better than a lot of the Wii's library, but Prime 3 just doesn't hold up to the other two games in the series mostly because it seems to lose that exploratory spark, opting to trade it in for fantastic vistas, voice acting and stunning (but inexplicably non interactive) draw distance.
On a single disc, it's easier to see their flaws and their strengths and appreciate each game for what it is. While it was hard from the start to take each game as a separate entity, it is now next to impossible; however, this makes the series better. It's probably the closest we'll ever get to an Iron Man game that isn't trash, but I guess I can live with that. I dreamt that night that Robert Downey Jr. played Samus, and my god, I think we've just struck gold!