I’ve just been playing Metroid Prime for the last couple of hours. I was playing the section where you get the thermal visor. Suddenly everything goes black, so you switch on the visor. This is not much better.

Before I bought Metroid, I read a Eurogamer review where the guy said the feeling he got while playing it was the feeling he got when playing Doom. I wasn’t sure before, but reading that made me buy it. It really is like playing Doom.

When I first got Doom (one HD, one DD, of course) I played it through. It shat me up. It has a very similar bit, which I’ll never forget, where it’s just pitch black and you’re just letting off rounds and it’s basically a maze and there’s all kinds of nastiness in there and then you get the light amp and it’s all OK. I just remember hearing the sounds of demons off in the distance whilst playing Doom late at night and being really scared. I was about 14. Now I’m 25 and the sounds of Space Pirates patrolling somewhere where I can’t see them in a huge dark room scares me almost as much. Ain’t life grand.