wow

Well there is not much to say about this, other than their wrong beyond salvation. This is not to say that Metroid is not a great game, but it's nowhere near the elevated status that Michael Thomsen, or the reporters in general, gave it in the video.

For starters in video games the story of a space/normal marine trapped alone in a dangerous planet/place is about as standard as a shooter having guns. From Halo to Dead Space to Lost Planet, It's space soldiers all around.

The larger focus on exploration over shooting, a statement I find suspect, is also found in these titles and Metroid was hardly the first. And if exploration over action is the name of the game then Shadow of the Colossus would be a much bigger contender than Metroid.

The idea of looking at past societies is also well established in most games that even in the remotest way contain exploration and some do it much better than Metroid. Bioshock comes to mind. In fact, two of Bioshock's main themes are nostalgia and the death of society and it carries them quite well.

Looking at the big picture, the search for a video game equivalent of Citizen Kain might be a futile effort. Mostly because video games are not film, they are their own medium. Sometimes this gets overlooked, but you wouldn't try to find the Citizen Kain equivalent in say music or theater. However, I'll leave the unfair comparison of video games to film as a topic for another time.