The Metroid Prime series kind of passed me by. I previously owned them on Wii U and snapped up the wonderful remaster of the original day one on Switch, but I've never seen any of them through to completion. I do want to play them through, but got horribly stuck at the Chozo Mines difficulty spike and admitted defeat - never to see the story to its conclusion. See, I never clicked with the Game Cube when it launched. I didn’t like the controller and moved on pretty quickly to the PS2 and Xbox.
That being said, the 2D Metroid games are among the most fun I have ever had in my gaming career so far. And I have made my way through a few of those - Metroid Dread, for example. It is one of my favorite games of all time. Deliciously difficult and heartily rewarding when you defeat that boss who killed you over and over, or finally figure out the solution to a puzzle.
But I digress, we are here to see whether or not you should pick up Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, so let’s dive right in.
This review will remain mostly spoiler-free for the story, but if you want to go in fresh, jump to the score at the end.
18 years in the making, and Metroid Prime 4 is finally here. Since it was announced in 2017, Nintendo has had 3 new CEOs, with the game first announced during the almighty Reggie Fils-Aimé era. It has had a turbulent development, to say the least, even starting from scratch and handed over to another team back in 2019.
Development troubles aside, we have the game in hand, and for the last week and a bit, I’ve played nothing else but the latest adventure featuring our favourite space legend - Samus.
When playing the game, I instantly got Halo 4 vibes. Now don’t let that scare you off - I liked Halo 4 and think it was unfairly treated. But let me explain what I mean.
It has been 18 years since Prime 3 was released, and aside from the digital re-release of the trilogy on Wii U, we haven’t seen the Prime series since way back on the Wii. Metroid Prime 4 Beyond felt like Halo 4 in the way that it feels like a new jumping-on point for fans, a soft reboot, and that’s a good thing here.
Many players today won't have been born when Prime 3 was released, so in the absence of a remaster of 2/3, the only thing they have on current gen to experience the games is the remaster of the first Prime (technically last gen/Switch 1, but you get my drift). But, now Metroid Prime 4 is here ready to welcome newcomers into the fold.
Samus has once again been called in to eliminate a deadly threat by the Galactic Federation as she was on recon missions nearby. Naturally, things take a turn for the worse, and Samus ends up in a fight to save the galaxy. Now, of course, this means stripping her of her powers at the start as is standard, but I had hoped that for once we got to keep them and we got new ones layered on top, but oh well.
You soon find yourself stranded on a whole new planet that is filled with creatures trying to kill you and ancient advanced tech that - you guessed it - will help you restore all the lost powers while maybe adding a new one here and there.
Now, please don’t take this as me bashing the game. There are certain series tropes that, if they weren’t here, long-time fans would be outraged. So the standard Metroid setup in the opening makes sense to tap nostalgia and familiarity, I had just hoped for a twist on the formula here to really plant the flag of the new era.
There are some new twists down the line, but we will get to those later.
Before we dive into the new features and cool stuff, I need to talk about the graphics in Metroid Prime 4. While the remaster of the original was phenomenal and looked good, Metroid Prime 4 Beyond is the best-looking game on Switch 2. Sure, it’s a relatively new console, but for the most realistic-looking game Nintendo makes, it stands leagues above its candy-colored companions as an absolute beauty.
Both 4K 60 fps and 1080p 120 fps are viable options, depending on your TV's output. A Nintendo game dated my TV, which is crazy. I could only play in 60 fps mode on docked, and the 4K resolution more than made up for it. The 60 fps is buttery smooth, so no worries on that side. Audio-wise, the game sounds perfectly haunting for each new biome you venture into, and those trademark Metroid sound effects are all here, bringing you right back to the fight you left in 2007.
Samus has a nice new red and black suit as seen in the snazzy new amiibo, and it looks very nice in cutscenes. I still prefer the Dread suit, but this one is up there, too. Her new suit grants Samus the power to ride the Vi-O-La, an Akira-esque motorbike that is quite fun to travel around the Volt Forge, but feels sadly tacked on rather than a necessary addition.
For anyone worried about the side characters seen in the game previews and trailers following you around - worry not - these NPCs are mostly found/rescued as you enter each new area. Some will tag along for a bit, but never get in the way. Most return to the Fury Green hub area and make the universe feel populated to a degree.
The haunting horror felt in the older titles still remains here. Deliciously so in fact. My personal worry was that these characters would tag along and get in the way or ruin the spooky ambience in the dark depths of a cave or in a messed-up experimental lab. I was glad to find that while they do appear during your quest, they never become annoying or follow Samus for any length of time.
You must find five teleportation keys in order to save the day. All while travelling from area to area (and back again), collecting new powers to reach new areas. It’s all very familiar for anyone who has played Metroid before and feels like a band belting out the classics and calling it a day because they know most will be happy enough.
But there lies the problem with Metroid Prime 4 - it’s too safe, it goes through the motions of requiring abilities without any of them feeling stand out. Sure, the psychic abilities to use otherwise invisible platforms are neat, but they aren't utilised in any significantly game changing way and the others are iterations of previous abilities with “psychic” stuck in front of them.
The shots picked up again feel like a greatest hits with you collecting ice, fire, and electric elemental shots to solve environmental puzzles and take down bosses. It’s all very familiar, and I understand why they did it, but it kind of holds back the game from evolving or even feeling like it belongs in 2025 (beautiful graphics aside).
It really feels like Metroid Prime never went away - and that’s not necessarily a good thing, dear readers…
The team has done such a good job making Metroid Prime 4 feel like the original trilogy that, despite the open world element, it feels like nothing has evolved. Now, this is a case of "damned if you do, damned if you don't" in my opinion, there was no other option here for Retro Studios. Had they departed too much from the series, fans would have been up in arms, and yet they have stuck so close to the original feel that I think fans will start to complain about it.
For me, it felt very safe, very “Force Awakens”, an easy home run that throws some new things in and polished it up real nice before they knocked it out of the park. The problem is that it could have been a much more streamlined and well-paced adventure had they cut the traversal through the empty desert between areas. The last thing a Metroid game needs is further padding - you spend half your time going back the way you came as is!
Anyway, to have “too similar” and “empty open world” as my only two major gripes is a good thing. Metroid Prime 4 Beyond is a fantastic way to jump into the series without the need for studying up on the franchise beforehand (although you should). It is the best-looking game I have ever seen from Nintendo that deviates from the candy-soaked visuals found across their other first-party titles. And I would struggle to say anything that really would be a huge negative for it.
However, the painful early exploration of the open area is tedious. If you remove this and tone down the graphics and frame rate, the game feels like it could have been released in 2012/2013 after Prime 3. You are either going to love this game or hate it because of this, and I don't know if those who never liked previous games will be swayed here. Metroid is a franchise that should be a blockbuster, but the fans and Nintendo seem to know its place in the hierarchy of Nintendo games. And for some reason, it just can’t rise above it.
If we don’t end up waiting another almost 2 decades for Prime 5, I daresay it could make full use of the visual quality and the new open-world elements. The fact that Prime 4 was released on last gen as well will definitely have been holding it back from reaching its full potential. Now don’t write this one off completely, as it understood the assignment 100%, it’s just not the evolution that I had expected after all these years.
You still get that rush of dopamine when you trigger the puzzle solved sound effect or hear the choir-like upgrade music play. It’s all very much as I said before - expected. So while I did enjoy myself playing Metroid Prime 4, I already want the next entry to see it hopefully do something new for the series now that Beyond has re-established it.
Metroid Prime 4 Beyond is a ‘good enough’ entry to the series and will be a familiar return for long-time fans. The bloating caused by the open world and no huge leaps in gameplay to significantly set it apart from the original 3 means we can only hope Prime 5 comes out soon and builds on these foundations to move the series forward.
I’m not asking for a completely new game, Nintendo, just one that feels like it justifies the 18-year wait and belongs in 2025.
