Metroid Prime 4: Beyond
Developer : Retro Studios
Publisher : Nintendo
Platform : Switch
Release Year : 2025
It’s Been Almost 20 Years…
And Metroid Prime 4: Beyond has finally been released, and it is a mess. For years this game was stuck in development hell, having been passed around from developer to developer before landing back in the hands of Retro Studios, the company behind the original Prime series, and you can tell there was way too many cooks. Sure, in the decades between Prime 3 and 4, Retro made some really good Donkey Kong Country games, but with the team behind the Metroid Prime trilogy are probably long gone, so hoping this new entry in the series would be as good as what came before was a fool’s errand. Yet we hoped anyway. Once we finally got a look at Prime 4, after reading tiny bits and pieces about the game for what felt like a lifetime by then, my excitement was thrown into overdrive. The wait was long, but maybe it had been worth it? Maybe the Prime series was about to return with flying colours, and Retro and Nintendo were about to blow us all away? Especially after the fantastic remake of the first Metroid Prime, I think we were all excited to see what was coming.
It did blow us away, but not in the way Retro or Nintendo had probably hoped, because my lord, is Metroid Prime 4: Beyond a mess of a game. Once you start playing, it takes no time at all to tell this game had a troubled development history thanks to its half-baked ideas and hilariously linear level design. Playing through this game was like going on a bad date: sure, she is beautiful, but that beauty is only skin deep, and once I got to know her, I quickly learned that there was no real substance there. All they have are looks, and while that’s nice for a bit, those good looks are not a substitute for lack of character. The game was fun enough while it lasted, but by the time the credits rolled, I had zero desire to play through it again, which says a lot. Shit, I played Other M twice, back to back, and that game is a hot mess, so the fact that Beyond only gets a single playthrough tells you more than anything.
Now don’t take this as me saying Metroid Prime 4: Beyond is a sin against humanity, or that it has killed my love for the series, because while it may be a mess, I do see the seeds of something great here. With a tighter focus, an experienced team, and a refocus on what made Metroid Prime so special, I believe that Prime 5 could be something special. That’s not to discount or gloss over the big problems here, because holy shit, if this happens again, I think we’ll be waiting a whole lot longer than 20 years for the series to come back.
The Good
I will give Metroid Prime 4: Beyond credit where credit is due, and say that for a Switch game, it looks and runs really fucking well. I am a huge fan of the art direction and the world building on display here, and it is easily the highlight of the game for me. The graphics and art direction here are absolutely stellar, so it sucks that they are in service of such a shallow and soulless Metroid experience: the forests of Fury Green are awash in verdant greens and lush foliage, just begging to be explored; the caverns and magma lakes of Flare Pool radiate heat and danger in its deep blacks and bright glowing reds; the Ice Belt’s lab, with its mix of metallics and icy blues and whites, is a wonderful mix of the natural and the unnatural; Volt Forge with its driving rains, constant lighting, and beautiful mechanical towers pop with purples and reds; the Great Mine is nothing to write home about, even if it is trying its hardest to channel the Phazon Mines, it just doesn’t live up. Even the game’s open-world section, Sol Valley, which is easily one of the game’s weaker aspects, looks awesome in its own way. It’s such a shame then that the game’s overly linear nature never lets you explore these areas, so you never experience the sense of scale that the art direction is trying so hard to get across.
There are feminine themes and motifs (I don’t really know how else to say it) on full display throughout the world. I totally feel like those themes are from an earlier iteration of the game, because they are not explored at all and are just kind of there? I don’t know, but it’s hard not to notice them, because come on, some of the doors are literally vulva and there is a map that is 100% a uterus and ovaries. Maybe at some point Prime 4 leaned into these themes more, and the world design had a purpose, but as it is now, it seems just kind of weird? At times it looks like there was some environmental storytelling going on, but it’s hard to tell if it is intentional or a byproduct of having way too may cooks over the years? I think it would be rad to explore these themes, but as it stands now, they’re just there.
I love Prime 4’s music and sound design. The music is very much Metroid Prime, and the sound effects are absolutely top notch. This is the one thing Prime 4 does so well, and it makes the adventure sonically diverse and really intriguing, even if the level design and countless other strange decisions undermine that sense of adventure and intrigue over and over. Just like the visuals and art style, the sound direction punch so far above their weight it’s such a shame that they’re in service of such a mediocre game.
The only gameplay aspect that Prime 4 does really well are the boss fights. I really liked how intricate each fight was, and how different each encounter was. Each boss fight is a combat puzzle to be solved, and I really enjoyed how each battle made me think on my toes. The rest of the game’s combat encounters are pretty standard for the series, so it’s awesome that the boss fights standout so much.
The Meh
Vi-O-la, the motorbike that you use to travel back and forth across Sol Valley, isn’t that bad of an addition to the Prime formula. I could see driving across a planet as a great way to add to the series sense of exploration, but as it stands, it feels like a solution to a problem they made for themselves. The motorbike is only here to get across the desert, and to open a few doors here and there, but that’s it. It is a half-baked idea that doesn’t become more than just a way to travel across a pointless open area. They really try and tie it into the lore of the planet, but to say the explanations the game gives us are lack luster is an understatement.
Combat in Beyond is pretty standard Metroid Prime stuff, for better or worse. While it would have been nice to see the combat system iterated upon, maybe have the enemies react to being shot just for example, it is not a deal breaker by any means. I know that combat is not a big focus of this series, but it would have been nice to see a bit of improvement here. It’s been damn near twenty years since Prime 3 and you’re telling me that there wasn’t a good idea here and there on how to modernize the game’s combat? Maybe it’s a case of not fixing what isn’t broken, but that doesn’t explain the rest of the game.
The Bad
Metroid Prime 4’s lack of exploration and maze-like level design is such a stain on the experience. For a series that is known for its labyrinthine maps and sense of exploration, seeing that experience reduced to a liner shooter more inline with Halo hurt my heart more than I can really say. Then to add insult to injury, you also have a bunch of NPCs telling you where to go constantly which erodes any sense of exploration this game may have had. It makes no sense to me, why make a liner game where there is no reason to explore when the Metroid series is known for its sense of exploration? Like, did no one say anything about this during the game’s development? Why did it turn out like this when there is over thirty years of what works right in front of them? Or was it a case of too many cooks over way too many years, with the good ideas falling by the wayside? I doubt we’ll ever know the full story, but whatever the problem was, it led to a terribly liner Metroid game.
Who thought it would be a good idea to put a whole bunch of chatty NPCs in a game series that is known for its sense of loneliness and isolation? Like, I don’t understand why there is a whole squad of marines here who are constantly talking in my ear, and telling me where to go? They need to shut up and stop constantly telling me where to go, and what to do next: let me get lost and explore, even if there is very little to explore. The marines are not terrible characters by any stretch of the imagination (even if their Marvelesque quips get old super fast), which I found quite surprising, but even so, their inclusion is so anti-thetical to the spirit of Metroid I just don’t know why they’re even here. I felt absolutely nothing for them, and that made their sacrifice at the end of the game lack any sort of punch. Did anyone want a whole cast of characters in a Metroid game? I know I didn’t, and it really shows that this game either had no direction or vision, or that vision was so, so flawed.
The Future
It is clear as day that Prime 4 had way too many cooks over the years, and this lack of direction impacted every part of the game. The Prime series used to mean something, but after this outing, I don’t know if the series can be salvaged if they stay the course. After such a long wait, I hope that Retro and Nintendo really listen to what people are saying and get the Prime series back on track and not take the negativity surrounding Prime 4 as a reason to put the series to bed for decades again. There is a nugget of gold here, but there is so much crap surrounding it, I don’t have much hope they can right of the ship.
I really wanted Metroid Prime 4: Beyond to be amazing, and to reintroduce the world to the first person adventures of Samus Aran. While it is not the worst game I have ever played, it is far from the high quality the past games in the series had, and I hope this is not how the Prime series is going to be from now on. Sure, there are some good ideas here, but overall, Prime 4 is a mess, and unless Retro and Nintendo sort their shit out, I can’t see Prime 5 being any better than this. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what happens, but needless to say, I am not about to hold my breath. I have my fingers crossed that lessons will be learned, and that if this is going to be a new trilogy, Beyond is just growing pains.
