Metroid Prime 4: Beyond – Review

Metroid Prime 4 is finally here after an 18 year build up of anticipation. Can this game go beyond the high expectations that precide it or will it be labeled more as a “Federation Farce”, as I’ll let you know, is Metroid Prime 4 a ten though?

Metroid Tread

Metroid Prime 4’s gameplay for the most part plays it safe treading familiar ground, often seen as a negative, in this case its to the games credit. Prime 4 feels like a Prime game, and 18 years after the 3rd installment, It felt nostalgic and wonderful when each new upgrade felt immediately familiar. Most of the core upgrades to Samus on this occassion are ones ripped directly from prior Metroid Primes, and when those familiar items offer new little fun updates you’ll find you haven’t just found the “Morph Ball” upgrade but the “Psychic Morph Ball” upgrade. There was enough freshness and familiarity here to make getting new upgrades as exciting as it always has been.

Combat is as fluid as always also and running at 60fps or 120fps, depending on in game options on the Switch 2 edition and it runs at these frame rates consistently and effortlessly.

As someone who is a self confessed Wii and motion control fan also, I found it gratifying to find that they decided to retain a lot of the motion control elements featured in Prime 3, including physically yanking your controller back to repel the grappling beam, as well as navigating your new control beam through areas entirely with motion controls.

I also applauded that Prime 4 makes the choice to return to being able to select between your different beams like Prime 1 and Prime 2 unlike Prime 3 which stacks them upon collection, this gives a little more strategy options in combat and bosses as you can select what beam is best to deal the most damage.

The areas within the world of Viewros (this games setting) tend to tread on familiar Metroid staples with your a-typical Jungle , Ice lands and lava environments present. Whilst functionally the areas work, the game would benefit from some more uniquely designed areas, nothing gets remotely close to the memorable likes of Prime 3’s Skytown, Elysia. Some areas such as the second area, Volt Forge certainly come close with some ingenious and unique puzzles that feel very much all Prime 4’s own. Yet as the game progresses the areas begin to feel more mundane.

A souless valley

Successfully getting Samus through the first area of the game drops you in to a new mysterious place thats ready to explore; Sol Valley. Initial impressions paint a sensational level of intrigue, if you didn’t like the fact that you spent a large part of the first area tied to a companion, you’ll be thankful to know your first drop in to Sol Valley will leave you feeling very alone behind the visor, a fittong essence of isolaton that Metroid does best. Music is toned down to nothing more than ambient tones and looking around theres nothing but desolate sand dunes as the game prompts you to move quickly in to the next main area for progression.

Your next expedition across Sol valley sees you equipped with the brand new Vi-Ola bike, your main form of transport to get across the desolate dessert. The bike is incredibly fun to drive, I found immense joy in hopping around the dunes and boosting off the odd occassional ramp. I immediately spent the next hour or so upon obtaining the bike driving across the desert to see what there was to explore. This is where my intrique that the area initially set up so well began to quickly evaporate, the feeling of abandomnent that I thought had cleverly been set up was in fact maybe not so much in credit to the low beat sounds and being able to see nothing much in the distance, its in fact the reality of the area, an open world that clearly the developers themselves abandoned.

There really is just miles of vast dunes with little or nothing in the way of anything to explore. You’ll find the odd classic missile expansion and boost expansions for your bike, in the late game one of your companions decides to hide out in the desert a couple of times holding expansion items to give you. You’ll discover some Federation camps which don’t become needed until late in the game and to obtain 100% item completion you’ll find the desert houses 6 shrines that each feature a puzzle within to obtain further upgrade rewards. The actual content thats here is mostly enjoyable but the fact that you’ll be crossing a massive desert multiple times, fighting the same rotation of 4 enemies who spawn in this area (which after my 2 playthroughs becomes old really quick believe me) the area just feels entirely unfinished. Its full of potential but instead of a populated desert akin to breath of the wilds Hyrule (which featured 120 shrines amongst much more content) we get a barron waste land thats full of green crystals and entrance ways to the main story areas within the game.

Green with envy for Crystals

No I wasn’t just going to brush over the green crystals, whats perhaps an impractical solution to filling the empty areas of Sol Valley (which is 97% of it) is populating the area with Green crystals, and they are everywhere. This has become the most controversial aspect of the game I feel as you will in fact have to collect half of the crystals populated across the desert to unlock access to the ending act of the game.

In concept I don’t actually have issues with the end of the game being locked off beind some collectable mcguffins, in fact its characteristic of Metroid Prime to do this, Prime 1’s Chozo artifacts, 2’s Sky Temple Keys and 3’s Energy cells, its familiar affair and in fact by design Metroid is all about collecting specific items to advance progression, but its execution here feels misdirected.

The game gives you the freedom to go across the desert and collect these from early on in the game whenever you choose to, this will eleviate alot of the frustraton players will feel by leaving all the collecting to the end, however there is a massive trade off. The longer you spend collecting green crystals during the main story, the more you’re going to be open to Mckenzie (one of your federation companions) communicating over radio comms where you should go next, going completely against the nature of Metroid. The core joy of Metroid in terms of working out where to go next to advance is entirely removed, so as a player you’re left with a moral dilema of collecting the Crystals but having where to go spoiled more probable, or speeding across the desert to where you think the next solution is to avoid it being spoiled but be faced with a crystal collecting grind at game end.

This is a choice you’re forced to make, you can’t switch off the radio hints, new players to Metroid I’m sure find these helpful, but for long time fans, the option to turn these hints off would have been a welcome feature. As it stands however, the longer you find yourself in the desert collecting crystals, the more the game assumes you are lost and reveals where to go, no matter how you approach green crystals the player is punished.

Sylux Sidelined

Some such as myself may be able to look past the empty hub world and the seemingly blind sighted approach to green crystal collecting, especially when theres a narrative to unfold that should address an 18 year long cliffhanger. Yes as Prime 3 set up and the marketing materials teased, Sylux is this games main bad guy, or so you may think.

Sylux is oddly abscent with exceptions of 5 minor parts of the game, 1 of them being the games opening which you can see from Prime 4’s first ever trailer reveal. The attempt to weave him in to the games plot feels exceptionally hollow, and frankly you’ll roll the credits for the game knowing nothing of any more significance about the character, which for such a long established cliffhanger, prime 4 fails to address.

There are some other narrative set backs also where I feel certain narrative directions give less impact to some of the more shocking and emotional aspects the narrative tries to deliver. Its a real shame and a wasted opportunity.

“Any objections Lady?”

Truthfully theres no further objections from me or real points of contention. Despite the issues across the game, I still managed to find that Metroid magic, the game still managed to captivate me. Albeit the game may not be as directed or refined as others in the series, the parts that capture that Prime gameplay do so perfectly and it more than satisfied my Metroid Prime itch, so much so I found myself playing through it twice back to back with 100% completion.

It stands as Nintendo’s most graphically impressive game to date too, textures are high res, theres some great lighting effects, visable weather elements on your visor and armcannon, facial animations look almost film quality, technically its a marvel to play.

Is it a Ten though?

It’s not a ten no, but amongst the misdirection are moments that if consistant could have seen this reach the 10/10 status that the prime games usually reach. What we have here though is a Metroid Prime game that over the long development cycle has clearly been dragged through multiple ideas of which some were never fully realised. Make no mistake, theres a solid game to play here and those just getting started with Metroid potentially could play entirely oblivious to the games issues, but those who are core fans will find aspects of the game dissapointing. We don’t have quite the lows of Metroid Other M here, but what we do have is probably the worst offering in the numbered Prime entrys.

It’s an 8/10

• Stellar presentation
• Exceptional Performance
• Nails the familiar Metroid Prime Gameplay
• Some fun and unique puzzles
• Mostly uninspired environments
• Unfulfilling narrative
• A lifeless hubworld