Shinesparkers has an additional review of Metroid Prime 4: Beyond to share:
It’s hard to process the fact that I’m finally writing about Metroid Prime 4: Beyond.
After the critically acclaimed trilogy of Metroid Prime titles spanned the Nintendo GameCube and Nintendo Wii platforms between 2002 and 2007, it would be a whopping 18 years before we would finally experience the fourth game in this storied series. That is a very long time in gaming terms. Heck, such was the scarcity of news about the game during the 8-year gap between its initial announcement and eventual release on the Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2 that one could be forgiven for doubting whether they had actually seen a Metroid Prime 4 logo appear on the screen at E3 2017. As the Switch itself started to look a little long in the tooth as we approached the mid 2020s, you might have wondered if the only 3D Metroid action we were going to see was 2023’s stunning remaster of the original game, though that title did at least show us that Samus’s adventures deserved to continue.
To outside eyes, it may even seem that the game’s development was troubled, with Retro Studios taking back the mantle from Bandai Namco when the latter’s efforts failed to meet the Big N’s standards. We saw neither hide nor hair of the game itself until 2024, which is an eternity for impatient gamers eager to board the Hype Train™, but the fact that the development was once again in the hands of the studio which gave us an all-time classic in the form of the original Metroid Prime and its worthy successors was a source of comfort. Finally having the game in our grubby gamer hands, then, is something of a marvel and a relief.
Nonetheless, the passage of so much time imposes a conundrum for any studio resurrecting a beloved series; how will they innovate while remaining faithful to the core ethos that made fans fall in love with Metroid Prime in the first place? Modern players have very different expectations of new game releases than those of a certain vintage would have had when playing original titles on release. The first Metroid Prime game had a lot to accomplish in the process of bringing the non-linear platforming and progression of the classic side-scrolling titles into the 3D era. It succeeded on the strength of its impeccably tight first-person gameplay and mechanics. It offered remarkable level design which managed to uphold the series’ unique sense of isolation while still encouraging exploration, a flawless translation of protagonist Samus’s abilities and power-ups into the third dimension, and a sumptuous visual and audio presentation that showed off just what the tiny GameCube could do in the hands of a talented studio. These days, visually striking first-person shooter games are ubiquitous, and there is the curious resurgence of 2D “Metroidvania” style games – especially in the indie space with the likes of Hollow Knight: Silksong, but also in the form of Nintendo’s own eagerly anticipated (and rather excellent) Metroid Dread in 2021. How would the return of Samus in 3D make itself relevant today, and would Retro Studios be able to wow us with Metroid Prime 4: Beyond in the same way they did 23 years ago?
Other long-running franchises which have seen outings on Nintendo’s current hardware offerings have made the, ahem, switch into this era in style, with the likes of Link and Mario delivering career-high adventures on Nintendo’s hybrid portable consoles. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild wasted no time in showing us that it was going to be radically different from its predecessors with the now-famous and oft-mimicked sweeping shot of the vast and fully explorable Hyrule in its opening couple of minutes. Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, by contrast, does not stake any kind of early claim to be a wild departure from what has gone before. What we have here is a game firmly rooted in the design ethos of the original game, dressed in a very shiny new suit (in more ways than one!).
For certain players, the introductory sequence at the UTO Research Center will be like reacquainting with an old friend you haven’t seen since, well, 18 years ago. Playing as Samus feels instantly familiar to anyone who played the earlier games, with the same responsive first-person controls and abilities at your disposal (and don’t worry, this is a Metroid game so you will absolutely be losing most of those starting abilities very soon!). Beam attacks? Check. Morph Ball? Check. Missiles? Check. You get the picture.
Whether you’re a returning fan or a new player, it instantly feels good to move around as the space-suited bounty hunter, whether using joy-cons or a Pro Controller in a more traditional twin-stick FPS style, or the surprisingly intuitive mouse style controls that the Switch 2 Joy-Cons provide. Transforming between the first-person view and the Morph Ball in particular is smoother than in the earlier games. Locking onto a target with ZL and blasting some Space Pirates or Grievers (this game’s most ubiquitous Arm Cannon fodder) feels intuitive, instantaneous and immensely satisfying, as if you – the player – are really the hero behind the visor.
And peeking out from that famous visor (which provides our in-game HUD and enhances the game’s immersive feel) shows us the first big leap since Metroid Prime: Corruption had us waggling our Wii Remotes in 2007. The visuals. Oh, my, the visuals.
This is without a doubt the most gorgeous game that Nintendo has ever published. Playing on a Switch 2 in docked mode, you are treated to the choice of a 4K output at 60 frames per second, or 1080p with a whopping 120 frames per second. The best part of this choice is that both options are great. Favouring the higher resolution shows off the game’s sumptuous environments and detailed characters in their best light, but the softer appearance of the 120hz mode more than makes up for it with stunning motion clarity and input response. There are relatively few games which support this high frame rate on Nintendo’s newest hardware at the time of writing, one of them being the Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour (why, oh why was this not a pack-in title!), so if this is your first time playing a game that’s consistently hitting its 120FPS target, it may surprise you just how good it feels.
Picking up the game in handheld mode offers similar choices; you can make the most of the Switch 2’s 1080p resolution in the game’s quality mode, or you can max out its 120hz refresh rate by bumping the resolution down to 720p in the performance mode. The Switch 2’s built-in LCD screen is not the best for motion clarity because of its inherent ghosting (motion always looks smeared), but the device’s own shortcomings in this area don’t stop Prime 4 from looking and feeling great on the go.
Most importantly, I found myself toggling between the different graphics options, and I cannot recommend which one you should choose because they are all good.
This reviewer did not have access to Prime 4 on original Nintendo Switch hardware. While there is of course no 120hz option there, it does appear that Retro Studios made the necessary sacrifices to resolution, shadow and texture quality to ensure that by all accounts the game still hits that crucial 60FPS target on the aging hardware, which is quite a feat for a game that looks this good.
And I cannot stress enough just how beautiful this game’s visuals are. This is all the more astonishing because Retro Studios has not reinvented the wheel with the techniques on display (a necessity given the vintage of the original Nintendo Switch hardware). Instead, they have relied on tried-and-true techniques, with detailed and clean textures with impressive material qualities, dazzling particle effects, and stunningly atmospheric baked lighting. The game makes no use of modern features such as ray tracing or DLSS (which only the newer Switch 2 supports), but Samus and the world around her have never looked better. Retro Studios clearly poured a lot of care and attention into this
A special shout out must also go to the game’s High Dynamic Range implementation, which is easily the best in class on the Switch 2 at the time of writing. In fact, very few games on any platforms have really managed to showcase what true HDR can do for a game’s overall presentation. Too often it seems to be an afterthought or has been poorly calibrated. Here, the bright beam blasts and explosions, psychic auras and glowing environmental lights and the visor’s HUD pop against the intimidating darkness of Prime 4’s environments. This is best experienced in docked mode on a modern TV, as the Switch 2’s own screen doesn’t get bright enough to showcase HDR’s dramatic impact. My jaw actually dropped in a later-game cutscene where Samus and two of her allies were silhouetted against a burning wreckage, such was the effect of HDR on the image.
There is no area of this game where Retro Studios has fallen short on the visuals. Be it Fury Green’s own Breath of the Wild moment as the camera pans over the vast mountains and forests, the crackling intensity of Volt Forge or the chilling horror of the Ice Belt’s frozen research facility, and even the empty vastness of the Sol Valley desert (which we’ll address), Viewros is a planet well worth viewing.
The gorgeous environments are only enhanced by the game’s stellar sound design. Music is a major component of my enjoyment of a Metroid game, and the choral ambience of Fury Green is instantly evocative of the best the series has to offer. Volt Forge’s throbbing beat, eerie synths and wailing guitars ramp up alongside you as you restore power to the various towers, highlighting the important role the soundtrack plays in the game’s environmental storytelling. Quite simply, fans of Metroid Prime OSTs will find a lot to love here, and it is best enjoyed by playing the game first. It knows when to exercise quiet restraint to enhance the horror, tension and isolation, but when those melodic themes do break out they stand proud with the legacy of the franchise.
Sound effects are, as you might expect, superb across the board too, in perfect synergy with the action on the screen. The familiar sounds of your beam attacks and Morph Ball transformations have made the jump to the Switch. Samus’s footsteps once again convey the different terrain you traverse during your adventure, and the surrounding snarls of enemy Grievers will set your heart racing as you tentatively make your way through dark corridors. I found it to be a stroke of genius that certain sound effects could instantly alert enemies to your presence in a later passage of the game – sound design as a game mechanic always puts a smile on my face.
You will meet a number of Galactic Federation allies during the course of the game, whose relative verbosity can be amusing when contrasted against our stoic silent protagonist in Samus (I can never tell if the humor of these moments is actually intended, but I’m here for it anyway). The game’s cinematics can be slightly jarring in that your friends will chatter at you without so much as a word or grunt offered in response, but they’re rarely around for long enough to become annoying or betray the series’ signature feeling of being alone on a hostile alien world. They do aid you with your progression in meaningful ways at different points of the story, though some story beats don’t quite land with the intended emotional heft due to each character being a little one-note. Keeping your allies alive in some of the more difficult combat situations can be a pain, and taking discoveries back to your first companion MacKenzie at base camp to have him upgrade your weaponry can become a chore.
The game offers no bigger chore, however, than the desert area alluded to earlier. Sol Valley does not really open up to the player until you acquire your shiny new motorbike Vi-O-La (and the accompanying ruby-red suit) a few hours into the game. The sweeping sands and rocky outcrops serve as a large hub area of sorts, from which you access each of the five main “areas”. These areas each hide a Master Teleporter Key (the five MacGuffins scattered around Viewros which will unlock the Chrono Tower and the way back home for you and your friends). You’ll already have two of the Keys by the time your wheels are tearing up the desert sand on your way to the next area. Unfortunately, the exhilaration of speed soon wears off. Though extra shrines and upgrades are peppered around the map, and occasionally an enemy will pop out of the sand to mildly inconvenience you, the long stretches of gameplay spent in this bland biome offer little true excitement or variety, and it seems that its chief purpose is to pad out this fairly short game. The most egregious aspect is the collecting of green crystals, which are necessary to beat the game, and you’ll be needing an awful lot of them. It’s not difficult, but nor is it fun, and given the amount of time you will spend riding around out here, this is the game’s biggest misstep by far. Having to traverse this tedious landscape quickly tempers any excitement I might have about returning to an earlier area to try out one of my new upgrades and find collectibles I’d missed before.
Indeed, returning to the main areas does highlight the rather linear map design on offer in this game compared to its predecessors. These are not the sprawling interconnected labyrinths of the original Metroid Prime. Puzzles and action set-pieces are at least mostly satisfying, and the pacing of your initial escapades through each area can be exhilarating, but the emptied corridors offer far fewer thrills on your return visits when trying to remember where you’d seen that grapple hook point prior acquiring the item in question.
Shrines found in the desert, while fewer in number than those found in Breath of the Wild, do warrant the comparison in their appearance, particularly as you descend into underground and behold the architecture of an ancient civilisation. The Lamorn, a race which once inhabited Viewros and whose lore is scattered about the land, have left behind these brief puzzle solving distractions which reward you with upgrades to your elemental shots. These are admittedly worth obtaining, but provide little challenge to any player who’s become acquainted to Samus’s moveset.
On the other hand, the bosses you encounter throughout the game do offer a decent challenge. They can be monstrous, imposing, and will dish out some serious damage if you don’t remember to dodge. Sometimes, the difficulty devolves into a frustrating test of endurance as you wait for an enormous projectile-spewing creature to cycle through its attack patterns before exposing a clearly signposted weak point (don’t forget to scan every opponent for your logbook!), but in the main these enemies provide enjoyable tests of your skills and recently-acquired upgrades (or else reward you with one); another staple of the Metroid series lovingly realised, and the new Psychic Abilities and elemental shots often prove useful in these battles to add some variety.
I have barely mentioned the story of Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, and that is in large part because it is second fiddle to the game itself. You do not need to have played the previous trilogy to follow along, as there is really not much worth following along with. I do not believe the scraps of story on offer will satisfy longtime fans of the series, and there is little to encourage newer players to engage with the wider lore. The five main environments and the frequent dopamine-rushes of upgrading Samus’s arsenal are really what provide the player with the motivation to progress, as big-bad Sylux is severely undone as the primary antagonist by little in the way of stakes or truly meaningful entwinement with the narrative. The best villains are the ones you love to hate, and sadly it’s hard to care that Sylux is even here.
A weak story and a bafflingly barren desert do much to hold this game back from greatness, despite its many high points. Metroid Prime 4: Beyond’s visual and audio presentation is arguably the very best to grace a Nintendo console, and the core gameplay, while offering only minor innovations over previous titles, is often incredibly satisfying (sometimes because of, and sometimes in spite of its “if it ain’t broke” familiarity). What a shame, then, that you will spend so long engaging with the aspects which are easily the least enjoyable. In a game that took so long to materialise, one feels that a lukewarm reception on account of these elements, though warranted, will only serve to put the Prime series back on ice again. Metroid Prime 4: Beyond may ultimately be one of the most beautiful missed opportunities in gaming.
Header image by: Leon