Metroid Prime 4 Beyond Review Breathtaking and Divisive Return
Having waited for almost a decade, after the development was restarted and amid a torrent of speculation, Metroid Prime 4 Beyond has now arrived. For a series that had taken a long break of 18 years, expectations were sky-high, nay impossible. The game is a technical wonder, one of the best-looking games, if not the best-looking ever made by Nintendo, but automatically trips over itself due to outdated design decisions, suspect writing decisions, and an empty open-world experience.
After completing the game, finishing all the backtracking, and enduring the long trek through that forsaken desert land, here is my complete account of this latest adventure in Samus Aran's life.
Visuals And Performance A Next-Gen Step Inside
Let us start with the good Metroid Prime 4 is one gorgeous-looking game. This title sweeps through the Switch 2 hardware at 4K 60fps, while folks interested in a buttery-smooth experience have the choice of playing at 1080p 120fps. The HDR implementation is breathtaking, with incredible attention to detail in the dark where the glowing light of Samus’s suit shines in the environment, or in lava-filled areas where the colors pop brilliantly.
The art direction is absolutely peak Retro Studios. The jungles feel thick and alive with background wildlife, raindrops hit your visor with real physics, and heat waves distort the air as you fire your blaster. Stunningly, even ice melts as you move from one area into warmth. It is unequivocally a next-generation Nintendo experience, breathing new life into the aesthetic of the franchise.
Gameplay Comfort Food with a Stale Aftertaste
If you loved the GameCube-era Metroid Prime, this will feel like coming home. The lock-on, combat, strafing, and puzzling are incredibly faithful to the original trilogy. Normal is perfectly balanced, challenging yet fair, with the unlocking of Hard mode after you finish.
But the gameplay refuses to adapt. Considering that today, throughout the industry, Metroidvanias such as Hollow Knight and Metroid Dread have changed the landscapes of traversal and combat, Prime 4 appears too old-fashioned. Dubbed "Psychic Abilities," the abilities gained from a crystal lodged in Samus's head include things like Psychic Boots for double-jumping and a dash boost to telekinesis. They feel largely fine to use in the game, but more as keys than actual mechanical changes. For instance, the double-jump has zero combat utility; it exists solely to propel Samus to slight increases in height from ledges.
To make matters worse, enemy variety is severely lacking. The bestiary is very dull and will give you about 8-to-12 hours of repetitive combat against the same dull robots and "Grievers."
Soul Valley The Open World Problem
The main structure of the game has five main dungeons with a central open-world desert hub named Soul Valley. This area represents the greatest failure of the game. It is a large void-a wasteland that was never really necessary except to pad the game's runtime. Players are lumbered with having no fast travel from the start, dragging them into an unnecessary back-and-forth drive.
It gets worse Except if you scan one very specific physical Amiibo, which unlocks the "Jukebox" feature, there won't be anything even close to music throughout the desert. There was no tone set and no tempo built, just white noise pummeling across this beige void on a drive to the real fun bits of the game. The whole experience was tiring due to "loading tunnels" being long-for-it elevators or bridges between the desert and dungeons.
"It feels like they took the ingredients of a masterpiece and diluted them with an empty open world that feels like it belongs in a game from 2005."
The Motorcycle Cool but Underutilized
To traverse Soul Valley, Samus utilizes a new motorcycle, Viola. The bike design is incredible, looking like a Tron light cycle, and the sound design for the engine is visceral. However, much like the desert it inhabits, it feels wasted. There are mechanics for slide-boosting and combat on the bike, but they are barely used. The bike feels shoehorned in to justify the existence of the large, empty map.
Narrative and Writing The Marvel-ification of Metroid
It is probably the most jarring shift to even in some way call it tone-are the writing. Metroid Prime has always been black with isolation; Samus alone on an extraterrestrial world. Here in Prime 4, however, with constant intercom calls from NPCs, knuckleheaded scientist Miles McKenzie, joke after cringe joke, even referencing "Marvel-movie style". And that is just counterproductive to the environmental tension of the game.
If things could get worse, Samus is mute. This could work for a silent prot protagonist, but when the supporting cast brazenly cries for Samus's help, guilty conscience must arise from the supposed protagonist's silence, if raised brows don't nullify her status. Tonal dissonance is rendered all but impossible to ignore by the contrast set within the chatty annoying supporting cast and the stoically silent Samus. And add to that the potential main villain Sylux, who is hardly present to be any credible threat himself throughout the game.
The Endgame Slog
Once you reach the end of the game, the pacing hits a brick wall. In order to access the final tower, players are made to scour the detestable Soul Valley desert in search of "green crystals," collecting components to be used in building a force field disabler. This fetch quest feels like blatant padding, forcing players to do laps in the empty open world for over an hour just to trigger the finale.
The pros
- Visual masterwork 4K 60fps on Switch 2; best graphics in the series.
- Classic environment The dungeons (Fury Green, Vault Forge) look and feel like the height of Metroid Prime.
- Sound design Great ambient sounds and a nice soundtrack (for inside the dungeons).
- Boss fights Great encounters, engagingly designed, make for good use of Samus's kit.
- Immersive details Rain on the visor, heat distortion, and environmental storytelling within the linear sections maintain a top-tier quality.
The cons
- Soul Valley A boring, empty open world-another desert set as tedious padding.
- Dreadful Writing Onerous NPCs and constant "quippy" dialogue diminish the sense of isolation.
- Dated Design Overly excessive backtracking, loads of "loading tunnels", and no fast travel seem awfully antiquated.
- Endgame Padding Compulsory, tiresome desert fetch quest comes to a halt just before the final boss.
- Silent Samus Problems It's just awkward and jarring how she's not responding to people speaking directly to her.
- Unlock Music Exploration music for the desert is locked behind ironing out the physical merchandise.
Visually stellar but mechanically muddled title, one fans will play for nostalgic purposes, but critique for execution.
Final Verdict
Metroid Prime 4 Beyond showcases the best of highs and the worst of lows. This is an eye candy that proclaims Nintendo's mastery over the next-gen graphics, but the game falters on many fronts for its misunderstanding of the subtleties behind defining what remains as impressive in Metroidvania circa 2025.
Nintendo Switch 2 version tested
