Metroid Prime 4: Beyond had an extremely rocky road to release. First announced in 2017 as being developed by Bandai Namco, Nintendo then announced in 2019 that this project was completely scrapped and had restarted development under original Prime Trilogy developers Retro Studios. It has been 18 (!) years since Metroid Prime 3: Corruption released on the Wii. I can’t think of a single other example of a sequel made by the same team as the originals with that large a break in between. Naturally, I went into Metroid Prime 4: Beyond more than a little trepidatious.
For better and worse, the bones of Metroid Prime 4 feel like those of a long-lost Gamecube game. It may look rather pretty thanks to the Switch 2’s technological bells and whistles, but everything else, from the art design, music, sound effects, combat and environments feel straight out of the mid 2000s. Even the elements of Metroid Prime 4 that are brand new for the series – having a wide open, but utterly barren, desert environment in between the traditional linear areas, Samus’ new sci-fi motorbike, and the relatively large number of essentially faceless human companions – feels completely out of whack with current design philosophies.
Metroid Prime 4: Beyond begins with Samus flying in to aid in the defense of a Galactic Federation base, which has been attacked by Metroids and Space Pirates. This unusual alliance between two of Samus’ biggest nemeses has been orchestrated by a fellow bounty hunter, Sylux. How did Sylux manage to get these two monstrous foes to not only work together, but to work for him? What do the Metroids and Space Pirates get out of this alliance? Why does Sylux seem to hate Samus in particular so much? Believe me when I tell you that only one of those questions is ever answered, and it is about as clichéd and irrelevant a reveal as you could possibly imagine.
Sylux has attacked the base to acquire a particular alien artifact, which, in all the fighting, is accidentally activated. The resulting explosion teleports Samus and a handful of troopers to a distant planet, Viewros, where the rest of the game takes place. Samus is presented with the mysterious remnants of the Lamorn, an alien race with psychic abilities who were once dominant on Viewros. It’s up to her to learn what happened to the Lamorn, find her stranded trooper buddies, and get off the planet.
A familiar premise for Metroid Prime games, to be sure. Viewros is split into five linear environments, which are connected by the aforementioned desert area. Samus must explore each zone, restore power to their various machinations, unlock new weapons and abilities, and of course upgrade her health and ammo.
The first-person combat is largely familiar to the original trilogy, to a disappointing degree. To old fans, it holds few surprises, and I imagine to new players, it will feel clunky and slow. A lose-lose situation, really. It would be hard to call the combat bad, it just fails to innovate in any real way, something each prior Metroid Prime game was so good at. That said, the core tenets of Metroid remain fun in Beyond. Exploring abandoned laboratories and factories, or wild jungles and caves, unlocking new suits and upgrades, and thereby gaining access to new areas, is as fun as it was in the 2000s.
The soundtrack is one element that I can confidently say does justice to the Metroid Prime name. Despite how much time has passed, the music feels distinctly Metroid, and more specifically, distinctly Metroid Prime. It features weird vocal samples, pumping electronic beats and some interesting use of electric guitar, all of which makes the soundtrack memorable. There are even some moments where the music you’ve been listening to for the past twenty minutes shifts into a more complex, up-tempo version when you restore power to the area, a distinctly video game thing that I always get a kick out of.
Level design is a mixed bag. The Volt Forge, a brooding factory housed in enormous spiked pillars of rock and electricity, and the Ice Belt, a subterranean lab full of horrific creatures surrounded in a perpetual blizzard, are two environments that really stand out. Sadly, the rest of what the world of Viewros has to offer fails to impress. The other environments are either overtly linear, too similar, or just plain bland. The latter half of the game features zones severely lacking in a conceptual level, let alone in the experience of actually exploring them.
Now, onto the story and characters. Much was made of the first companion Samus rescues, Myles Mckenzie, pre-release. He’s goofy-looking, makes stupid jokes, and won’t stop yammering advice. It’s true, all of it, sadly, however Myles is just one aspect of a much bigger problem. As Samus meets up with more of her trooper buddies, I was dismayed to discover each is more generic than the last. There’s the gung-ho sergeant, the bumbling fangirl, the brooding sniper. All of their dialogue is stilted, and they’re all paper-thin, annoying, or both.
Perhaps worst of all, from a narrative point of view at least, is that Samus remains entirely mute throughout. The troopers will address her directly, ask her questions, or for reassurance, praise her, or share a joke, all of which have the potential to be interesting character moments for Samus who is traditionally alone in her adventures. Instead, she remains awkwardly silent and no-one ever questions why. It’s almost like the trooper’s dialogue was originally written with the expectation that Samus would respond with voiced lines of her own, and then late in development they scrapped that and just had her respond with the tiniest of nods.
This problem I think is emblematic of the issues I have with Metroid Prime 4 at large. Having Samus speak, even if she only does so rarely, is the far more bold and interesting choice, and yet the game just seems unwilling to commit. You can feel this cloud of uncertainty around the whole experience, like Retro Studios were so close to stepping outside the comfort of the series’ tropes, only to retreat at the last moment. They gave us a wide open area to explore, but it’s visually stark and almost entirely devoid of interesting things to do. They gave Samus a vehicle to drive around, but it really only seems to be there because walking through the empty desert on foot would be untenable. Finally, they introduced the most named, voiced NPC characters any Metroid game has ever had, but Samus fails to interact with any of them in a meaningful way.
Metroid Prime 4: Beyond succeeds at feeling like a Metroid Prime game in 2025, which is nothing to sniff at. There are elements worthy of note: the graphics are super impressive for a Nintendo game, the core Metroid gameplay remains fun to this day, the soundtrack is memorable and there are moments where the environments shine. However, it utterly fails to modernise or innovate enough to be called a true successor to what made the original trilogy such a landmark series of games. Samus is an anti-character, Sylux as the big bad is at complete odds with the rest of the narrative, the combat is stale, and the level design isn’t much fresher. If nothing else, Metroid Prime 4 has shown us the series is beyond ready for its Breath of the Wild moment.
Rating: 6/10
Metroid Prime 4: Beyond was reviewed on Nintendo Switch 2 with a code provided by Nintendo.