Please never do an open world again.
By Ameer Ammar
Metroid Prime 4: Beyond is the newest Nintendo exclusive, a cross-gen title that aims to bring back the Metroid Prime series in a big way. This game has famously been in development hell for many years, being handed off to an entirely different studio mid-development with Retro having been on it full-time since 2019. This is my first Metroid game, and I walked away having enjoyed the game, yet also completely baffled at some of its design decisions.
The story in Metroid 4 is not good. There is no getting around that. It feels like the first draft of what could have been an interesting tale about Samus discovering a new planet, discovering the Lamorn and their legacy while encountering various different characters along the way. Unfortunately, none of this is even close to being fleshed out. Metroid 4 has caused a ton of controversy over its sidekick characters that accompany Samus through the game, and while I never found them as annoying as people make them out to be, or even game-ruining. It can't be understated that none of these characters are well-written.
It's hard to feel connected to anybody in Samus's journey because they never get ample time to express who they actually are. It's unlikely you'll even remember their names by the end aside from Myles, who is only memorable because of how central he is to this game's issues and controversy. I know next to nothing about Samus's companions; you never learn about what kind of people they are outside of service, their dreams, their family, anything that makes them real people that you can connect with. Myles and Private Armstrong are the "comic relief" characters, and I put comic relief in quotes because their dialogue is insufferable at best. Duke is basically Johnson from Halo without any of the interesting backstory or cool moments. Tokabi is the only one of the companions that you get to spend more time with and learn about his life on a personal level. But the script feels so incomplete that the conversations with him are more of an afterthought side-content than something that is at the forefront of any sort of arc. There are no real character arcs for anyone in this game.
Samus herself suffers a ton from the issues with the writing and direction of cutscenes. Samus is a silent protagonist, and that is fine; I adore masked silent protagonists who exhibit language by just being freaking awesome like the Doom slayer. But Samus runs into an issue where she just seems strange, maybe even rude to her companions? It's hard to describe, but there are multiple cutscenes where Samus’s companions try to communicate with her, ask her direct questions, and she just stares awkwardly. It feels unnatural and adds to the feeling that Samus does not care about these people, so why should you, the player, care?
The villain, Sylux, barely talks, does not have any sort of character building or presence, and just kind of exists to fight a few times throughout the game until you eventually get a sort of background towards his story, but that's it. I'd argue this game has no actual antagonist or villain; it’s just Samus discovering the planet and fighting off its creatures until she collects all the teleporter keys. There is nobody really going after her to stop her, with 0 sense of urgency to any of her activities on Viewros.
And this all comes together to an ending that left me deeply unsatisfied with the narrative. I do not want to get into spoilers, but this is the kind of ending that is cheap sequel bait at best.
The levels in Metroid Prime 4 are a blast to go through, with big setpiece moments especially in the Ice and Volcano regions. The way the game sometimes goes into 2D as you complete a morph ball puzzle is always a fun change of pace, and there is always some shake-up to the formula that keeps each level feeling unique. For example, one particularly memorable part was in the Snow region, where strong winds came in, so you had to specifically time jumps and using the grapple hook to avoid when the winds are strongest. There are a ton of these moments that ensure each dungeon is unique and easily the best parts of the entire game. As you unlock new upgrades, you'll be required to go back to already visited sections of the map to check out some of the locked paths that you couldn't use without the new upgrades. This specific part of backtracking is OK for me. I don't mind going through a few already visited areas to see a new room and get some new unlocks, but I did find it strange that there aren't many optional rooms in this game; it's actually rare that a room is completely optional. Most likely, if you can't enter it yet, you'll be required to do it at some other point. It does result in levels feeling far too linear, but it wasn't too big of an issue in my experience. Where the level design completely misses, however...
Outside of the main "dungeon" levels, Metroid Prime 4 has an open world called Sol Valley. This open world feels like a late-development tacked-on gimmick that was only added in to pad out gameplay. There is absolutely nothing interesting to find or see here. And this takes up multiple hours of the overall playtime. You will be required to drive across this empty desert multiple times with no fast travel system of any kind. You’ll have to drive across it every time you find a new weapon upgrade for Samus, you'll have to sit through 3 loading screens to get to Myles again for him to plug that upgrade in, then sit through 3 more loading screens to go back, and then drive across the empty desert again to get to an actual interesting level.
It wouldn't be so bad if it were entirely optional and you could just drive through and not think about it, but no, Metroid 4 forces you to collect its "green crystals," which are just stones littered throughout Sol Valley that you have to crash into to collect. This is a completely mindless activity with no thought or creativity put into it. To put it simply, Sol Valley is a terrible addition to Metroid that fails as an open world, fails as an interesting locale to traverse, fails to provide any interesting content, and only exists to pad out this game's playtime. If you cut out Sol Valley entirely, you would lose nothing of value. Another side of backtracking that completely fails here is that you HAVE to go back to Myles (right next to him) every time you collect a quarter of the required Green Crystals in order for them to continue counting. This is just horrible game design and a mind-boggling decision that I can only assume was done to pad out the game because it might have been too short by Nintendo's standards without this.
I think what baffles me the most is that this game has had 6+ years of development behind it. I don't understand why having to backtrack to Myles wasn't at any point modified to be more convenient. I wouldn't mind going back to Myles every time if the base of operations was in the middle of Sol Valley, which wouldn't require 3 loading screens to get to. As it stands, Sol Valley is a huge blemish on what is otherwise a well-designed, fun game that rarely gets boring when you aren't in this open world.
Graphically, Metroid Prime 4 is gorgeous. This is a cross-gen game, so it doesn't get to the highs of, like, a Cyberpunk 2077 or Final Fantasy 7 Remake running on the Switch 2. But it's rendered at a gorgeous 4K 60FPS, and the art direction elevates these locations. I especially adore Fury Green and just how grand the entire land feels. The lameness of the architecture in specific is gorgeous, and there are several points in this game where you'll audibly go "woah, that looks amazing" that I do not want to spoil. All the characters look great as well, though I did notice some bad texture work on their weapons, but that is a very minor nitpick in a game that looks great and, most importantly, runs perfectly. The only point where none of the fantastic art direction is present is, unfortunately, Sol Valley, which again, feels like a tacked-on late addition that eats up far too much playtime here.
FINAL VERDICT
Overall, Metroid Prime 4 is a fun game with many highs but awful lows that drag the entire experience down. If you are willing to focus solely on the base gameplay and are willing to overlook the 2-3 hours you'll have to spend in Sol Valley in order to finish the game, there is little chance that you won't walk away from Metroid Prime 4 having had a good time overall.
But the same cannot be said about the story. Do not go into this game expecting anything resembling a well-written narrative. This is one of the weakest narratives I've played through this year, and if you want to skip all the cutscenes, I would not blame you at all.
METROID PRIME 4 - 7/10 - WAIT FOR SALE