Metroid Prime 4: Beyond

Metroid Prime 4: Beyond was put through the wringer. From brutal development delays to scrapping the initial Bandai Namco build and pivoting entirely back to Retro Studios, it seemed like we might get Half-Life 3 before we ever saw this game. Add the heavy burden of being forced to run as a cross-gen title on both the Switch 1 and 2, and the odds were stacked against it. So, after eighteen years of waiting, how did it turn out?

For starters, the presentation is gorgeous. I know menus are a small detail, but there's a level of polish right off the bat that gives you hope the bumpy dev road was worth it. The sound design is top-notch, albeit a tad muted in its grandiosity. (I really found myself longing for that classic door-opening noise we've become so accustomed to over the years). Visually, the atmosphere is fantastic. Lush forests, thick fog, floating spores, and alien worlds off in the distance look truly alive. Realism isn't always the end goal, stylized is often more fun, and considering this had to run on the original Switch, the character models and environments look great.

However, the gameplay is where the turbulence starts to show. The Prime series has always been a bit clunky compared to the hyper-tight controls of its 2D, side-scrolling sister. Once you play for a bit, it feels adequate again, but the aiming feels surprisingly loose on the Switch 2. I found myself missing shots more than normal. It's forgiving enough since they kept the lock-on system, but a snappy, precision shooter this is not.

The new upgrade system revolves heavily around psychic powers. We get psychic gloves and boots that give Samus Jedi-like abilities, and they introduce an underutilized lock-picking mechanic to access power-ups and doors. It’s an alright system, but it never feels overpowered or even all that useful. Like a lot of the game, it feels tacked on just to inflate the runtime and slow the player down.

And man, does the game want to step on the brakes. The unskippable cutscenes are a drag after your first play through. The animation delay between leaving morph ball and being ready to fire, or the delay of a door opening after being shot, all add up to an experience that feels oddly heavy. Instead of Samus feeling light, lethal, and kinetic, the movement is clunky and borderline slow.

Nowhere is this padding issue more apparent than the semi-free roam via the bike, which was easily my least favorite aspect of the game. A masterpiece thrives on a tightly contained, meticulously paced structure. When you swap that out for padded, open-world desert traversal, it completely dilutes the experience. Instead of a focused adventure, you get a tedious commute that leaves you with deep-seated anxiety that you’ve missed a ton of hidden pickups.

Then there is the elephant in the room...saving. I don't know how many times I played, saved, and came back the next day only to find my progress completely wiped. I lost hours of gameplay no less than three times. It’s unacceptable. Auto-save had the similar issues, only happening at major milestones. I'm fine with auto-save being worthless, and I'm fine with manual "save and quit" not being a thing. But when I actively hunt down a save station, I expect the game to actually save my progress. It made me highly consider putting the game down for good.

Furthermore, when you're managing your kids screentime and they only get a 30-minute or so window, expecting them to accomplish a goal and navigate a convoluted, overlapping Z-index map just to find a save room is unreasonable. There desperately needs to be an accessibility option or an auto-save on steroids for easy mode.

Things finally start to click late in the game. Once you get all the elemental powers and suit upgrades, specifically the ice blast, which finally makes the combat feel decent, it starts to feel like classic Metroid. The environment shifts from a disjointed open-world desert into a well-thought-out Rube Goldberg machine, and everything falls into place.

Unfortunately, it gets long in the tooth immediately after. Once you have all four power-ups, you have to hunt down mech parts to unlock the central spire. Then you have to fill up the green crystals, a fetch quest that feels incredibly tedious. Thankfully, it goes by quickly, leading to the epic conclusion against Sylux at the central spire. (Minor spoilers: The first time through, I did not teleport away when my crew told me to, assuming there were multiple endings and I could rush in to save them. Yeah, no. I died and had to redo all three phases of the final boss fight again).

Overall, Metroid Prime 4: Beyond is a solid but unspectacular entry. It’s fun in bursts, but play for longer and it just becomes an exhausting hunt for a functioning save station. Samus deserved a little better, but given the development hell it went through, I'm just glad we got something. Metroid has always been about traversal, movement, grappling, and rolling, yet the game seems hesitant to let you actually have fun with it. Instead of unleashing your powers, you are muted at every turn. Sony's Spider-Man franchise can make web slinging around the city more fun than the actual missions, why can't Samus get the same luxury? Metroid is still one of my favorite franchises, but let's hope the next entry boasts a bit more polish and doesn't take 18 years to arrive.