The journey to get here has been as long, challenging, and convoluted as many of Samus Aran’s own adventures. The last original release in the Metroid Prime series came out over 18 years ago, with the fourth entry in the series being announced in 2017 when the Switch was in its infancy. A complete development reboot, which saw original series creators Retro Studios taking back control of the project, followed, and numerous delays got stacked on top of that, so it’s honestly hard to believe Metroid Prime 4: Beyond launches this week. No, really. It’s happening.

Has the lengthy wait for Samus’ latest adventure been worth it? Or is this series past its prime? Suit up and roll on for the answer.

Metroid Prime 4: Beyond opens in the midst of a chaotic attack on a Galactic Federation base orchestrated by the mysterious bounty hunter Sylux, who has harnessed Metroids to take control of his own Space Pirate crew. Of course, our trusty heroine Samus Aran steps in to kick some Space Pirate ass, but when a mysterious artifact is disturbed in the melee, she finds herself transported to an uncharted corner of the galaxy. And thus, Samus finds herself marooned on Viewros, a sprawling, beautiful planet once ruled by a technologically-advanced civilization known as the Lamorn. Samus must figure out why exactly she’s been summoned to Viewros and how to get home. As an extra complication, Sylux has also been transported to this new world and is plotting trouble.

However, Samus is also joined by some new allies. As anybody following the pre-launch coverage of Metroid Prime 4 has no doubt heard, the game has friendly NPCs – a quintet of Galactic Federation soldiers who pop up throughout Samus’ journey, eventually congregating at a home base and helping her through various missions. The reaction to the previews that first revealed the existence of these NPCs, particularly the nerdy, self-effacing engineer Myles MacKenzie, was… mixed, to say the least. Alarmist takes that Metroid — Metroid, of all things! — had been dealt a game-destroying dose of Whedonesque snark ran wild.

Well, I’m here to say, you can calm down. It’s okay. While Myles comes on strong, the sequence that previewers reacted so negatively to literally lasts around 20 minutes. After that, Myles continues to be the guy you go to for certain upgrades, and he will chime in via radio from time to time, but he’s much more subdued once he settles in. The rest of the Galactic Federation crew, while all a bit trope-ey, are generally less jokey and potentially annoying.

Don’t get me wrong, I get the initial knee-jerk reaction. I never liked Buffy and tapped out on Marvel movies well before most people (how was Avengers: Endgame?). As somebody sensitive to cringe, let me assure you, Metroid Prime 4 is not that cringe. Samus is still a lone wolf for the large majority of the game, and hey, what’s so wrong with her having friends for once? The only issue I have with Samus’ new crew is that, at a certain point, the game asks that we actually care about them, and I never really did. They didn’t annoy me terribly, they didn’t ruin the game, I just found them forgettable for the most part.

Broadly speaking, “forgettable” is the best word to describe the Metroid Prime 4 plot. While some of the backstory of Viewros and the Lamorn is interesting, the game doesn’t weave its various threads into a particularly satisfying whole. Of course, Metroid Prime games have always had relatively uninteresting stories, and nothing here descends to the dire storytelling lows of something like Metroid: Other M, but there was potential for something a bit more engaging here. What if, for instance, Samus had actually been allowed to have some back-and-forth interactions with her new crew (she’s given the Nintendo silent protagonist treatment here)? What if this story felt more interconnected with previous Prime games or the larger Metroid mythos? Alas, these are mere pipe dreams.

But again, this franchise has never really been about story, and on the gameplay front, Metroid Prime 4 delivers. If you’ve ever played a Metroid Prime game before, this entry feels pretty much identical — the silky-smooth movement, the surprisingly solid-feeling first-person platforming, the fun Morph Ball physics. This time around, there are more control options than ever, with players being able to make use of gyro aiming, flip their Joy-Con 2 controller on its edge for well-implemented mouse controls, or go old-school with Gamecube-style lock-on aiming. The newer control options aren’t really required; the series is built around lock-on aiming, and that’s largely what I used during my playthrough, but it’s nice that those who want to play this game as a more traditional shooter have valid options. Also lovely is Metroid Prime 4’s impressive level of technical polish, offering both 4K/60fps and 1080p/120fps modes, with the former never dropping so much as a frame as far as I noticed.

Metroid fans will be familiar with most of the abilities Samus gains this time around, from the Space Jump to Super Missiles, with the main addition being the new “psychic powers.” Most of these powers essentially complement existing abilities, with, for instance, Samus being able to move bombs she produces in Morph Ball mode with telekinesis or direct shots from her arm cannon to hit tricky switches. Psychic abilities don’t radically alter that classic Metroid Prime gameplay, but they do open up some new level design avenues.

And really, Metroid Prime 4’s world and level design is where it truly shines. This game is all about scope. If most Metroid games to this point were obviously inspired by the claustrophobic feel of the early Alien movies, Metroid Prime 4 feels inspired by Ridley Scott’s (underrated in my opinion) prequel, Prometheus. In contrast to past Metroid entries, this is a game about dramatic, imposing openness and size. You see that in the stark, rolling dunes of the game’s desert hub as well as its various “dungeons,” which are all grandiose in their own ways, offering up large-scale, immaculately-designed architecture set amongst beautiful skyboxes.

Make no mistake, while it may not be designed for the strongest hardware on the market, Metroid Prime 4 is one of the most striking-looking games I’ve played in recent memory. Again, the focus here is more on bold, beautifully designed structures and open spaces rather than the cramped approach of past Metroids (although the game is often dark and atmospheric when it chooses to be). On Switch 2, this is easily the sharpest-looking game Nintendo has ever offered, with even the publisher’s usual lack of anti-aliasing being much less obvious than usual.

The scope of Viewros is reinforced by Samus’s bitchin’ new motorbike, Vi-O-La, which is fun and easy to control, whether you’re cruising around the world’s central desert area or the paths that connect different sections of some dungeons. There’s also been a fair amount of concern about Metroid Prime 4’s central desert, Sol Valley, with some worrying it’s a huge, all-encompassing open-world similar in scope to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild’s Hyrule, but that’s not really the case. Granted, Retro has borrowed somewhat from recent Zeldas, as Sol Valley is dotted with a handful of shrines to explore and other collectibles to find, but the reality is, you can drive from one edge of the desert to the other in maybe 2 or 3 minutes and can largely ignore it for much of Metroid Prime 4’s runtime (although you shouldn’t, for reasons I’ll explain soon).

As good as Metroid Prime 4’s overall world design is, it’s in its traditional exploration-focused “dungeons” that it reaches its zenith. These parts of the game are perhaps the most fun and engaging Metroid Prime has ever been, and while each dungeon has a predictable elemental theme (fire, ice, electric, forest, etc.) they all have a unique secondary theme and often a backstory that defines them. For instance, the electric-themed dungeon is an automated factory where Vi-O-La bikes are manufactured and the ice area is actually a horror-tinged experimental bio lab where shadowy experiments were conducted.

Almost all the dungeons are designed in a “there and back again” format, with players pushing downward into their furthest depths, upon which, you usually battle a boss and the area transforms, resulting in a completely different experience as you try to extract yourself. And then, the dungeons often change again as you backtrack to them later.

Yes, classic Metroid backtracking is still very much a thing here. While the early hours of Metroid Prime 4 feel relatively on rails, around a third of the way in, the game really opens up, freeing the player to unravel how to progress through the rest of the game. There is a specific path you have to follow (although I’m sure clever folks will be able to sequence-break) and the game is refreshingly willing to let you find your own way. Myles will occasionally chime in over the radio to give you high-level pointers on what to do next, but it’s up to you to figure out how exactly to get there, and once in dungeons, you’re fully on your own.

During the middle stretch of Metroid Prime 4, as I was happily hacking through one intense, magnificent-looking dungeon after another and figuring out where to backtrack to next, I was fairly sure I was playing the Nintendo game of the year, and quite possibly the best Metroid Prime title to date. Unfortunately, Metroid Prime 4 does lose some of the momentum that it previously built so expertly in its last few hours. Retro doesn’t outright fumble the ball, but it does kind of feel like they’re running out the clock near the end.

Without giving too much away, Metroid Prime 4 makes a mistake that seems to be endemic to this series — sending players on a last-minute scavenger hunt just when the game’s story seems to be reaching its climax. This portion of the game is largely focused around Sol Valley, which is why I suggest you try to make some piecemeal progress there throughout the game, but even if you do, you’re still looking at a fairly significant diversion just when you’re eager to move full speed ahead. As for the climax itself, it’s solid, but compared to other big 2025 Nintendo games, it doesn’t land the epic knockout blow that, say, Donkey Kong Bananza delivered.

That said, while Metroid Prime 4’s final hours left me a bit flat, there’s no diminishing how great the first three-quarters of the game are. Metroid Prime fans still have a mostly-tasty meal to look forward to, and the portions are generous. This is a solid 15-hour campaign and completionists could probably spend at least twice that time getting to 100 percent, so warm up your scanners.

This review was based on a Switch 2 copy of Metroid Prime 4: Beyond provided by Nintendo.

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8.5

WCCFTECH RATING

Metroid Prime 4: Beyond