Backlog Adventures: Metroid Prime 4: Beyond

It's been a while, hasn't it? Welcome to Backlog Adventures! I have a decently sized backlog, and I want to chronicle my thoughts of some games in that backlog. Let's begin.

Metroid Prime 4 is a game where you explore an unknown, interconnected world, shooting enemies, platforming, and occasionally gaining upgrades that grant more methods of movement, more defense and offense, and the ability to explore other parts of the world previously inaccessible.

The game was revealed in the first year of the Nintendo Switch, 2017. But it had gone through a ton of development troubles, resulting in it releasing 8 years later, in 2025.

Now, I like Metroid Prime, but I am much more of a fan of the 2D series. Those games are a lot faster-paced, have more fun movement and platforming, and have much more accessible navigation and puzzles. When I tried out the original Metroid Prime for the first time, it did not do much for me. Playing through it later, I would, slowly as the game progressed come to appreciate it more. And I played through the other games in the trilogy, liking them about as much as the first one, give or take. Even though Metroid Prime is not my preferred version of the series, I did look forward to the game's release, because, well, I love Metroid.

The game has been met with middling to poor reception for multiple reasons, but what do I think?

The visuals are amazing. It's hard to believe it's running on what is essentially a souped-up Xbox 360. At a handful of points it looks like an Xbox One game! It definitely shows off what the Switch 1 can do, and is visually worthy of being a late-release title.

The story was... kind of disappointing. (This paragraph has mild spoilers) The villain was a man named Sylux, who first appeared in the DS spinoff Metroid Prime Hunters. He was made a big deal of by some fans, and I expected him to be much more prominent in the story, and that we would get to see who he is and what kinds of things he does. But... he was only there in the beginning and the end. Metroid games often do this with Ridley, but because Sylux was so hyped up, I expected more from him. Also, I expected him to have more of a reserved voice, or to not speak at all, but when you fight him at the end of the game, he has the voice of a cheesy, cackling villain. Kind of disappointing.

Throughout the game you discover stranded soldiers from the Galactic Federation that you need to escort. When the first of these, Myles Mackenzie, was revealed pre-release, his more "modern" style humor that clashed with Metroid's more serious tone made many fans groan. But honestly, he's the worst offender. The rest are okay. My favorite was (mild spoilers) the robot character VUE-995, who would sometimes destroy otherwise unbreakable barriers. What was weird about these encounters is that these people talk to Samus, and ask her questions, but she says nothing, being faithful to her silent protagonist style.

I was disappointed that we didn't see more of the Lamorn civilization and their plight, but... that's mostly on me. Metroid Prime games allow you to scan your surroundings and glean insights about them, whether they be what a machine is used for, journal entries of the inhabitants, or other things. And I'm generally not super interested in doing this, because I don't want to have to stop the game every few seconds and read descriptions. I like reading dialogue from pedestrians in RPGs, but I prefer that to scanning.

MAJOR SPOILERS!

The ending was... kind of abrupt. You defeat Sylux, and your soldier friends, who wanted to finally get home after all this time trapped on the planet Viewros, sacrifice themselves so Samus could do that instead. This was sad, but... that's the end of it. We barely see anything that happens afterward. Metroid games sometimes don't have much falling action, but I guess because the conflict was different from other Metroid games, that's what it was like.

END SPOILERS!

Now... what about the gameplay? The gameplay, when it is more faithful to the series, is standard Metroid Prime fare. It was pretty fun to explore, and I am horrible at certain kinds of adventure games, so I needed to look up a walkthrough every... sometimes few minutes. Unfortunately, due to the way the YouTube video sections were labeled, this had the side effect of spoiling what upgrades you would get. 

When it comes to enemies, I didn't like fighting the Space Pirates from the other Prime games, finding them annoyingly difficult. Fortunately, this game doesn't have common enemies like that. It does have an annoying enemy that isn't so common, the Psy-Bots, who can shoot lasers that take away large chunks of your health. 

Now, the game adds some things to the Metroid Prime formula, such as the Vi-O-La motorbike, the desert hub world Sol Valley, Psychic Abilities, and the previously mentioned soldier escorts.

You ride on the Vi-O-La bike to traverse a large open desert... and this is not very fun. It isn't terrible, but there's not much to do other than collecting green energy crystals (which I'll get to later), shooting the occasional easy enemies, and once in a while coming across little, uncommon puzzle challenges. When I first encountered this hub world, I was like "they really plopped an empty desert wasteland in the middle of Metroid Prime 4, didn't they?" Yeah...

The other reason why Mackenzie was so poorly received pre-release was the fact that he (and the rest of the escorts) were constantly guiding the player. Like I said, I am terrible at some adventure games, so a handful of times, I needed that handholding, and other times, it wasn't even enough! I am that bad at it! Though other other times, it was definitely obvious hints that I already knew. And near the end, Mackenzie would constantly call me, telling me to do the same things that I was already doing! That was definitely kind of annoying.

Psychic Abilities. It's the flagship feature of the game. And... they don't add a ton to the game. A lot of the time, it's movement puzzles, and they re-label certain upgrades with "Psychic" in front of it, without changing much (there is one ability that is definitely changed but the new feature is used very rarely). The most interesting feature, though, is the Control Beam. It's situational, but it allows you to guide your energy projectile to solve certain puzzles and sometimes damage bosses in ways otherwise inaccessible. The latter, though, is a little difficult to do sometimes, and not in a good way.

Speaking of bosses...they were not very fun. They were long and difficult, which is not a good combination. Metroid Dread had bosses that were really fun while being difficult, but these ones are slow and frustrating. I think, though, they are less frustrating on the Nintendo Switch 2 Edition of the game, where you can aim more precisely with the controller's mouse mode, and these bosses take advantage of that, at the expense of Switch 1 players, like me. Though I noticed it was a bit easier with the controller's built-in motion controls, which I realized too late, and wouldn't have been able to use half the time anyway, because sometimes I was playing in Handheld Mode on car rides, where the gyroscope detects the car's movement.

(Mild spoilers in the next two paragraphs) Now, Metroid Prime 1 and 3 (maybe 2 but I don't remember) required you near the end of the game to find collectibles scattered across places already visited in the world (or worlds in the case of 3) to progress to the final area. I didn't find this very fun, especially in Prime 1, and when I found out that in this game you need to find several robot parts (needed to destroy a force field) scattered across the world, I was like "oh no... it's the Metroid Prime endgame quest!" But it turned out that most of those parts were in quick-to-find spots in Sol Valley, and it didn't give me much hassle. Well, I did have to go around the world anyway collecting health upgrades to prepare for the final boss, and honestly it was kind of fun, going to each of these areas one last time. And I guess I just find health upgrades more satisfying to get than mandatory keys.

But what wasn't fun was the fact that near the end, you are also required to grind for tons of green energy crystals scattered across the desert. You have to grind! In a Metroid game! Fortunately, near the end of the grind, you are given the ability to see nearby crystals on your radar, which helped a lot when the crystals were starting to get scarce.

The final boss, without spoiling anything, was the best boss in the game, being, while still kinda long, fast paced, (if that makes any sense) and closer to the kind of boss I enjoy in games.

My overall thoughts on Metroid Prime 4: Beyond were that I liked it, but I didn't love it. It's definitely fun, and has a lot of what makes Prime good, but some of the things I mentioned hampered down the experience, and Metroid Prime is not my preferred version of Metroid anyway.