PixlBit

It’s been a long time since we’ve seen an entry in the Metroid Prime series - 18 years, in fact. It was 8 years ago that Metroid Prime 4 was originally announced and its development was more than a little turbulent. Initially developed by Bandai Namco, it was later scrapped completely and development was shifted back to Retro Studios to start the project over. In the end, Retro has delivered a solid new entry in the series, but one that doesn’t totally capture what originally made the series so compelling.

It’s hard to exist in a media vacuum in this day and age, and no doubt, I saw the countless criticisms pre-release about the annoying talking NPC. I watched clips and worried about what they’d done to the series. Having completed the game, I didn’t really find these NPC interactions to be wholly bad or a major detractor from the experience. For those who have played and remember Metroid Prime 3, this falls in line with the expected trajectory of the series, and barely interrupts the majority of your playthrough.

For me, the much bigger issue of Prime 4 comes down to both the map construction and the critical path through the game. Rather than the interconnected, tight maps of Prime 1 and 2 and to an extent, 3, we are presented with an open world sandbox with a handful of key dungeon-like areas at the perimeter of the map and a final tower of interest sitting at the center.

You’ll find yourself consistently trekking across the sandbox, a (mostly) empty expanse of desert, to visit these dungeon-like areas at the edges of the map. To help speed things up, you’re given a brand-new-to-the-series power-up with the Vi-O-La motorbike. You’ll find a few quests and Breath of the Wild-like shrines out in the desert, but other than a quest in the late game, very little in this part of the game feels important or interesting. There are lots of green crystals to collect, which you can drive into to collect and exchange back at your home base for a few power-ups, but this too felt uninteresting and mostly unimportant.

Upon reaching these dungeon-like areas, you are treated to that classic Metroid Prime gameplay that has you scouring the world, scanning items of interest, and fighting myriad foes while pushing toward the next save station and, ultimately, the boss of the area. You will find locked doors that require yet-to-be-acquired power-ups and you will make trips back to investigate what you once could not access. As always, this is the real joy of the Metroid series - exploration, learning, and the steady grind of growing more capable with each power-up and encounter.

With that being said, every prior Prime game feels like it does all of this better. When looking at the macro-progression of the game, you’ll find it to be very linear. And once you pick up something of value and find yourself back out in the desert, our talkative NPC buddy, Myles, is happy to tell us exactly where to go next to use our nifty new mcguffin. This obviously takes some of the joy out of discovery, but there were some instances where knowing this information would be impossible otherwise without blind exploration.

Given the huge sandbox expanse, the design decision to lead the player makes sense, but it begs the question - did we really need this sandbox, or even Vi-O-La in the first place? Both feel like net-negatives for the overall game experience. A more tightly woven world a la Prime 1 and 2 would remove all the useless down time of the open world and make it so that quickly traversing areas is easier, allowing the player to engage in that discovery without being led along.

For all of my criticism of the broad pacing of the game, it still does scratch that Metroid Prime itch. The first-person shooting feels nice with both pointer and dual analog controls (mouse controls were a non-starter due to the ergonomics of the joy-con). Though it’s weird that you can’t do big sweeping movements with the control stick while using pointer controls, as many other first-party Nintendo games have done.

The game is stunningly gorgeous on the Switch 2 with a smooth 60 FPS. Most of the time, it felt like I was playing a PS5 game, which is an impressive achievement given the hardware it’s running on. The sound design also impresses, as it always has in this series, giving you subtle but catchy tunes that set just the right atmosphere.

I sunk about 18 hours into the game and managed to secure an 83% clear rate on scans and items - I don’t feel like I did an exceptional job exploring, but I seem to have found most of what’s in the game. In that regard, Prime 4 felt somewhat lean when compared to its predecessors, but I think that the path through the game is direct enough that things never slow down and you’re just never getting stuck, though I’m sure significant time was wasted out in the desert, especially in the end game.

I believe Metroid Prime 4 will mostly be a polarizing experience for players. Die-hard veterans might chafe at some of the choices Retro and Nintendo made here. Newcomers will likely appreciate the Metroid Prime flavor with the production of a more modern AAA game, with some of the charm and rough edges being sanded off to make a smoother, simpler experience. If you’re willing to keep an open mind, chances are you’ll enjoy Metroid Prime 4, even if you don’t wind up loving it.