18 years after Metroid Prime 3 launched and eight years after the sequel was first announced, Nintendo and Rare have finally finished Metroid Prime 4: Beyond. The long-awaited follow-up arrives later this week on Switch and Switch 2. And on December 2, ahead of release, reviews from critics went live across multiple outlets. In summary, Prime 4 isn’t a bad game. But it doesn’t sound like a masterpiece either, falling short of past entries in the first-person shooter series.
Launching on December 4, Metroid Prime 4 is Nintendo’s last big game of 2025 and has a lot of hype and hope surrounding it. Fans have been wanting an entire console generation. So when previews last month featured an overly talkative sidekick, a big departure from the often atmospheric and empty worlds of past Prime games, people were nervous. Would players quickly grow tired of some bumbling sidekick?
The good news is that many reviews, even the less glowing ones, indicate that Prime 4‘s human characters aren’t overly annoying and aren’t as big a part of Prime 4 as some had feared. Another concern fans had involved the open world connecting the various areas of Metroid Prime 4, which Samus Aran traverses on a motorcycle. Many critics, even those who found the bike cool, weren’t convinced this was a necessary inclusion.
Narratively, the world you explore in Prime 4 is reportedly filled with excellent worldbuilding and lore teases, but some complained that this latest entry doesn’t feel like a complete story. Instead, it seems like it’s teasing the start of something more. Hopefully, if Metroid Prime 4 gets a sequel, fans won’t have to wait another decade for it.
At worst, these characters are somewhat stock, providing a contrast against a singularly awe-inspiring figure like Samus. For example, there’s a chatty nerd and an old, gruff general. They leave you alone for long stretches of the journey, so when they’re deployed, it’s with purpose. Initially, your comrades explain tutorials at base camp. Later, they pop up for set-piece moments that advance the story and diversify the gameplay. In a nice touch, soldiers aid you in battle if you can protect them, and a hulking robot companion clears paths blocked by debris. There are some neat hints of worldbuilding as one teammate explains his spiritual beliefs, which sets up a lovely payoff. These supporting characters are Beyond’s weakest element, but they’re inoffensive and serve their purpose well. As always, Metroid’s real story is between you and the planet.
Metroid Prime 4 thinks you are very, very stupid. Like, unbelievably dimwitted. At one point, I’m running through a room that only has one exit and one entrance. My companion runs over to the only other door I can walk through and shouts “This must be the way!” Later, I blast down a machine while standing on a bridge. Everything explodes around me in a cinematic and the camera focuses on a morph ball-sized hole that has appeared in the chaos. The scene continues long enough for a soldier to point directly at the hole and tell me that it’s the way out. I gain map data for an area at some point and a pop-up tells me that I can press the minus button on my controller to open it. A companion chimes in: “Wanna check your map?” I get it. Metroid games can be alienating for mainstream audiences, and the series has always struggled to find commercial success. Having linear biomes and tighter direction helps ease the on-ramp for players who are intimidated by the idea of getting lost.
But Retro Studios has already solved for that time and time again: cutscenes that telegraph where to go, a scan feature that tells players exactly how to kill bosses, on-screen button prompts. The soldiers don’t replace any of those ideas; they quite literally talk over them. You now get up to three nudges at a time when you encounter an obstacle. And all of that is happening in the one major Nintendo series that isn’t geared towards its youngest players.
The first-person action gameplay is familiar to previous Prime games and feels good. Samus’ new psychic powers don’t radically change the fun lock-on, shooter gameplay, but I enjoyed remote controlling the Control Beam at opportune times in boss fights and to solve puzzles. The pacing and unfolding of each location are immaculately designed, funneling you toward objectives while consistently planting seeds that make you want to return later with expanded abilities. The desert hub area where Samus drives her motorcycle between objectives is the perfect size: Big enough that the motorcycle feels necessary, but not so big that you are ever driving for too long.
The overworld, the dune-covered Sol Valley, feels similarly dated conceptually, and, again, closer to classic Zelda than any kind of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild twist I hesitantly expected – especially considering there are literally shrines that offer small puzzle challenges. There’s so few you can count them on two hands, and basically all amount to walking into a room and seeing if you have the power-up to progress or not – this is no bite-size revolution of the Metroid formula but something to fill an otherwise fairly empty open world map Sol Valley is how Samus accesses each of the five main key-hiding areas, which does make it the largest completely interconnected open world Metroid has ever had. Sort of. The problem is how much of a rigmarole it is to get back and forth between anywhere.
The central desert, which you’ll be crossing often as you go back and forth between the main areas, is fun enough. Vi-O-La, the bike, is a blast to drive, with a few fun and simple mechanics to experiment with. The desert does give the impression, though, that it was designed separately from the rest of the game. I genuinely wonder if it was outsourced to a different team. Even the loading zones seem to suggest this, as it doesn’t even directly connect to the dungeons. In each case, there’s a loading zone, then a tiny ‘staging’ area you can cross in about a minute, then the dungeon.
Metroid Prime 4 is a Frankenstein fusion of ideas, which at its peaks delivers some great series moments, but at its troughs, feels like a dilution of the formula that made these games beloved in the first place. Throughout Prime 4, players neck-jerk between horror-style FPS sequences, open-world vehicle exploration, and comedy banter between a crew of wisecracking support characters. It’s an experience that feels like a collage of styles plucked from past Samus Aran adventures, The Legend of Zelda, and Halo, but never really settles into a clear identity.
All of this is delivered with a visual fidelity on Switch 2 that is among the best we’ve seen on a Nintendo system. Sometimes particular details can look a little rough–some of the flora in Fury Green, or the industrial mesh grating of the Volt Forge, for instance–but other times it’s stunning. The frozen-over laboratory of the Ice Belt, or the futuristic beauty of Lamorn architecture in its artifacts, are particularly strong. It won’t match the best we’ve seen on PC or higher-powered consoles, but it’s a beautiful game regardless. Plus, I just love the look of Samus’ new suit, and in cutscene close-ups, the fidelity did it a lot of favors by showing the layers of its textures and materials.
It’s possible that a version of Metroid Prime 4 that leaned into the open-world aspects or even the party of secondary characters could work, but as it is now, both feel bolted onto a game that would be much better without them. Ultimately, much of Metroid Prime 4 feels like a failed experiment. As great as it is to explore the lightning-struck Volt Forge or pick through the haunted remains of the Ice Belt facility, the game’s standout moments are buried in drudgery. Metroid Prime 4 is thrilling at times, set across consistently beautiful environments, but it can’t stop getting in its own way.
