Metroid Prime 4 Review (NSW2)

Past Her Prime

Eight years is a long time.

I’m not ashamed to admit that, alongside Mario Odyssey, Metroid Prime 4 was the main factor in me acquiring a Nintendo Switch back in 2017. A new installment for the first time since 2010’s Other M put the franchise on ice, and a return to form for 3D Mario was more than enough to convince me to buy into Nintendo’s newest system. Well, the Switch came and went and there were no signs of Prime 4 coming out. Not all was in vain, however as I got to enjoy a few (emphasis on few) Switch 1 games including Metroid Dread, which I find to be the best game on the console. It wasn’t until the Nintendo Switch 2 showcase where we finally got a release date and confirmation of a Switch 2 version. Truth be told I was no longer excited for the game, but I wasn’t about to play the inferior version, was I? $600 later (I love taxes!) I finally got my hands on my Nintendo Switch killer app, but was it worth not only the long wait but 2 whole systems? I feel like you already know the answer to that.

Let’s get the positives out the way, visually the game looks surprisingly great. I say surprisingly because I thought it looked dreadful in every preview. In fact, if I watch footage on Youtube or Xitter I still think it looks bad. But trust me on this one, on a good TV it looks fantastic. I’d go as far as to say it’s the best looking game Nintendo have ever made, not the highest bar by any means but still something to praise. The soundtrack is also great. While there are times when nothing but ambience sounds are playing, once the tracks kick in when you make it deep into a dungeon (yes, dungeon) it’s good stuff. That’s kind of where the praise ends.

There really isn’t much to talk about when it comes to Prime 4. In the nicest way possible, every new feature and gimmick they added to spice up the gameplay sucks, straight up. The NPCs (which, unlike the rest, could’ve worked had they not done it in the worst possible way), the way areas are “connected” to each other, how linear the whole experience is, and yes, the fucking desert. It’s all different shades of terrible. The rest? Well, it’s just Metroid Prime. For better and for worse.

Prime 4 plays exactly like Prime remastered, it has the same control scheme, the same mechanics and most of the same power-ups. When I played the remaster, it felt timeless. 2 years later this feels completely outdated.  What went wrong? What’s different? Nothing, and that’s the problem. Prime remastered might be a 2023 release, but the original came out in 2002. You’re telling me in 23 years they couldn’t come up with ANYTHING to improve the combat? The movement? Your moveset is as limited as ever and all you will do for 10+ hours is shoot, jump and occasionally use the jank dodge. Samus has shown many feats of athleticism over the years, but she still can’t do anything but walk slowly and double jump. Fact of the matter is this game would be outdated if it dropped when it was first announced in 2017, let alone today. How has a game where you spend most of your time walking from place to place not implemented a dash? Why in the love of fuck is there no fast travel in a 2025 Metroidvania? Metroid Dread has both of those things! Why can’t Metroid crawl my ass, the real question is why can’t Metroid fucking sprint.

Perhaps another reason for the datedness is how backwards we’ve gone when it comes to level design. Every area in this game is extremely linear, and don’t get me wrong, I like linear games, but in a genre that’s about exploring and finding new upgrades? The biggest problem with the type of linearity Prime 4 goes for is simply that getting said upgrades is not fun, because it’s just a straight line. In every area there will be a very small path you can’t access because you lack a certain power up, eventually you get it and you’ll make your way back. Driving in a straight line with Vio-la, then walking in a straight line, you unlock this new room that might link to 2 or 3 others but no more than that, and you’re done. You leave the area and go back to farming green crystals. I had a similar problem with Jedi Fallen Order (but worse there because backtracking to your ship was a nightmare) and it just made it so I wouldn’t go out of my way to revisit areas unless I was forced to. Not to mention, most of the upgrades are useless. I ended the game with 69% item completion, and never did I run out of missiles or elemental shots, in fact I never even came close to running out of them. If I got half what I ended up with I doubt much would have changed.

I mentioned that the NPCs could’ve worked, and I really do believe so. Sure, they’re all kinda super very generic, but that’s not the real problem. You see, your friends will communicate with you, during cutscenes they’ll ask you questions and the like, and Samus will respond by standing still and not saying a damn word. Leaving you with incredible lines of dialogue such as:

“Identify yourself!”
“…”

“Are you Samus?”
“…”

And then they carry on like she said something. Silent protagonists aren’t something new but at least in RPGs they give you dialogue to choose from even if they aren’t voiced. Here there’s just nothing, it makes the already nothing story flow terribly. And the worst part is Samus talked in Dread! She’s not mute! What the fuck are we even doing?! I’d get it if they were still terrified of Other M but that makes no sense. She. Talked. In. The. Previous. Game. And no one had a problem with it. She wasn’t super chatty or anything, but she still talked when it was appropriate like oh, I don’t know, holding a conversation.

All that and I’ve yet to talk about the elephant in the room. Our lovely bike Vio-la and the beautiful desert we get to explore, because that’s what Metroid needed. To be fair, the bike controls well. It goes relatively fast and turning feels nice. There’s not much to do with it unfortunately as Vio-la shares the spotlight with Sol Valley, acting as a hub world of sorts. Instead of every area being linked to each other, they are now connected by Sol Valley. Basically, rather than going from the Ice level to the Fire one by a door, you’ll exit the Ice level, drive around on Vio-la then enter the Fire area. It’s about as fun as it sounds. It leaves a bad impression at first, but it won’t hit you just how awful this is until you have to backtrack for the first time. Backtracking is a normal part of the genre, backtracking also doesn’t normally include driving back and forth in a straight line. And lucky Prime 4 players drive back and forth they will! Go to one area to trigger a cutscene then drive all the way back to install a power up and then drive back to where you first went. Padding much? Besides accessing the main areas, the desert features a few bases to get items, shrines (we know who the blame for the whole thing. Also, it’s only like 4 so, what? Why?) and an abhorrent number of crystals to smash into! You need them for the final area of the game, woo!

For the rest of the areas, we’ve got a generic jungle, a generic volcano, and a generic ice level. Honestly at this point why not just remake Prime 1 again? All the areas are also fairly short and not very memorable. But look, despite all my ranting (which I didn’t intend on doing, trust me) not all is bad. Underneath everything it’s still Metroid Prime. Does it feel dated? Sure, but the feeling of the game as well as the gameplay loop is, for the most part, enjoyable. It’s not some irredeemable pile of dogshit. It’s just a safe, lame, generic new entry in a niche franchise that in an attempt to create a new audience all it managed was pissing off the few million who already love it. It would make sense to go in this direction if this came out on PS5 or PC but after 39 years you would think Nintendo would finally accept its core audience just does not care for Metroid, and all fans of the genre mostly play on Steam.

I said there was not much worth talking about, guess I fucking lied because there’s still more. The ending, and don’t worry, I won’t go into detail, is awful. Awful, awful, awful. Don’t you love it when a game is in development hell, and it takes a miracle for it to release, and they’re so fucking confident they decide to end things on a sequel bait? The last thing I want to think about after finishing this is Prime 5, but maybe the people at Retro have other plans. Since I’m already talking about the story in general, yeah, it’s bad, really bad. Sylux has got to be one of the most irrelevant antagonists in any game period. And when he shows up he isn’t even cool, if anything he’s just stupid. They went out of their way to make the game more dialogue and cutscene heavy than the rest of the franchise but couldn’t write something engaging or coherent to go along with. Priorities, people.

This is one of those where if you’re not familiar with the franchise you will walk away like “Yeah, that was a cool game.” A perfectly serviceable video game that has great graphics and plays well enough.

But I am. And I guess I care a lot more about this dumb alien rip-off franchise than I thought. For those responsible for these baffling features in my Metroid game, whether it be Retro or Bandai, I wish you all nothing but sperm cramps for the rest of your days, and I reward you with this site’s first ever seal of shame.

SCORE: **.75