There’s an old internet adage often incorrectly attributed to Nintendo guru Shigeru Miyamoto that goes, “A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad.” Although it’s not a genuine quote, the oft-used meme does mostly align with what fans perceive to be the Mario creator’s sensibilities — do it right, even if it takes a while.
What’s funny is that Nintendo isn’t really known for substantial delays. Famously, the company’s creatives have been blunt when it comes to explaining why beloved series like Star Fox and F-Zero have remained on ice for decades at a time: They just don’t know what to do with them. Compared to Rockstar or Ubisoft — hell, most of the industry — it paints a clear picture that if you’ve even heard of a Nintendo game’s existence, it’s probably pretty far along in its development cycle.
Then came Metroid Prime 4. Initially announced way back in 2017 — the same year that the Nintendo Switch launched — the long-awaited sequel to 2007’s trilogy capper made a big splash as one of the then-new console’s most anticipated titles. But afterward, there was nothing. Two years later, after the internet worked itself into a tizzy, Nintendo officially confirmed that development on the game wasn’t up to their standards.
In a shocking twist, the work was going to be restarted from scratch under the eye of Retro Studios, creators of the first three Prime games who had previously handed over the reins to Bandai Namco. The whole thing felt decidedly un-Nintendo-like.
Now, another six years later, the game is nearing completion and is set to launch on Dec. 4 for both Switch and its successor, Switch 2. But after all this time, could it ever live up to the impossible expectations the prolonged delay set in motion? Rolling Stone recently attended a preview event in New York City to go hands-on with Metroid Prime 4’s early areas, and the most realistic answer is “maybe?”
Based on the roughly one-hour demo, here’s what we know.
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Old Samus, New Twists
First released for the GameCube in 2002, and recently remastered in 2023, Metroid Prime reimagined the previously 2D-designed series (that itself kickstarted a whole subgenre) as a fully 3D first-person shooter with a heavy emphasis on exploration. Metroid Prime 4 is technically the sixth installment of the sub-series, which now has as many entries as the mainline games.
The Prime series are interquels wedged neatly between the original 1986 NES game and 1991’s Metroid II for Game Boy. They follow the legendary bounty hunter Samus Aran (who, honestly, doesn’t pick up that many bounties) on her continuous missions to aid the Galactic Federation in their ongoing conflict with the Space Pirates. Prime 4 picks up after the trilogy and its handheld spin-offs Hunters (2006) and Federation Force (2016), with the latter two mostly chalking up to footnotes except for the inclusion of the new game’s main antagonist, Sylux.
Samus returns for the first all-new Prime game since 2007.
Nintendo
The demo starts at the very beginning of the game, and is the same content previously shown at the Switch 2 reveal event and other previews. This section sees Samus arriving at a Galactic Federation station to help combat an invasion of pirates led by Sylux, who is seeking a mysterious relic.
This introductory portion is entirely on-rails, ushering Samus room to room for small incursions while serving as a basic tutorial for her combat abilities and Morph Ball rolling. In most Metroid games, Samus is a loner; the series itself was inspired by Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979), meaning that the bounty hunter generally sees herself stranded on an alien planet to survive. Occasionally, certain games will give her support from NPCs via comms, but rarely is she engaging in squad-based warfare.
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That expectation is immediately upended by Prime 4, which similarly to 2007’s Prime 3, throws Samus into action alongside space marines for all-out battle. But being a superpowered Amazonian type, towering over the solders in height and physical prowess, she’s seen more as a messianic savior than just another grunt.
As usual, Samus begins buffed up but quickly loses all her abilities.
Nintendo
After this brief sequence that ends in a relatively easy boss fight, the demo jumps ahead past a bunch of exposition and story set up (all of which are under wraps at Nintendo’s request). The bulk of the preview takes place on another planet in a region called Fury Green. This lush jungle environment is pretty different from anything seen in other Metroid games, which may have had biomes with vegetation and foliage, but never to this degree.
It’s here where the first genuine look at Metroid Prime 4’s gameplay can be gleaned — and it’s very familiar. As is the case with all Metroid titles, Samus loses all her high-end abilities from the opening section somewhere between the start and Fury Green. Left with just a base skillset, players will need to explore the labyrinthine world looking for upgrades and tools to use. In Metroid Prime 4, they’re mostly based on new psychic powers.
Like in Prime games past, the first-person perspective allows players to comb the world using a scanning visor, which highlights pertinent information and clues on where to go next. In Prime 4, this is augmented by a Psychic Visor which, paired with the Psychic Glove, lets Samus see invisible trails and objects and manipulate them with a form of telekinesis.
Samus’ psychic powers work for puzzles and combat alike.
Nintendo
It mostly works for puzzles; simple ones include unlocking doors with specific sliding nodes, with more complexity coming later as Samus can guide a Control Beam blast through the air like a remote drone. The preview culminates in a big boss fight wherein Samus must whittle away at the plant-like foe’s armor then guide her psychic shots into its weak points.
It’s a cool gimmick but doesn’t entirely feel revolutionary. In fact, that’s an issue that pervades the entirety of the demo.
Less Than Prime
In the years since Metroid Prime 4 was originally announced, a lot has changed in gaming. Not only did the entire life cycle of the Switch (its intended home platform) pass by, but first-person shooters and exploration games have evolved. Open world titles like Red Dead Redemption 2 (2018) and a wave of action-RPGs have broadened the horizons on what exploration looks like in modern gaming. In that regard, Prime 4 feels simplistic — though to be fair, the demo only encompasses an early slice of the whole experience. But even by Metroid standards, the areas in Fury Green are extremely linear.
In the series’ best entries, like Super Metroid (1994) and the first Prime, players are dropped into sprawling worlds that are mazelike in their design. Filled with competing routes, dead ends, and challenges to return to later, there’s a sense that every step is filled with discovery. You’ll need to remember the important details to mentally recall and solve the puzzle of the environments themselves.
Environments in Metroid Prime 4 look nice but the visuals aren’t exactly mind-blowing.
Nintendo
Here, most areas barely have more than two or three doors on the high end, and the path is obvious. Had I not stopped to take notes or comb every room for secrets, the demo would’ve been quick to breeze through, even without any prior experience playing Metroid.
It’s not a new issue; Metroid Prime 3 heavily dumbed down much of the series’ complexity to make the game function on the Wii’s motion controller, and even 2D titles like Fusion (2002) and Zero Mission (2004) streamlined the exploration with straightforward guidance to fit their handheld platforms.
In 2021, Metroid Dread brought the franchise back to 2D on Switch, and it felt like a course correction for how easy the games had become post-Prime 2. While not quite the brain buster the early entries were, Dread leaned into its roots as an explorable puzzle in ways that could leave newer players scratching their heads, and its combat was tough as nails.
Although the full scope of what Prime 4 has to offer remains unknown, what’s shown in the preview feels like Nintendo and Retro Studios are playing it safely with a light take on the series’ hallmarks. Its pathways are narrow, funneling players between relatively easy enemy encounters and puzzles with obvious solutions.
Metroid Prime 4 adds NPCs to partner with Samus, for better or worse.
Nintendo
Another reversion that, for now, seems ill-advised is pairing Samus up with other characters. A third of the way through the demo, players meet an NPC named Mackenzie, a Galactic Federation technician. Putting it simply, Mackenzie’s a dork; a sheepish science guy whose awe of Samus and bumbling demeanor set the duo up as a typical odd couple.
The first scene with Mackenzie has Samus rescuing him from a horde of aliens, followed quickly by an escort mission — one of the most agonizing cliches in gaming. Their dialogue (or lack thereof on Samus’ part) has funny moments. Nintendo has learned that the bounty hunter’s most affecting personality trait is remaining a mute goliath who handles nuisances — from chatty scientists to roaring monsters — with annoyed nonchalance. The recurring joke here is that Mackenzie talks a lot and Samus doesn’t.
It’s hard to say how much of a presence characters like Mackenzie will have in the larger story, but Nintendo learned firsthand how detrimental poorly written NPCs and forced interactions can be with 2010’s abysmal Metroid: Other M. That game, which fans would kill to forget, turned the series into a Ninja Gaiden-like third-person action title, but its worst crimes were in the painful dialogue and dumb-as-rocks story. Samus works best when other people are at a distance, and giving her a sidekick, even temporarily, raises some red flags.
Using Samus’ nonchalance makes for good comedic bits, but hopefully it doesn’t wear thin.
Nintendo
Visually, the game looks nice — with sprawling vistas in the distance when looking beyond the edge of the cliffs and little particle effects filling the air. There’s some great lighting, too, with bloom effects and glints of sunbeams peering through Samus’ visor, as well as the return of the occasional reflection of her face in the helmet’s glass (a detail that blew fans’ collective minds back in 2002).
But despite the pleasantness, there are still some areas where the graphics are lacking. Waterfalls lack complex physics, mostly appearing as flat sheets with some misting to cover up the seams. There’s some solid texture mapping across the ground and objects to give the appearance of depth, but it mostly looks like wallpaper.
The game runs very smoothly — even hitting up to 120 frames per second in performance mode — but it doesn’t feel like much of a leap forward. It’s a game that was clearly designed to run on the now-geriatric Nintendo Switch, which results in a game that aesthetically lags behind its Switch 2-exclusive peers like Donkey Kong Bananza.
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Nitpicking aside, it’s a small miracle that Metroid Prime 4 exists at all. Arriving after one of the few instances of publicly known developmental hell for Nintendo, the game could’ve been cancelled outright. Metroid has never been one of the company’s best-sellers; it’s an IP that they’ve invested in to keep their hardcore fans happy in between higher grossing fare. But, after all this effort, here’s hoping that the full version of Metroid Prime 4 is worth the wait.
Metroid Prime 4: Beyond launches on Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 on Dec. 4.
