They say first impressions can be deceptive, and, as a Metroid Prime fan keenly awaiting the first instalment in 18 years, I really hope what I’ve played so far isn’t representative of the final game. Because to me, it didn’t feel much like Metroid at all.
The Metroid series occupies a very specific, if small, corner of Nintendo [5,787 articles]” href=”https://www.videogameschronicle.com/platforms/nintendo/”>Nintendo’s games portfolio. It’s never been a huge franchise for a company used to selling games in the tens of millions (the last Metroid sold around 3 million), but it offers something different from Mario and Zelda and has a niche and passionate fanbase as a result.
For 40 years, Metroid games have mostly stuck staunchly to the pillars of the franchise: exploration, empowering the player with new abilities, a strong atmosphere of isolation and mystery, and a sci-fi narrative told subtly through environmental storytelling.
For many fans, these elements feel as integral to Metroid’s DNA as jumping is to Mario, or zombies to Resident Evil (series) [520 articles]” href=”https://www.videogameschronicle.com/games/resident-evil-series/”>Resident Evil. And Nintendo seemingly understands this, because in 2021 it produced the fantastic Metroid Dread [61 articles]” href=”https://www.videogameschronicle.com/games/metroid-dread/”>Metroid Dread, a brand-new instalment that introduced original ideas, while sticking faithfully to the series’ core identity.
So, it’s fair to say I was slightly aghast when Metroid Prime 4: Beyond [70 articles]” href=”https://www.videogameschronicle.com/games/metroid-prime-4/”>Metroid Prime 4: Beyond’s opening hour introduced Samus’s new bumbling, slapstick sidekick, Miles Mac [576 articles]” href=”https://www.videogameschronicle.com/platforms/pc/mac/”>MacKenzie, who wisecracked his way through my remaining play time, stripping away at any trace of atmosphere or tension with his comedic quips and exclamations, even often outright noting when I’d missed important items.
“Samus, there’s something interesting over there. Are you sure we don’t need to use that?” To Metroid fans like me, it was a sobering experience. I glanced around at other journalists in the room to confirm I wasn’t imagining it. At one point, Miles introduces Samus to a downed Mech vehicle, which he affectionately calls “Betsy”.
Comic relief can be done well in otherwise serious productions, but so far, Prime 4’s narrative feels like it’s been handled with the same level of care as parachuting Jar Jar Binks into Alien.
Strip away MacKenzie’s prominent and incredibly annoying role in the opening hour of Beyond, and what’s left is a competent, if unimaginative, Metroid Prime opening. The bulk of my play session was in the first main area of Prime 4, Fury Green, a lush rainforest environment that looks and sounds the part, with the fantastic art direction and engrossing electronic soundtrack we’ve come to expect from the series.
Another honored tradition here is the overall structure: Samus progresses through a succession of ‘rooms’ across an interconnected map, shooting critters and solving simple puzzles, like, essentially, inserting space keys into space doors.
Eventually, Samus regains some of her traditional abilities, like rockets and the Morph Ball, before unlocking the psychic powers of the Lamorn, an extinct alien species with special abilities, allowing her to solve another selection of simple puzzles, which mostly involve tracing symbols on rocks, or seeing hidden items in the scenery.
“Strip away MacKenzie’s prominent and incredibly annoying role in the opening hour of Beyond, and what’s left is a competent, if unimaginative, Metroid Prime opening”
Eventually, we unlock a more compelling psychic ability, the Control [587 articles]” href=”https://www.videogameschronicle.com/games/control/”>Control Beam, which allows Samus to control her charge beam in mid-air and trigger multiple switches, or hit multiple enemies, with a single shot. The Control Beam later powers an entertaining boss encounter – something the Prime series has always done well – with a giant, sentient plant, in which players must shoot off all of its attacking tentacles simultaneously to stop them growing back.
By itself, it’s a solid, if not particularly surprising, introduction to a Metroid Prime game then, but crucially tanked by the discovery of MacKenzie on his downed spaceship partway through.
After fending off a wave of attackers (the glasses-wearing mechanic is, of course, a nervous clutz who immediately fumbles his pistol), the NPC joins Samus on her adventure, following you through the environment, cowering from baddies, and offering the least subtle hints since Xbox Game Studios (Microsoft) [3,693 articles]” href=”https://www.videogameschronicle.com/companies/microsoft/”>Microsoft Word’s Clippy.
Tonally, these sequences feel like a jarring U-turn for a franchise that has barely included a few pages of spoken lines before now, exasperated by some face-scratchingly juvenile dialogue (“MK-99 mech, this is Samus Aran… you know her. She’s famous!”).
Worse, it powers gameplay I thought had been left in the 2000s, like an escort sequence in which players have to fend off waves of enemies while the NPC cowers behind a nearby rock, the reward for completing which is, yes, another excruciating dialogue sequence.
By itself, these feel like pretty uninteresting mechanics. But inside a Metroid game, it feels particularly disappointing. Beyond’s opening section felt like a solid, if predictable, Prime game drenched in a puddle of gameplay and narrative tropes, each sabotaging what makes the franchise beloved by fans. Metroid games are essentially sci-fi horror, but so far, Beyond feels like Indiana Jones – and not the good ones, either.
“Tonally, it feels like a jarring U-turn for a franchise that has barely included a few pages of dialogue before now, exasperated by some face-scratchingly juvenile dialogue”
For a series with origins steeped in putting players inside of Samus’s suit, Metroid Prime 4 doesn’t feel grounded either, but hollow and implausible from the off, and I quickly felt uninvested in the events on screen, which is something I don’t associate with this series.
There’s nothing wrong with trying something new, of course. Some of Nintendo’s greatest games, like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild [301 articles]” href=”https://www.videogameschronicle.com/games/the-legend-of-zelda-series/the-legend-of-zelda-breath-of-the-wild/”>Breath of the Wild or Super Mario Galaxy, were the result of disrupting an existing formula. The problem is, what Metroid Prime 4 is seemingly trying to be is a far less interesting, and more dated, type of first-person action game with none of the mood the series is known for.
There are hints that there’s more to Beyond, like a hub section featuring, among other things, exploration on a motorcycle-type vehicle. But if its opening section is representative of the rest of the experience, I’m officially worried that this isn’t going to turn out to be the Metroid game I was waiting for.
Update14th Nov 2025 / 2:01 pm
At the same time as the embargo for this preview, Nintendo released an overview trailer, which confirms, among other things, that NPC companions will play a prominent role throughout the game.
