Metroid Prime 4: Beyond

[mfnick]

Terrible first impression. It starts with a big action set piece - normally I’m well up for that but it just does not suit the feel and control of these games. Especially if you’re mad like me & feel you have to scan everything. In which case all momentum and excitement is constantly ruined by switching visors and scanning. Think I’m going to have to force myself to stop scanning soon, there’s just way too much. Far more than I remember there being in other entries. 
 

Anyway, you get past that, lose your abilities and reach your first proper area. It’s gorgeous! & atmospheric. This is much better. Then you quickly reach Miles… he’s as terrible as everybody says. He genuinely ruins the rest of this area with his wisecracking and terrible dialogue. 
 

Thankfully this first area/dungeon is short. Before you know it you’re in the 2nd one. It looks incredible and Miles is no longer there. However my stomach sank when Miles started talking again via radio and told me where to go and I “can use an elevator to go down”. No shit Sherlock, thanks… 

 

But then it changes, immediately after that he can no longer get in touch with the you and you’re free to just explore and progress through this stunning area & it’s brilliant. It’s basically old Prime with new tech at this point which is exactly what I wanted.

 

Then the desert opens up, it’s already ugly and dull. Made my way to another area and stopped there.

 

Already know this is going to be a game of huge ups and downs.  When it’s good, it’s brilliant. The rest of the time, we’ll see as I progress.

[mfnick]

 

Quite disappointing to say the least. 
 

Theres loads I didn’t like about it. 2 of the NPCs I hated, even though they’re not in it too much they’re in it enough to really annoy me. It also has sections where they can die. Especially at the end this really pissed me off causing loss of a tedious and lengthy amount of progress a couple of times. This shit should be relegated to the past. 
 

The desert is fucking terrible. It’s just boring as fuck. And the bike isn’t fast enough. Luckily I didn’t have the green crystal issue as I was already aware of it so I made sure to keep going out of my way for them. Which made me just have enough by the time I reached the end thankfully. Just pointless, boring shit though. 
 

Backtracking is made more of a pain than normal due to the bike, desert and getting through the boring corridors between the desert and the dungeon entrances. So that stopped me exploring areas again with new abilities unless I needed to.

 

The bosses are mostly fun but a couple of them really suck and just go on and on and on. Some basic enemies just take too long to kill too. Takes way too long to upgrade the beams. It gets really tiresome mashing on that trigger button.

 

Speaking of the beam taking too long, the entire item economy in this was just a bit shit to be honest. You go ages without getting anything really useful or that gives you that really satisfying feeling that ‘this opens up so much’. Then it throws multiple of the biggest game changing abilities at you almost all together right as you get to the end dungeon. 
 

& the dungeons? While they’re stunning to look at. They’re all very, very basic. I still had fun actually going through them but they didn’t feel Metroid like where you get the excitement of getting new abilities and exploring them. Just because everything is so obvious and just so simple. & getting back to them is so tedious. 
 

There’s still a lot of enjoyment to be had here. If you like the Prime games, the feel is still great. Going into and out of the morphball and the visual tricks they pull while rolling through tunnels is still really fun. Just the general loop of getting new beams and abilities is still good (even with the shitty backtracking to base ruining it a bit). & the dungeons are still fun and compelling to go through first time. But it’s just not good enough. & the low points really did my head in. Everything they’ve added on top of the basic Prime formula is a net negative. 
 

I can only assume they added the filler BS desert and fetch questing stuff as without it this would have been a 6ish hour game for me which would have pissed people off too.

 

For me it’s a 6/10. I enjoyed it in spite of all the shit. 

[DANGERMAN]

that's much shorter than I was expecting

[mfnick]

Most I’ve seen are around the 14 hour mark. But they have 95ish% on items and scanning.

 

But like I said I didn’t feel the pull to go for the extra items. Never felt the need for another +5 missiles above the ones I managed to find on the story path. 
 

& scanning is ridiculous in this. There’s just way too much of it. & I’m a fan usually. It makes you scan the exact same boxes, stones and consoles over and over again just because they’re in a different dungeon. Sometimes even different rooms. Just to say “this console is powered down” That shit just isn’t interesting at all. So I started only scanning interesting looking stuff instead. The psychic sound filter it puts on the scan visor started to really irritate the fuck out of me as well. 
 

Unrelated but forgot to add, just a FYI for people who play this when you reach the point of no return. Make sure you refuse and use the save room first. I didn’t and wrongly assumed there’d be another. Went into the final area and boss with half my energy tanks and without full ammo because of that. Made it more difficult than it should have been. Still managed obviously but don’t make that mistake. 

 

[Metroid66]

Why do I feel no desire to play this? And yet have spent many hours recently playing and (mostly) enjoying a neo classic metroidvania (PoP: the lost crown)?

 

It's a knotty one.

 

[Maf]

Because the trailers and marketing were mostly trash and the reviews were high overall but opinions are split 

[mfnick]

I’d also say Metroid Prime & 2D Metroidvanias are totally different really. Theres been a load of progress in the 2D space too whereas Prime is the only thing in its space with the only “progress” being to its detriment. 

[Pikman]

10 minutes ago, Metroid66 said:

Why do I feel no desire to play this? And yet have spent many hours recently playing and (mostly) enjoying a neo classic metroidvania (PoP: the lost crown)?

 

It's a knotty one.

 

Your username would suggest you should try it 😅

I'll share my POV after xmas (once I have @mfnick's copy 'gifted' to me by the kids). I am also expecting the worst, it sounds like the lows could outweigh the highs.

[Metroid66]

Ninty just tread water tho don't they? I know there's flashes of brilliance, like BotW, but mostly it's just repetition. 

[Maf]

25 minutes ago, Metroid66 said:

Ninty just tread water tho don't they? I know there's flashes of brilliance, like BotW, but mostly it's just repetition. 

Please use Wikipedia and look at the last 10 years 

[Metroid66]

Read it. Same old shite😀

[Maf]

I never, ever would have guessed there would be work-based, office humour in a Metroid game. I never even imagined cubicles would exist. 
 

I used to criticise Metroid for having one of the most dysfunctional and stupid universes in games (lose powers every time but always find them again) but overtime it’s become part of the charm of it, I suppose. So trying to add any kind of normalcy to it, like a guy making an office joke, has gone the other way. Don’t try to normalise it at all. 
 

The environments look so unique and amazing. It does look like they’ve done a good job with the classic Metroid Prime parts 

[mfnick]

Ive started the Remaster of Prime 1. Im tempted to drop this down to a 5/10.

 

It’s so much better in every single way. The area design and how sprawling they feel in 1 have made me realise just how basic they are in 4 too. It’s 23 years old & destroying this instalment, that shouldn’t be happening. In the remaster it still looks incredibly good too. 

[Pikman]

I might find the same then as I didn't play 1 all that long ago 😅

[Maryokutai]

I think you'd like it, it's a good game, just a very uneven one. I'll post more about it when I've completed it and can look at it holistically but I'm definitely enjoying it a lot more than nick (though of course disliking it is also fair, I can see why some of its issues could weigh more to some people).

[mfnick]

Yea, it’s issues have definitely irked me more than most. & playing 1 again has just made it worse and exacerbated them.
 

Take scanning, it’s so much snappier in 1, there’s not as much boring shit like just plain boxes and the flavour text in them is far better. The areas are far more complex and vertical, have multiple paths, provide actual platforming and sometimes actually make you think rather than just fighting a few bullet sponges in a room. Just feels like there’s a lot more enemy variety too and the world’s much more alive. The way the areas intertwine and have multiple access paths with the central area works so much better than the big desert. 
 

Plenty of people like this a lot though. I still think it’s ok. 

[spatular]

just finshed this, took 14 hours, overall enjoyed it, at points the graphics and music are really great. there are some cool bosses, exploration was fun. but can't disagree there are some problems with it, puzzles and stuff maybe a bit too easy, there's some annoying collection stuff near the end but i didn't find it too bad. the people and desert that people seem to find annoying didn't annoy me really, i didn't think thay were good either mind.

 

comparing it to the prime remaster i think the high points in that are better but the annoying parts ifound more annoying, although the old one is probably better overall

[Maryokutai]

 

 

Well, shit. The good news is I'm pretty sure which scan I missed and it's part of the final boss. The bad news is the final boss isn't really fun, but I'll plow through again tomorrow. The items I have no idea where the rest could be, the map is cleared.

 

Anyway, I'll post more tomorrow, a bit too tired now.

[Maryokutai]

Alright, beat it again with 100% scans, thankfully you can switch difficulty mid-game, so I could breeze through the final boss. The best ending unfortunately only unlocks if you also collect all the items, so I had to look that one up. Regretfully, it's just as abrupt and unfulfilling as the normal one, with the exception that

Spoiler

Samus takes her helmet off – with a more realistic face model that seems like a natural evolution of the Prime 1 design – and a short cutscene somehow explaining Sylux' origins, but in a not particularly believable way.

 

I wonder why they kept the ending so open and vague, because let's be honest, Nintendo is going nowhere near this series again (Prime, that is) after this game's history.

 

As for the game – I might have to preface this by saying that Metroid Prime is an all-time favourite of mine. Ask me ten days in a row what game I'd put on my personal top spot, I'd name it on nine of those days. It was a combination of multiple factors back then, a genuinely impressive, revolutionary title that reinvented 2D gameplay in a 3D space not even Mario 64 and GTAIII had done so masterfully. It also came at a time when I was slowly transitioning from viewing videogames as a fun time to kill some time either alone or with friends and started to become more aware of the intricacies behind them, how they are designed, what they want to make you feel while playing them, how they can impact you in ways other media can't (without downplaying those, everything has its values). There have been games that are important to me before and since, but Prime 1 was a milestone that just by definition can never be repeated. And being able to launch a game in 2025 that ultimately feels just like that and reminds me of those times, it's obviously difficult to approach it even remotely in an objective fashion. 

 

(There will be some area/upgrade spoilers in the text below.)

 

You could certainly throw the criticism at Beyond that, in some ways, it does its own Force Awakens where it tries to hit the same notes as Prime 1 did all the way back then. And I'm not just talking about how the double jump has the exact same momentum, goes the exact same distance and height, how the Morph Ball is linked to the same physics, how sound effects and jingles are taken 1:1 from the original. I'm also talking how it goes back to the classic videogame tropes of visiting jungle, ice and lava areas, of having funny little Morph Ball puzzles that require skills the game never explains, of having save stations despite the addition of autosave and checkpoints almost making them obsolete. If the game was just that, would it have drawn less or more criticism? For me it would have been enough, but looking at its first gameplay trailer, feelings of stagnation seem to have been part of some of the discourse, and that's likely the reason why we have those new ideas sprinkled in, none of which really improve the game in any shape or form.

 

Oddly, I didn't hate the bike. It is fundamentally unnecessary, but it does control well, there's very little friction and annoyances when moving around with it (take note, horses from Rockstar games). I did, however, play the game at a cadence where I would only ever use it once per session – maybe your gaming habits and speed, and how often you have to get back on it without a real-life break, can negatively impact how you feel about it. Or you just dislike the idea in general. But after my extremely negative first impression from the trailer, I have to say I'm fine with it. But at the same time, the game would likely be better if it wasn't part of it, because it ultimately doesn't add much of value and I can only imagine how many months of development resources it must have swallowed to get working this nicely. Concept art suggests it was an idea they got quite early in development, so this must have had a massive impact on its production, especially as Retro has never done anything close to 'racing' before.

 

The second addition is significantly more impactful, in a negative way, and I'm obviously talking about the Federation Force marines. I don't really know where to begin here because their inclusion has implications on so many levels, beyond just the gameplay side, so I think I'll just go ahead through everything wrong with it. For starters, the way one of them works as a hint system is diametrically opposed to what Metroid is about. The first three Primes had a hint system as well, but not only was it unobtrusive, it was diegetic in a way that feels organic within Samus' lone wolf approach, in that her scanners picked up an anomaly on the map and showed you where it was. It was not a spoken line, which in itself feels at odds with Metroid's atmosphere, that straight up tells you what to do or shows you, at hour 14 of your playtime, the location of 'base camp', a place you have been a dozen times before. It's handholding at its worst, insultingly so, and has no place in a Metroid game. Why you can turn off tutorials, which are actually useful, but not hints is beyond me.

 

The problems with the NPCs also move over to other areas, for example when they accompany you. I did actually lose one boss fight because during that specific encounter they were part of it and one of them got knocked out, which is horrid game design no matter how you slice it and it's emphasised by the fact that their presence as a whole is entirely unwelcome in the first place. There's also moments where their presence impacts the whole tone and atmosphere – a late area that is an obvious reference to the Phazon Mines would have been incredibly tense if you were on your own. Enemies in that area are blind but spawn all around you when you produce loud noises, like using missiles. The obvious byproduct, you'd think, of this idea would be to make happenings there as eerily quiet as possible, but instead you're permanently accompanied by an NPC who regularly talks. It almost feels like outside interference during the game's design, or at best two ideas clashing, not finding a compromise, and just combining them, forcing a result that drags down both.

 

There's also a third issue with this, and to an extent some of other aspects, and I think that's what the video maf linked goes into (I haven't watched it): the demythification of the Metroid universe. More like any other game in the series except for Other M, Beyond is very happy to give answers to questions nobody was asking for. It's making its universe smaller by adding information, interestingly in a similar way as to what happened to one of its biggest inspirations, Alien. Suddenly we have people constantly interacting with Samus. They talk like people from earth, or at least the stylised version of them from Hollywood movies. They believe in gods. They work in cubicles. They comment on stuff that we were used to just accepting as-is – like Samus' unrealistic transformation into a Morph Ball – making it feel awkward and comedic. Samus as a character has traditionally been entirely detached from the 'good guys' of its lore, and in hindsight I get the feeling it was an accident, but it added to the universe instead of taking away from it. No lessons were learned from Other M in other words, and even though Samus doesn't speak here, it hardly matters. In fact, it might even make some cutscenes feel more weird than they should.

 

I'm not saying there's no place to indulge that side of Metroid, but I think it should happen without Samus' involvement. Let a character like Armstrong fangirl about her in her own spin-off game, in which Samus doesn't appear but is only a looming legend in the vastness of space. Not in an active manner like she does here (though admittedly, she's still the best character in the game, likely thanks to how good her voice actress is).

There's also two additional aspects of how they're implemented that can feel annoying. Firstly, Samus gets teleported away after a short tutorial filled with Marines. Why not use that opportunity as a believable plot device to have her isolated yet again after said opening – don't send the other characters with her, have her try to find a way back on her own, thinking she left everyone on that base to fight for themselves. Another idea is a bit of spoiler territory but

 

Spoiler

if the plan is to kill them off anyway, why not have that happen early in the plot to give Samus a driving force to conclude her mission. Sure, you wouldn't get to know them, but as it stands a lot of players will associate mostly negative feelings with them anyway, lessoning the impact of their sacrifice at the end.

 

Though despite all these issues, and an extremely underwhelming finale, I have to go back to the first paragraph and say that just being able to go back to this type of game was a joy. Yes, the level design is extremely linear and can't hold a candle to Prime 1 and 2. But this being a sequel to Corruption, it seems like that's just the direction the series was travelling in. There's also some extremely good moments in there, like the first visit in the ice fields, fighting through the station, figuring out some part of its lore, and then seeing the whole station come to live and the ice thawing when you walk back to surface. Even simple ideas, like restarting the generators in the Volt Forge and seeing the whole area come to life again with the pumping soundtrack, are extremely powerful moments that can easily keep up with some high points of its predecessors. It's ultimately the good parts that outweigh the bad for me, and I might – though I still have to think about it a bit – put this at the top spot of my goty list. The ending soured me a bit on it, which is a bit petty of me, but that's the emotion you're left with at its conclusion. Though it was indeed a strong emotion and not some lackadaisical sigh, so it's not like it left me cold.

 

I have no idea if anyone will read this, but yeah, that's how I feel about this game. One annoying part about the general discourse about it I want to add though is that years ago, we had a sequel similar to this that made mostly the same mistakes but the majority of people embraced it and considered it an improvement. I am, of course, talking about Batman: Arkham City. In the same vein, not to blow this post up even more, I wonder if Metroidvanias (particularly the 3D variant) are just inherently incompatible with the industry's desire to go 'bigger and better', because the further you move away from compressed, labyrinthine environments, the more you distance yourself from the genre's core foundations. Maybe to conclude, I'd say I like this as much, maybe even more than Corruption, while Prime 1 and 2 still hold the two top spots. 

[mfnick]

Yea I read it, I’m extremely curious to read other people’s experiences with this game for whatever reasons. Especially from people who think it’s GOTY contender. 
 

I agree with the Ice area. Definitely a highlight. Although the “bring the level to life” thing was already starting to get old there I thought.

 

I hated Armstrong. She was up there as the worst character for me. I detested all that fangirl shit. She’s a soldier as well, no need for her to act like a child. Especially has no place in a Metroid game. 
 

I’ve realised apart from 1, this series has been very miss for me. 1 is a 10/10 masterpiece (maybe a 9 these days). 2 I hated because of the dark world stuff. & 3 I actually never played because I hated the Wii and from what others said I knew I wouldn’t like it. I suppose I shouldn’t be so shocked that this didn’t hit for me either.

 

Regarding Batman AC, I felt the same with that. But I do think perception has changed a little now. People still love AC but I definitely see more now saying Asylum was better at least. Which is a cold hard fact.