"I believe we have done everything we could here, but ultimately, we could not save our kind. I am overwhelmed with helplessness. I trust the words of Chatoya, that someday our savior will appear . . . I am Tahrgun. And I am utterly defeated."
—Log entry "Prayer"
—Reger Tokabi
I remember when I first saw the teaser trailer for Metroid Prime 4: Beyond back in 2017, only to have to wait almost a decade for the eventual release. This long-awaited sequel masterfully maintains the spirit of Metroid Prime from the music of the title screen and Fury Green to the story that features ruins once inhabited by a very Chozo-like species without merely retreading the same thematic and narrative ground. It accomplishes some distinctly new things, such as introducing an entirely new means of environmental traversal, psychic abilities, a fictional religion (which is unfortunately very minimally developed), and an inversion of the sterotypical function of the chosen one in media. The game also returns Sylux to the forefront of the story after foreshadowing something major involving him for multiple games across platforms. For the most part, Metroid Prime 4 is an excellent update of what made the original game of the subseries such a stellar triumph of first-person platforming, exploration, and shooting, reunited with franchise elements first incorporated in later Metroid games, like named Federation troopers and voice acting.
Production Values
Some of my many screenshots do not reflect the stable smoothness of the game in motion, making it appear to contain more jagged lines and edges than is really the case during ordinary play. I selected images with more overt clarity. Metroid Prime 4 is a gorgeous game, one of the absolute best looking on the original Switch system. Miscellaneous details even go beyond graphical excellence because they reflect a significant attention to detail directed to Samus, her power suit, and the general world in the design process (franchise veterans will notice some of them as variations of things in past games). In some portions of the icy, snowy region of Viewros, for example, her arm cannon is covered with frost when she is exposed to cold winds or otherwise away from heat sources. In rain or otherwise falling water, water droplets are visible on her visor and arm cannon. The player can briefly see a reflection of Samus' face in her visor if she is close enough to certain explosive events, like the impact of a charged power beam. Moreover, her face is shown for a very short time over the map screen when you pause.
The same high quality visuals are present in the character models, and particularly in the facial animations, of the Galactic Federation soldiers Samus collaborates with. Among the troopers, who are fully voice acted, there is even a fair amount of diversity, including a black man (not the first in the series thanks to Other M), a woman, and a man who seems to be of Native American descent. It is only fitting that a series which very explosively pushed back against the illogicality of gender stereotypes would include a naturally implemented diversity decades later (more will be said about this outside this review). Thankfully, it is not just the human characters that look great: some creatures Samus and/or her companions face look outright incredible, especially for a Switch game. Even with the Switch 2 bringing the era of its predecessor to a slow end, Nintendo once again displays some of the best visuals on the first Switch while climbing even higher than before. If anything, though the audio is excellent as well, from the weapon and animal sounds to the GF vocal delivery and superb sountrack, it is out of place for Samus to be so quiet. She actually does not speak at all. This is all the more somewhat tonally strange since she talks very openly in Other M, which also features many Federation soldiers, and even speaks briefly in the Switch's own Metroid Dread of 2021.
Gameplay
While the blend of exploration, puzzles, and shooting is one familiar from the previous games, the psychic powers are entirely new. Some psychic abilities are connected to returning abilities like the double jump, unlocked with the psychic boots, but with some sort of additional feature. With the boots that grant a double jump, Samus can stand on special platforms that only materialize when you use the psychic visor. The psychic visor itself takes the place of the scan visor as the only alternative to the standard combat visor, though you can still fire shots. In fact, you can use the new Control Beam to dictate where the shots go after they are fired, using either the analog stick or motion controls. This is required to defeat some enemies. While the boost ball function can now traverse varied psychic pathways, with the player simply observing as the game controls the direction of the morph ball, the Psychic Glove is also entirely new to the series, allowing Samus to retrieve airborne morph ball bombs to her fist and telekinetically hurl them at a target.
As for non-psychic alternate weapons, rather than taking the form of the plasma beam and the like, elemental "shot" types are acquired through progression in the main story. These draw from a shared secondary ammunition pool that can be significantly expanded by collecting optional items. Using these weapons is also vital to completing a series of underground puzzles, ranging from extremely simple to highly complex (the spider ball tracks!), that yield special charge attacks for each of the three elemental shots. Despite the novel way they are presented and named, elemental beam or beam-adjacent attacks are not new to the franchise. The Vi-O-La motorcycle is a much more original inclusion, and perhaps as controversial as it is innovative (in that it is a genuine series first).
This vehicle is obtained early on once Samus gains the suit interface to ride it, and it can be summoned in the game's central area, an expansive desert, and dematerialized at will. Actually, it is very similar in function to Epona in some Legend of Zelda games. Since the desert is vast and it harbors somewhat essential crystals, Vi-O-La does at least fulfill a crucial role given the environmental layout. If you space out the crystal runs so that you do not rush to get the amount of crystals necessary to beat the game, traversing the desert is not forced on the player for any particularly prolonged duration. However, there are plenty of items in the desert, so a completionist will have to visit most spots to find every expansion. As for the green crystals, after collecting enough to advance to the finale, it is still possible to fill up the crystal meter all over again to unlock items in the main menu's gallery; this is not required to complete the story.
Likewise, it is not mandatory to find every single energy tank and missile, elemental ammunition, or power bomb expansion, but other images in the gallery are only unlocked by finding all collectibles or by scanning all logbook entries or both. Specific items appear at certain thresholds, like filling 25% of the logbook. Still other unlocks are accessed by finishing Beyond in hard mode, which only becomes available after beating normal mode. To see every image and cinematic, you must achieve a variety of goals, not necessarily in the same playthrough—though at least two are necessary to unlock everything. Yes, hard mode is more difficult, such as by having save stations only save progress and restore health as opposed to also replenishing comsumable ammunition. But like with Metroid Dread, the patterns of enemies like bosses can be exploited to avoid most damage. And if some items are difficult for a player to locate, each area has an inactive scout drone that can be made to send out a pulse that identifies the locations on each region's map. Activating scout drones is purely optional, albeit helpful for some discoveries.
Story
Samus arrives to help the Galactic Federation as Sylux attacks the latter to steal a mysterious artifact, using an army of space pirates and metroids. The artifact is accidentally powered up and teleports Samus, a handful of Federation soldiers, and Sylux to the planet Viewros, which seemingly is absent from all records. To return to the original planet, Samus works with the Federation troopers to secure a series of keys tied to a teleportation device atop the massive Chrono Tower.
Intellectual Content
I recognize that the last game review that was posted involved a game where supernaturalism and science are very particularly intertwined, and there is another game review to be released in the near future that addresses its own explicit convergence in a very different manner. Metroid Prime 4 stands on a mixture of supernaturalism and science fiction as well due primarily to its prominent psychic abilities. Consciousness is nonphysical even if the existence of the immaterial mind is only sustained by the physical brain, and these powers go even further than base consciousness does beyond the direct results of neuron activity; they are obviously mental, triggered by thought and intentionality. Of course, Beyond says Samus had latent psychic abilities, meaning the capacity was present but inactive, and Other M shows her Power Suit appear and disappear over her Zero Suit at her whim. Now, the place of Beyond in the timeline is not clear from the game itself, but perhaps this entry shows why she can will her armor on and off in the aforementioned Wii game; this newest game is not the only one to show Samus have some sort of unusual mental power.
In spite of not doing much to explore the specifics of how there is already no logical contradiction between the immateriality of consciousness and the workings of the physical world, Metroid Prime 4 does heavily rely on a mixture of overtly supernatural and science fiction elements that in various ways is no stranger to the series (Chozo ghosts in the first Prime, etc.). It partially leans into this with the central prophecy of the Lamorn, the former inhabitants of Viewros. Like the Chozo of the first game's Tallon IV, the Lamorn are very spiritual, with their own affinity for prophecy alongside their great scientific advancements. However, while a chosen one does arrive as anticipated, Samus comes too late to rescue the Lamorn. She finds a world overtaken by the tragedy of a failed attempt to uplift the planet. A Lamorn who left holographic messages for the future chosen one even points out that they does not have absolute certainty that there will come a savior, echoing the general thoughts and struggles articulated in various logbook entries. In actuality, it is unclear if the Lamorn had a genuine prophecy or just desperately held on to the hope that someone would eventually honor their legacy with the Memory Fruit, without there being any one individual foreseen to accomplish this.
One more thing about the game's approach to spirituality before moving to a topic already tackled here [1]: one of the Federation units, Tokabi, shares barebones information about the religion of Sollan he is allegiant to. Something so novel to the franchise and so major a philosophical issue merited far deeper exploration, but at least the seeds have been sown for a more precise dive into a fictional religion that Tokabi's limited comments suggest is one of egalitarianism and redemption. As a rationalist and a Christian, I know there is only logical proof of one uncaused cause (there could be more!) and that there is evidentially high probability that the Judeo-Christian Yahweh is that God. Still, there are great depths to the potential for fiction to touch on many aspects of religions, those adhered to in real life and only in stories, that I rightfully wish Beyond had trended closer to even though Sollan is not Yahweh. Ironically, because I am a rationalist and a Christian, I appreciate paganism of one kind of another being explored in storytelling all the more!
Now, it is time to once again acknowledge a foundational parallel between the fate of the Lamorn and the fate of soldiers under the command of Sylux shown in a memory of his which Samus psychically experiences, one only seen in its entirety upon completing the game with 100% of the items and 100% of the logbook filled. Just as Samus did not arrive in time to save the Lamorn who prophesied her coming, she once did not arrive in time to prevent the soldiers fighting under Sylux from being killed by an enormous weapon of the space pirates which he wanted to seize control of. This seems to be the real origin of what likely became a much more complicated relationship later on. It does not mean she did so maliciously or negligently, but her timing adds a layer of legitimate weight to why Sylux has such bitterness towards Samus. Sylux himself appears fairly little in the game, but his presence is integral to the plot, and the characterization we do see in this one entry is far more layered than some have come close to recognizing.
Conclusion
Certainly, Beyond would have benefitted from more elaborate characterization of some NPCs (though the optional voice lines at the informal base do help develop some of them) and more details about matters like the religious philosophy of Sollan, but for the most part, everything included plays the role it needs to. Many complaints would really be about subjective preference, an irrelevant factor. At times radiating the same pillars of the original Metroid Prime and at times implementing very new elements to the subseries, Metroid Prime 4 is largely a triumph of gaming and a fitting adventure for Samus Aran. A very personally driven villain, whose backstory we probably only see very minute glimpses of at most, and graphics that are usually quite incredible, the extreme heights of the platform's utilized capabilities, are just some of the ways that Beyond takes the first-person Metroid games further than before. This sequel is far removed from being a blight on the franchise.
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