Topic: Metroid Prime 4: Beyond

For the record, I don't particularly pay too much attention to...honestly most reviews in general, let alone Metacritic. At most I quickly look at the score to see if I find a surprise, either positive or not.

Some people hate Metacritic for that but...eh. I think I'm right that a great Kirby Air Ride will never be reviewed as well as a good Metroid Prime, since despite the original being my favorite game ever, I prefer Air Ride slightly to even 2 and 3 (even if part of that is that absolutely that they are follow ups to my favorite game, while Air Ride was a one-off until this year) and that says...something. But in general my tastes are not too wild most times. Like my hottest take on a game is that Vanquish was like...a 6. Even Star Fox Zero is not as dramatically better to me compared to reviews as what you'd assume by how much people hated it and that I actually liked it (though that's partially because games rarely get mid to bad reviews, compared to movies or the like). I'm not gonna say that every Ubisoft game sucks, even when they're samey and cynically made (though I will for Outlaws because its funny and based to hate Star Wars) and I'm not one of those people trying to convince the world Travis Strikes Again is secretly a masterpiece. I'm gonna buy what I'm gonna buy and its incredibly rare I regret spending money on a game, I'm rarely an outlier for any game.

Yeah, I agree that it’s not worth getting too het up over review scores in general. You’re probably going to get a general idea of what the game is like (and whether it suits your taste) from watching a bit of gameplay footage, and then the actual words in a review do much more heavy lifting than the score when it comes to giving an impression of whether you’ll actually enjoy it.

That said, it’s fun to piece together what you’ve seen/heard pre-release and try to guess what the critical reaction will be just from that.

…At least, I find it fun, anyway!

50 isn't supposed to be bad. Think of Nintendo Life's definition in their scoring policy: '5/10 — Average
A middle-of-the-road title'.

That said, a metacritic score requires a fair amount of reviews from fairly major reviewers and, generally speaking, major reviewers don't review bad or even average games very often so they simply don't have a metacritic score.

Let's think of less than 50 as below average games. Even if they are slightly devisive, almost all reviewers have to rate fairly low to get in the 40s. For 2025, only 4 games got metacritic scores lower than 50. Only one score got below 40 which is where Nintendo Life would define 'bad' and given that the highest review score for that game--MindsEye-- was 5/10, the metacritic was 37, and the player score was 2.5, I think it's fair to assume most people would probably agree it is bad. Some people complain that almost all metacritic scores are above the 'average' 50 but, for 2025, there were 415 metacritic scores but there have been 10s of thousands of new games across steam, mobile, and consoles. There are countless bad games in there which never get much in the way of reviews.

By NL's scoring definition, 71 from your example is firmly in the 'good' category.

Really when people complain about games in these forums - whether Metroid Prime or Kirby Air Riders - it is generally because the game doesn't have what they want personally or because it doesn't hit the insanely high peaks of quality we know Nintendo is capable of or perhaps doesn't feel worth the high prices. But even though I don't plan to buy e.g. Kirby Air Riders for $70, it would be dishonest of me after playing the demo to say it wasn't a fairly high quality game. There are so many insanely good games that people have skewed expectations sometimes.

p.s. Sorry for continuing the tangent on metacritic scores but this thread is kind of a waiting room at this point so hopefully it is not too disruptive even though it is barely on topic.

11 days to Metroid Prime 4

@FishyS
Kirby Air Riders is actually a great example.

I bought it, and it just wasn't as fun as I'd been hoping. It's good, don't get me wrong. But it's not to my personal taste. And yet, I gamechatted with Nath the other day and he says he absolutely loves it and can't get enough. Like, it's just his jam. And I can understand that even if it's not mine.

It's not a bad game, but it is for a certain niche. And if you're in that niche, it's a 10/10 for you. You're gonna adore it. If you're not in that niche (like me), it's like a 7/10. Totally depends on who you are, really.

As for Metroid, I am precisely the niche the game is aiming to cater towards. A huge fan of metroidvania game design, massive fan of gyro and mouse aiming, someone who appreciates good performance and visuals (doesn't have to be AAAA, just pleasing to the eye with solid performance), and a soft spot for well voice acted dialog and personable characters. I also like engaging story in games. And even though Nintendo isn't usually the company you think of when it comes to story, I do welcome more of it in games like Xenoblade, Fire Emblem, Zelda and Metroid.

Reason I love Tomb Raider so much is it has fun, quality gameplay and engaging story with interesting characters. And some light metroidvania design. You spend much of the game alone, but it still manages to splice in certain segments with other characters, it sometimes has dialog over the radio to keep you engaged when it's been a while since the last time you were with anyone, it just kinda does everything. It's not the best gameplay ever or the best story ever or the best metroidvania design ever or the best tomb puzzles ever, but all of these aspects are high quality and when combined, makes for a really engaging game.

I'm excited to see Metroid Prime finally offer more than just excellent gameplay and puzzles. There's room to do what Tomb Raider does, and add those interesting characters well voice acted, add more interesting story that takes more of a prominent role (even though it'll still likely be backseat to the gameplay overall), up the ante with more intriguing puzzle design using the psychic powers, improve on the already excellent gameplay with even more control options like mouse mode, refine what's there and already established, and integrate some of these other pillars that can make a game feel more well rounded.

@JaxonH I don't disagree with a thing you said but I do also think Air Ride isn't niche just because of what it is but also how best to experience it, in my experience. At least for me, Air Ride rarely was worth playing for more than an hour at a time. It was consistent short runs across a couple of years that made Air Ride a highlight of the GCN era, when my first times playing it made it seem like a decently fun but lower tier first party release. Whereas a Metroid Prime I'll gladly play for 2-3 hours at a time, possibly more if I really wanted to (especially the GOAT original). It being a consistent, reliable game to go back to IS part of the appeal, a more important one than even a lot of other party games I'd argue.

I feel somewhat similarly about super short games. Mario Land 1's appeal to me is that it is really short and I can just play through it in the span of a half hour or less, and that unique appeal is why I think it holds up despite probably not being as good as other classic Mario games, it hit a specific niche other games usually won't. Hyrule Warriors is the opposite extreme, it is a neverending grind fest of a game where you go through battles countless times, and you either get into that as a regular thing or don't. And in the case of Hyrule Warriors and ESPECIALLY Air Ride, that's a disadvantage for reviewers since they can't play it that way and get a review out in time. The fact that both recent entries have good reviews at all is impressive just with that in mind alone.

@kkslider5552000
I can see Kirby Air Riders being designed around quick play sessions, and tbh, the Top Ride is my favorite part. It's also perfect for impromptu MP passing a joycon. Which, that kind of game won't suit most suitations when you game, but I think it's important to have a few games like that on deck for when the situation presents itself. Mario Kart World is another great one for passing a joycon in tabletop mode.

I don't regret buying KAR, I just recognize it's not a game I'll play all that much. But sometimes you just want a low stakes in-and-out gaming session. It's great for that.

Metroid Prime 4... I'll say this. Metroid Prime is what got me into gaming as an adult. I'd watch my brother play all day- 8 hours in a single say. Morning to night time. When he finished, I bought the $99 Platinum GameCube bundle with MP, and got Metroid Prime 2 since I'd just seen the entirety of the first.

And I played 8-10 hr sessions day in day out. I was literally having dreams about the Ing. Idk if Metroid Prime is designed for such long play sessions, but it's so good you can't help but binge. Very much like Tomb Raider for me now.

I suspect Metroid Prime 4 Beyond will be my obsession for a week or two. But part of me will never want it to end, so I fully intend on dragging my feet, backtracking multiple times and exploring every nook and cranny, to make it last as long as possible.

I largely agree, but would simply add that I think all of that involving calculating the confidence interval based on the total number of reviews is kind of pointless. Its swamped in impact by how "noisy" the data itself is, which is to say, the bias of the individual reviewers. No amount of statistics can make data that is more precise than the original measurements.

Which is why I think a Rotten Tomatoes "freshness rating" is actually far more useful, as aggregate scores go. The fact that the individual measurements are binary and, to any reasonably expected extent, unambiguous ( a reviewer either recommends a game or not )? Is a huge improvement in useful data, with all the hypothetical tradeoffs in detail being fictional.

@metaphysician
I think the confidence interval would make sense for user reviews on this specific site because you never know if a game had 3 user reviews or 30. So saying a game scores an average of 87 +/- 9, vs another game that scores an average of 87 +/- 2, would be helpful. I don't advocate for such a system with aggragate sites.

The things that are holding it down for now are:

The bike sections, that also look bad graphics-wise

Escort missions, especially with a annoying "marvel" character. I really don't get it. Everyone seemed to hate the talking characters in Metroid Prime 3 and Other M (not me though), yet Nintendo includes this. The "marvel character does look annoying though, I have to admit. That being said, it annoys me more that Samus stays quiet when others talk to her. Hello, we live in 2025! She talked in Other M, wich I personally didn't hate.

And this is what annoys me: The world is just broken up into smaller (potentially more lineair) levels, with a desert in between. Why not one big maze like Prime 1 and 2?

Honestly I probably agree with this more than the other complaints. I don't hate this idea, but its never been better for a Metroidvania than the alternative, that I can think of anyway.

Prime 3 was probably the best example of it but I just prefer a proper interconnected world.

Prime 1 and 2 weren't really one big maze. They were actually pretty linear with each area simply connecting to the next.

Not that it bothered me, nor does the hub design of Prime 4 which is essentially the design of Prime 3 using the ship. I never cared about how areas connected, only that exploration and level design within each area is well done.

edit
Upon further reflection, I retract my previously stated preference (or lack thereof). The prior Prime games were a nightmare to backtrack in because of the linearity of areas. If you wanted to go from one to another, it could sometimes result in directly backtracking through 3 areas tip to tail.

This hub design in Prime 4 ensures that will never happen. Which will make backtracking less tedious, which will result in a higher quality experience. The bike will help even more- not only are all areas connected to a centra desert area, the bike drastically speeds up traversal.

When you're running a 3D game on a console with a tiny amount of RAM and limited rendering power, of course you're going to be building your map out of a lot of small rooms connected with long corridors and narrow doorways to attempt to fool the player into thinking that it's all seamlessly joined up. Rather than it just being a delaying tactic while it's frantically trying to load the next area from disc before you go into it, with an occasionally slow-to-open door being the closest that you get to a loading screen. And that's most of why MP1&2 are the way that they are.

You still that get in a lot of modern games too, albeit to a lesser extent, but I'd think that it's reasonable to use the advances of the intervening decades to do things a little differently with MP4, albeit hopefully not in a way that ruins the atmosphere of the game.

That's absolutely one aspect in which Metroid Prime 1 (and probably 2 as well, but I haven't replayed that one in the last 20 years) shows it's age. It can be a right slog backtracking through "interesting areas". Also a hub area in a Metroidvania is not a novel concept (often containing things like shops or other ways to upgrade your abilities, gather information etc.) and many in the genre employ some sort of it or even a mixture of ways to travel/connect that open up once you've reached a certain level of complexity in the map layout. I wouldn't be surprised if that's the case here too. Maybe it's more straight forward in the beginning and later you unlock shortcuts or alternative modes of travel (like teleporting) + new abilities that allow for faster traversal. Modern MVs do that all of the time, once you thoroughly explored an area some sort of fast travel option opens up to "unslog" the backtracking. I also think it rather likely that neighboring regions will also have direct connections to each other (because why wouldn't they?) and you won't have to go through the desert area each and every time. The mark of a good MV is how seamlessly and organically the map opens up. It also goes together with the sense of power you gain once you level up. Areas you once had to battle through tooth and nail, in the later parts you will just breeze right through or skip altogether. I mean, the genre isn't new and Retro and Nintendo played a big part in defining it, so I would assume they know what they are doing.

For some reason Prime 4’s approach to queries design reminds me a bit of Luigi’s Mansion 2. Not that there was a giant desert of a motorbike in that game. But the fact that they chopped up ‘The Mansion’ into lots of smaller mansion with their own themes seems similar to how the main world is being divided up here.

…Maybe.

I dunno, I haven’t played the game.

I've said it before, but: IMO the one big change that Prime 1 needed? An additional connection point between Tallon Overworld and Phendrana Drift. Everywhere else has plenty of doors-to-before offering shortcuts ( even the Phazon Mine has one you unlock, even if its fairly late ). . . but Phendrana? Despite being a place you need to visit multiple times over the game, you always have to get there through Magmoor.

@OmnitronVariant
I don't think it's an assumption at this point. Its a disclosed fact that the areas are connected to a hub like Hyrule Field. And it's a fact the bike speeds up traversal between areas.

These are not assumptions. If you mean, "makes backtracking less tedious" that's a pretty safe assumption, and I stand by it. I've played enough video games in my life to know how long it took to backtrack in the previous Prime games and what effect making that easier will have on me as a player.

Honestly this is only kinda related, but I have been thinking that as much as the idea of making an ACTUAL open world Metroid Prime (which this obviously isn't) is stupid and bad and cringe, I think having larger open areas could be very beneficial. At the very least, if you combined two larger rooms from the previous games, including the same quantity of items/doors to other places and the like, it feels like it'd make for some cool environments that make the game stand out while feeling like a natural evolution of the series. Especially since the doors in the Prime games are secret loading screens, so taking advantage of having more power to avoid that more often would be the most logical thing to do.

Maybe this game does that, I dunno, no one wants to discuss it other than for non-controversies lol.

This. I find Prime Remastered to be overrated for this reason and was crushed that it was nothing more than a graphical coat of paint for the game. People act like Prime 1 (also Super Metroid, but for the purposes of this conversation I'm focusing on Prime 1) is this untouchable masterpiece and there's nothing they can do to make it better. No, it's an excellent game but it's not flawless, and this is a major flaw. The game is utterly PAINFUL with backtracking because of a lack of fast travel, shortcuts, etc. Worst offender is the stretch from Flaaghra to the adult Sheegoth, where you have to pass through Magmoor Caverns a whopping 3 times with little new that opens up in the process simply because it's the only way to reach your actual destination which is Phendrana. Prime Remastered doing nothing about it because they focused on graphics that barely look that much better (seriously I'm sick of these types of remakes/remasters, making the graphics 10% better doesn't exactly make the game more fun to replay) definitely killed the nostalgia for this game, or at least that part of the game.

Yeah, this is what Prime 2 did. Everything else was accessed from Temple Grounds but you could discover elevators that provided direct connections between the areas that you could use as shortcuts (there's an elevator between Agon and Torvus that you can access with the Boost Ball, and elevators between Agon/Sanctuary and Torvus/Sanctuary that you can access with the Power Bombs). I wouldn't be surprised if Prime 4 does something similar.

@kkslider5552000 I actually do think the game has these larger areas apart from the desert. Just look at the scenes in the trailers of the big open jungle area with the bridge and the temple in the background or the snow desert environment in which the wolves attack and the collapsing hanging bridges. There will definitely be some amazing setpieces taking advantage of the newer hardware.