Topic: Metroid Prime 4: Beyond

@JaxonH The thing is, you seem to be claiming some kind of conspiracy of bias against the game while ignoring that you, perhaps, are biased towards it.

I don't think this is about Edge, anyway. That score is an outlier and they're entitled to that opinion (the review raises some good points, even if I disagree with the score). Away from the reviews, folk that I know are disappointed by the game on some level, myself included. That's not to say we're not enjoying our time with it but we do have reservations. I just hope that the series can recover to its heights in the hopefully not too distant future.

@eldersnake nah, it feeling like a GameCube game is definitely a strength for me!

@Haruki_NLI There are metroids everywhere, in all shapes and sizes, in the original Metroid Prime trilogy. I was just expressing disappointment that none was seen in-game in Beyond.

@echoplex There were Metroids in a few areas per game in the original trilogy.

They are in one area in Metroid Zero Mission. One area in Super Metroid. One area in Fusion. Not at all in Dread.

They've always been a rare enemy, boss, or glorified plot starter for most of the series.

Except Metroid 2, obviously, and that game is part of why they are so rare now.

Also, for the love of god, HD remasters of Echoes and Corruption now please! We are sitting here in the Switch era with the excellent remaster of Prime 1 and now Prime 4 and it's like 'HELLOOO Nintendo and Retro? You there?? There's a big gap/hole here now! Can you kindly address this now?' 🙄

@Rahmus
Not some "conspiracy". I dont think people gathered together and "conspired" lol.

But I do think people will exact vengeance against Nintendo for not making the exact game they think it "should have been". In fact it's plain as day. I also think there's a desire to exact vengeance due to anti-Switch 2 sentiment, and some won't dare to expose that inner desire if it sticks out like a sore thumb, but if they smell blood in the water and perceive an opportunity to mask it behind "legitimate criticism" they'll do exactly that. Not everyone, but certainly some.

This isn't some wild, tinfoil hat statement.

I agree. That's exactly the kind of game I wanted. 2025 is chock to the hilt with "modern games". I wanted a Metroid Prime, which was conceived in the GC/Wii era. And they gave us precisely that.

Slower movement, focus on exploration rather than high speed combat, puzzle solving, collecting, all the hallmarks of the original.

But they did modernize where it mattered, and as a result Idk if I'll be able to go back to prior entries. For example, auto saves before bosses or scripted combat encounters. Map markers. Gyro/mouse aiming with a multitude of control options. Voiced dialog for other characters. These modernizations all contributed to Prime 4 feeling less frustrating than other entries.

And that's exactly what they should have done. Give us the old school game design with modern comforts and improvements. If it didn't feel like a "GameCube/Wii" game it wouldn't feel like Metroid Prime.

I still want Prime 2 and 3 remastered with gyro aiming and map markers, but Prime 4 has scratched that lingering itch I've had for something new these past 2 decades.

@Haruki_NLI While it's true that the actual enemy isn't seen too often (I will say there's a fair amount in Prime 1, but mainly only limited to Pirate strongholds and Impact Crater, but other than that yeah you don't see them in most of the game), the fact that they're not really there at all in game is fairly disappointing. What's worse is that they are shown in a cutscene at the beginning of the game and there's lore about them fusing with the major bosses in the game, but that's completely unexplored. It's just sloppy writing and evidence that something seems to have went wrong with the game's development, even beyond what we knew about the infamous restart.

@JaxonH “exact vengeance” is a bit strong, wouldn’t you say? Certainly not plain as day - you’re assuming motive against a group who are saying what a lot of non-critics are saying too.

I think it’s far more likely that this game is fine but conservative, which leaves it exposed to critique. It’s well-made but design-wise it’s a bit soulless.

I can’t help but feel that at some point in its development when it was rebooted they looked at doing a full open world game à la Breath of the Wild but realised that they didn’t have the budget. The result is a sparse open world stitched in between largely linear sections.

The thing is, I do enjoy it while playing but I’m fully aware that it’s not a classic.

I'm at the end game, just haven't beaten it yet (in case I am missing anything that is end game)...with the talks about Metroids showing up. It wouldn't make a tone of sense, given what happens in the very beginning. Unless there were already Metroids on Viewros, they wouldn't be there. I'm not making a statement on whether or not they should be in the game, it's just that based on the story, it makes sense.

We see similar infusions happening to enemies, which is very reminiscent to past Prime games.

Like what others are saying - there was likely more that was planned, but they did what they could with the game. Like others here, I'm much higher on it - but I do understand some of the critiques. But that Edge review - I haven't seen the full review, but this line I think is way off base "Nintendo games have tested our patience before, but rarely in so many ways at once, and not without a core brilliance that makes such transgressions forgivable." There is absolutely a Core brilliance in Prime 4, and in no way is the game a 4.
They also gave Air Riders a 5 - and while that game was not for me, there is no way it should be scored that low.

I mean Sylux's Metroids could've easily been caught in the teleportation blast along with Sylux himself and the Federation soldiers. That would easily explain why we could see Metroids roaming around Viewros.

"Conservative" isn't quite the right word either because that implies that it doesn't change too much which they definitely did. What I think better describes Prime 4 is that it's simplified, a lot of the things they did differently made the game feel easier and less demanding (especially cognitively) and that tends to be off-putting to certain demographics of gamers that want intellectual stimulation, a game like this insults their intelligence. That's what the controversy behind this game is about.

@Bolt_Strike you are right on that one...I was hoping that they show up in the final battle...unless they have fused with others that you fight...

@Bolt_Strike it’s conservative in the wider context of game design, it’s unambitious and lacking innovation with things like its dungeon design is what I meant.

Sure, in terms of the series it’s trying something new (to be more mainstream, maybe?) while simultaneously being unimaginative with the building blocks of the design. Maybe that’s why it’s not landing: it’s caught in a no man’s land.

I tried to find more about Sylux in the databook that was released on the Nintendo Today! App. Looks like Sylux made his own research and experiments with Metroids and found a way to breed them (can we know about that just by playing the game?). But that doesn't explain how the bosses in MP4 were all fused with Metroids — the only way would be that the Metroids did get teleported to Viewros too, again, how can we know that? On one hand I find these story gaps exciting because we can speculate, on the other hand I think it's a bit lazy...

If you want to check the Databoook : https://metroid.fandom.com/wiki/Metroid_Prime_4:Beyond-_The_World_Databook

Weren't the infusions in the past Prime games made from Phazon? With all this lore I'm getting quite confused so maybe there was some Metroid DNA involved somewhere along the way

This is a pretty liberal definition of conservatism, by this logic anything that isn't a BotW-esque revolutionary convention smashing departure is conservative. Prime 4 feels somewhere in between, it's definitely not the BotW-esque revolution, but it's not really a copy/paste rehash along the lines of the NSMB games. It's somewhere in between.

As for why it's not landing, I don't think it's purely because of the in-betweenism. You can have games like that be successful. Mario Galaxy took a similar approach and that was a major success both critically and commercially.

The likely reason this particular in-betweenism isn't landing is because its contrasting elements don't really mix well. Galaxy was somewhat of a weird mish-mash of sandbox gameplay elements and linear course-clear elements looking back on it, but those two styles have significant overlap and they can go back and forth between the two with little trouble (they mainly differ in terms of level design, which can be remedied by simply having some parts of the levels be more open and some parts be more linear). With Prime 4, the new things they tried to do don't really mesh well with the Metroidvania gameplay fans are used to because they have polar opposite gameplay philosophies and contradict each other. They wanted to do open world sections with the bike, but Metroidvanias are designed around obtaining new abilities to open up more of the world and open worlds are designed around going wherever you want at any point in the game, so it's difficult to imagine how you could make a Metroidvania open world. They wanted to add NPC interactions to give the game more dialogue and interactions, but fans consider the isolation a key part of Metroid's identity so this move waters down what they enjoy about the series. They made the non-desert areas more linear (presumably to make them more casual friendly) but fans like the mazelike design of a Metroidvania so that also feels watered down. They wanted to create new abilities to make the game feel fresh, but they evidently didn't have many ideas and just made Psychic variants with new properties, so it makes the changes feel artificial.

Prime 4's issue is that it's not really designed under the philosophy of "what is a Metroidvania and how can it be modernized in a way that expands on what it can be?". It feels purely designed under the philosophy of "how can we get Metroid to sell more copies?". They added in elements that felt broadly appealing but don't feel like they fit Metroid's identity and as I've mentioned multiple times, they've watered down elements that fans did like. So it feels like a pandering sell-out rather than a genuine attempt to make a quality experience.

No, I know there's still story gaps, I'm saying that would've been an easy way to fill the gaps and provide a rational explanation for adding Metroid enemies to the actual gameplay. It's a simple fix that they could've implemented but sadly didn't.

@Bolt_Strike I think what I'd say is that it sounds like you're saying that anything with any changes from a previous iteration can't be considered conservative.

It's context. Vi-O-La, while a new element to the series, is a conservative addition. It adds very little other than bloated run time (oh you've got the flame chip? Drive over the other side of the map!). Grievers - new but are derived from bog standard sci-fi and feel no different to fight than the space pirates. Interiors, boss fights, puzzles - all iterative at best, and the stuff we've seen loads of times in other games. Just because they've added or removed design elements doesn't stop it from feeling like this is a game scared to take chances and there's been little progress in this series in 18 years.

The BOTW thing is a grand example - maybe that kind of revolution is what we should expect, given the protracted development time and gap in the series, whether it upsets the diehard fans or not. Again, this puts MP4 with a foot in each county.

I've just fought the Omega Griever. Another boss fight that isn't challenging but goes on for way too long. Is anyone playing on hard mode and finding that these sections are more satisfying second time around?

@Bolt_Strike I'd disagree with your analysis about Metroidvania concepts not working in an open world. This simply isn't the case. You can see it in BoTW itself - parts of the map are soft locked (or even in a few cases hard locked) behind particular armour sets. Of course, in theory, you can beat everything in Death Mountain without flame breaker armour by making lots of elixirs or constantly eating food but that's only because it's soft locked. Super Metroid - the platonic ideal of what a Metroidvania should be - is exactly the same and you can get through the Norfair caverns without the Varia suit if you're determined enough.

Open world and Metroidvania philosophies can be incredibly close. I think you're misconstruing what open world games are about. They aren't about "going and doing whatever you want at any point" - that's just the illusion they want to generate. They do typically utilise more soft locking than more linear games and they punish you less for deviating from a given path but with very few exceptions they are not free for all's.

As to why Prime 4 isn't moving big numbers I can't say since I've not played the game yet. Slightly mixed critical reception is probably the biggest reason. No-one has come out and said "this is a must play genre defining experience get it NOW" - they've generally said "it's really good but there's a few things you might not like". They might have got a better critical reception by doing what you'd suggest and picking one lane and doing it extremely well.

I suspect (and again I've not yet played the game) that the bike sections exist because they realised that designing an interesting and tightly interconnected map in 3d is extremely difficult; many players find it hard to navigate and the benefits in terms of what it actually gives to players turns out to be negligible when the game is actually designed around smaller discrete "levels" built in the world anyway. This is very obvious in some Metroidvania's (Metroid Fusion for instance or Shantae and the Pirates Curse) and less so in others but it's usually a feature of the genre to some degree.

I'm looking forwards to playing the game at some point - even knowing that it might not be the "out of the park 10/10" that Metroid Prime 1 was (I'm not a huge fan of 2 or 3 in the same way but they're both good games).

I do wonder if this game was just "More Metroid Prime", if people would be complaining as much because it HASNT changed much from the last entry.

Then again, saying what Metroid Prime is....is a bit hard as each game structures itself somewhat differently but also with similar elements.

How long until we get the official announcement for Metroid Prime 5?

If Switch 2 gets not one but two new Metroid Prime games I'll be reliving the glory days. Even more so if they port Prime 2 and 3.

I think... 2028 with a holiday release? Or perhaps 2028 with a 2029 release? That would give time for Prime 2 and 3 to drop late 2026 or early 2027.