@Secret_Tunnel I dunno, but this was in a 7/10 review, which I found interesting, because you rarely see this level of praise for things in a 7/10 review. I get the sense that Retro's still GOT IT when it comes to the Prime formula but that people just didn't like well... most or all of the stuff that diverts from the Prime formula.

Metroid Prime 4 has excellent level design, from how gorgeous each area looks on Nintendo Switch 2, to the way you simply navigate spaces. There's a real intentionality to how each environment is designed that invites you to become similarly engaged. Rarely do I enter a new space without popping Samus' scan visor active. Analyzing objects, creatures, and more can provide clues to progression and puzzles, but just as much allow you to piece together the story of the environment you're exploring. I'm not sure any other FPS is as good at making you really care about each space you navigate through.

Metroid Prime 4 is excellent at giving these zones a sense of progression as you poke around in search of ways to get your hands on teleporter keys. As you descend deeper into an abandoned factory, more systems begin to power up, machinery activating and beginning to make progression more difficult because of it, as an industrial and electronic score begins to build and build. Likewise, the frozen chambers of a bio-lab have you learning more and more about the experiments conducted within as you scan sparking computers, datalogs, and test tubes themselves. Metroid Prime 4 has a phenomenal sense of atmosphere, and in this sense it does go 'Beyond', the higher fidelity really sells a degree of tactility that takes Metroid Prime to a new level. Rival, louder FPS games may have higher fidelity graphics, but Metroid Prime 4's levels are more evocative, and boast superior visual design because of it.

...

Within its actual levels, Metroid Prime 4 is triumphant, delivering immersive first-person exploration like nothing else in the genre, with some of the greatest levels in the series to date, dripping with potent atmosphere.

I feel like this is a better "averaging 8s" scenario than a game that is just kind of generic all around. It leaves me hope that A. I might really enjoy this one still and B. Retro might still someday deliver a game that can stand with the 1st if they ever decide to really go back to the roots and stop throwing in so much other stuff.

@Zero

With highs that high, it's gotta have some low lows to earn a 7! But just reading that is making me excited.

I saw this long Youtube comment the other day that I found interesting:

YoutubeCommenter said:

Re Myles McKenzie: What made the original Metroid games so special with regards to in-game environmental word building and storytelling, the first 3 games in particular, was how it would wordlessly allude to the mysterious bond between the Chozo and Samus, and use this as a jumping off point to build a new mysterious bond between Samus and the Metroids. If the first 3 Metroid games have a cohesive narrative to speak of, it's the unlikely connection that can exist between completely disparate alien species, transcending cultures and languages. Despite all their differences, the Chozo, the Metroids, and whatever man or woman is inside that mute robotic suit we control, all of them exist alongside each other and leave their mark reciprocally, without us the player ever fully understanding them.

I replayed all the Prime games over the course of last year and it slowly became painfully obvious that Kensuke Tanabe does not understand what made those original games, as well as the original Prime, so special. Miyamoto was the producer on the original Prime: he was personally responsible for cancelling Retro's original IP in favor of having them take on the Metroid license, he advocated for the game to be in first-person, he prompted the developers to shift focus away from combat and focus instead on the visor mechanic (the game would be labeled a First-Person Adventure rather than an FPS), and his gameplay-first narrative-second approach to game design can be felt all over Prime 1. We also know that Nintendo was adamant that the Morph Ball was to be in the game, and I wouldn’t be surprised that that was another Miyamoto mandate. It was under his stubborn supervision that Retro found what made Prime appropriate yet special.

Miyamoto left supervision of Retro to Tanabe starting with Prime 2, and from that game onward Tanabe and Retro took the series off its course. We now know from the recent Metroid Prime artbook that the director of the Prime games Mark Pacini championed the idea of having a platoon of Galactic Federation Soldiers feature in the opening of Prime 2. That whole opening sequence was "his baby", and seeing this inspired Tanabe to one day make the Galactic Federation the star of a Metroid game. This then led to the increased presence of the GF in Prime 3, not just being limited to the opening sequence this time, and of course ultimately led to the existence of Federation Force on the 3DS. Tanabe's justification was that Prime is a "gaiden" to mainline 2D Metroid, and therefore can highlight elements that remained "under-explored" in those games (like the new bounty hunters in Metroid Prime Hunters DS and Prime 3, or the increased focus on the aforementioned Galactic Federation). Frustratingly, Tanabe is pushing Metroid into more generic military sci-fi territory. It infuriates me that the federation of the galaxy, the Galactic Federation, with all its alien species, is just Space America. You flip through the manual of Metroid on NES and see weird bug guys and squid creatures partaking in the Galactic Federation (look up the phrase "The formation of the Galactic Federation, as depicted in Metroid" in Google images to see what I mean) and yet none one game featuring the Galactic Federation has ever deviated from its human-centric portrayal of the galaxy. A series like Metroid, with its freaky Bird Alien Statues, its Flying Satanic Space Lizard, its Energy-sucking sable-toothed jellyfish, Psychic moth monks, its almost-android-like blank slate heroine that can turn into a fucking ball for some reason, and loads more crazy shit; all that diluted because one producer wants to make the most uninspired sci-fi universe. A universe that used to have unexplainable oddities unknown to mankind now also has guys named Dane, Adam, Alex, Dominguez, and Myles running around wearing prescription glasses talking about office cubicles; and soldiers of Herakles Task Force on board space ships named The GFS Olympus and The Nirvana; it's all so boringly human.

And worse of all, 2D Metroid doesn't even provide the juxtaposition it supposedly does according to Tanabe. After those first 3 Metroid games, we got Fusion, Other M, and Dread all increasingly focusing on the Galactic Federation, too. And the series' obsession with developing its lore destroys so much of the mysterious alien allure it once had. Since Zero Mission Samus is now overtly a daughter of the Chozo, thanks to Dread we know her DNA donor, with her commanding chief-turned AI partner Adam by her side; thanks to Prime 1 we now know she was the Chozo's Chosen One all along; in the cutscenes of all 3 main Prime games and all post-Zero Mission Sakamoto games Samus is doing sick cutscene backflips, running away from filmic explosions, and doing super hero landings. Maybe the Zebes explosion at the end of Super Metroid is to blame or something but they have been going way overboard with this, and now she does Akira slides on her motorcycle.

It's not that Tanabe has no positive influence on the Metroid series. Ex-Retro studios developers have had high praise for Tanabe's level design skill, especially his enemy and boss encounter design chops. He would relentlessly playtest each sequence of the game and tweak the game in a million tiny ways, up-ending the level design tea-table multiple times and forcing the art team to have to redo whole rooms over again. You happened to talk about exactly that skill in this stream, about a designer's ability to understand how to evoke certain behaviors in the player, as well as you mentioning that you appreciate R-Type Delta's deliberate setpieces (something this game happens to have in common with the (Tanabe-led) Prime games). Tanabe is a Nintendo Designer through and through, so Prime 4 will be perfectly playable, but I'm not sure if that's enough for Metroid. Part of me wants to reserve judgment for Prime 4, but man "hype deflating" is the perfect way to put it.

@Secret_Tunnel

I'm always hesitant to give too much credit or too much blame to one person. There was this know-it-all douche who used to post on all of the Resident Evil forums 15-20 years back, cosplaying as an insider. And this guy would always point out how everything bad about RE1-4 was solely Shinji Mikami's fault and the success of the series was due to everybody else, in spite of Mikami. Because even though that guy wasn't there, he had "inside info bro!", bro! For whatever reason, this person had an axe to grind w/ Shinji Mikami.

I've seen a lot of similar vitriol over the years toward Tanabe, as it pertains to Metroid. But I have to say RE: Tanabe, every time I've heard him in an interview speak about what he sees are the strengths of Metroid and where he'd like like to see the Metroid Prime games go, I think to myself "Man, this guy just doesn't get it." For years we've lived in a world without a follow-up to Metroid Prime 3, and Tanabe's vision has remained pretty consistent: We need more Sylux and we need more Galactic Federation. But have any fans of the Metroid Prime Trilogy really been clamoring for that?

So it's easy to look at the Myles McKenzie stuff and MP4's merry band of GF companions and immediately think Tanabe's fingerprints are all over this, and that could very well be the case. But it could have been a mandate from elsewhere at Nintendo, or from within Retro - who surely have many new faces on staff since their last game, let alone their last Metroid Prime game. Retro is ultra-secretive even by Nintendo's insane standards, so we'll likely never know, but I imagine Tanabe will be the face of everything perceived to be bad about MP4.

In fairness, Tanabe is the producer on a series that has largely underperformed sales-wise, and it's hard to fault him trying anything to help the series gain more mainstream popularity. That's a large part of what he's tasked with. Personally, I disagree with him (as do the sales of the post MP1 games - which have had increased focus on rival bounty hunters and the Galactic Federation). But if Retro can still deliver a core Metroid Prime experience and we have to have this stuff on the periphery that feels decidedly not like Metroid, that's a tradeoff I can live with. If that's what it takes to get new Metroid Prime games, with the alternative being that this type of game simply goes away. I'd rather have a new Metroid Prime game with some new additions I feel annoyed or indifferent about than none at all.

Anyways, can't wait for tomorrow!

Played an hour at midnight last night.

It's good!

Atmosphere is amazing. Visuals and audio. The first forest area has so much chatter around you, feels very alive. I was playing on TV with a headset so the stereo really kicked in. There may be debates over gameplay but in this area Retro absolutely still has it.

So the gameplay... I just did Pro controller and didn't try out mouse or anything but the controls are great and feel like what you would expect. The design has been fairly linear so far but it is just the start. Still, I'm expecting more Prime 3 area design than 1 (or even 2), which is what it is.

There was one really cool thing fairly early in, travelling through a well lit forest and you go into a long morph ball tunnel and pop out into a very dark forest area with a completely different song playing. Not the hugest thing ever but it felt great.

Anyway, I ended right after I saved THAT GUY so perhaps I'm about to change my mind but so far I'm very satisfied.

Zero said:

There was one really cool thing fairly early in, travelling through a well lit forest and you go into a long morph ball tunnel and pop out into a very dark forest area with a completely different song playing. Not the hugest thing ever but it felt great.

Yes! Atmosphere off-the-charts in that area.

I'm partway through the second area!

The epic space battle presentation really does nothing for me. In hindsight, Myles' inclusion isn't any more gratuitous than anything we saw during this game's very first reveal at E3 2024. Of course a game that opens with mechs and soldiers has a scientist marine that talks you to over comms. It's totally par for the course after MP3.

The gameplay feels a bit start-and-stop so far. Enter a room, scan stuff, operate some machinery, watch a cutscene, enter another room, fight a battle, talk to Myles, get a power-up; I'm not feeling a flow here. It reminds me of the Intermediate tier in this diagram:



However...

I just fought two mini-bosses in this second area that each asked me to use all of my tools in different combinations on the fly, and they were both excellent. If that's a sign of what's to come, I'm very excited.

Still, depending on how long this game is, it's a bummer that the first 2-3 hours of it sort of plays itself. That's not a dealbreaker for a 60 hour long game that you play once every 15 years, but for something short like Metroid, I want it dense, and for it to get to the point right away. A cinematic tutorial section is tolerable on the first playthrough, and torturous on every one after that.

It's a new Metroid Prime! I'm about an hour in, and have reached the second save point. Graphics are largely beautiful and it's great seeing a current-gen Prime game (well, a new one at least). The music is really nice too although occasionally just a hair overbearing, and those synth horns in the otherwise awesome Theme of Samus Aran at the beginning were a little distracting. I'm happy with the pointer controls for sure, especially since I had an issue with them in Prime Remastered; are they different now?

While it feels quaint on occasion, it's just nice to play this style of game again after so long. Walking in, scanning things, blasting a few bugs...there's something weirdly cozy and comforting about it. It helps that the first area is laying on the scenic beauty thing pretty thick, so we'll see if it keeps up.

Myles is about as distracting as I expected, although I'm curious to see if his quippy self becomes one of those campy things we love in the future. He's not what I want from Metroid, but I'll see how long he sticks around.

My biggest complaint right now is the linearity--almost everything after an hour has been a single path with maybe 3 little branch-off points total. I need more doors! Doors everywhere!! Let me slap down a preorder for Metroid Prime 5: Too Many Doors (coming 2043).

Initial thoughts: It's the best looking game on Switch 1.

Atmosphere is great. Combat is fine. New abilities are cool. New guy is fine and breaks up the quiet. First big boss was neat, if not frustrating.

I saved after getting to the electric factory. I need to play with the settings more to fine tune the pro controller. Aiming doesn't feel snappy, like fortnite or doom eternal, etc.

Just got the key from the ice area.

@TheBigG753 is correct to say that we shouldn't speculate too hard about what goes on behind the scenes, but so far this game feels very much like a by-the-books Western AAA product to me. The environmental art team was allowed to go sicko mode; work needed to be created for the writers on staff and the mocap studio on lease; the pacing of the levels follows the typical best practices for linear mission design as defined by the industry veterans Retro hired. If your love of Metroid Prime stems from it being a sort of sci-fi Gone Home with slick atmosphere, MP4 is probably a dream come true.

For me, sense of place in a game comes much more from its structure and interactivity than from its aesthetics. This seems to be a very Japanese (maybe "very Nintendo," in fact) design preference which is hard for me to articulate, but I think this video captures a big part of it well:



From what I remember, the original Metroid Prime doesn't ever require you to scan very often. The environments and obstacles are sight-readable, and the complexity comes from navigating the map as a nonlinear space. A missile door looks like a missile door, and you immediately know exactly what button to press to open it.

Beyond so far feels a lot more point-and-click adventure gamey, almost like an escape room game, where you'll walk into a room filled with brand new objects that you "interact" with by scanning. This was particularly egregious in the ice area where you need to obtain TK keys by scanning random lore objects throughout the facility—an interaction that feels largely driven by the increased emphasis on realistic environments. This is the same design choice I'd expect any blockbuster game to make, and it's disappointing to me to see Metroid go all-in on it. It made for some neat enough pacing throughout that level, but that type of pacing is also setpiece-driven in a way that I find to be pretty one-note. Compare it to, say, a Zelda dungeon, where there isn't so much of an explicit narrative throughline, but the tension and release of finding keys, unlocking doors, and progressing through floors feels so much more natural by virtue of emerging purely from gameplay systems.

I played a bit of this last night in "Handheld Mode." As one might expect me to, lol.

The visuals are a *little* blurrier on the OG Switch, (OLED version, mind) but honestly it still looks good. And the frame rate did not tank AT ALL. So overall, not too shabby.

I've also found that Myles is not as annoying as early reports would describe. I mean, make no mistake, I'd rather him not be there at all. But? Eh, I'm not too bothered.

Game is fun so far.

I finished this last night. 100% items and scans.

It's a really fascinating game on many levels. There's really nothing quite like the Metroid Prime games already, but there are a lot of things about MP4 in particular that made it a very unique experience in its own right (both good and bad). It will never happen because Nintendo/Retro, but I'd kill for a "Making Of..." documentary on this game from its earliest origins up to how this final product came to be.

Overall, I enjoyed my time with MP4 but can acknowledge that much of that comes from the 'coziness' factor of being back behind the visor, and that a shallow version of the formula I love is still, at the end of the day, a formula that I love. This game has some real problems and I certainly agree with much of the criticism, which is valid. This game also has some unbelievable highs, and I think it's deserving of substantial praise. I think how much tolerance you have for some of the game's faults will ultimately win the day for any one player, but I don't begrudge anyone who thinks this game is awesome or anyone who thinks it sucks. The elements are all in place here for this game to be divisive. Ultimately, the Metascore feels about right to me.

I scored this a 7.5/10, but emotionally I feel a lot more happiness (that this game came out and is, imho, a fine game) than disappointment (that it doesn't live up to previous Metroid Prime or Retro Studios games). I think over the many many long years waiting for a new Metroid Prime game, my expectations sorta reset organically - especially over the last year and a half - from hoping for a Prime 1 or BotW level masterpiece, to just hoping for a respectable sequel to MP3. I feel it reaches that bar, at least.

I'll probably do an in-depth writeup in the next few days, because I have so many thoughts on this game - good, bad and everywhere in between. In the end, I'm glad we got this game, enjoyed my time spent playing it, and I hope we're fortunate enough to get a Prime 5.

@TheBigG753

I dropped the game when I got to the fifth area the other night and couldn't stand it anymore, but as far as unbelievable highs go, shooting a psychic blast down the lava worm's stomach was an incredible moment. I also enjoyed the second and third areas well enough, and I think the bosses in this game are pretty great.

I'm curious to read more of how you felt!

@TheOldManFromZelda

Yep.

Secret_Tunnel said:

I dropped the game when I got to the fifth area the other night and couldn't stand it anymore, but as far as unbelievable highs go, shooting a psychic blast down the lava worm's stomach was an incredible moment. I also enjoyed the second and third areas well enough, and I think the bosses in this game are pretty great.

I'm curious to read more of how you felt!

That was a really cool moment, but outside of the boss and the escape sequence following it, I was very underwhelmed by that area. I didn't like the fifth area any better, so I feel ya.

For me, although the game got off to a slow (and not particularly flattering) start, I generally felt the game got better and better up through the third area where I felt the game peaked. That was the point where I was enjoying the game the most and had that feeling of "Man, if it keeps this up, this could end up being among my favorite Metroid games." Mainly due to how each new area seemed to get less linear and more complex than the prior, and I was hopeful that might continue. Alas.

Man. I don't know guys, I just don't know. Earlier my main gripe was the linearity and some of the goofy lines but new problems have reared their ugly head. It pains me to say it but very little is clicking with me now in MP4.

I got my first taste of Sol Valley and it was one bitter pill. I'm not inherently opposed to a hub world of sorts in Metroid, but it all just feels kind of...pointless? Points of interest are scattered super far apart and thus far nearly all of them require a very obvious lock-and-key upgrade solution to do anything, making me not want to bother. Theoretically I could travel to various "dungeons" and go out of order like Mackenzie suggested, but you're actually locked out of all of them save the one the game wants you to go to.

Compounding these troubles is the fact that I just don't enjoy controlling Vi-o-La much. Holding down the ZR button constantly, being really limited in the boosts, the odd lock-on combat and few things to mess around with. Honestly I find the Morph Ball to be way more tactile and satisfying to use and kind of wish there was just a "Motor Ball" mode instead of a bike.

Not that it's super-crucial to Metroid games but the plot is kind of all over the place. I'm not given a reason to care about Sylux or even an idea of what's going on in this planet. Why would Samus care about preserving the history of some random dead race she has no link to? There doesn't seem to be any sort of larger threat (so far) than Samus needing to get back home. What is Sylux up to? Metroids fusing with creatures to make super-creatures is kind of interesting but it's just told to you in a scan entry on bosses rather than being integrated into the story. And speaking of which, scanning is made a lot more tedious due to the sheer number of things to scan and how long it takes. I might be misremembering but they're a lot more mundane this time around rather than getting much in the way of worldbuilding so far.

This is getting long so I'll leave with a nitpick: for a crucial plot-related substance, they couldn't think of anything cooler-sounding than "Green Energy?" That's as bad as "Talking Flower!" What's going on at NOA these days?

** scanning green rectangle **
"Console for monitoring life signs of subjects. Rendered inoperable due to physical damage."

** scanning another green rectangle **
"Console for monitoring life signs of subjects. Rendered inoperable due to significant impact."

** scanning yet another green rectangle **
"Console for monitoring life signs of subjects. Rendered inoperable due to getting hit really hard which is significantly different than the first two things so aren't you glad you scanned all three?"



I finished the game 100% scans/items, and while I was prepared for an underwhelming experience (I've soured somewhat on the MP formula in the decades since MP3) this was still a pretty big letdown for me. The scanning is tedious. Enemy variety is really low. The open world is empty and pointless. The story and characters are forgettable at their best. Their inclusion makes the game more linear and discourages backtracking. There's nothing really new here as far as the gameplay goes, aside from the mostly pointless motorcycle.

On the bright side, the game is gorgeous (especially on the handheld screen). While most of the puzzles are simple lock/keys, there are a few brights spots that tickled my brain just right. And while they gave you nothing to do with it, I really liked the feel of riding the motorcycle. To damn the game with faint praise, my favorite part was probably skidding around the desert picking up all of those stupid Green Energy crystals... as long as I had a podcast on to keep me awake.

Oh come on, it's imperative that we know how the crates in Volt Forge are different from the crates in Ice Belt!

@TheBigG753 lmao yep

I have all 5 keys, but boy howdy do I hate how quickly enemy respawns happen. It'd be fine if the grievers could be one-shot, but they can't be. And sometimes minibosses respawn! UGH. I just hate that. It makes backtracking not fun. You're confined to fighting mutants, robots....and that's it.

Thankfully the game IS gorgeous and each area feels unique. The bosses are a legit challenge for me and feel great when you beat them. The motorcycle does feel smooth to ride around it, just wish everything was a bit closer together, or there were more shrines/puzzles in the overworld.

Scanning sucks. There's too much to scan, and the scanner doesn't scan fast enough to make it enjoyable.

The little item revealing robots are really cool and make revisiting areas worthwhile if you want to 100% stuff.

I'm looking forward to finishing it. It'll be the first one I finish since MP2.

Game is complete, not 100%. More like 97% but that's good enough for me.

The final boss was boring and anticlimactic, to be honest. And once you figure it out, it's an easy fight. Then you knock Sylux off the edge, and that's it? Not final shot to the dome? The ambiguous ending lets us know that yep, he's still alive and rife for more sequels.

All told, the game was fine, nothing mind blowing. I didn't mind traversing the desert for green energy at the end, especially with the map notifications on. I turned some tunes on and rode around for a half hour and got more than enough.

No interest in replaying it. Was it worth the wait? Not really. Hopefully the team learns from the critics and refines them for the next one.

I will say that Samus controlled perfectly, and the bike controlled very nicely. Don't change that. The shot swapping was quick and easy. Vary up the enemies next time too, please. And get rid of endless respawns!! Geez, so annoying. I also didn't mind the team. They broke up the anxiety and isolation of the other prime games.

7.5/10 for me. See you next mission.