I've been ripping on this one but I sure did enjoy my session with the game tonight. I did a big chunk of the Ice Belt area, up until reaching the bottom. FINALLY, it feels like Metroid Prime! :')

The puzzles were good, the setpieces were fun, and the unfolding Resident Evil-style mini-plot is compelling enough. Granted, it's still pretty linear, but it's linear in that Phendrana laboratories way where you're pushed to keep going due to the atmosphere and rising tension. Even though a whole lot hasn't really happened in the area yet, there're all sorts of neat little details and fun surprises. I was even getting a little creeped out at points. I didn't need MP4 to reinvent the wheel--a game full of areas like this would still be terrific (IMO that's basically what MP3 was).

Do any of the later areas measure up or is this pretty much the best part of the game?

That was definitely my favorite area in the game.

I might put Volt Forge above Ice Belt. Some of the stuff in Ice Belt felt misguided to me, whereas Volt Forge mainly felt like a solid linear tutorial area with great music and bosses (except for the totally out-of-place motorcycle tutorial).

But yeah, those two areas were way, way better than the fourth, and I gave up at the fifth.

Volt Forge is my favorite, Ice Belt is probably right behind. The 4th area was alright, the 5th was... well, it's different.

I'd also say I enjoyed going back to areas, some of the best morph ball stuff is in the clean-up.

@Zero
That's good to know. The Morph Ball is one of my favorite parts of Metroid (or Metroid Prime). Just such a fun and quirky little ability. I like how MP4 illustrates just how huge it is too, like the size of one of those exercise balls.

I'm slowly grinding my way through the game. Just got the Vi-O-La and made it out of Volt Forge and into the desert.

I'm liking it so far. I'm playing it on the OG Switch, but the visuals are still really impressive, IMO.

I'm nearing what seems to be the end of the game. Unfortunately I hate to say that a lot of the complaints I've seen about the game are completely warranted, and in some cases, I think the game is worse in many aspects than I had feared.

There's kind of a feedback loop that's constant throughout most Metroid games. You do some exploring, or basically just like "seeing where you can go next." You hit a few dead ends, and there's usually one or two areas that are the right way to proceed. You go that way, and in doing so, it gets you some mechanism in which to explore the other dead ends. It's usually very gratifying because it changes the context in how you view the world, and often plays with your expectations. "Oohhh, THAT's what that's there for."

THIS game takes that whole idea WAY too literally, and just does not disguise how arbitrary it is whatsoever. You don't even do any sleuthing really, before hitting a dead end. You'll get to a new area, immediately hit a dead end, have to double back to an area for one "thing," and then resume to proceeding forward. It feels so incredibly amateur hour, and designed in a way that not even the easiest and basic of Metroid games would work.

And what's worse- you KNOW all of the upgrades you'll be getting prior to getting them. Samus' visor EXPLICITLY just tells you "You'll need the Psychic Boots for these. You'll need the Boost Ball for this." There are times where you can infer that something can be destroyed with a "massive explosion," so you know it's probably the Power Bomb or Super Missile. There's just absolutely no surprise in the game at all in this aspect. Other M also suffered similar issues- all the upgrades were just bog standard Metroid upgrades. MP4 attempts to add wrinkles to the upgrades with the psychic elements, but these wrinkles are just not that exciting, and not exploited enough.

The area I just did last night was incredibly egregious. You already know that you have to assemble the mech parts. Mackenzie tells you just as much. So then you have to talk to the dude at his campsite, and then go BACK to Fury Green (where you JUST were, potentially), just to insert the teleporter chip.

What in the world is the point of continuing to have to backtrack to Myles to install these chips? It feels like the developer is just saying "Hey, you had to backtrack- just like in a Metroid game!" I feel like even Zelda doesn't have you doing this. Samus should be perfectly capable of just installing chips as she finds them. She often doesn't need these chips for her exact location anyway, so adding Fury Green to the mix just overcomplicates it further.

This game also commits a cardinal sin of Metroid Prime- over relying on Prime's combat. For the most part, combat works in the original Metroid Prime because it's simple. You usually strafe around one or two enemies and just shoot them (or shoot them at some weak point). This setup does not feel designed to have Samus take on handfuls of enemies. We've already seen this with how annoying the Space Pirates are in the first game.

Speaking of which...I'm sure the game will get back to this whole thing, but I assume that by the time we return home, the Space Pirates have just taken over everything? Really, NONE of them have been transported to Viewros? Why only Sylux? and I guess he just got there way before us and took control over all of the bots? Or maybe he just hasn't even been involved at all?

With Dark Samus, it's conveyed almost immediately what her goal is. You see her syphoning off Phazon in Metroid Prime 2. That's really enough. Here, I have absolutely no idea what Samus' end goal is. Really, we just want to leave Viewros. But we also want to keep intact the legacy of the Lamorne? I guess this means just killing all the grievers? What does it even matter- the Lamorne are all dead at this point. So sure, the Grievers are monsters and everything, but I guess it's okay to just genocide them off the planet at this point? What threat to they pose? Some of it doesn't seem to make any sense. They're in our way of getting home, which basically seems to be the main thing. I get that. Kill or be killed. But outside of that, I don't really know what the main threat/goal is here.

Anyway, just my rantings. Despite all that, my love of the previous games washes over all this. I love seeing Samus and controlling her and working around these beautiful worlds. So, in that sense, it's enough. But as a "game," this definitely feels like a 7/10.

@PogueSquadron

What makes the "backtracking" even more bizarre is that Myles tells you at the start of the game that you can tackle the areas in any order. Papa lies!

GameDadGrant said:

I'm playing it on the OG Switch, but the visuals are still really impressive, IMO.

They really are. It's the first sorta "next-gen"/"wow" moment I've gotten from a Nintendo game (from a purely visuals standpoint) in quite a while.

PogueSquadron said:

I'm nearing what seems to be the end of the game. Unfortunately I hate to say that a lot of the complaints I've seen about the game are completely warranted, and in some cases, I think the game is worse in many aspects than I had feared.

Yeah, pretty much same for me. Around when I finished Ice Belt I felt like a lot of the pre-release criticism was overblown, but by the end of the game I thought the game's problems may have actually been downplayed a bit.

This just came in from the library and I'm not sure if I should give it a go or just return it and focus on Hyrule Warriors...

@PogueSquadron The first time the scan visor spelled out exactly what (upcoming) upgrade would be needed for something, I assumed somebody accidentally left some placeholder text in the final game. But then it kept happening. It's just bizarre.

@TheBigG753 Yeah in all honesty, if we're using a baseball analogy, I think they need to blow the whole thing up here.

I don't think they need to get a whole new engine or something, but really just rethink about what makes Metroid *Metroid*. Dread did a great job with this (but I think the incredibly punishing difficulty probably put some people off). I feel like it shouldn't be that hard to do in 3D.

Dare I say, I think maybe they need to retire scanning to a degree and work on making Samus more athletic. Quicker paced, mechanics based, bigger, more connected worlds.

I mean honestly it's a huge part of the problem. In Metroid Prime, Samus' speed wasn't an issue. Here it's like...I was kind of begging for some last minute Speed Booster surprise.

Maybe they need to borrow from DK Bananza to an extent with some more destructible environments? As is, this kind of just feels like a museum that you're walking through, only interacting with what they want you to interact with.

@J.K. Riki
I say give it a go at least. If/when it starts to bother you, then you can try something else.

@PogueSquadron
Metroid could use a new reimagining in 3D I think. I'd love to finally see a fully-realized, third-person AAA Metroid game that effectively feels like Metroid brought into 3D. I don't think anyone's really pulled it off yet. Take the best bits of Prime, the best bits of Other M, find a few more solutions, and Super Metroid the whole thing up. If done right it could reinvigorate the series like BotW did for Zelda (but I'm not implying it should be open-world or anything, quite the opposite really).

@TheBigG753

Yeah, the visuals are really impressive. Especially considering the hardware they are using. And I mean...other Nintendo games have looked really good. Super Mario Odyssey looked great, as was Breath of the Wild, IMO. But there is also kind of an " * " that goes with them...the cartoony visuals in Mario sorta make me (and maybe others) not take the graphics quite as seriously. And of course Zelda has the cel-shading aspect, which - while still looking awesome - also downplays the visual "WOW!" factor a bit because...well, we've been doing cel-shading for generations now. It's not really giving that "next-gen" vibe. or maybe I'm looking too much into it, idk

@J.K. Riki

Either way, you can't make a bad choice!

TriforceBun said:

Take the best bits of Prime, the best bits of Other M, find a few more solutions, and Super Metroid the whole thing up.

Sounds super easy, barely an inconvenience!

also, you earn bonus GDG points if you catch this reference!

I think what makes Super Metroid a masterpiece is that... the Metroid formula is kind of inherently repetitive. You're sort of doing a depth-first search on the game map, and if you get unlucky you'll run into every dead in a row before finding the place you can actually make headway into. You could alleviate that by more obviously telegraphing what ability you'll need to overcome an obstacle, but then you end up designing very lock-and-key style obstacles like "psychic platforms" that you arbitrarily can't stand on, and it raises the question as to why you don't just let the player teleport around the map, or just build out a linear game world. Backtracking a recontextualized environment is what Metroid is.

But since Super Metroid is so short, your first playthrough is really just a rehearsal, so it isn't so bad if you don't ace your routing the first time. It's a practice run where you learn the right path. And then you beat the game in six hours, and do another playthrough where you beat the game in four hours, and every time you play it gets more fun and more dense. You start thinking about skipping items to save time, which forces you to get better at the combat. Or maybe you decide to chill and explore the world and find a bunch of hidden areas. It's a game that has its cake and eats it too when it comes to both atmosphere and action gameplay.

Metroid Prime nailed the atmosphere, but not quite the density. It doesn't get more fun the more you play it. I think if Nintendo wants to keep making Metroid-style Metroid games where backtracking is the whole premise, they have to... make the backtracking enjoyable. There are probably ways of doing this other than the Super Metroid method. "Add new enemies to old areas" is the obvious first idea that any designer would have, and you only get so much mileage out of it. What could Nintendo's best minds actually come up with if they really put effort into it? That's what it means to have BOTW-tier ambition. Do some wacky thing where you end up having to backtrack through the negative space of the level, or you alternate between playing as different monsters that have radically different movesets, or anything that alters the physics of the game in a surprising way that evokes delight.

I forgot I made this thread and I'm glad to see while I was on hiatus there was some good chat going on!

As for MP4.

Wow did Nintendo drop the ball on marketing this game. Read a story about how NoA basically begged NCL to develop a Metroid game. Then once that was announced, they couldn't be arsed handling any significant marketing campaign. They just phoned it in.

Overall though I have to say I really enjoyed the game.
I WISH they bulked it out a bit more with questing and exploration. Sol Valley, while I could see the use and intention of it, it didn't feel fully executed.
Plus the forges etc going completely linear like previous primes are a stark contrast to Sol Valley it felt like they could have added more "routes" into each of the areas. I would have liked to have seen exploring pathways in. Go in through 1 entry "oops I can't go any further but hey I got a power up", try another entry "oh here's a suit upgrade I can use in ... ". Not always like that maybe another area has multiple ways in that all work but give different challenges dependant on suit upgrades etc.
I played 100% on my TV with the pro controller, so I played on quality and the game looked beautiful! The artistic choices in many places just had me stopping and looking around. Watching the sun, admiring the vista. Loved it. Controls... I get the choice for showing off mouse mode, but sometimes the "lock on and use joystick to manoeuvre aim to weak spot" for the pro controller was infuriating.

While talking about something infuriating, the federation NPC's. I liked them. The way the internet was going on about them seemed all doom and gloom. They were going to be overbearing, a sap on the lone bounty hunter experience. But they weren't, they added character to the whole abandoned on a strange world thing. They humanised the situation Samus was in, rather than viewing it through a stoic can handle anything badass. It actually gave me insights to what normal people/life in the universe of Metroid is like, making me feel more connected to that world.

Can I just segue, just take a moment to talk about the red and black suit. That suit looked glorious, for a long time I've considered a Samus tattoo and I strongly feel that's the suit I want to do (in black ink though). The white final suit was nice but the other used for the majority of the game I was almost happy the final one was underutilised 🤣

As for the ending I am pissed that they all got left behind or died. I'm sorry, but that trope in storytelling is overused and I doubt the next game will be a mission to save them... it could have had a bit more to it, more depth and maybe something unique. Loved the game, really did, on reflection there seemed to be lots of things lacking especially for the length of development cycle. But I'm going to count my luck for what I have in my hands rather than seeing what's missing from what I have. Could have been nothing in reality.

I just hope that MP5 gets green lit, giving Retro (or some other team under Retro's guidance/oversight) the opportunity to take their time from the beginning and develop a game for the switch 2 hardware, lessons learned and direction cemented. What a game that could be!

I went to the flea market last week to trade this game in. But as fate would have it, the retro store was closed that day. So I resolved to take this extra week with MP4 and finish the game before Resident Evil Requiem came out. I managed to roll credits last night and agree with a whole lot of what you guys have been saying. What the heck happened here!? I'll start with the good: [some mild spoilers ahead]

+Great visuals for the most part. Clean and detailed for what they were, with lovely framing.

+The Morph Ball feels awesome as usual and has a nifty late-game mechanic that's probably the most enjoyable-controlling section of the game. I love the Morph Ball! It's been around forever but it's still a joy to use. Bonus points for being able to mount Vi-O-La in Morph Ball mode.

+Ice Belt was a success and the best section of the game. It's linear but spooky and tells a progressive, interesting little story through environments and scanning, which plays right to this sub-series' strengths. Reminded me of a good MP3 area.

+By and large, most of the moment-to-moment gameplay is pretty good. Shooting stuff feels okay and I actually quite like using the Ice Beam thing or whatever to manage crowds (feels better to use here than in past Prime games).
+Some of the platforming is pretty fun.

+/- Soundtrack is decent if a little overbearing. They're memorable enough and fairly textured. I miss hearing some of the classic themes though and I feel like the sound of Metroid (especially considering Dread) has really gone too far from the iconic themes and atmospheric soundscapes of Hip Tanaka and Kenji Yamamoto.
+/- You know, I didn't hate the fed troopers overall. The voice acting was largely good and I think after the game dropped the ball in being a Metroid, the weird escort missions sort of/kind of worked for me?

Okay, no more Mr. Nice Guy.

-The level design just blows. Never before has Metroid felt so artificial; I'm struggling to think of more than a handful (literally, more than 5) of points in the game where you have more than a single door to choose from (besides Save Rooms). For a series that famously began with players being guided towards the opposite direction to proceed (to get the Morph Ball), this is totally unacceptable. Where are central memorable set pieces, the big vertical hub rooms peppered with doors that you regularly pass through and gradually solve? Even at its most linear (Fusion), Samus would regularly get lost and have to improvise a path through areas. Why don't these areas connect? Going back to Base Camp via two long, transitional loading sequences every time is a pain in the Carvex.

-The controls in terms of the shooting never felt right for me. You lock onto bosses but not their weak points, so you have to awkwardly switch the reticule to "aiming" mode by jostling the right stick. It's really weird and had me feel like I was just playing the game wrong the whole time. The button layout changes between the three modes (on foot/bike/Morph Ball) and I would regularly press the wrong button.

-The upgrades are really phoned in. Besides a slightly different approach to Beams, the only really new thing here is the Control Beam which is mildly interesting but also slow and clumsy with no real combat use. Everything else is either something we've seen before (just with the word "Psychic" grafted to it) or in rare cases some weird new underbaked mechanic (like throwing bombs). Even the psychic aspect leads to very little, just making some doors and switches take longer to open.

-The scan visor (Psychic Visor, whatever) writeups are long-winded and dull.

-"Now eventually you do plan to have Metroids in your Metroid game?" The only time the titular creatures show up is at the very beginning with Sylux in a cutscene, and then through scan logs telling you they apparently fuse with bosses. Neat idea but we get absolutely nothing else about it.

-Sylux is lame, for that matter. Who even is this guy and why should I care? For having five characters that don't shut up, MP4 could've really benefitted from a villain that explains SOMETHING about why he's so angry at Samus, what he's doing on Viewros, etc. Why does Samus care about helping out this race of dead creatures anyway? How is she the Chosen One when they're already gone and nothing is actually at stake besides her escaping?? Crazy underbaked story that doesn't make sense.

-Myles ends up being fine but plenty has been said about the writing style of his intro already so let's move on.

-What is that ending? Are they going for emotional? Cliffhanger? It just feels awkward.

-The desert is huge with almost nothing in it. Felt like they were going for a Zelda game at points and I love Zelda but I don't love this.

-Lastly, there are a few downright amateurish moments of padding. Running back through the entirety of Volt Forge to its very bottom to get a stupid Chip that you have to bring back to stupid Myles just to get installed (meaning you pass through that stupid cannon that shoots you to Fury Green yet again). The ending Green Energy thing really left a bad taste in my mouth. You have to collect a ridiculous amount of this stuff! At one point, Myles told me to find Tokabi in the desert to get a required item. Yet Tokabi was right there in the Base Camp! But no, I had to find him somewhere out in the desert. Then I had to RETURN to Base Camp to get Myles to activate the item! Sheer lunacy.

Okay, this is way too long. The point is, Metroid Prime 4: Beyond the Pale really got in my craw at the end of the day. I have some problems with recent Metroids but by the end I was begging for another Dread. Heck, I was begging for another Other M. I did not like this game and it makes me sad.

@TriforceBun

I've heard so much about the ending being bizarre that I'm close to just looking it up on Youtube. I really don't expect to ever finish this game.

Most annoyingly, if you DO want to see the final cutscene, you have to 100% Items AND Logbook, which I think is ridiculous. If that’s the case, you shouldn’t have any missable scans required for that cutscene.

“Oh sorry, you didn’t scan that one boss’ arm, so you get locked out of the end game cutscene.” This game has some nice moments but is kind of a mess all around. I just hope it does well enough for them that they do more. Give Retro full control this time, if that’s what they want.

PogueSquadron said:

Most annoyingly, if you DO want to see the final cutscene, you have to 100% Items AND Logbook, which I think is ridiculous.

And even after that you still have to search for it in the Gallery. It's not the last cutscene listed or anything (that would make too much sense!). It's almost comical.