‘Metroid Prime 4’ looks and feels great, but I’m nervous about one little thing

It’s just good to have my wonderful friend Samus Aran back.

Arguably Nintendo’s coolest character, Samus and her Metroid series has largely been in the wilderness since 2007, when Metroid Prime 3 came out. I enjoyed Metroid Dread a great deal a few years ago, but that’s really the only game starring Samus in nearly 20 years that I’ve cared about. On Dec. 4, that streak will hopefully end with the launch of Metroid Prime 4: Beyond on Nintendo Switch and Switch 2.

I got to play about an hour of the game at a recent preview event, courtesy of Nintendo, and boy do I have some thoughts. For the most part, at least based on the early parts of Prime 4, this is still the Metroid Prime you know and love. But, I have one major concern. Let’s get into it.

It feels good to be back in the power suit

The aliens are very mean.
Credit: Nintendo

My demo of Prime 4 occurred in two distinct chunks: A short, 10-minute glimpse at the very beginning of the game (a demo I had already played back in April), and a longer look at the point when it seems like the game properly starts. As in, Samus finds herself on a mysterious, seemingly abandoned alien planet full of wonder and mystery, and she’s gotta figure out what the heck to do about it. Classic Metroid stuff.

The longer portion of the demo took place in a jungle-themed area called Fury Green. This place is very reminiscent of past Metroid games; gross bug monsters and alien plants attack Samus every few minutes, and weird alien artifacts litter the landscape, just waiting for Samus to get the right item or ability to use on or around them. While this portion of the game was fairly linear and straightforward, there were definitely doors and pathways I couldn’t open yet because I didn’t have the proper ability, which is what you want to see in a Metroid game. It was also, seemingly, the first hour or so of the game, so I’m not going to condemn that part of it for being linear.

Despite having started life as a Switch 1 game (and still getting a Switch 1 release), Prime 4 might be the best-looking game I’ve seen running on a Switch 2 so far. The demo was running in the 4K/60FPS configuration, though the 1080p/120FPS version looks great, too. Beyond raw tech specs, Fury Green is just a tremendously gorgeous area, and the art direction in Prime 4 seems to be on par with the rest of the series.

Series developer Retro Studios has also nailed the feel of running around this ancient, unknowable world and shooting everything in it with a gun. Combat is fast, smooth, and fun, and as a bonus, this is the first Metroid Prime game to launch with normal, dual-analog stick controls. It feels great, and Samus’s new psychic abilities add some interesting variety to both puzzle-solving and fights. She can manipulate little balls of energy to power alien devices, as well as fire a beam that stops time and allows you to manually fly it around the environment for a few seconds. I did one major boss fight at the end of the demo where I had to take out three targets simultaneously using that last ability, and it felt like classic Metroid Prime stuff.

So, yeah, I’m not really worried about the parts where you look at and play Metroid Prime 4. My demo also, heartbreakingly, didn’t include any motorcycle stuff.

But I was kind of hoping I’d be the only one around here

Hell yes.
Credit: Nintendo

This demo of Prime 4 would have left me excited for the game with zero reservations if not for one little thing: At one point in Fury Green, Samus runs into another stranded human, a dorky Galactic Federation engineer guy who is fully voice-acted. He accompanied me throughout most of the rest of the demo, partially as someone to protect in a brief escort quest-like section, but mostly as a guy who chimes in on comms every now and then to chat with Samus (who does not speak at all).

This isn’t the first time a Metroid game has put Samus near other people, either with or without voice acting. Results in previous games have been…mixed, to say the least. Metroid has always worked best when Samus is truly alone on a dark and preferably goopy alien world. The early Prime games, in particular, have utterly flawless senses of atmosphere. Before you meet this engineer doofus, Prime 4 feels reminiscent of that. After you meet him, it’s still a fun game with very pretty visuals and good combat, but it’s not the same.

It also doesn’t help that he’s genuinely kind of annoying, and it’s hard to tell if the game is in on the joke or not, from what I played.

I’m not going to render judgment on Prime 4 for this just yet. For all I know, this dude is only a small part of the game and won’t be chattering in Samus’s ear for the entire adventure. I just don’t want to spend an entire Metroid Prime adventure listening to a geeky dude talk in pseudo-Marvel Cinematic Universe banter at me.

After seeing that part of Metroid Prime 4, I’m officially slightly concerned about a game that had given me no reasons to feel that way up until now. I think Nintendo has earned the benefit of the doubt here, but I can’t lie: I’m a little more nervous than I’d like to be. We’ll see what happens when Metroid Prime 4: Beyond launches on Switch and Switch 2 on Dec. 4.

In the meantime, you can pre-order Metroid Prime 4: Beyond for $69.