After Metroid Prime 4 went unmentioned in Nintendo’s latest financial results, a reader attempts to pinpoint exactly what went wrong with the controversial Switch 2 sequel. Late to the discussion, I finally finished my playthrough of Metroid Prime 4 on Switch 2, and while I enjoyed it to some extent with excellent moments in the campaign, I would be remiss not to acknowledge its severe flaws that undercut the sense of progression, cohesion, and general identity of a Metroid game.
The Positives
Let’s get the positives out of the way first. The presentation is gorgeous, with stunning vistas and art design on planet Viewros. The soundtrack and general alien soundscape are exquisite. Every moment involving the morph ball is fun, tactile, and representative of some of the stronger facets of the game’s level design. I particularly enjoyed the echoes of Super Mario Galaxy with the gravity tether pull ability in this movement mode and the half-pipe boosting activities. In fact, I want Nintendo to commission a morph ball-only spin-off where you negotiate increasingly tricky obstacle courses, akin to a modern Marble Madness. The Viola bike is a neat addition that looks ace and controls slickly. The bosses are generally high quality and among the best in the Prime series, especially the epic lava facility boss. The new psychic abilities, like the Metal Gear Solid Nikita missile-style psychic shot, are really cool, if underutilized. The dungeon areas are also well designed, if a little linear, and demonstrate flashes of prime Metroid Prime in aspects of their design. However, the mining area was a missed opportunity, marred by repetition as you face wave after wave of the same mindless feral foes in an aesthetically and structurally uninteresting location.
The Open-World Problem
Now to address the elephant in the room: the open-ish world in Metroid Prime 4 felt beyond bland and ultimately pointless. I tried to find redeeming qualities about this incongruent addition to the formula but could not. This feeling was exacerbated by some of the most egregious examples of padded backtracking I have ever experienced in a modern game. Having to traverse a desert of Starfield levels of uneventfulness multiple times to return to base and have Myles MacKenzie upgrade Samus’s abilities was contrived and insulting to the first lady of gaming’s self-efficacy. How does the bespectacled brainbox interface so intuitively with alien tech? Never mind, suspend disbelief…
The Nadir: Crystal Harvesting
The absolute low point is when you are tasked with harvesting green crystals growing throughout the desert. This was one of the most tedious and interminable moments in the franchise’s history, absolutely pulverizing the game’s pacing. What on earth were Retro Studios thinking with this awful piece of design? It beggars belief that Retro Studios or Nintendo thought this half-baked fusion of classic Metroid Prime and semi-open world design was a good idea. The game’s problematic development gestation is well known, but evidently the schizophrenic identity crisis in design decisions led to the corruption of a more cogent vision.
Companions and Final Boss
As for the other contentious point, I actually did not mind the companions that much, other than Myles’s frequently intrusive reminders that state the obvious and treat me like a colossal nincompoop. I mostly found the marines inoffensive and largely peripheral. But their inclusion in the first phase of the final boss fight was, much like the semi-open world design and crystal-gathering palaver, retrograde to say the least. I dread to think what Nintendo will do with the 3D series if sales were really as inauspicious as early estimates suggest. Let us hope they foster a sharper acuity of vision going forward, if they give the 3D series another chance. After all, there is still nothing in the industry that looks and plays quite like Metroid Prime, and something to occupy Samus and her interstellar talents is still better than zero missions.
