Metroid Prime 4: Beyond

Beware: this review contains psychic spoilers that will be sent straight into your mind. Through a psychic technique called “reading.”

It’s late at night when Pierre, the purist, flies over to Retro Studios headquarters, looking for some executive to drink. To his dismay, however, he finds no one there but some tired programmers and artists working overtime, who are people he would never feed on, as he’s a vampire with principles. Maybe the writers, though. No one has ever needed those.

Suddenly, he receives an imaginary call from the past: Charles, the snob, a Roman philosopher and senator, had sensed Pierre was about to go on a murder spree over the release of Metroid Prime 4: Beyond and decided to intervene. Charles, who likes to think of himself as a savior, used his psychic powers to make a psychic call to Pierre’s imagination in the future, making the vampire feel both psychically violated and psychically intrigued.

Charles: Please, Pierre. Don’t do anything rash. Let’s think over Metroid Prime 4: Beyond first. I believe that if we carefully analyze the game in a fair, unbiased way, going over its many strengths and weaknesses, we will realize that, at the end of the day, it is not a bad experience at all. It is not Metroid Prime in its finest form, for sure, but it is also not offensive enough to warrant such a violent reaction from you.

Pierre: If it is not offensive, how can I be so offended? I’ve waited 17 years for this sequel, Charles. Metroid Prime 3: Corruption is from 2007, back when we thought fascism to be a thing of history books, and video games had to look brown and grey to be serious and mature. I have crossed oceans of time to get this game, my dear imaginary friend from the past, so I’m not just denigrated, I’m disgruntled, I’m despondent, I’m disappointed. And, most of all, I am hungry.

Charles: I understand that, I understand where you are coming from, Pierre. However, I suggest we take a step back and start from the beginning. In Beyond, we play once again as bounty hunter Samus Aran, who finds herself on an alien planet after a fight against space pirates triggers a teleportation device, sending everyone near it to this unknown place called Viewros.

Pierre: Why are you telling me these basic things I already know?

Charles: It is for the people in the back, do not mind them.

Pierre: Ok, but may I drink them?

Charles: …….

Pierre: …….

Charles: On Viewros, Samus discovers she is apparently the Chosen One of this long-dead civilization called Lamorn, who left messages urging her to plant the seed of their tree of life in another land, where it can grow and thrive.

Pierre: If I had a human slave named Guillermo for every time Samus became the Chosen One of an extinct species after getting stranded on an alien planet full of puzzles and equipment said species designed just for her, I’d have two Guillermos – which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice.

Charles: I can safely deduce, then, that you are content with the story being almost a direct retread of the first Metroid Prime.

Pierre: I like it when new things feel familiar, Charles, as this gives me ample room to compare them with the original work and point out all the innumerable ways they fall short. Take the new characters, for example. This time, Samus has companions while she travels through Viewros, talking over the radio or even following her and assisting during combat. But the thing – the most important thing – is that Metroid Prime is all about isolation. The first one, for example, excelled at building an oppressive, uncomfortable feeling of isolation that heightened the alien aspect of the environments – we had to go ever deeper into these dangerous places full of strange monsters and hazards… and we were utterly alone. Much like I have always been…

Charles: The companions are not bad by themselves, Pierre. If done right, they can mean a breath of fresh air in the franchise, a novelty that can shake things—

Pierre: Silence! These companions are a blight on my life, on the game’s narrative, on Metroid’s history! The world is poorer because they exist. God, that vengeful bastard, shed tears when they saw these guys for the first time and has vowed to punish us ever since. The only reason I haven’t drunk to death everyone involved in their conception is that yesterday I visited Ubisoft headquarters, and I’m still quite full!

Charles: Calm down, Pierre. Some of these characters are quite fun. Take private Armstrong, for instance; she is a huge fan of Samus and is so excited to meet her hero that she can barely even focus on the mission. She is corny and cringe, yes, but in an honest, endearing kind of way. There is this moment when we must activate a generator and, each time we perform an action, she calls out the name of our move for her companion, saying something in the lines of “Look, look, she’s using a spin boost!” I found that quite charming.

Pierre: I found that quite dull. What I find interesting, Charles, is that you didn’t mention Miles MacKenzie, the first marine we come across in Viewros and save from monsters. Using words you like, this guy is anathema to Metroidvania design, Charles. The antithesis, Charles. He is my affliction. Or, simply, as we say back home, une merde. Games like Metroid Prime are all about getting lost in these alluring, mysterious landscapes and progressively getting better at traversing them with new equipment and abilities. But Miles MacKenzie, Charles, this guy tells us everything: where to go, what to do, how to proceed, and why we should brush our teeth and floss before going to bed. He’s like those annoying Zelda companions, Na’vi and Fi, the ones who never shut up and leave us alone, but much worse, because he exists in a Metroid game – where his very nature is heretical. He’s a crime against humanity, Charles, and I should punish those involved! I don’t get why you’re stopping me.

Charles: The complication, my hematophagous friend, is that Metroid Prime 4: Beyond is not like the games you have alluded to. It is not structured like Symphony of the Night, or Super Metroid, or Hollow Knight, or even the first Metroid Prime. No, Beyond, is more like a continuation of Metroid Prime 3: Corruption’s design, where the different biomes don’t make an interconnected world, but are kept totally separate, feeling precisely more like Zelda… dungeons – isolated places where we solve puzzles, go from one room or corridor to the next, and eventually get an equipment that allows us to open more rooms and corridors. Moments where the game asks us to return to previous areas with the new equipment at hand are actually rare in Beyond – and when that happens, it is very brief: there are just a couple of rooms we could not access before but can now, so we do not take more than ten, maybe twenty minutes there. It feels as if Beyond is doing this necessary backtracking out of obligation.

Pierre: You know you’re making me dislike it even more, right? You’re making it worse.

Charles: What I am trying to convey here is that this is not a Metroidvania at heart, despite the game’s title. Backtracking is not at the core of the experience in Beyond. This is not a game where we are constantly returning to a previous area to explore with our new abilities, and passing by previously out-of-reach locations on our way there just to happily discover that, lo and behold, we can now get to them as well. No. Backtracking here is just occasional busywork, something we do from time to time because we must for power-ups, and then return to the real meat of the game: the areas, the dungeons – each with its own boss that is usually designed around the equipment we found there. Think of classic Zelda games, when we acquire a new piece of equipment in a dungeon, and then can use it to get heart pieces and rupees in other areas of the world. Metroid Prime 4: Beyond is going to please more Ocarina of Time fans who were pissed with Breath of the Wild than proper Metroid fans.

Pierre: If you want to make a classic Zelda, make a classic Zelda. I require things to remain as they’ve always been, Charles. I want them to make sense. Call a spade a spade. Be true to a series’ tradition. It’s not that hard, I think. I’m not asking for much, am I?

Charles: You are asking for stagnation, my friend, for comfort food, to never be challenged. Your request is not artistic; it is selfish and—

Pierre is hissing.

Charles: …well, let’s put a pin on that and go back to Beyond. These areas, these biomes, these… dungeons are generally well-designed, if usually falling on the short side. The fauna and flora are fascinating at first: in the jungle – Fury Green, the area is called, indicating its hostility – we soon come across Mireworms, which gently sway on the ground mimicking the nearby plants while being almost indistinguishable from them at a distance. We see the Shimmerstrap, the crustacean parasites that feed on the sap of trees and look like tentacles coming out of the wood, which quickly retract when they sense danger. We’ve also got plant life that looks like a predator disguised as a plant, such as the Cone Berry, which stands conspicuously in the middle of an area with a long protruding vine that seems very ready to gobble us up as soon as we look away. And we are quite wary already, especially after being attacked by the Rootspur some minutes before, which were “tuberous root plants” that have “a thick, swollen stalk and also possess an autonomous nervous system.”

Pierre’s hissing subsides.

Charles: Yes… yes. In Fury Green, we get a cutscene of a little bioluminescent beetle scuttling away just to get caught by a bird. We then come across its body staked on a stone, finding out that they managed to get free, only to be unlucky during the fall. In Fury Green, after a boss battle, we get to a room where a line of alien ants is marching on top of a branch carrying leaves – all except one ant, which is carrying nothing at all and is faster precisely because of that, the clever bastard. Can you see the level of attention put into the flora and fauna to make these areas feel alive?

Pierre: I can, and it’s one of the few reasons I’ve indulged in conversation instead of murder. I’ve got principles, after all. I can recognize the game’s few strengths, the areas where it honors being called a Metroid Prime. The music, for instance, is stellar all around, with Fury Green’s theme being especially haunting, using vocals to impart a sense of mystery and history to the surrounding environments, making them feel majestic and ancient. I play it often in my coffin when I go to sleep.

Charles: And then we arrive in the second area, Volt Forge. The entrance is arguably the most striking image in the entire game, the three spiked towers enveloped by a never-ending storm and a purple, menacing light. As we get inside, the futuristic aesthetic, dark and sleek, with some… echoes of Prometheus, certainly makes an impression. The art direction in Beyond is a … prime example of the series at its finest.

Pierre: …..

Charles, the snob, psychically smiles

Pierre, the purist, psychically rolls his undead eyes.

Charles: However, there’s a lot to talk about Volt Forge besides its visuals. The whole area is structured in what Metroid Prime 4: Beyond’s own System Designer likes to call Folded Level Design. In his own words, “Folded level design is like folding a piece of paper; the two halves cover the same area, but there’s an additional layer to consider. For example… on your way to the kitchen, you had to dodge all kinds of domestic objects that are now hazards in the dim lighting. But on your way back, you must reconsider your approach due to the glass of water you are carrying in each hand.”

Pierre: Tell me his name so I can spare him when the time comes.

Charles: Ah, so you see how the whole bit of Volt Forge is exactly that. As we go down the first tower and learn that it is a factory, everything is powered off. There are few to no enemies around. We go ever down and then, at the bottom, we find a generator. We power it up, the whole structure comes to life, the music, which was eerie before, becomes rapturous – I don’t know if space metal is a music genre, but it should be if it isn’t – and a whole army of drones becomes active. We are bombarded with enemies, passages that were safe before are now sometimes pierced by electric current, devices that were off are now our only way to progress: Volt Forge has folded, and the way back up the tower is much different from the descent.  Not only that, but there is also this brilliant moment when we realize the factory is producing bikes, and we must turn into a morph ball to pretend to be a tire. I have never seen a chef show affection to anyone, but I believe their kiss is much like this moment.

Pierre: It’s indeed my favorite area in the game. I’m an honest vampire; I give credit where it’s due. Up to this point, yoy could even say I was a believer. It’s what comes after Volt Forge that pisses me off.

Charles: So, you could say you were enraged…beyond measure.

Pierre: If you make a pun with the word corruption, I am going to travel through time and tear your throat out. Just test me, Charles. Come on.

Charles: No need, no need. The next area is called Ice Belt, and instead of murdering each other, I suggest we talk about it.

Pierre: It would be just you being murdered, mon ami. But yes, let’s talk about the snore fest that had one or two interesting ideas, yes.

Charles: I get why you found the whole area boring. The reason is quite simple, really: Ice Belt is structured in the exact same way as Volt Forge. We are in a derelict lab with no power… and then we venture ever further inside and turn the generator on, which makes the facility come back to life and monsters appear. It’s not only Folded Level Design done again, but done again in a very similar context as well. Here, Beyond is trying to pull the same trick twice in a row, which, in the whole recorded history of tricks, has never worked: the second time around, after all, we’re already familiar with it, so there’s no suspense.

Pierre: And it’s still quite a linear area. I was hoping the game would open up by then, but it doesn’t. And when I say linear, I mean linear. If there are two doors for us to choose from at any given time in Beyond, it will only be because one of them is a save station or similar. Otherwise, we’ll just follow a straight path to the goal.

Charles: A straight path that will sometimes fold back to the beginning of the level or near a boss room with some shortcuts – just like a proper Zelda dungeon. But Ice Belt still has the vibes and the lore going for it. It is the area where we discover what happened to the Lamorn, that they became the monsters that hunt us down in each area, the aptly named Grievers, with their multiple elongated limbs, horn-like tendrils and a xenomorph-shaped skull: they are called Grievers because they are the tragic result of an experiment – the Lamorn tried to enhance themselves with crystals, which reacted to the green energy of the planet and mutated them. In other words, the Lamorn grieved each one who transformed. This shakes things up a little, as each Griever we kill from this moment onwards should not feel as weightless as before: we should feel a bit bad for them, that is, if we have a heart.

Pierre: What did you just say?

Charles: Oh, nothing. Forgive me. Ice Belt! Ice Belt. We also have the whole ambience of a laboratory covered in ice there: if Volt Forge reminds me of Prometheus, Ice Belt reminds me of The Thing. And as we proceed, the logs we find, detailing the Lamorn tragedy – and their doomed attempts to reverse it – grow increasingly desperate, ending with a poignant, “All I can do right now is pray. I am Tahrgun. And I am utterly defeated.”

Pierre: That’s all fine and dandy, but let’s keep it real here: the Ice Belt is when the illusion of a detailed flora and fauna breaks apart. It’s when we understand that, in each area of the game, we’ll just see different color variants of the same animals that we’ve encountered in Fury Green. So, instead of a Griever, we’ll find an Ice Griever, and then later in the generic volcano area, a Fire Griever, or whatever they are called, and so on.

Charles: Yes, that genuinely hurts the game, for while the Grievers being everywhere is narratively justified – due to their special origin – the other ones are just bland, uninspired repetition. I understand that.

Pierre: I hope you can understand, too, Charles, how the desert area is an abomination. You know, many decades ago, I went out hunting on the rooftops of Paris one night and found a boy just hanging around on his porch, doing nothing, an easy target. I couldn’t gather much about him to make a conscious choice regarding the morality of the kill, but he was white, seemed reasonably wealthy, so a good chance of being an asshole. So, I didn’t think twice: I dropped on the sucker and sucked him dry in under a minute. Almost a record for me at the time. The thing is: the boy was completely anemic. Not a hint of iron in his blood, the piece of shit probably feared stakes more than I fear the wooden kind. I don’t think you know, but drinking blood with low iron levels for us vampires is an experience similar for you punny mortals to drinking a cup of water with many tablespoons of salt: not only disgusting, but toxic. Now bear in mind that I drank many cups in under a minute, so I was miserable for weeks, maybe months. Stomach going full whirlpool, unbearable pain, fully questioning my life choices. I wanted to die, but I was already dead. No prospect of relief, you see. Anyway, my point is that traversing the desert in Metroid Prime 4: Beyond is much worse than that.

Charles is making a mental note to become a vegan, so that if Pierre ever comes for him, he’ll at least get the bastard sick for a while.

Charles: Yes, the desert… the desert… it is hard to defend the desert. Yes, it is supposed to work much like Hyrule Field in Ocarina of Time – see, Zelda mentioned again, maybe not a coincidence, and the area even has a few Breath of the Wild shrines. The desert is a hub that connects the game’s main areas, but it fails to work nearly as well as Hyrule Field for several reasons.

Pierre: “Many” is functioning as an euphemism here. There are many more reasons why the desert sucks here than there will be people sucked dry by me tonight. And believe me when I say: there will be many.

Despite the threat, Charles discards the Vegan mental note because, much like Pierre, he’s got principles. Veganism is crossing a line.

Charles: The first reason is its size, of course. The desert is many times bigger than Hyrule Field, so the distance between any two areas is always considerable, taking us a good amount of time to move from one place to another, even though we are riding a cool bike we helped build in Volt Forge.

Pierre:  Which was an incredibly fun moment until I realized what the bike was for. I went from “Yeaaah” to “Murder” very quickly as soon as I went back from Volt Forge to the desert.

Charles: And to make matters worse, getting in and out of any area can be a laborious process, too: it’s not like in Hyrule Field, where we just touch the edge of the map where Kakariko Village is and are immediately transported to the place. Here, sometimes we must park the bike in a device and spin it to open a bridge to the area, which takes a while. Sometimes, though, it’s even worse: to get to Ice Belt, we must drive to its entrance, go through the alternative door by the side – for the front one is broken – then take an elevator down, then walk a bit and take a gondola to a snowy area, walk through a snowfield and only then – only then – get to the main area, the laboratory, where most of the things happen in Ice Belt. We are actually lucky the game is not structured like a proper Metroidvania, because imagine going through all these steps many times just to advance the story instead of just twice and a third to get all the items?

Pierre: What I can perfectly imagine are the unspeakable acts I’m going to perform against those involved. I caught myself wanting to go back to Ice Belt time and again just to get a new item or two after acquiring new equipment, but I never dared until the end. I may be immortal, but I still value my time, you know? And our base in Fury Green is even more infuriating, Charles.

Charles: Yeah, it is. This base is where the NPCs we come across in our adventure all go and gather. We must return there each time Samus acquires a new upgrade for her arm cannon to get it installed, but for reasons I cannot fathom the entrance of Fury Green in the desert is not next to the base, but at the other end of the Fury Green map – meaning we must get to Fury Green and then put ourselves inside a canon that will shoot us to a place near the base – still not directly into the base, mind you – and then, when we’re done with our affairs at the base, we must travel back to the canon and shoot us back to the entrance. And get to the desert. And then drive back to, I don’t know, the Ice Belt. And get to the side door, get to the elevator, get to the gondola, and…

Pierre: Am I a purist for hating such an abominable structure? This turns backtracking into a chore, Charles. Yes, I know you’re going to say that Beyond is more like Zelda, and we shouldn’t be going back to each area leisurely to explore all the time, but still, one time we’ll have to do it to gather all items anyway, and it will still be a chore. It makes me thirsty; it makes me hungry, Charles. I can sense their fear building up from here, possibly from the swarm of giant bats surrounding their building. What a sweet sound they make, the creatures of the night. I wish you could hear them, my psychic friend from the past.

Charles: Refrain from killing anyone for now, please, Pierre. I have not even ceased to complain about the desert. I am sure you were eager to get to the Green Crystals, which are–

Pierre: Violence, murder, blood! Feast my children, FEAST!

Charles: Forgive me! Call them off, Pierre, please! I was remiss; I should have imagined the term would trigger you. Think of France, think of home, my friend, calm down, think of guillotines chopping off the heads of the rich and powerful. Think of submarines imploding in the depths of the Earth.

Pierre: Ok… ok.. I am better now.

Charles: Good. As I was saying, the Green… objects in the desert, we must collect them in order to open up the path to the final boss. The desert is littered with these objects, and we are to hit them with our bikes to acquire a bunch. In theory, they are supposed to give us something to do as we travel from one zone to the next, as the desert is mostly devoid of anything but them (and five or six random shrines with simples puzzles). The problem, then, is that the game requires us to not only collect them, but to collect almost all of them. So, in practice, they are not a harmless distraction anymore, but a mandatory… grind. We will unavoidably catch ourselves having to drive aimlessly in the desert for some time just to hit lots of these Green Crystals and–

Pierre: FEEEAST!

Charles: Stop with the bats! Complain about the scans instead!

Pierre: The scans! Don’t get me started on the scans! In Metroid Prime games, we must scan the environment and our enemies constantly to learn about them, but Beyond is littered with useless scans: a small metal crate and a large metal crate have distinct scans when they shouldn’t have a single one – I don’t need the game to tell me a crate is a crate and that it’s used to store things. I’m more than a hundred years old, Charles, I know a crate when I see one. And if different factions made those crates, there will also be different scans for each one of them. And terminals will have different scans if they are on or off, just to say that they are… on and off. These optional scans don’t count for completion, but still, what’s the goal here? What’s the purpose of allowing us to scan a small metal crate just to see a text saying it’s a small metal crate? How does that enrich the experience in any way, shape, or form? Even scanning enemies start to lose meaning as the creatures begin to appear just in different colored versions of the first ones, with the logbook entry rarely adding any fascinating bit to their lore. Give me more, Charles, give me more topics to vent out my frustration, or they die!

Charles: Talk about the writing!

Pierre: Ah, the writers. They’ll won’t need those for the next game, right? Did they make any difference here? Take our companions, for instance. We go through that whole ordeal with the canon and the loading screens to get to our base to find them, and while we’re there, we barely see any interactions among them that really develop their personalities. That clip above, which I can see with my psychic echolocation, that’s one of the more meaningful conversations found in the game. These characters rarely say anything noteworthy. We can’t even have conversations with them, which, truth be told, may be for the best, as they would be all one-sided, since Samus remains silent even when people ask her direct bloody questions. A marine will say something like, “Samus, what do you think of this map?” and she’ll remain mute. She’ll just stand there, sometimes without even nodding or shaking her head. Armstrong will be like, “Oh my God, Samus Aran, aaaaaaaaaaah, I love you so much,” and Samus will just stare, heartless and unsympathetic.

Charles: Samus can be quite rude here, indeed.

Pierre: She seems to care less about these marines than I care about my victims, Charles. Which hurts our bond with them. The final main area in the game, the mines, is all built around this continuous set piece where our companions sacrifice themselves one by one until Samus is left all alone. It’s great in theory, but we barely know these people, and Samus seems to despise them deeply, so each time they’re left behind, we couldn’t care less.

Charles: And the game even reverts all the sacrifices later, making the whole sequence feel cheap.

Pierre: Not only that, it then tries to pull the same bullshit again during the climax, as they stay behind to stop Sylux while Samus ventures alone inside the teleporter out of Viewros. If their sacrifice didn’t work before, it works even less now. Even though, and I must give it to you, Charles, Armstrong is indeed cute. She deserved a better Samus.

Charles: Please, call off your bats, Pierre, and tell me… I don’t know, your thoughts on Sylux.

Pierre: Talking about Sylux makes me want to summon even more bats, Charles! The fils de pute appears in the first cutscene as if he were a big deal, triggers the teleportation to Viewros, and then is basically a non-entity until the climax. I couldn’t think of a weaker antagonist.

Charles: Yes, the cutscene that explains his motivation – the origins of his hatred toward Samus – is basically the definition of “too little, too late.”

Pierre: And nothing about him makes sense. He uses Metroids to mutate the Guardians of each area – who were supposed to help us, not try to kill us, since we’re the bloody Chosen One – but we never see the slimy things on Viewros. Not a single Metroid. It’s as if Sylus got teleported with the exact number of Metroids he needed for the Guardians. And he also managed to hack all the machines to become hostile – they were also supposed to help us – because the Lamorn thought it would be a great idea to grant access to the whole infrastructure built to support the coming of the Chosen One to any random person that enters their infirmary. Makes no sense, Charles, and it doesn’t compel me either.

Charles: It is as they say, my friend, not everyone gets teleported to some random planet while fighting the woman they hate the most… but the ones who do are often lucky enough to bring along just the right number of Metroids to overpower that planet’s strongest enemies while stumbling upon a healing pod that grants them access to that very woman’s entire mission support infrastructure, turning what should’ve been a quite straightforward mission for her into a unnecessarily long and troublesome one.

Pierre:  People really say weird things, Charles. You humans are an odd bunch.

Charles: And that is why you should spare us, my friend. For the memes.

Pierre: Even the writers?

Charles: We should all strive to be that merciful, my dear Pierre.

Pierre: Even when they put the word “psychic” before almost every power-up in the hopes of disguising them as something new and exciting, when in reality a psychic lasso works just the same as a normal lasso? And we have now psychic bombs, psychic boots,  psychic boost, psychic vampires visiting you at night…

Charles: And psychic conversations between old friends!

Pierre: I have never met you before, Charles.

Charles: And I have never introduced myself, either, Pierre. Time flows in funny ways when psychic powers are involved.

Pierre: Truth be told, all this psychic talk made me lose my appetite.

Charles: And maybe all Retro Studios’ employees are anemic, too, who knows? Working many hours, fans complaining all the time, all that pressure coming from an established IP, I doubt they had the time and energy to maintain a proper diet. I would not take the risk if I were you. I really would not.

Pierre: Yeah, but I shouldn’t go home with an empty stomach, that’s not healthy either. Maybe just a snack.

Charles: Okay, okay. Fine. Just the writers.

Pierre: Don’t worry, Charles. I’ll do it psychically.

April 20, 2026.