Metroid Prime 4: Beyond Revealed

It's been seven years since the announcement of Metroid Prime 4 and Nintendo now finally delivers, after a development reboot that brought the project back to Retro Studios, who should have gotten this in the first place. And we now have a first gameplay trailer that gives us pretty much what has been promised. Nothing more and nothing less.

It clearly uses the same engine that we already saw in action with Metroid Prime Remastered, making this one of the best, if not the best-looking game for the Nintendo Switch. It's positively breath-taking.

I normally don't care much about graphics, as long as they look pleasing, but these two games are a technical marvel, achieving that much with so little... Can't even wait what Retro Studios will be able to create on the Nintendo Switch 2. Metroid Prime 4 doesn't need to be played on the next console if it looks this good, though.

But I have to be honest... as nice as the graphics are, the overall action looked quite generic. So generic that for a moment I was honestly confused whether I was looking at Metroid Prime 4 or a remaster of Prime 2 and Prime 3, because the sequence looked like a mix of Norion from the beginning of Corruption and the Space Pirate base in the Agon Wastes of Echoes. It felt all so familiar, like we've seen this before.

Of course it wasn't the exact same thing, but there were many similarities here and it felt a bit "lame" because of that. It wasn't until they brought Sylux onto the stage that I was entirely sure that this is actually Prime 4 and not a very fancy remaster of the rest of the trilogy.

Well, this is only the beginning of the game and it won't necessarily reflect the rest of it, where it's also fine to have some basic Metroid Prime action at first, very close to the original trilogy. It has been 17 years after all, not counting Federation Force.

But I do like that Kensuke Tanabe is sticking to his vision here, even after all this time, one that has been teased since the secret ending of Prime 3. Sylux wasn't necessarily the most interesting character in Metroid Prime Hunters, only the most mysterious, but his intro here is fire. Not only does he have Metroids (or Mochtroids) on his side, after he had stolen one in Federation Force, he has teamed up with the Space Pirates as well. It's painting a picture where this foe means serious trouble and feels like an arch nemesis for Samus, rivaling Dark Samus from the previous Prime games.

Add some guitar riffs into the mix and you're getting a certified badass. This also gave me some Metroid Prime Hunters vibes, but it wasn't Sylux's theme. Speaking of that game, I really hope that this will have a multiplayer mode where you can play as all the seven Hunters again, maybe even some new ones, because this would be amazing.

The Galactic Federation Research Facility might even be the one from the end of Federation Force, though there Sylux was acting stealthily, while here it's the complete opposite. It's a full-on assault by the Space Pirates, but the goal seems to be the same: take the Metroids out of the hands of the Federation.

At the end of the trailer we also got a glimpse at the rest of the game, where Samus visits the Mana Tree on the planet Pandora. The Tallon Overworld area was already a treat and this is going next level with the jungle area theme. They knew how to hit a nerve here, this was absolutely beautiful and makes you want to see more.

The game will also need some gameplay hooks to set itself apart. Echoes had the light / dark theme and Corruption had Hyper Mode and the Gunship controls. The latter still can be seen in the beginning of the trailer, looking slightly more hardcore, but I have a feeling that it will get destroyed by Sylux soon after. Samus enters the above area through some sort of portal, not her with her Gunship. And in Metroid II / Samus Returns she has switched back to her classic Gunship from Prime 2, so something must have happened there.

In general, I've always expected Prime 4 to bridge the gap back into the classic Metroid main series to a degree, where the Gunship change is one part of it. But Sylux snatching away the Metroids may also become the key incident which led the Galactic Federation to decide to wipe out the Metroids on SR388, because they became too much of a threat. So, I expect this game to be a more traditional Metroid story, since the Phazon storyline is over. There will be ties to Metroid Prime Hunters and Federation Force, and they might try to connect things back into the main series.

Nevertheless, it will need something to make it unique. To stand out in the series mechanically. And from the trailer or the game's title I really couldn't tell what that will be...

I'm not a fan of the game's title, by the way. "Beyond"? Really? This reminds me of Star Trek Beyond or Beyond Burgers... Let's see what it leads up to, other than going beyond the Phazon era. The logo also looks like the game revolves around Noxus, not Sylux.