Teased 18 years ago, announced eight years ago, and its development rebooted six years ago... Metroid Prime 4: Beyond has a very long development history and now has finally become a reality on the Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2. But was it worth the wait? Does it hold up to the reputation of the original Metroid Prime Trilogy? And how how does Sylux fare as a villain? If you have followed my logbook, then you will already have a good idea, but here is the condensed version.
GRAPHICS & SOUND
Let's start with the best part: the game is absolutely beautiful, probably the best-looking Nintendo game so far. Metroid Prime Remastered had already demonstrated quite effectively what the Retro Studios of today (and the newest iteration of their in-house RUDE engine) is capable of. And Metroid Prime 4 makes good use of it from start to finish.
The game is not only a looker, it runs perfectly smooth in 60FPS on both the Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2. On the latter you can also opt for 120FPS, but you will only get FHD resolution in that case. The resolutions on the Nintendo Switch are generally lower and the textures aren't as pretty, but like Metroid Prime Remastered it's still a technical marvel what Retro has achieved on the older system.
Fans will be delighted to hear that Kenji Yamamoto has returned as the composer, who has absolutely outdone himself with a number of compositions for this game, especially the title theme. However, not every area gets a banger – some have to make do with ambient tracks, which feels closer to Other M in atmosphere.
But there is one area where it deliberately starts out quiet and after a certain point the music kicks in, which is one of the most memorable moments in the game and nicely executed.
CONTROLS
Metroid Prime Remastered offered four different control schemes, but none of them were truly ideal. Here they have simplified it to two, but which are a lot more versatile. They are called "Dual Stick Fusion" and "Pointer Fusion" and only really differ by the primary way of looking around, where you can either go for the right stick or motion controls like in Metroid Prime 3: Corruption.
The dual stick mode still supports motion controls for precision aiming. And on the Nintendo Switch 2 you can seamlessly switch into the new Joy-Con mouse controls in either mode, given that this is something that suits you. However, the default control scheme of the pointer mode, where you shoot with the A button instead of ZR, isn't exactly ideal for this.
Luckily, you can fully remap the buttons, so you are able to fully customize the controls to your liking. There are also all sorts of sensibility options, inversions, and other settings, where Retro Studios has thought of everything. Well, the initial three-shot burst for your Power Beam, which has sparked some controversy with the Metroid Prime remaster, is still there, but you can now immediately go for another charged shot afterwards. And all this makes you wish that the remaster will eventually get an update with the same improvements.
ITEMS & ABILITIES
At its core Metroid Prime 4: Beyond plays very much like its predecessors from the Metroid Prime Trilogy, where fans of those games will feel right at home. What set each title apart from each other were the different upgrades and abilities you got based on the game's theme(s), for which Samus always has to suffer from "physical amnesia" somewhere at the beginning.
Metroid Prime gave you the classic Super Metroid experience in 3D, Metroid Prime 2: Echoes had its light and dark theme, while Corruption gave you the Hypermode and utilization of your gunship.
Beyond also wants to set itself apart here, but falls completely flat in its attempt to create something around psychic abilities. The idea itself is nice and it starts out promising. The Control Beam lets you steer your beam around, so it can reach hidden corners and hit multiple enemies at once. And you can now move around certain objects with your mind via the "Psychic Visor", which even includes your bombs.
The rest, however, is completely uninspired. You get your usual upgrades with the world "Psychic" slapped in front of them and some purple visual effects, but with no meaningful gameplay differences. The Psychic Spider Ball, for example, is very much the same as the Spider Ball in previous Prime titles, only that some purple rails can appear out of nowhere. And that's just disappointing, because there would have been a lot of potential for making crazy things that stand out in the series.
The new weapon system doesn't do that either. You get the Fire, Ice and Thunder Shots, instead of the classic Plasma, Ice and Wave Beams, which now all use a shared type of ammunition. You can switch between these and Missiles via the D-Pad, and everything gets their own charged variant (instead of the Beam Combos), which works fairly well. The Power Beams also gets a significant damage boost throughout the game and you can find lots of expansions for the shot ammo, so running low never really is a problem, making the new system very enjoyable overall.
However, the weapon balance is somewhat off, because the Thunder Shot, which you'll obtain last, is simply too good with its chained lightning attacks. Its fully charged attack trivializes many of the late game's enemy encounters, while you can just keep spamming it with how many ammo expansions there are... So, that feels very much broken.
What truly stands out in Samus's latest kit is the bike, Vi-O-La, for which she needs her new Vi-O-La suit. And from a pure gameplay perspective this thing is actually quite awesome. It can be summoned and deactivated in certain areas directly via the press of a single button, where Samus will automatically hop on and off. Its slide functionality lets you make very sharp turns and it feels so responsive that you will hate playing Mario Kart World afterwards.
This is the best vehicle you could wish for in an open world experience, but that's exactly where the problem with the bike are found, which brings us to the next topic...
WORLD DESIGN
Other than your upgrades and abilities, the Prime games have always differed by how they structure their worlds and how you traverse between the areas. The newest one is no exception, but it's arguably the weakest installment in this category. By a large margin.
You're stranded on the Planet Viewros and a teleporter is the only way off the planet. There are five main areas in total and in each of these areas you will find a boss at the end, which earns you a "Teleporter Key" for your main goal. And all these areas are connected by a hub world at the center. It's a similar structure to Echoes on first glance, but it completely lacks its intricacies.
The five main areas are fully isolated from each other, so there is only always one way to enter them. And from this entrance you will usually follow a linear path as you progress, making the areas feel more like basic first person shooter levels than the more complex and interlaced environments you would expect from a Metroid game. This was to a degree already a problem with Corruption, but Beyond doesn't even try.
These linear levels now heavily collide with the hub world connecting them all, the Sol Valley. This desert area is where you will be mainly using your bike, Vi-O-La, which lets you dash over the dunes to your next destination. And this part very much offers a small taste of open world gameplay. There are even shrines to find, which offer small mini-dungeons, almost exactly like in Breath of the Wild, and some optional weapon upgrades. It's actually quite fun.
But this is where the game is having a full identity crises. It gives you this miniature open world and the illusion that you can freely explore the areas of Viewros in any order you like, but you will quickly notice that the rest of the game is as linear as it has ever been. You have to visit the main areas in a certain order to progress, or else you will simply be greeted by a dead end.
And like with the psychic abilities, this is a wasted opportunity. They could have offered different paths of progression, giving the player some agency, where in the very least the Ice Belt and Flare Pool could have been interchangeable. But that's not the case.
On top of that, they didn't really know what else to put into the desert other than the few shrines (there are only six in total) and some Galactic Federation debris. The rest is filled with green crystals – lots and lots of green crystals –, where your goal is to simply smash through them (mostly with your bike) and collect their "green energy".
This can be fun for a little while, but it gets more and more throughout the game, making this completely excessive. And if you want to unlock everything in the game's gallery, you will have to collect every single one of them, which is just tedious busywork, even once they start appearing on your radar. Otherwise it's not so bad, because you can just focus on the big rocks and the crystal depots inside the shrines for the necessary item upgrades that you need at the end of the game.
Speaking of, like all its predecessors, Beyond is making you go the extra mile at the end for some additional collectible, before you can proceed to the final boss, but this is also mostly focused on the Sol Valley to force you to engage with it.
You're also forced to move through the desert unnecessarily earlier in the game for certain upgrades. The three new shot weapons are only acquired in the form of chips, where you need the help of your mechanic at a makeshift base to integrate them into your system. And for this you have to get back into the first major area, Fury Green...
This wouldn't be as bad if the transition between the areas were seamless. And you would think that this is the main reason why they have included the bike into the game: so it can load the next area while you're driving towards it. But that's not the case it all, instead it makes you go through two whole loading screens – one from a classic elevator and one from a cargo cannon that shoots you towards your destination. And it makes you question why they thought this game needed the bike in the first place.
Sadly enough, the Sol Valley is where the game truly feels fresh and unique compared to its predecessors, because the areas around it feel mostly like a rehash of what we've already seen in Metroid Prime, just with less inspired naming. Fury Green is the equivalent to the Tallon Overworld, Ice Belt to Phendrana Drifts, the Flare Pool to the Magmoor Caverns, and the Great Mines to the Phazon Mines. Only the Volt Forge is somewhat unique with its theme, which again is tied to Vi-O-La, because this area serves as a production facility for the bike.
GALACTIC FEDERATION ALLIES
Well, yes, Samus is not alone during her adventures on Viewros, which has sparked what's easily the biggest controversy around the title. She got stranded there with five other Galactic Federation soldiers, who she will gradually discover one after another to assemble a small team. And they all like to talk, quite a lot.
The issue with these characters isn't that they simply exist, however, it's that they are badly written. Most of them are very contemporary, meaning that they feel like people from Earth from the early 21st century with how they talk and act. MacKenzie, a mechanic wearing actual glasses, and Duke, your typical military veteran, are the worst offenders for this. And Armstrong, who acts as this massive Samus Aran fangirl, doesn't make things better. Only Tokabi, a sniper who believes in some deity called Sollan, and the blunt robot Vue-995 appear like characters from a proper Science Fiction setting, but are stereotypical nevertheless.
You will go on missions with each of them and during these segments it will display their health bars at the left side of your HUD. You can heal them with your psychic abilities, but for whatever reason you can only do so when they are down, which happens at their last stretch of health points. If you don't heal them quickly enough, they will fall in battle and give a Game Over. This isn't much of an issue early on, but can haunt you in the later game, where it would have been better if you could just heal them preemptively and not just when they are near-death.
The most annoying thing, however, happens when these characters aren't even in sight. Whenever you're driving through the desert, you will be quickly contacted by Myles MacKenzie, who is trying his hardest to become the next Navi of gaming. The moment you enter the desert, he will worry that you might be lost and give you directions, whether you want his advice or not. And he keeps calling you a couple of times, before leaving you alone, which resets whenever you leave the desert and come back.
They've even implemented a feature where you can call him directly for advice, whenever you actually need and want it, but for some reason the developers wanted to make sure that you're getting the advice anyway. A way to disable this "hint system", like you could do in the older games, would have been very much appreciated.
ENEMIES & BOSSES
It's a Metroid game, so you want to be shooting at things, ideally something with MacKenzie's face on it. Or at least a huge variety of different foes, which make you change your strategy every so often. Sadly, that's another thing where Beyond disappoints.
The Space Pirates only appear in the beginning of the game. But since they have been featured quite prominently in all three predecessors and also Federation Force, it's okay that they are taking the backseat here.
Once you're on Viewros you will mainly fight against the "Grievers", which are reminiscent of the Reptilicus from Corruption, but somewhat simpler. They do come in various variants based on the environments, but it never makes a huge difference. They also tend to get stuck from time to time, where you can watch them walk in place, which is uncharacteristically unpolished for both Nintendo and Retro Studios.
One other main threat awaits you on the alien planet: an army of "Psy-bots". They all look pretty much the same, but differ in their abilities, making some of them more annoying than others. Whether you're fighting against these bots or the Grievers or both depends on the area. Otherwise you're mainly facing smaller foes, like local gritters and fauna that act hostile, or other machines, but it never reaches the excellence of enemy variety from the previous titles.
As for the boss fights, their designs feel quite uninspired for the most part, but the fights themselves are all entertaining and offer the kind of spectacle that you would expect. Curiously, this is the only time where you will encounter the eponymous Metroids, who are ironically acting as weakpoints to these monsters...
Whether it's a boss or a Psy-bot you're fighting, combat in general sometimes lacks visual feedback whenever you are hit by certain strong attacks. You may lose two whole Energy Tanks from an attack, but not notice it immediately, because the game isn't making it look like a big deal.
STORY
Usually, this is the first thing to talk about, since the story for your typical Nintendo Action Adventure, whether it's Zelda or a Metroid game, mainly serves to explain the gameplay. It's not quite as simple in this case and we're going into spoiler territories here, so you might want to skip this section.
Just like the world of Viewros itself, the story is another thing where the game doesn't know what it wants. Both Metroid Prime 3: Corruption and Federation Force have teased Sylux, one of the hunters from Metroid Prime Hunters, as the next antagonist, who harbors a grudge against the Galactic Federation and Samus. Now, you will run into the guy very early on, where he impresses with how he is able to make both the Space Pirates and the Metroid, the long-standing foes of Samus, do his bidding.
But after the incident the game moves to Viewros and now shifts its focus towards the Lamorn, an extinct species very similar to the Chozo or the Luminoth. Their designs are based on axolotls and they have psychic powers, but they are your usual ancient planet inhabitants. And they want you to know what happened on Viewros and save their history, so other civilizations can learn from their mistakes.
Sylux is able to use the technology of the Lamorn to his advantage, but that's really it, making him a villain who is oddly disconnected from everything else that's going on. We only get a very small glimpse at his backstory in some hidden cutscene, which creates more questions than it answers. Nintendo has said that this game is meant as the start of a new story and maybe an upcoming Metroid Prime 5 will do more with this particular villain, but after many years of waiting it feels unfulfilling.
EXTRAS
If you want to play the game in its Hard Mode difficulty, you will have to beat it first. Maybe that's for the best, because the Hard Mode can be quite devilish, especially against the Psy-bots, where you want to learn the game first. But if you want to jump right into the hardest difficulty, then this will be an unnecessary roadblock.
Besides that, there are many different gallery pictures and videos to unlock. Some of those require 100% items or scans, some even want you to collect 100% of all Green Energy crystals, others require the Hard Mode.
If you decide to start over your completed save file, then your scans won't carry over any longer. This had been a very nice New Game+ functionality ever since Corruption, making it easier to complete your logbook, but for some reason Retro Studios didn't want you to have this again. And that decision makes a restart very much pointless, since you can just open a new file or delete the old one.
The game also supports amiibo, but not in a good way. All the older Metroid amiibo don't cause anything interesting, they only let you play sounds. The same is true for the new Sylux amiibo, which triggers taunts from Sylux himself. Since you won't get to hear him until the end of the game, this feels like a sad compensation for his absence throughout the story. You can also unlock his hidden cutscene prematurely, without the 100% requirements, but that is barely worth mentioning.
This leaves us with the other two new amiibo, which got released one month prior to the game's launch: Samus and Samus on Vi-O-La. The latter lets you obtain a series of seven different skins for your bike, based on how mileage you have with it. And the former is probably one of the biggest offenders in amiibo history: it unlocks a radio for the bike, so you don't have to listen to the eerie ambient tracks while driving around the Sol Valley.
The music alone makes the dull activities, like collecting the green crystals or simply driving from A to B, already a lot more enjoyable. It honestly slaps, and it's not funny that you have to pay around 20€ for a plastic figurine in order to get this feature. It's one of the most shameless things that Nintendo has done with these toys, though there has been worse...
Ideally, all the different Metroid amiibo would unlock the various skins for Vi-O-La, which look very nice, but aren't substantial. That way each amiibo would have some value to this game, while you also wouldn't be missing much without them.
CONCLUSION
Metroid Prime 4: Beyond is one of the smoothest and best looking gaming experiences ever produced by Nintendo, where it proves that Retro Studios has the right foundation to create more titles in the Metroid Prime series and Kenji Yamamoto returns with some fantastic tunes. This creates some confidence for a fifth title.
However, this new installment lacks a coherent vision for its world design and story, acting near-schizophrenic. An open world clashes with the linear areas it's trying to connect, while the new villain Sylux takes a backseat on the planet Viewros. The game doesn't know what it wants and is certainly a product of its rough development history.
On top of that, the psychic abilities are so underwhelming and the Galactic Federation allies so clichéd and annoying to say anything good about them. And while the new bike is fun to use, it mainly serves the troubled open world. So, when it comes to its core gameplay ideas, Beyond does not go beyond its predecessors and won't be remembered all too fondly.
No comments:
Post a Comment