Jungle, ice, lava... Metroid Prime 4: Beyond certainly doesn't cover itself with originality when it comes to environmental themes. Maybe they should have called this game "New Metroid Prime"? Anyway, let's see what the Magmoor Pyrosphere, errhhh... the Flare Pool has in store. With some desert driving in between.
Scans: 81%
Items: 51%
After beating the boss of the Ice Belt, you can obtain the chip for the Ice Shot, so there's that familiar route back to the base again... Which wouldn't be so bad if it didn't have three different types of loading screens one after another. First Samus walks for a bit, then she takes an elevator and then there's the cargo cannon...
And then you have to go all the way back again. I've said this before, but it somewhat diminishes the purpose of the whole bike sections when this doesn't even create seamless transitions between the areas. Though, this could have proven a technical challenge on the original Switch with loading all the different textures and meshes.
But I have to say it... and that's probably going to be the most controversial thing that you will read here in this blog series: I actually do like the desert. It clearly was a mistake that Nintendo locked the radio feature behind amiibo, because having some music on the bike rides already makes a huge difference.
And it's certainly more fun than going through the Magmoor Caverns for the the twentieth time. I also like the "mini open world" aspect of it, where you cruise around the sands and make small discoveries on the way... There aren't that many discoveries, but there is stuff to find nevertheless. Most importantly: shrines!
It's very much like in Breath of the Wild, so you get these small mini-dungeons. There aren't that many, but there should be at least six of them, because their primary purpose is to upgrade the different shots by giving them a charge and then even a stronger charge. And some of the puzzles require the different elements to solve them, e.g. freeze some water with the Ice Shot. (Though, you don't necessarily end up with an Ice Shot upgrade...)
To me, this is a good taste at what an open world Metroid game could be like. And maybe this was even the intention, to make this a field test. However, if the reactions on the internet are any indication, then we won't be getting a game like that any time soon, but I think this would be much more well received if the desert wasn't so bland. The Breath of the Wild gameplay loop in itself is fun and it just gives me the vibe that this game could have been something grander if they let it.
As a nice detail, the shrine entrances always face the Chrono Tower, so this is what you will be looking at when you exit one. And it's well done how there are always these landmarks in the background that let you easily navigate the desert with looking on your map.
However, it's annoying how enemies tend to appear around the shrines. So, you find one, get off your bike, but then get interrupted immediately, which forces you to start driving again. Those enemies aren't easily defeated on foot and they do so much damage that you can't ignore them either...
Another complaint is how each of the Green Energy rains make more crystals appear. It doesn't make any sense to start collecting them until they all have appeared, because otherwise you will have to start the grind all over again. And then again. Plus, there isn't anything to get for when you do it early, but once the container is halfway filled, you will get an upgrade to the Psychic Charge Beam.
Now, you briefly have return to the Volt Forge to upgrade Vi-O-La into "Vi-O-La IC". Please don't ask me what the IC stands for, but it lets you fly over the lava, which is what you need to finally proceed in the Flare Pool. Your exit from the Volt Forge will then be blocked, where you have to defeat another Flight Drone MCU... And I hate these things, not only because they apparently make you fight the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe, but because you have to take them out with the Control Beam and it's very awkward in this case. But at least it's obvious that you need to use it here, where I keep forgetting it in other situations... Which will come back to haunt me later.
So, the IC mode turns your bike from this...
Into this:
Looks much less comfortable for some reason. Like Samus has to keep it really tight to not get her feet torched. It doesn't maneuver as nicely either, but gets the job done for this section. The real problems come afterwards, where I have two major pain points with these areas.
They may look gorgeous, but the underlying design is painfully linear. Of course, if you put sequence breaking aside, then the Metroid games always have been linear to a degree, but there was usually an intricate structure to the individual areas and how you proceed in them. Or how everything connected in the end.
Metroid Prime 2: Echoes also follows the same world design, where you have a central hub area and the three major areas connected to it, with some back and forth between the areas. But eventually you will discover shortcuts that lead from area to the other, without the need of traversing the Temple Grounds. And the areas themselves make you loop through bigger rooms, gradually unlocking different paths.
In Metroid Prime 4: Beyond it's all quite straight-forward for the most part, like the towers in the Volt Forge. You may run into a stop sign early on, where you have to turn back and visit another area first, but once you're past that stop sign (like the pit of lava above), it becomes just a series of rooms in a futuristic facility. It feels more like playing DOOM (2016) without the glorified violence, and less like playing Metroid.
It also doesn't get better when Samus Aran gets treated and is acting like the Doom Slayer, being put on a pedestal by the NPCs, while not saying a single word to any of them. It had its charm early on, with the goofy Myles MacKenzie, but it's getting weird when characters are trying to interact with her more seriously. It almost makes you miss Other M, where this feels like an overcompensation. Sure, it stays true to the other Metroid Primes, where she didn't talk either, but sometimes you wish that she would just utter a simple "yes" when someone asks her if she's Samus Aran.
At least it's clever how the different suits provoke different reactions. Myles recognized her immediately in the classic Varia Suit, while it takes a second for Duke to realize who he's dealing with. And while the entire internet is hating on Myles, I think that Duke and Armstrong are equally bad, where this is the part where these Galactic Federation soldiers truly started to annoy me.
With Duke it's simply this whole military lingo and behavior. Naturally, this is what you would expect from a soldier, but it feels way too contemporary, like this character was taken straight out of the latest Call of Duty or Battlefield game. That's even a problem with MacKenzie, who looks like your typical geek and even says he has worked in a cubicle before this. They appear like characters from the early 21st century Earth and not the cosmic year 20X9, but for Myles this is only an issue in his first cutscene.
Then there's Armstrong, who goes hard on being a total Samus fangirl, which is adorable at first, but gets cheesy after a bit. "She's doing Morph Ball!"
At least Tokabi was cool, but the Sollan god thing came off as weird at the end. Imagine someone survives a dangerous situation, takes out their cross and says, "it's all thanks to Jesus Christ!" I guess, it will be important later, but in that moment it came off as cheesy. At least it's about some faith that we're unfamiliar with. Is Sollan some kind of sun god? Sounded like it...
The Sylux cameo was funny. But at least he is doing something and not just aura farming at the Chrono Tower, where I'm still excited to finally learn the truth about this character. Ideally, Sylux as a villain will make up for the presence of all these Galactic Federation soldiers, where we all know that they are only here in the story, because Sylux hates the "Gal Feds".
And you get a whole dragon as the big boss of this area, which is interesting. It's a well-staged battle, but the ending had me completely stumped. I was at a loss of what to do here:
The dragon collapses and opens its mouth, where the weakspot is somewhere down his perfectly Morph Ball-sized throat. As a Metroid veteran, you instinctively want to roll inside and lay some bombs. It's practically mimicking the Metroid Queen here... But there is no way to get to it. You can't summon Vi-O-La in that moment and you will take too much damage when going through the lava. Trust me, I tried.
And if you don't finish Phenoros fast enough, it will wake up again and you have to repeat the last part of the battle. Over and over again. I was seriously confused what I had to do here and got frustrated by the constant resurrections, until someone else on the couch asked, "do you maybe have to use some psychic stuff?"
Oh... of course! The Control Beam! As I said, I kept forgetting that it exists, but I won't any longer after that lesson. For example, I realized that it's also effective against the Psy Teleporters, which makes so much makes sense that it's painful to have missed this.
I learned this while going back to the Volt Forge, which is the next step. You obtain the Psychic Grapple after Phenoros, which is the same as the Grapple Beam, only in purple. And this lets you fight another Sylux imitation, an annoying one at that.
It electrifies the whole room, which causes an unreasonable amount of damage, should you get caught in the middle of it. The only way to stay safe is by swinging around like Donkey Kong, but the Sylux bot is very patient with this attack... Testing my patience in the process.
As I'm using the pointer controls, this also got somewhat uncomfortable to play. You now have to aim at the grapple points, but the gyro aiming gets off-centered so quickly that you have to constantly reset it. Makes you wish they'd bring back the Wii sensor bar.
The Sylux imposter was there for a good reason, though, because this gives you your last weapon, the Thunder Shot. And he probably didn't want you to get cool lightning attacks, because that's his thing. But back to Myles again... where he has now the company of Duke and Armstrong, camping it out.
At one point Armstrong even started singing... But at least these two don't keep calling you, marking remarks about where you should be going. The first two Metroid Prime games must have received so many criticisms about their sometimes obscure progression that Nintendo really makes sure that players don't ever get lost here on Viewros. And as a result, they are using Myles as the Navi of the Metroid universe.
"Hey, Samus! What are you doing right there? Exploring the desert? Listen, you can backtrack with your new abilities to find new secrets! Go check out the Ice Belt again! And when you're lost, you can always call me! But don't you worry, I will be calling you every two minutes anyway to remind you what you should be doing! By the way, have you been back to the Ice Belt yet? There are some unexplored areas there! Maybe try out that new Thunder Shot of yours?"
Well, I first went right back to the Flare Pool, because there were so many doors with an electric shield that it was itching me. This let's you find this odd room with a single Missile Expansion in it, which took inspiration from Silksong and makes you fight a gauntlet of all the different Psy bots:
I used the Bomb mechanism to the right first, which throws you all the way back to the crossroads near the Save Station. And when you return to the room, it will trigger another enemy gauntlet, even though you've already cleared it before... It's quite annoying, but maybe this exists to make sure that you can still scan all types of bots at the end of the game.
If only the game was so "considerate" about all its enemies, like the single-time occurrence of the "Swim Snatcher".
This one was tricky, so I can fully understand that people may miss this for their 100%. The whole environment has lots of different scanning targets, which makes it very difficult to lock on to this thing. You have to get super close, while it's constantly running away from you. But this enemy really should just re-appear afterwards, I don't see why not.
In other news, I have now unlocked all the skins for Vi-O-La, where the last one matches the current suit perfectly:
So far the Space Pirate theme was my favorite, but this will replace it, until I eventually get a new suit (which I already saw, because internet). However, I still think that this whole amiibo functionality could have been handled better. The radio should be accessible to all players, while the different skins should be unlocked by matching Metroid amiibo. Here's how this could have looked like:
- Samus Varia Theme: any Samus
- Sylux Theme: Sylux
- Metroid Prime Theme: Dark Samus, Metroid
- Space Pirate Theme: Ridley
- Ancient Theme: Zero Suit Samus
- Psychic Era Theme: E.M.M.I.
- Vi-O-La Suit Theme: Samus & Vi-O-La
They even could have added a Metroid theme while doing so... Arguably, you may see this solution as worse, because you need to have most of the Metroid amiibo to unlock all skins. The way it is, you will only need the one. But these skins are not as essential, while this would have given all the different Metroid some value.
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