Why Metroid Prime 4 definitely deserves its bad reputation – Reader’s Feature

After Metroid Prime 4 went unmentioned in Nintendo’s latest financial results, a reader tries to pinpoint exactly what wrong with the controversial Switch 2 sequel.

Late to the dodgy party, but I finally finished my playthrough of Metroid Prime 4 on Switch 2, and whilst I enjoyed it to some extent, and there were some excellent moments in the campaign, I would be remiss to not acknowledge its very severe flaws that undercut the sense of progression, cohesion, and general identity of a Metroid game.

Let’s get the positives out the way first, the presentation is gorgeous, with some stunning vistas and art design in planet Viewros. The soundtrack and general alien soundscape is quite exquisite. Every moment involving the morph ball is just really 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 mode of movement and the half pipe-boosting activities. In fact, I want Nintendo to commission a morph ball only spin off, where you’re just negotiating increasingly trickier obstacle courses, à la a modern Marble Madness.

The Viola bike is a neat addition, which looks ace and controls really slickly. The bosses are generally of a high quality and among the best in the Prime series, especially the epic lava facility boss. And the new psychic abilities, like the Metal Gear Solid Nikita missile style psychic shot, are just really darn cool, if underutilised.

The ‘dungeon’ areas are also pretty well designed, if a little too linear, and demonstrate flashes of prime Metroid Prime in aspects of their design. Although the mining area was a missed opportunity, which was marred with repetition, facing wave after wave of the same mindless feral foes in an aesthetically and structurally uninteresting location.

Now to address the awfully salient and stinky elephant in the room: the open-ish world in Metroid Prime 4 felt beyond bland and ultimately pointless. I tried, I really tried to find some redeeming qualities about this massively incongruent addition to the formula, but alas I just could not. And this overriding feeling was exacerbated by some of the most egregious examples of padded backtracking I’d ever had the displeasure of experiencing in a modern game.

Having to go through a desert of Starfield levels of uneventfulness, more than once, to return to base, to have Myles MacKenzie upgrade Samus’s abilities, was contrived and just insulting to the first lady of gaming’s self-efficacy. How the heck does the bespectacled brainbox interface so intuitively with the alien tech anyway? Never mind, must, suspend, disbelief…

The absolute nadir point in the game is when you’re tasked with harvesting the green crystals growing throughout the desert. This was one of the most tedious and interminable moments in the franchise’s history, which absolutely pulverises the game’s pacing. What on Earth were Retro Studios even thinking with this awful piece of design?!

It beggars belief Retro Studios/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 pretty well known by now, but evidently the schizophrenic identity crisis in the game’s design decisions led to the corruption of a more cogent vision.

As for the other conspicuously contentious point, I actually didn’t mind the companions that much, other than Myle’s frequently intrusive reminders; painfully stating the obvious and treating me like a colossal nincompoop. I mostly found the marines to be inoffensive and, thankfully, largely peripheral for the most part. But their inclusion in the first phase of the final boss fight was, much like the semi-open world design and crystal-gathering palaver/aggravation, retrograde to say the least.

I dread to think what Nintendo will do with the 3D series if the sales were really as inauspicious as the early sales estimates suggest. Let’s just hope that they foster a sharper acuity of vision and thought going forward, that’s if they give the 3D series another chance. After all, there’s still nothing in the industry that looks and plays quite like Metroid Prime, and something, anything to occupy Samus and her interstellar talents is still better than zero missions.

By reader GG

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