The long-awaited Metroid Prime 4: Beyond is coming soon to Nintendo Switch 2 and we’ve already played it and experienced its impressive new control options.
As predicted, Metroid Prime 4: Beyond didn’t feature prominently in Wednesday’s 60 minute-long Nintendo Direct, as it had already been one of the highlights of the previous week’s showcase. There it was revealed that bounty hunter Samus Aran gains psychic powers during the game, but none of that was shown in the demo we played this week, which seemed to be from the very start of the game.
The version shown last week was for the original Switch but Wednesday’s Direct confirmed that there will also be a native Nintendo Switch 2 edition of the game, with improved visuals and optional mouse control. We didn’t see the Switch 1 version to compare but on the Switch 2 Metroid Prime 4 was probably the most graphically impressive game we played, despite that not being the Switch 2 upgrade we found most interesting.
Metroid Prime 4 is also the best advert for mouse controls on the Switch 2 and we particularly liked how it is not only optional (we assume you can just use the Pro Controller if you prefer) but that you can switch back and forth instantly, as the situation dictates.
There’s a very strong whiff of Halo in the game’s intro, as Samus (who never actually seems to do any bounty hunting, because apparently Nintendo didn’t originally understand what the term meant) is called in to help out a Federation outpost under attack from Space Pirates, who are trying to steal some kind of special artefact.
The original reveal trailer is from the same section of the game, with both it and the demo ending with rival bounty hunter Sylux turning up. Before that though, the game introduces you to the basics of Samus’ abilities, which will be very familiar to existing Metroid Prime fans (or those that have only played Metroid Dread, since the fundamentals are the same, despite the Prime games using a first person view).
For the demo we were given two Joy-Cons and you can play the game with them held in the normal fashion, moving with the left analogue stick and aiming with the right one. What you can also do though is turn the right Joy-Con on its side and use it like a mouse, for faster and more accurate aiming, which works very well.
We ended up alternating between the two modes often, sometimes on a whim and sometimes depending on what we were doing, as turning it away from mouse mode gives you easier access to your special visor modes and makes more sense when transforming into a morph ball.
By design, Metroid Prime 4 has a lot of auto-aim built in, if you lock onto specific enemies, but you still have to lead your targets or aim at specific weak spots when fighting larger opponents. So the fine aiming is very useful- as well as adding to the immersion, considering Samus’ armour has a giant transforming gun on her right arm.
The nods to Halo begin with the intro, as Samus fights through a battle in the upper atmosphere, and continue as you fight Space Pirates and see Federation troops utilise a giant mech that looks like much more serious military tech than you’d expect from a Nintendo-made game.
The demo ends with an enjoyable boss battle, that forces you to use the morph ball to avoid incoming energy attacks and learn how to use a dash dodge to move rapidly left and right around a target. It’s no pushover for a first boss and we found the demo as a whole very encouraging for the final game.
The wait for Metroid Prime 4 has been an unusually long one, with the whole project having been started again from scratch, when Nintendo wasn’t happy with it, but it seems well worth the wait and the only disappointment so far is that it’s not a launch title.
Formats: Nintendo Switch 2 (previewed) and Nintendo Switch
Price: TBA
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Retro Studios
Release Date: 2025
Age Rating: 12
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