Finally played Metroid Prime 4: 18 years of waiting were worth it

The Switch 2 could end its first year with a bang. But one big question mark still clouds my anticipation.

October 21, 2007: Wow, what a cool ending! Let’s see how it continues!, I think to myself on this (presumably rainy) autumn day. Kimi Räikkönen has been crowned the last Ferrari world champion in Formula 1 to date. I am 17 years young, a brand-new trainee at the Wiesbaden city administration, single, and have just played through Metroid Prime 3: Corruption on the Nintendo Wii.

November 6, 2025: Wow, what a cool game! I don’t want to stop!” I think to myself on this (definitely rainy) autumn day. At 35 years old, schoolchildren now address me formally on the bus. I am a games editor, blessed with a wife and daughter, and I have just finally played Metroid Prime 4: Beyond on the Nintendo Switch 2.

We fans had to wait 18 years for a new Metroid Prime! The world has changed, I have changed, but Samus Aran has remained exactly the same. Nintendo’s in-house bounty hunter has also had a tough time.First announced at E3 2017, development was completely restarted in 2019, including a change of developers.Nintendo invited me to Frankfurt so I could play Metroid Prime 4 at my leisure. The question that preoccupied me as a fan beforehand was: Will Samus make a successful comeback?

Two hours of gameplay later, my heart is cheering, “Yes!” but my head is screaming, “Watch out!”

A typical day for Samus Aran

The plot? Oh, just everyday life in the Metroid universe: aliens attack, lots of bangs, bangs, explosions. Crash! Boom! Bang! Something breaks somewhere. People die, aliens too. Samus shoots, jumps, rolls, and opens doors. She beats up the boss. A portal opens, and Samus is sucked in.

Our heroine awakens on the alien planet Viewros. She has miraculously lost all her abilities—so everything is as usual in Samus’s life.

Eighteen years of progress in storytelling and game design have clearly left no mark on the basic formula of Metroid Prime, and I have to admit: I love it! The story premise is so simple that it’s cool again as an anachronism in today’s world.

Anyone familiar with Metroid also knows that it’s often the alien environments that tell the real story. As in the three previous games, you can scan everything that isn’t nailed down. Doors, rocks, plants, enemies, animals…

Questions such as “What happened here?”, “Where do I need to go?” or “Who lived here?” are answered in this way. Avid readers are rewarded with a deep background lore. Those who prefer to shoot, however, will find their way around even without extensively reading the ever-growing travel brochure.

In the following gameplay compilation of my play session, you don’t have to read or shoot, just watch. The material was recorded with HDR enabled and converted to the SDR color space.

I’m 17 again!

The gameplay of Metroid Prime 4 hits the mark for me. From the second I pick up the Switch 2’s Pro Controller, I’m that 17-year-old greenhorn again. I’m amazed at how much I still enjoy old-school gameplay today.

I’m standing in a jungle. Dizzyingly tall trees barely let the glistening sunlight through. All around me, the inhabitants of this strange environment are chirping and tweeting, and almost all of them want to kill me.

With my versatile arm cannon, I blast my way through until I stand in front of ancient ruins. Inside, I find murderous aliens and tons of puzzles. Using the new psy sensor in Samus’ helmet, I solve little brain teasers to open doors and activate switches.

Often, all it takes is to activate a mechanism with psionic power or trace a pattern with your finger. Is this revolutionary game design? No. But does it make the rest of the gameplay devilishly fun? Oh yes!

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On my journey through the jungle and the temple complex, I already come across many hidden items that I can’t reach at first, as is typical for Metroidvania, because I lack the necessary skills. I immediately feel that excited tingling in my stomach at the thought of exploring every nook and cranny of this game world in my pajamas on the couch.

Promising: The mix of shooter elements and short puzzles is well balanced in the section I played, so that the action never degenerates into a monotonous shooting gallery or a soporific puzzle-solving ordeal.

Nostalgia bonus: When Samus picks up a new ability, the typical Metroid melody plays. You know the one. Ahhhaahhahhahaaahhahhaa… okay, that doesn’t work. Then like this:

As you can see, Metroid Prime 4 doesn’t reinvent the wheel—quite the opposite, in fact. Instead of jumping on the modern gaming bandwagon, Nintendo and the development team at Retro Studios deliver straightforward shooter action and linear level design in the old style. Like Doom: The Dark Ages in May 2025, Metroid Prime 4 takes me back to the good old days™.

This is great news for fans. After 18 years, it feels like coming home. However, those hoping for a story presentation that meets today’s triple-A standards and contemporary convenience features (the 3D map is just as cumbersome as it used to be, and I don’t know whether to sigh or rejoice) will probably not be happy here.

The big question mark

The linear Metroidvania sections are, as far as I can tell from my test, absolutely top-notch. After my trial session, I have no doubt that we can expect a gaming treat to crown the Switch 2’s brilliant first year.

B-u-t. BUT. B-u-t. Now here comes the but: there’s still the open-world-like area of the game world. That’s the part of the alien planet that Samus travels on her brand-new sci-fi motorcycle with the somewhat embarrassing German name Vi-O-La.

Nintendo games and the meaningful filling of open worlds – this combination often leaves something to be desired. Mario Kart World is the latest cautionary example. Fans are therefore understandably asking themselves: is this necessary in a Metroid game?

And now guess which part of the game I wasn’t allowed to try out? That’s right. So I’ll be honest: I don’t have a good feeling about this. But maybe I’m wrong. I certainly hope so, because everything else I’ve played in Metroid Prime 4 screams “hit.”

Picture perfect, as long as you don’t look too closely

The graphics of the Switch 2 version, on the other hand, are only a hit to a limited extent. The game looks great – but you can’t stand still and look too closely. That sounds weird, I know. Let me put it another way:

At first glance, Metroid Prime 4 looks stunning. The lighting is super chic, the effects are explosive, every location is brimming with small details, and all of this on the Switch 2 in 4K/60 FPS or 1080p with a rapid 120 frames per second.

However, it becomes clear that this is essentially a game for the Switch 1 as soon as you pause and take a closer look at the stone to your right or the wall texture to your left. Or the somewhat coarse pixelated shadows. But who does that when your eyes are constantly being treated to new panoramas and exotic locations?

The audio backdrop, on the other hand, leaves nothing to be desired. The weapon sounds, the ambient noises, and the orchestral sci-fi soundtrack with many familiar Metroid melodies make my fan heart beat in time with the music.

Whether that’s healthy or not is anyone’s guess. For now, I’m just looking forward to December 4, 2025, when I’ll finally be seventeen again.

Editor’s conclusion

Come on, Nintendo! Why are you making such a secret of the open-world sections? Either you know you’ve got something hot on your hands, or you already realize that the idea was a dud and you want to delay the inevitable.

Oh well, let’s forget about it. In a few days, I’ll finally be able to try out the game for myself. Until then, I’m optimistic, because what I’ve played of Metroid Prime 4 so far has lived up to my high expectations as a fan.

I’m particularly taken with the mysterious planet Viewros. The level design of the first areas is fantastic, and if my brief glance at the other areas of the map is anything to go by, there should be plenty of visual variety.

Now it all depends on the open world and Vi-O-La (what a name…).In the best case scenario, we can expect one of the best action-adventures in years and a spectacular comeback. In the worst case scenario, fans can look forward to a good, classic old-school Metroid that stumbles over the only modern innovation.