Or about half that time if you played Federation Force like a real fan.
http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/feature/73590/checking-in-was-metroid-prime-4-worth-the-wait
With the wait finally over and most of our staff enjoying a nice vacation on Viewros, we decided to check in with a few of them to see how Metroid Prime 4: Beyond is holding up to their expectations. Don't forget to drop a comment to let us know how you're feeling about Metroid Prime 4 but remember to avoid spoilers where you can.
Willem Hilhorst
As much as I love Metroid as a series, the Prime games have always been a blind spot for me. I had a lot of fun with Prime Remastered in 2023 and in preparation for Prime 4, I’ve played through Metroid Prime 2 Echoes and the opening hours of Metroid Prime 3: Corruption last month. I was sort of half-afraid that this would lessen my enthusiasm for Beyond, but so far the ride has been incredibly smooth. Prime as a series is at its best when you’re already loaded up with tools and can go back and forth between regions to find new threads to pull on. While that is still a bit off on my journey in 4, having only just obtained the second key, the first impressions have been great. I love the subtle tweaks to movement, being able to slightly adjust your aim when already locked on to enemies, helps to deal with larger groups. Visually the game is really stunning, even in the 120fps handheld mode.
I think the psychic gameplay mechanics add a unique twist to the formula, even if they are so far just a different flavor for already existing mechanics. Shoutouts to the mind bullets, taking after Rayman 3’s rocket hoodlum power-up. Vi-o-la, the motorbike, is a bit of a gimmick and I don’t think that segmenting the overworld as literally as Prime 4 does is necessarily a benefit. But having yet to really travel back and forth between these areas, it is hard to judge if that really becomes an annoyance over time quite yet. So far, it takes more after Prime 3, especially with its chatty NPC’s, which I am honestly okay with. I do think that the hint system is a bit too active for the early game. Overall it certainly is a fourth entry in the prime series. Nothing revolutionary so far, but I am definitely having fun exploring (read: scanning) every nook and cranny on Viewros.
Justin Berube
It’s hard to believe I’m actually playing the fourth installment of Metroid Prime, but here we are. The opening sequence was great and really got me hyped to play more. My Metroid Prime Hunters main, Sylux, is back and finally in a more prominent role. This has been two decades in the making.
The opening hours of the game are a bit basic. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still fun, but back tracking is kept to a minimum when I would have liked to go back very early on for some pickups that were locked. The game didn’t let me though which is a bit frustrating. Again, I’m still in the early tutorial phase of the game, but there aren’t many powerups for seasoned Metroid veterans to smartly grab early which is a bit of a bummer as my through exploration isn’t rewarded much.
Myles MacKenzie, a new character which was met with much ire from the Internet collective, doesn’t bother me. I think it’s cool that we get some more Federation stuff in the Prime subseries as they play a major role throughout the entirety of the Metroid story. It’s ridiculous to ignore them all the time. Myles is a typical nerd and I’m already past the point of where he’s saying too much. I also find it funny and weird how he talks all the time and Samus basically ignores him.
As for the controls, I found the defaults to be a bit sluggish and not what I was looking for. I did, however, spend a bit of time just tooling around with the decent set of options provided in the settings and came up with something that feels much better. Once I did this, the game felt much better and I highly recommend anyone playing to mess around with the options until they land on something that feels right. That said I ended up using my modified version of the Dual Stick Fusion settings. I tried motion controls and it just didn’t feel stable enough for me but after some tweaks it’s definitely playable this way. It’s just not as good as having the Wii’s IR Sensor Bar to keep aiming accurate. The mouse controls are just not good. I don’t know how anyone can play this game using them while also having to access all the face buttons. It’s just not comfortable and I hope Nintendo releases a dedicated regular mouse in the future if they plan to use the feature in more games like this.
As far as my progress, I’ve just acquired the Vi-O-La bike and the journey leading up to it made me feel it. Metroid Prime is back. The scanning, platforming, puzzle solving, cool set pieces, and combat. It’s all here and I’m so happy a game like this is being made again. I’m on the edge of my seat and can’t wait to see where the journey takes me and I’m excited to hopefully learn more about Sylux after all these years.
John Rairdin
The thing that has struck me immediately about Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, is how it has managed to pick up right where Metroid Prime 3: Corruption left on, in terms of game design. Beyond doesn’t feel like it's had any pressure to reinvent the wheel. It doesn’t feel like a game with the weight of 18 years of expectation on its back. Rather it feels like a game that (barring technical fidelity) could have come out a few years after Corruption. A greater focus on the relationship between Samus and the Federation, the return of Sylux, and expansive yet clearly delineated world were all elements set up by the prior numbered game (and spinoffs).
I realize the more character driven and story focused tone that the Prime series shifted to in the back half of the trilogy isn’t to everyone’s liking, but I enjoy Prime finding its own identity separate from Sakamoto’s mainline Metroid series. At the end of the day it has become something that rides the line nicely between Metroid and elements more commonly seen in pre-Breath of the Wild, 3D Zelda. I’m glad this version of the universe is being given the freedom to exist on its own and not being forced into emulating Super Metroid forever.
In a lot of ways, Beyond also feels like what Corruption wanted to be. We’ve heard in the years since that original Wii release that the ambition for Corruption was to present a larger explorable world. Due to technical limitations this was split up in the distinct planets featured in that game. But Beyond manages to pull that into a single continuous environment with both a wide open desert overworld and the more traditional dark hallways the series is known for. Beyond feels like a game out of time, and I kinda love it for that. It feels like a game Tanabe and Retro had been sitting on for nearly two decades and we’re just now finally getting the chance to play it.
Topic: Checking In: Was Metroid Prime 4 Worth the Wait? (Read 20 times)
