‘Metroid Prime 4’ looks and feels great, but I’m nervous about one little thing

It’s just good to have my wonderful friend Samus Aran back.

Arguably Nintendo’s coolest character, Samus and her Metroid the series has largely been in the wild since 2007, when Metroid Prime 3 came out. I appreciated Metroid Terror a lot a few years ago, but this is really the only game featuring Samus in almost 20 years that I care about. On December 4, we hope this streak ends with the launch of Metroid Prime 4: Beyond on Nintendo Switch and Switch 2.

I had the opportunity to play about an hour of the game at a recent preview event, courtesy of Nintendo, and I have some ideas. For the most part, at least based on the first parts of First 4it’s always the Metroid Prime you know and you love. But I have one major concern. Let’s go.

It feels good to be back in the power suit

The aliens are very evil.
Credit: Nintendo

My demo of First 4 took place in two distinct parts: a short 10-minute preview at the very beginning of the game (a demo I had previously played back in April), and a longer preview of when the game seemed to be working properly. begin. As it happens, Samus finds herself on a mysterious, seemingly abandoned alien planet full of wonder and mystery, and she has to figure out what to do about it. Classic Metroid thing.

The longest part of the demo took place in a jungle-themed area called Fury Green. This place is very which recalls the past Metroid games; gross bug monsters and alien plants attack Samus every few minutes, and strange alien artifacts litter the landscape, just waiting for Samus to get the right item or ability to use on or around them. Even though this part of the game was pretty linear and straightforward, there were definitely doors and paths that I couldn’t open yet because I didn’t have the proper abilities, which is what you want to see in a game. Metroid game. This was also, apparently, the first hour of the game, so I’m not going to condemn this part for being linear.

Although it started life as a Switch 1 game (and is still getting a Switch 1 version), First 4 This might be the best-looking game I’ve seen running on a Switch 2 so far. The demo ran in the 4K/60FPS configuration, although the 1080p/120FPS version also looked great. Beyond the raw technical specs, Fury Green is simply an extremely beautiful space, and the art direction of First 4 seems to live up to the rest of the series.

The series developer, Retro Studios, also created the feeling of running around this ancient, unknowable world and shooting everything with a gun. The combat is fast, fluid, and fun, and as a bonus, it’s the first Metroid Prime Launchable game with normal dual analog stick controls. It’s great, and Samus’ new psychic abilities add some interesting variety to both puzzle solving and combat. She can manipulate small balls of energy to power alien devices, as well as fire a beam that stops time and allows you to manually fly it around the environment for a few seconds. I did a major boss fight at the end of the demo where I had to take out three targets simultaneously using the latter ability, and it felt classic to me. Metroid Prime thing.

So yeah, I don’t really worry about the games you watch and play. Metroid Prime 4. Additionally, my demo, heartbreakingly, did not include any motorcycle elements.

But I was kind of hoping I’d be the only one here

Yes of course.
Credit: Nintendo

This demo of First 4 would have left me unreservedly enthusiastic about the game if not for one small thing: at one point in Fury Green, Samus encounters another stranded human, a dimwitted Galactic Federation engineer who is fully voiced. He accompanied me for most of the rest of the demo, partly as someone to protect in a brief escort quest-type section, but mostly as a guy who occasionally pops into comms to chat with Samus (who doesn’t speak at all).

This is not the first time that a Metroid The game put Samus in close proximity to other people, with or without voice acting. The results of previous games have been…mixed, to say the least. Metroid has always worked best when Samus is truly alone in a dark and preferably slimy alien world. The beginning Prime the games, in particular, have a totally impeccable atmosphere. Before meeting this idiot engineer, First 4 This reminds me of that. After meeting it, it’s still a fun game with very nice visuals and good combat, but it’s not the same.

It also doesn’t help that it’s really boring, and it’s hard to tell whether the game is a joke or not, based on what I’ve played.

I’m not going to pass judgment on First 4 for this for now. As far as I know, this guy is only a small part of the game and won’t be chattering in Samus’s ear for the entire adventure. I just don’t want to spend a whole day Metroid Prime adventure listening to a geeky guy talk about me in pseudo-Marvel Cinematic Universe jokes.

After seeing this part of Metroid Prime 4I am officially slightly preoccupied with a game that had given me no reason to feel this way until now. I think Nintendo has earned the benefit of the doubt here, but I can’t lie: I’m a little more nervous than I’d like to be. We’ll see what happens when Metroid Prime 4: Beyond will launch on Switch and Switch 2 on December 4.

In the meantime, you can pre-order Metroid Prime 4: Beyond for $69.