Metroid Prime 4 was first announced at E3 2017 and fans have been eagerly awaiting its release since then.  At first it was from a completely original team,  but eventually the reigns were handed back over to Retro Studios.  The original was scrapped, and development started all over again in 2019. Since Prime 4 has come out, opinions on it have been very negative. But is it as inferior as the mind of the internet has been saying, or is the small minority talking loud yet again? Only really one way to find out- let’s dive into Samus’s most recent entry mostly on the planet Viewros.

Gameplay/Story:

 The most controversial part of Prime 4 is its gameplay… mostly. You’ll see the story is included in this section as well, as they tie in together for the biggest complaints about the game. The two biggest complaints are the hand holding, and the side characters’ writing. The main problem these two go together is due to the fact that the hand holding is from the side characters. MacKenzie in particular, The quote “my coworker is dead, so I don’t have to deal with him… win?” writing feels just like from a Marvel movie these days, and has grown very stale.. They’re quirky, they’re annoying, and boy have they been overplayed.

And then there’s Nora Armstrong, the fangirl of Samus, as in, actually fanning out about her. While on a deadly planet..

fighting for her life. Now, respecting Samus I can understand, truth be told, there’s 2 characters that actually do this quite well, but, more on the others in a minute. Armstrong does tone down the fangirling after the first mission she’s introduced. But it is so jarring to basically hear  someone fanning out about Samus that it takes you out of the world, even for a brief moment. But since this is about gameplay too, let’s circle back to Mackenzie. 

Well, he did insist.

So, his writing isn’t great due to him being annoying, so what? What does that have to do with gameplay? Well, that’s the problem-MacKenzie is the games direction guy  The game thinks you’re taking too long and wants you to get a move on? MacKenzie, can, and will, call you. Now, that being said, a majority of the time, it is optional, you don’t have to take his call, you’ll just have a little beep that he is calling… kind of. The problem being that the answer his call button, and the map button, are one in the same. If they had made it two separate buttons, that alone probably would fix a lot of the problems. Somewhat similar to Alia in fact for Mega Man X5 to X6 actually. How for X5 she always called you, for X6 you activated her calls with a button. And sure you do technically here. But if you’re exploring the world, and need to check the map, and have a MacKenzie call lurking in the shadows, you get an unskippable section where the game has the map zoom out, and then zooms back in where it thinks you should go. A lot of the fun of Metroid games is figuring it out for yourself! If there had been an option so as to turn off the hints, that would have been fine. Veterans can have it off, those newer to the franchise can leave it on, and it’d be a happy solution for everyone.  

While on the map however, I will say being able to mark parts of the map with icons, somewhat similarly to Hollow Knight, is appreciated. See a missile tank but don’t know how to get it yet? Slap an icon down. My only complaint here would be there aren’t enough specific icons- there’s missiles, but nothing for weapon energy (more on that in a minute). It’s more selective than I’d like, but it is still appreciated – no more having to take notes on paper (but, obviously that is still an option.) As for Samus’s toolkit, it is pretty similar to before- Morph Ball, Jump, Double Jump, Arm Cannon beam and missile, and for a third time in the series, weapon energy for your Ice, Fire, and Electric beam weapons. I actually enjoy the weapon energy and it is nice to see it return, and I do like the beams we got, but I wish they had been a little more unique in this instance, somewhat similar to Metroid Prime 2. Since the suit upgrades were developed by a different species than the Chozo, much like Metroid Prime 2. Not a big thing to take note of, but it is something of note. All the beams and missiles have an upgrade for them doing more damage, or letting out more shots at once or some other effects for each weapon type which is appreciated. There is one new beam which I did actually like, even if it didn’t get as much attention as I thought it should have. Samus’s Remote Controlled Batarang Beam- I mean, her Control Beam.

For those that haven’t played the Arkham games, the Control Beam lets you manually control Samus’s shot in a vastly slowed down sequence and hit more precisely . Let’s say the weakness is on the back of an enemy’s head, but they don’t turn around to you. No matter. Use the Control Beam and it’ll stay focused on you as you direct it to the back of its dome. It is a neat feature, and as I said greatly reminds me of the Batarang (so much so that I greatly missed the U-Turn function the Batarang had here), but it just felt underutilized. Maybe on subsequent playthroughs I’ll find more of a use for it, we’ll see. But I do wish it had been used for more puzzles as it does feel very infrequent as opposed to the Psychic Glove.

The Psychic Glove isn’t nearly as cool, but it is used a whole lot more. It lets you control things from a remote distance if it’s already there, or you can hold the Bomb button down while in Morph Ball mode and you can use that for the puzzles instead. Not the most clever use for it, but it is used frequently so it is worth mentioning. 

All that being said, Metroid Prime 4 controls very smoothly. I wish that they would cut back on the hand holding. Hopefully they will if we get Metroid Prime 5. 

One of the key aspects to progress further into the game is getting green energy, primarily acquired from smashing crystals on the overworld with your bike You get enough green energy, you’ll get some rewards – the Arm Cannon does more damage, Samus will take less damage, you’ll unlock a green crystal radar, and eventually get more control for the Control Beam. Most of these are appreciated, all of them are in fact, just wish the radar was first, as you do have to have a certain amount of green energy to even beat the game. As we get more green energy it does affect some of the enemies which I really appreciate, as the enemies are rather lacking without this factor. Even with this I would have liked some more enemy types, but I did appreciate seeing the creatures evolve as we progressed and actually found that to be a really cool mechanic, just wish we could have seen more of that. 

One of said enemies that get affected as the game goes on

The plot overall is okay- it’s not one of Metroids stronger plots, and does feel like some more thought needed to be put into aspects of it, but  I appreciate what it does do. The most impactful part of the plot however, for good and bad, is the side characters. We already addressed McKenzie and Armstrong earlier, but I would like to take a moment to talk about the other 4 characters, including Sylux,  the main antagonist of Prime 4. Sarge (Ezra Duke) is your typical soldier, a little gruff, but cares about those under him, which includes Armstrong. Sarge evens her character out a fair amount,as he does tell her to knock it off, and after a few outbursts she does. You can tell he does care for her.. Reger Tokabi is the sniper of the group, probably the one given the most thought as there are 4 separate dialogues you can find for him on the world map that expands his character. The only down side to that is it can feel somewhat random for when he’s available to talk. I didn’t find it egregious but did find it necessary to notate. He is also the religious character of the group, and through some research seems to be of a Native American inspiration for the religion and his character.  There is some possibility it could have some parallels with Christianity, but it doesn’t necessarily mean they were going for that either- this is a sci-fi setting and if they’re going to make up religions they should take that into account, especially when it’s told well, as it was here. If Sarge had gotten some 1-on-1 talking to Samus, that may have pushed him into my favorite character, but Reger holds that position.  He’s handled well, he’s not in your face, he’s just a guy living, and I love it. Then there’s VUE-995, a toaster. 

Okay, okay, we’ll actually talk about VUE-995, he is a robot that they try to make you feel like  is alive, somewhat similar to Commander Data from Star Trek, but the problem with both of them is, they’re a computer. They can seem alive, but they aren’t. Doesn’t mean you can’t appreciate the character however, and VUE is entertaining at the least, probably the third best character of the supporting 5.  He’s a fun character -they were going for the quirky robot, but not overly so, like just a smidge of quirk, which is great because I am quite tired of the quirky robot. 

And then there’s Sylux, who doesn’t get as much screen time as was expected. Still, it was nice to finally see a payoff of some sort for him after Hunters and Prime 3. The unfortunate part is, aside from his backstory, we didn’t get much more about him. I can’t really reveal why without spoilers, so that’s all I’ll say currently. I hope he does come back in subsequent games so we can get more development for him, as well as the other hunters from Hunters, but we’ll have to wait and see for now. Heck, aside from McKenzie I wouldn’t mind seeing the others, as long as Armstrong stays toned down. If there’s one thing I want to leave off with for the story it’s this- it’s not that having new characters in Metroid is bad. It’s bad if they’re poorly written, or tied to poor game mechanics. And unfortunately, 2 of the 5 were poorly written, and 1 of the 5 was tied to a poor game mechanic. Without going into spoilers, Samus’s computer from Fusion has been a character I appreciate seeing, and when said computer returned in Dread I was happy to see him. Conversely, when Adam in Other M told you “Nah, you can’t activate your Varia suit, burn Samus burn”, that was tied to poor gameplay and is a Prime example of what NOT to do. And I wanted to bring up both examples here for the fans showing that it can work, we’ve seen it work. The developers just need to do better.

Graphics:

I played the Switch 2 version, and the graphics were quite good.. The Forest and Lightning Forge are my two favorite areas in terms of graphics, with the mine probably being my least favorite. I do feel the design could have been utilized a bit better to feel more otherworldly as we have forest, electric factory, ice zone,fire mine, and regular mine. The zones being somewhat basic did not help them to stand out as much as they could have. Chrono Tower was good, but we were in it for such a short time that it barely counts.  Overall I did like it, but between that and the lack of enemies it did feel somewhat samey – the game looks good, but the art style probably needed some more direction to make it feel more unique. 

Really when the game is pretty, it’s really pretty

Music: 

The music for Prime 4 is wonderful however.There are a few tracks that I absolutely adore, and I may in fact appreciate others as time goes along. Nintendo has added a handful of songs to their Music app, and all of the ones available I do happen to appreciate, but Volt Forge and Fury Green are probably the best songs available on the app currently. While the graphics were a little lacking in making the world feel otherworldly, the music did the opposite. It definitely fit the bill and did it well. However, I do need to mention one bad part about the music. The music for VI-O-LA (the motorcycle) is locked behind an amiibo, which means that while exploring the desert, unless you hear the amiibo it’s empty silence. I didn’t mind it myself, but it is a part that is a mark against the music. I think what would have worked better for the amiibo usage is you get a remix of the VI-O-LA music instead. But that’s not what happened and as such we have this.

Faith Perspective:

Now, this is probably one of the most interesting parts of the companions mentioned earlier with Tokabi. Metroid hasn’t brought up religion before, and while it does seem to have some similarities with Christianity in some sense, I do think it is much more accurate to say it’s similar in depiction of Native American religions without being a one-for-one.We don’t get much of it here -mainly that you’re supposed to be a pacifist if you’re a follower of Sollan, and he’s not very good at it since he’s a sniper. That being said the writers did seem to be at least somewhat respectful of religion, in regards to Sollan or other similar religions. Now whether or not this is the case for Christianity, we may never know, or we may find out when Metroid Prime 5 comes out. Only time will tell if Prime 5 actually happens and if they decide to cover more of Sollan or  other religions. That being said I think it was handled with enough respect here. It at least seems better than how Chakotay was handled in Voyager in that regard and I am looking forward to seeing more. 

Outside of that, there is nothing problematic that goes against the Catholic faith. The worst thing is if you don’t like shooting things,there is no pacifist mode, so you will have to fight.

Conclusion: 

Metroid Prime 4 is a perfectly acceptable game. Is it amazing? No. Is it the worst game I’ve ever played? No. Is it the worst Metroid game I’ve played? Also, no (but just barely for there is… another.) Do I recommend you pick this up? Flaws aside, yes – I actually enjoyed playing it and am going to jump back in for a hard mode playthrough soon. I think even when a game is talked about negatively it can have some merit, even if it’s not exactly the game I wanted after 10 years of waiting. But it does still have merit whether you like it or not. I’d say pick it up on a sale if you can [though good luck with that due to this being a Nintendo game.] . But just because people like to punch down instead of up, it doesn’t make something bad. It just makes it the most recent thing to be picked on -until something else comes along.

About KAMaximilianK