This quest for enlightenment about your environment, represented by a map that gradually fills as you play, defines the Metroid formula. In fact, the formula is so established that a genre (Metroidvania) is named after the series. It’s an investigative formula that must be supported by diverse abilities, sparking your imagination for novel potential interactions. It’s about seeing a massive rock early on and knowing you’ll eventually obtain the bomb that can break it. Beyond’s power-ups, generously spread across its 15-hour run time, don’t disappoint.
Many abilities returning from prior games, like Samus’s compact Morph Ball form or the grapple beam, are tweaked by the new psychic powers conceit. More than just a glowing purple visual effect, the psychic powers emphasize uncovering hidden platforms and manipulating invisible forces. Again and again, you’re encouraged to open your third eye and view your surroundings in new ways as you figuratively and literally spend mental energy. One of my favorite recurring multi-step solutions, cleverly combining new and old mechanics, requires you to infuse a Morph Ball bomb with psychic power so you can manually fling the upcoming explosion to a distant trigger.
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Even as it shares the spotlight with other tools, Samus’s trusty arm cannon remains a reliable weapon. It, too, gets a psychic boost as Samus can slow down time and guide charged shots to specific targets with her mind. Along with solving puzzles, this is a useful strategic skill during the dynamic and surprisingly challenging combat encounters with bosses and regular enemies. I took cover and shot tough enemies from behind by guiding blasts like boomerangs. Other projectile powers satisfy in and out of combat, like the ice shot that extinguishes fires and freezes foes in their tracks.
Even without gimmicks, shooting never feels like an afterthought, with tense firefights punctuating methodical exploration. One spectacular sequence, a descent into caves, punishes you for using your stronger but louder armaments, like missiles, by summoning more enemies. On Switch 2, you can choose between dual-stick, motion, and mouse controls. Although the lock-on targeting is serviceable, the extra accuracy from the more precise input options is put to effective use against trickier targets.
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Metroid Prime 4: Beyond reminds me of Metroid Dread, a game that followed a remake (Metroid: Samus Returns) with a slick and assured approach to updating classic 2D Metroid play. With Beyond, you can feel how Retro Studios’ remaster of the first Metroid Prime, itself a masterpiece, got the creative juices flowing. One big difference, though, is that the video game industry is awash in new terrific 2D Metroidvanias, including Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown and several indie hits. But aside from Batman: Arkham City and Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, 3D blockbusters Metroidvanias are far more rare. That makes Beyond’s evolution of the form all the more impressive, even if it’s not the most radical change.
It’s a delicate dance. Giving Zelda an open-world scope did wonders for Breath of the Wild, but it’s a style like that could easily break the Metroid series. After all, the intoxicating Metroidvania formula relies on your curiosity naturally uncovering a planned route. However, Beyond’s vision is so thoughtful and deliberate that it keeps you engaged on a room-to-room basis while never feeling obviously and artificially guided.
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The shooter has a confident, bespoke variety of excellent scripted campaigns in classics like Half-Life 2, Resident Evil 4, and Titanfall 2. It also has the empowering self-motivation that comes from nonlinear, criss-crossing treks between biomes in search of the path forward. Got the fire shot? Time to go back and melt walls in the ice lab. The world’s big, and you can get lost, but it’s not so overwhelming that you can’t handle the mental stack.
Still, Beyond manages to modestly and intelligently expand its scope with the Sol Valley, an entirely new zone type for a Metroid Prime game. This large desert isn’t an open world, but an overworld that connects other areas. Think of Wind Waker’s Great Sea. It’s just big enough to have meaningful things to find, like enemies to fight or self-contained challenges with optional upgrades. However, it’s not so large that it becomes empty and tedious. Crucially, it doesn’t break the Metroid structure with bloat and doesn’t distract from the crafted locales that actually matter, which you always see off in the distance.
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The desert is also where you’ll make the most out of another Beyond selling point. Although you can travel on foot, you can reach destinations much faster on Samus’s space motorcycle, the Vi-O-La. Having a stylish ride adds to her cool factor and acts as a useful puzzle-solving tool. But mostly, I sped across the lonely, quiet expanse, a graveyard buried under harsh sand and sun. It’s a new twist on the purposefully boring isolation Metroid thrives on for mood and atmosphere. Without compromising game design, the desert helps sell the idea that this was a planet where beings once lived. More games can benefit from being big without toppling under their own weight.
