Metroid Prime 4: Beyond is a technical marvel and game design nightmare

"Despite beautiful art direction, graphics, and sound design, Metroid Prime 4 is a baffling game to play. It focuses too much on action instead of puzzle solving and exploration. It has annoying side characters who won't leave you alone. Its desolate overworld lacks personality. The result is a game that feels antithetical to the carefully curated mood that makes this series work: and one of the weaker Metroid games in recent years. All of this is frustrating because Metroid Prime 4 is a technical marvel."

"I played primarily on the Nintendo Switch 2's handheld mode. I toggled between two graphical modes: a higher resolution option that runs at 60 FPS, and a 120 FPS option that runs at 720p. Colors pop, light dances off surfaces, particles drift, and choir vocals layer on top of ambient soundscapes. What Nintendo has done here is a model that the rest of the industry needs to take note of. Great art and music should take priority over unnecessarily taxing graphical "innovations.""

"It begins in an aggressively linear fashion, throwing waves of enemies at you. In one of the first major areas just as you'll gain some freedom the game requires you to complete a 20-minute tutorial on how to use Samus' motorcycle (called Vi-O-La, of all things). When the game finally opens up, its desert hub world adds half-baked lore, but makes it even more annoying to revisit past areas."

Metroid Prime 4 endured a decade of troubled development, including multiple restarts and a handover back to Retro Studios. The game features outstanding art direction, graphics, and sound, with vibrant colors, dynamic lighting, particle effects, and layered choir vocals. The experience skews heavily toward action, deprioritizing puzzle solving and exploration central to the series' mood. Early sections are aggressively linear and include a lengthy 20-minute motorcycle tutorial. A desert hub world introduces half-baked lore and makes backtracking more tedious and disconnected. Annoying side characters and an overbearing Galactic Federation engineer further undermine immersion. The final product feels like a technically impressive but tonally inconsistent Metroid entry.

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