Just rolled the credits of Metroid Prime 4. I was surprised to see it only took 20 hours to play through this game. It definitely felt much longer, in a good way. It felt like a very robust game with plenty of content. At the end I was hoping it lasts a bit longer or has a bit more content. For a lot of other games it’s the opposite, I hope they end sooner so I can play the next one.M
Metroid Prime 4 is such a masterpiece. I almost feel i have my 2026 game of the year already. Btw I looked up and figured games released in December are usually considered for awards of the next year.
At first I didn’t even realize Metroid Prime was its own series, separate from Metroid. I somehow thought it was a jump of Metroid series from 2D to 3D. Later I found there were three 3D Metroid Prime games on GameCube and Wii. And Metroid Prime 3 was released on 2007… no wonder I never heard of them. So this is a series revival after 18 years. And apparently this 4th-gen was originally developed by Bandai Namco, but was scrapped by Nintendo due to quality issues, and started over by Retro Studios. This backstory explained how the game seemed to make an attempt on open-world with an empty desert, but 99% of actual gameplays still happen in traditional mazes. Zelda made that breakthrough of blending “new abilities unlock new places” and open-world; I’m ok if Metroid doesn’t make that leap.
The graphics, music, and level design of Metroid Prime 4 is very very good. A first-person view brings a more immersive experience than the 2D game; and the sci-fi theme works great with the thrill brought by alien monsters and abandoned facilities. Other levels of lush forest, icy cave, and stormy towers also look stunning and make me want to stop and just stare at the view from time to time.
One thing I wondered was how the game works with the unique pointer control of Switch 2. I’ve seen people on Reddit said it worked great and “felt like the game was designed for that control”. But my own experience was rather disappointing. Metroid Prime 4 has auto-lock (by pressing L2), and has a few bosses that require you to aim “a bit off the center of auto-lock”, which seems to be designed for the Switch 2 control. I tried pointer and motion control, and eventually decided to turn both off and just use the most traditional right stick control. Maybe I’m just too used to the old-school control and less used to the motion/pointer way. The bosses were not hard in normal mode. I was able to beat almost all bosses within 3 tries, including the final boss. The only exception was the “fire dragon” which was a pretty great boss fight. Overall it’s a thrilling, smooth, and not over-challenging game experience. I loved it.
I think my earliest Metroid game was Metroid Fusion on 3DS. The core experience of exploring a huge maze with a detailed map was not new to me at that time as I played Castlevania before, but it was still fun. The most impressive part was how certain puzzles were designed. I remember some puzzles require solutions that are both hard to figure out and hard to execute. It could be a morph ball flying through several screens with precise jumping, transforming, and bombing. I remember having a feeling of achievement after solving some puzzles. Metroid Prime 4 has a lot of puzzles and some of them are clever. But none of the puzzles was sophisticated enough to make you feel “achieving”. It was more of a “huh this is clever” feeling. I think boss fights was a better part of Metroid Prime 4, compared to puzzles.
Overall I’ll give this game 8.5/10. Absolutely worth a try if you are ok with FPS game control on console, and want a sci-fi themed non-open-world Zelda-like experience, lol
