I’ve always greatly appreciated the Metroid series for how much of a different flavour it brings to the Nintendo catalogue. With many of the Japanese gaming giant’s family-friendly franchises including colourful platformers like Mario and Kirby or fantastical adventures like Zelda, the darker sci-fi shooting-centric Metroid experience is just so refreshingly different.
As I play through an extensive early chunk of the iconic series’ latest entry, Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, I’m immediately reminded of all of these special qualities. Above all else, there’s such a sense of wonder and mystery to Metroid. Walking through this strange, Pandora from Avatar-esque tropical jungle filled with towering ritualistic structures immediately compelled me to continue exploring to uncover more of its secrets. That feeling only continues as I turn into a Morph Ball and enter a small mountainous crevice, rolling between thin, eerily iridescent walls filled with alien bugs to the tune of creepy sci-fi music.
I don’t actually know exactly why I’m doing any of this, mind you. Nintendo is remaining pretty coy about Beyond‘s broader narrative, outside of confirming that Sylux, Samus’ rival bounty hunter who was introduced in the DS game Metroid Prime Hunters, is a villain. But it’s all incredibly atmospheric, which is more than enough to create a high level of intrigue already.
Eventually, I’m greeted by larger insectoids that fly around while spraying acidic projectiles, and naturally, I return fire with Samus’ signature Arm Cannon. It’s the snappy first-person shooting you’d expect from Metroid Prime and, as a nice touch, you can use the Joy-Con 2’s new mouse functionality for aiming if you so choose. Personally, though, I find this neat only in brief bursts, as the relatively small Joy-Con 2 isn’t really comfortable for longer periods, unlike a traditional mouse. Thankfully, you can just use the Joy-Con motion controls or a Pro controller, the latter of which is my preferred way to play.
But of course, Beyond also has more than a few new tricks up its sleeve. One of the most prominent in the marketing thus far is Samus’ ability to traverse expansive sand areas on the new Vi-O-La bike, but this wasn’t available in my demo. What I did get to try, though, were some of Samus’ new psychic powers. After interacting with ancient constructs, our hero is basically given telekinesis. In classic Metroid format, this means that previously inaccessible areas are opened up, in this case by allowing you to move orbs of energy either between or within objects to unlock doors and other obstacles. While the actual telekinesis engagement was fairly basic in my demo, basically just moving the energy within a fixed circle, I’m hoping the applications of these abilities expand in meaningful ways over time.
On the flip side, though, I’m already loving how the psychic powers affect combat. For instance, the new Charge Beam allows you to shoot and fully steer a projectile in the environment, sort of like Batman’s Remote Controlled Batarangs in the Batman: Arkham games. In some instances, this is simply used to enter a small hole in a wall to clear a blocked path, but it was in a boss fight against a massive Venus flytrap-like tentacled beast where it proved particularly inventive. As I zig-zagged to avoid the monster’s swinging tentacles, I peppered them with regular Arm Cannon shots to remove their spiky coat of armour and leave them vulnerable. However, you have to take them all out in one-go, otherwise they’ll regrow, so you’ll have to carefully aim your Charge Beam. Once the tentacles were all felled, the boss was temporarily vulnerable, allowing me to bombard it with my missiles.
If that weren’t enough, a Nintendo representative also teased another neat combo move that I hadn’t considered. Like in previous Metroid games, Beyond lets you drop little bombs when you’re a Morph Ball, but now, you can use your Psychic power to grab these emitted energy fields and shoot them as projectiles. It’s easy to imagine how that might not only come in handy in certain instances, but even be required in others. If that’s the sort of compelling mix of Samus’ new psychic powers and traditional cannon arsenal that Beyond is already offering early on, I can’t wait to see how it all evolves throughout the game.
And of course, there’s much more to learn about the story. On that front, I really only got a tease for five special keys that Samus must collect, the first of which I obtained after beating the boss. (This discovery came from a delightfully dorky Galactic Federation ally that Samus rescues in the demo, Specialist Myles McKenzie. Thankfully, his presence is more in the form of the occasional sort of helpful “guy in the chair” interactions, so Prime‘s deep feelings of isolation and suspense are still maintained as you’re regularly exploring on your own.
All in all, I came out of my demo very impressed by what I saw. So far, everything that we love about Metroid Prime, particularly the rich sci-fi atmosphere and snappy shooting mechanics, is back and in top form, while the new psychic abilities offer much promise in how they’ll shake up gameplay. While I still have a lot of questions about the story, I’m confident the answers will be satisfying. We don’t have to wait much longer, either, as Metroid Prime 4: Beyond launches on both Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 on December 4, 2025. I absolutely can’t wait.
Image credit: Nintendo
