Metroid Prime 4: Beyond review: "The series' atmosphere has never been better, while being dragged down by a boring overworld and clunky psychic powers"

I didn't need psychic powers to predict how Metroid Prime 4: Beyond was going to go, even if bounty hunter Samus Aran quickly gains mind-bending abilities of her own when she's mysteriously transported to Viewros, ("say the line, Samus!") once the home of a now long-dead civilization. Before playing, I wasn't sure how psychic skills would fit among the rest of Samus' arsenal, and I was skeptical about adding in an almost open world-like overworld you navigate with a motorbike.

Sadly, my grumbles were on the money. Neither of these things feel good. Awkward to juggle at best, and detrimental to the overall experience at worst, their implementation feels dated. I didn't need Metroid Prime 4 to try to go 'Beyond' – I needed it to nail the fundamentals. What's frustrating is, it does. Within each dungeon-like area to explore, Metroid Prime 4 shines, mixing tactile FPS exploration with gorgeous visuals and impeccable atmosphere. But the surrounding structure ends up dragging it down – trying and failing to go 'beyond' is a curse more than a blessing.

Planet with a View(ros)

Called in to assist the Galactic Federation in protecting a mysterious artifact, a large battle ensues as Sylux, a rival bounty hunter with a burning (and not really elaborated on) hatred for Samus, attacks. Flanked by titular Metroid creatures that can fuse with enemies to power them up, the artifact activates as the skirmish escalates, and Samus is mysteriously transported to Viewros – her power suit's abilities diminished in the process.

On Viewros, Samus is greeted by ancient Lamorn structures and scriptures that designate her as a prophesized Chosen One, who will carry on their civilization's desire to be remembered long after a tragedy wiped them out. To do so, she's gifted a stone that grants her psychic powers, and told to track down five keys to activate a special teleporter to return home.

Metroid Prime 4 is light when it comes to linear storytelling, and isn't great when it attempts it. I'm still not sure why Sylux – a character from Nintendo DS' Metroid Prime Hunters, with brief cameos elsewhere – is elevated here. He's such a non-presence that it's almost comical whenever the plot considers him to be some kind of ultimate nemesis. She's too stoic to say it, but I almost like to imagine Samus likewise has pretty much no idea who this guy is. Almost like M. Bison in 1994's Street Fighter movie: "For you, the day you met Samus Aran was the most important of your life. But for me, it was Tuesday."

This storytelling fares better when Samus links up with other survivors of the teleportation event. While some may malign dorky Galactic Federation tech engineer Mackenzie, I have a real soft spot for him just as Ashley did in our Metroid Prime 4 hands-on preview. Around each of these companions who only briefly join you on excursions, Samus remains the strong and silent type, and it helps sell the sense of her as this larger than life, legendary bounty hunter figure.

Still, while they have their charms, at many points these interactions can feel a bit toothless, especially as the game progresses. You never really get space to sit with any kind of melancholy through play that comes with Samus' relationships, or lack thereof, with those around her – a miss compared to Metroid Prime 3's own effective experimentation.

But, linear storytelling isn't what you come to Metroid for. This is a series all about exploration, piecing together small details from environmental design and patchy data logs about the ruins around you. Metroid Prime 4 has excellent level design, from how gorgeous each area looks on Nintendo Switch 2, to the way you simply navigate spaces. There's a real intentionality to how each environment is designed that invites you to become similarly engaged. Rarely do I enter a new space without popping Samus' scan visor active. Analyzing objects, creatures, and more can provide clues to progression and puzzles, but just as much allow you to piece together the story of the environment you're exploring. I'm not sure any other FPS is as good at making you really care about each space you navigate through.

Metroid Prime 4 is excellent at giving these zones a sense of progression as you poke around in search of ways to get your hands on teleporter keys. As you descend deeper into an abandoned factory, more systems begin to power up, machinery activating and beginning to make progression more difficult because of it, as an industrial and electronic score begins to build and build. Likewise, the frozen chambers of a bio-lab have you learning more and more about the experiments conducted within as you scan sparking computers, datalogs, and test tubes themselves. Metroid Prime 4 has a phenomenal sense of atmosphere, and in this sense it does go 'Beyond', the higher fidelity really sells a degree of tactility that takes Metroid Prime to a new level. Rival, louder FPS games may have higher fidelity graphics, but Metroid Prime 4's levels are more evocative, and boast superior visual design because of it.

Brain power

Progression through each of Metroid Prime 4's main areas is slow, but deliberate – and you'll never be able to uncover everything on a first go-around thanks to Samus' steady accrual of power-ups that gate access forward. These are all very gamey in traditional Metroid fashion but mostly work well. For instance, you may need the psycho lasso to pull chunks of debris free to access a hallway, or (less exciting) an ice laser to remove an ice lock. Puzzling the way forward is satisfying, but rarely challenging outside of remembering where certain locks were (and a later collectible can help mark those on the map too).

First-person shooting comes into play as rooms are frequently home to wildlife both aggressive and passive that will hurt Samus. I love that both are present, impressing each space as an ecology. Boss fights also lean towards the puzzle-based, a quick scan usually hinting at how you need to approach uncovering their weak spot before you start blasting, while executing on that can be quite challenging. Rarely is this much of a problem, with the exception of a couple of gruelling battles that instantly fail you if you don't revive a companion when they're downed before they take enough damage (often a gaming sin).

Unfortunately, for all the gushing I've done about level design and the exploration loop, there's a lot about Metroid Prime 4: Beyond that's just a pain to deal with. Psychic powers, for example, just feel clunky – don't expect to be weaving in any skills like Control. Combat use is very limited. You can fire the control beam, a maneuverable purple blast that's the best of the bunch, to slow time and hit up to three targets in a row – required for some enemies and puzzles. But it's a chore, requiring you to switch visor view, then charge all the way up before releasing, then having to switch visor view again to continue shooting as normal. These are better off in low pressure puzzles, but the control beam basically amounts to the Beetle item from The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, which has more interesting puzzles for the same concept.

In the valley

The overworld, the dune-covered Sol Valley, feels similarly dated conceptually, and, again, closer to classic Zelda than any kind of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild twist I hesitantly expected – especially considering there are literally shrines that offer small puzzle challenges. There's so few you can count them on two hands, and basically all amount to walking into a room and seeing if you have the power-up to progress or not – this is no bite-size revolution of the Metroid formula but something to fill an otherwise fairly empty open world map

Sol Valley is how Samus accesses each of the five main key-hiding areas, which does make it the largest completely interconnected open world Metroid has ever had. Sort of. The problem is how much of a rigmarole it is to get back and forth between anywhere. This overworld puts its worst foot forward. After I obtain the bike early into the game, tech hero Mackenzie informs me I can check out the remaining three key signals in any order I like. Score! Except, not really. I bike to one, go through a little opening space. Go up an elevator. Go along a gondola lift. Poking into this frosty area, I hit an ice wall that blocks progression. I go back across the gondola lift. Back down the elevator. Bike to another corner of the map to find I can't access that marked area at all. The tech guy then phones me to ask me to check out the volcano. I bike to that corner of the map and load across a motorbike tunnel. I can't access this facility either, but I do get a fire chip that means I can use fire blasts. Time to break the ice wall, right?

Wrong. Why would Samus be able to install her own hardware? Now I have to bike to the other end of the overworld, go through a shrine-like entrance to the forest area, use a cargo cannon to slowly blast to the other side of the forest, so that Mackenzie can finally allow Samus to shoot fire blasts. Then, of course, back across the cargo cannon load screen, sprint through the shrine entrance, bike across back to then sprint through the entrance to the ice level elevator, actually go up the elevator, then across the gondola, and then finally I can access the next dungeon-like area. This is the most egregious moment in the game, but it's literally my first experience of navigating the overworld, and you have to slog back to base camp to install upgrades a fair few times later.

Progression gating and poking around new areas after you unlock new abilities is a core part of the Metroid experience, and it can really build a sense of mastery over a space and that you're becoming steadily more powerful and well-equipped – but all this expansive overworld does is add a needless amount of slogging through load screens and dull spaces, lacking the same sense of purpose that the first Metroid Prime's focused Tallon Overworld had. To what end? To ostensibly make these spaces technically connected across Viewros, even though they still require additional transport as a load screen anyway? At no point playing Metroid Prime 3, set across a handful of planets with identities as distinct as those in Metroid Prime 4, was I desperate to pilot Samus' spaceship across empty space. In the end, I feel discouraged from revisiting areas to poke around as it's such a slog to get back there.

Clocking in at 12 hours with around 90% of upgrades and scans, its length on par with the other, tighter Metroid Prime games, Metroid Prime 4: Beyond has much more bloat – it ends up making the overworld feel like padding, when I'd rather it just be shorter. I even collected 100% of the green crystals, an overworld collectible linked to a major side mission that involves driving into chunks of the stuff at high speed – which plays out like a somehow less interesting Ratchet & Clank raritanium excursion.

The best Metroid games, and, indeed, the best Metroidvania games are mazy and labyrinthine. But somewhere along the way it feels like Metroid Prime 4 got lost itself. Within its actual levels, Metroid Prime 4 is triumphant, delivering immersive first-person exploration like nothing else in the genre, with some of the greatest levels in the series to date, dripping with potent atmosphere. But outside of those, Metroid Prime 4 is such a drag, and actively gets in the way of reaching those heights. Unfortunately, Samus isn't going beyond my expectations – there's such a thing as trying to do too much.

Take a look at out best Metroid games ranking for your next adventure with Samus Aran.