HOW I PLAYED: I played Metroid Prime 4 on my Nintendo Switch 2, mostly in docked mode. I purchased a digital copy through the Nintendo eShop and played on my 32-inch LG UltraGear monitor using Performance Mode at 120Hz.
INTRO — 3/5
Metroid Prime 4 has a very traditional Metroid opener. You are at a base being attacked by Space Pirates while getting a feel for the controls of Samus. If you have ever played the original Metroid Prime, it is very reminiscent of that, which is no surprise since Metroid Prime 4 is made by the same studio.
You make your way through this completely destroyed base, take on some basic enemies, and eventually encounter your first boss.
It was an OK opener. Very tried and true, but nothing amazing or particularly memorable.
CUTSCENES — 2/5
I thought the cutscenes in Metroid Prime 4 were very campy and cringe at times. With a character like Samus Aran, I think you need to keep things simple. Less is more.
Instead, the cutscenes really focus on the side Marine characters, giving them different personalities and backstories, none of which I really cared about. We learn MORE about these side characters than we do the game's main antagonist, and it left me feeling underwhelmed.
The cutscenes also feel like something from the PS3 / Xbox 360 era. The visuals look good, but they are nowhere near the level of the current console generation.
WORLD BUILDING — 2/5
The world building in Metroid Prime 4 is very weak. It uses the same system as the original Metroid Prime where you scan items and read their descriptions. The main modern addition is getting more information through NPC dialogue and cutscenes.
I would have liked a lot more environmental storytelling, but the game is very barren, which becomes an even bigger problem once you get into the "open world."
Overall, the world building is very bare bones. Not terrible, but not great or particularly enjoyable for me.
OVERALL STORY — 1/5
I thought the overall story was very weak. Samus and her team are transported to another world, and you barely get a grip on what is going on or why you should care.
You have basically ZERO interaction with the main antagonist until the final boss battle. After the ending, I was just sitting there thinking:
What the hell was all that?
I think the problem with Metroid is that the series has kind of put itself into a corner with how these stories should be told. I think they have gone about as far as they can with the Chozo, Space Pirates, and some of the other main lore of the Metroid universe. It has gotten too convoluted to the point where none of it really feels like it has stakes or matters.
The story is largely forgettable, and I found myself forgetting it almost as soon as the credits rolled.
CHARACTER MODELS — 3/5
The character models look good. If you played Metroid Prime Remastered on Nintendo Switch, Metroid Prime 4 looks very similar to that. Yes, the game has been bumped up to 4K thanks to the Switch 2's increased specs, but the actual visual fidelity is very similar to Metroid Prime Remastered from 2023.
Samus looks great and is definitely a well-designed character model. The NPCs are very average, though, and this is where you start to see the visual limitations of the console.
The enemies and bosses also look good, but not great or amazing. The models lack some of the tiny details we have become accustomed to seeing in modern AAA games.
Again, the Switch 2 is essentially a handheld console, so its lower power is understandable, but it is still worth mentioning.
ENVIRONMENTS — 2/5
When I heard Metroid Prime 4 was going to be an open-world game, I was very skeptical.
After playing it, I was right to be.
The "open world" is so insulting. It literally looks and feels like someone at Retro Studios was like:
"Oh shit... we told Nintendo it would be open world?.... OK... Fuck it. Throw a big empty desert in the game."
Literally, THAT is the "open world." A huge empty-ass desert that you have to ride across on a motorcycle to get between areas.
The best environment in the game is probably the first major dungeon, the Thunder biome, which you actually revisit a couple of times. The fire / lava biome is also pretty good.
The rest of the jungle and organic biomes are very dull and uninspired.
SPECIAL FX — 3/5
Back in 2001, the visuals of Metroid Prime were groundbreaking and insanely high fidelity for the time.
But today, in 2026, these visuals are passable.
I am happy they got the game running at 120 FPS on Switch 2, but I can still tell this game was primarily designed to run on the first-generation Switch.
The particle effects and new Psychic Beam effects are bland and generic, while the explosions are pretty bare bones.
Like most of this game, the effects are decent. Not great, not amazing, but also not terrible.
AMBIENCE — 2/5
A lot of the tracks remind me of the original Metroid Prime, and I would not be surprised if a lot of the OST was straight ripped from it. Some of the OG tracks make an appearance, but I felt like there was nothing new or refreshing here.
Nothing about the ambience got me sucked into the world.
I could literally feel the same uninspired attitude that the devs had for making this game.
BOSS MUSIC — 2/5
The boss tracks are your standard high-tempo alert or driving tracks to make the player aware that, yes, you are fighting a boss.
I couldn't hum you back a single boss track.
None of it was memorable, and it was barely adequate for the situation. Either they had no budget for a good OST or they just didn't care.
SOUND DESIGN — 3/5
I played with headphones at times, and the beam cannon and environmental sounds were good. The sound mixing was also done well.
The voice acting, however, was campy and kind of overacted, which is kind of the standard for Western studios.
Overall, the actual sound design is good enough, but nothing about it really stood out to me.
FRAME RATE — 5/5
I was VERY happy with the performance of Metroid Prime 4. It was easily one of the highlights of the game.
I felt like it played at mostly 120 FPS for the entire game while docked, and it maintained a solid 60 FPS while playing in handheld mode.
Again, this is ultimately a Switch 1 title that had some beefed-up features added for the Switch 2, but the performance was excellent.
I have to give it a perfect score here for offering a 120Hz mode when most console games still cap out at 60 FPS.
STABILITY — 5/5
This is still a Nintendo game, so I wasn't surprised that I encountered ZERO bugs or graphical glitches.
I had no performance hiccups during my entire playthrough, and I played the game at launch.
Rock solid.
CONTROLS — 4/5
Controlling Samus was great. Movement was very smooth, and I felt extremely comfortable with her controls.
The one thing I HATED was controlling the Psychic Beam and having to manually guide my shots using the Psychic abilities.
But that problem has much more to do with the mechanics than the actual controls.
MECHANICS — 2/5
All of the typical Metroid mechanics are here. Morph Ball, Grapple Hook, Charge Beam, and everything else you would expect.
But there are several new mechanics in Metroid Prime 4, and I feel VERY differently about those.
The New Motorcycle Mechanic
This was CLEARLY a Band-Aid fix for how boring and uninspired the "open world" was. They knew that if players had to traverse this shit on foot, they would probably quit the game.
So they give Samus a motorbike to fast travel across the dead, open desert space.
The little motorbike mini-games were actually fun, and I think the bike should have been limited to those.
But... here we are.
You can check off that "open world" box, I guess.
The Psychic Abilities
I know it must be tough to constantly think of new ways to meaningfully upgrade Samus throughout these games while giving players abilities that feel unique to the new title.
But these Psychic abilities were SOOO lame and trash.
If they wanted to incorporate psychic abilities, they should have copied games like Remedy's Control or Quantum Break.
Instead, you get a beam that you can control with your mind and manually guide through the air. It is so flaccid and dumb, and it wasn't fun to use, especially when the game started baking that shitty mechanic directly into boss fights.
The Green Crystals
Throughout the open world, you find green crystals that can be broken for an in-game currency and brought to an NPC for upgrades.
I thought this mechanic was 100% optional until I reached the endgame and discovered that it was NOT.
So I had to spend HOURS grinding these stupid crystals.
Very POOR system and not fun for the player.
The Arm Cannon Upgrade System
I also hated the new system where you find a random item in each biome, usually after beating the area boss, and then have to bring it back to the stupid comic-relief NERD NPC so he can make an upgrade for your Arm Cannon.
Just keep the tried-and-true Metroid upgrade system.
Samus finds the Plasma Beam. You get the Plasma Beam.
Done.
I hated the forced use of this annoying NPC.
PACING — 1/5
The pacing is poor.
Again, the "open world" was clearly shoehorned into Metroid Prime 4 for whatever reason. They kind of introduce fast travel through this huge cannon that launches Samus between areas, but I would WAY rather just have quick travel through the map in the start menu.
In typical Metroid fashion, you have to ping-pong back and forth between areas and revisit them once you obtain certain abilities. Metroid Prime 4 just shows how much of a chore that structure can feel like in the current era.
This is very much a game of its time.
The problem is that the time was 2001, and this game was released in 2026.
UI/UE — 4/5
I thought the UI/UE was actually very sharp.
Again, it isn't too far removed from the HUD in Metroid Prime from 2001, but it has been slightly modernized and refined.
The start menu was very easy to navigate, and everything worked exactly how I wanted it to.
Overall, very good.
BOSS QUALITY — 1/5
I found EVERY boss in Metroid Prime 4 frustrating.
Not because they were difficult, but because they just HAD to force the stupid Psychic mechanic into every single boss fight.
You essentially have to slow down time, take control of your stupid Psychic Beam, and awkwardly navigate its trajectory through the air to hit the "magic spot" and deal damage.
It turned what would have otherwise been serviceable but average boss fights into frustrating encounters that I actually started to resent.
ENEMY VARIETY — 2/5
The enemy variety is serviceable but very mediocre.
There are enough enemies that I didn't really notice the same mobs coming at me over and over again, but there still isn't much variety.
I will give the game a pass for at least attempting to have different enemy types for the specific biomes. They also recolor or reskin enemies to better match the environments.
It's enough to prevent the enemies from becoming painfully repetitive, but that's about it.
GAMEPLAY VARIETY — 1/5
It sucks.
You are either traversing very long and boring areas or solving very minor platforming puzzles.
There are collectibles you can find throughout Metroid Prime 4, but I found getting from point A to point B so fatiguing that I couldn't even be bothered to go out of my way to look for optional collectibles.
When simply moving through the game becomes exhausting, I definitely don't want MORE reasons to explore it.
REPLAYABILITY — 2/5
There are multiple endings you can get in Metroid Prime 4. I think I got the "bad ending" on my first playthrough.
But there was absolutely NO WAY I was playing the entire game again just to see the other endings.
I immediately went to YouTube, searched "Metroid Prime 4 endings," and watched the other endings that way.
I do not regret that decision whatsoever.
Shockingly, Metroid Prime 4 has no meaningful accessibility options that qualify for our bonus categories.
No Colorblind Options.
No Audio / Visual Cues.
No Assist Modes.
0/3.
Metroid Prime 4 is just an uninspired, tired game.
I was actually excited to play this as a longtime Metroid fan going all the way back to Super Metroid on the SNES. Yes... I'm that old.
So playing Metroid Prime 4 and feeling how little care went into figuring out how this game should actually play was incredibly disappointing. It's barely passable, and I would NEVER recommend anyone pay full Nintendo prices to play Metroid Prime 4. It does nothing new or exciting. I would tell anyone interested in the series to play Metroid Prime Remastered or even emulate the original before recommending this. The one genuinely cool thing this game did was offer a 120 FPS mode, but even that is wasted on such a lame, uninspired SLOG of a game.
Do better, Nintendo...
PROS
✅ Excellent 120 FPS Performance Mode on Switch 2
✅ Rock-solid performance with no bugs or crashes during my playthrough
✅ Samus feels smooth and responsive to control
✅ Clean, sharp, and easy-to-navigate UI/UE
CONS
❌ Empty and completely uninspired "open world"
❌ Psychic abilities are lame, frustrating, and forced into boss fights
❌ Weak, forgettable story with an underdeveloped antagonist
❌ Tedious progression, backtracking, crystal grinding, and poor pacing
TLDR: 50/100 (MEDIOCRE)
Metroid Prime 4 feels like a game designed in 2001 that somehow got released in 2026. The excellent 120 FPS Performance Mode, rock-solid stability, smooth controls, and sharp UI are highlights, but they are wasted on an uninspired open world, weak story, forgettable soundtrack, frustrating Psychic mechanics, tedious progression, and painfully outdated gameplay structure. As a longtime Metroid fan, this was incredibly disappointing. Skip the full Nintendo price and play Metroid Prime Remastered instead. Do better, Nintendo...
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