As the Metroid Prime series has gone on, it’s leaned progressively more into fast-paced action and linear stories, while deemphasizing the more open-ended exploration of the original game. That shift is seen in full force in the intro to Metroid Prime 4. A Galactic Federation base guarding a mysterious alien relic is under attack, and spacefaring bounty hunter Samus Aran is there to help. At the end of this short but fun sequence, with Samus blasting her way through Space Pirate troops as her allies take potshots from behind cover, an accident involving the relic sends the heroine hurtling through space until she awakens on the planet Viewros.
It’s been a long wait for Metroid Prime 4: Beyond — eight years since it was announced and 18 since Metroid Prime 3. Long enough for the game to restart development, switch studios, build up excessive amounts of both hope and fear in series fans, and make many question whether it would ever be released. Long enough even that the Metroidvania formula the series was first built on has massively expanded in popularity, which perhaps explains Metroid Prime 4’s attempts to set itself apart from both its series and its genre — an impulse that detracts from the game much more than it adds to it.
