Hands on with Metroid Prime 4 Beyond - Preview
Ever since I got Metroid II: Return of Samus on GameBoy one Christmas, I have been a fan of the Metroid series and when news of a new Metroid Prime was announced back in 2017, I got excited. Then years went by and the next time we heard about the game, development had restarted and Retro Studios had been brought onboard as the developers. Here we are some 6 years later and I finally got a chance to play the game, so was this long wait worth it?
Yes.
Oh, why was it worth it? There are three things I wanted to know about the game, how smooth was the action with the traditional control scheme, or at least the Metroid Prime Remaster control scheme, did the mouse-con mode work as advertised, and was the game fun. At the Nintendo Switch 2 Experience the set up was a bit different, where most games were standing stations, Metroid Prime 4 Beyond Nintendo Switch 2 Edition was a seated experience, and that was for the mouse mode. After strapping in, literally as I was told to put the wrist straps on, I sat down and started to play, after I skipped the story cutscene. Playing with split Joy-Con was nothing new for me, and I didn’t even need to think about what I was doing, I just got into the action. There was a downed space pirate ahead of me, and locking on was a breeze and then a few shots later he was dead, and I pushed on.
For the most part I played the game with the more traditional control scheme, because for Metroid Prime, that is how it started, but after clearing out a room of space pirates, I opted to swap to mouse-con mode. Now Nintendo had said that to swap between the control schemes, all you needed to do was turn the Joy-Con 2 on its side, no menus to navigate, just turn and you are good to go. Now that to me sounded like marketing speak, so I was fully prepared for some lag when I swapped over and nope, it was seamless. With the Joy-Con 2 turned over, my fingers wrapped around the R and ZR buttons and it was just like using a regular mouse. I did encounter a small issue, well not issue, rather more unfamiliar motion, that was accessing things like the scan visor. To open that up I had to press the X button, now when using the controls in the traditional scheme, it was just reaching up and done, but in mouse-con mode, it was weird to reach down for the button. I am sure that with time it would become second nature, much like how using the ‘back’ button on a PC mouse is, but for the brief time I had access to the game, it was weird.
Apart from having odd movements when accessing buttons, I did find that the mouse controls worked flawlessly. In the traditional mode, in order to target enemies, you can either move Samus around fully and try to aim at them, or you pull the ZL trigger and lock on. Here, there is no lock on, because if you want to target an enemy, you just move the cursor over, like you would have done in any PC based shooter. When I got up to the boss fight in the build, I swapped back to the traditional mode to see how that went and after a bit swapped back to mouse-con mode. Swapping back and forth was fluid, but I would not recommend doing it in a boss fight, until you grasp the controls better. The boss, Aberax, throws out these powerful energy waves, sometimes they are low to the ground and you just jump over them, other times they are higher up and you need roll under. Trying to manage that, when I was not used to the button placement in mouse-con mode, was a challenge, as I often turned the visor on, instead of rolling into a ball.
It was after this boss fight that my time with the game came to an end and I just wanted to play more. I want to know more about the story, characters, and of course enjoy mouse-con mode some more. But perhaps most importantly I just want more Metroid Prime, the series has always delivered some great moments, weird multiplayer aside and I know this will too.
The game is coming to both Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2, and is aiming for a 2025 release, but there is no date firmer than that at this time.
