I haven’t finished the Metroid Prime 4, but we wanted to talk about it. We were hyped for the game but the previews left us worried. We played it and there’s some things to discuss.

When I first booted it up, the intro made us think it was trying to be Halo. It’s written by devs from 343 industries, and the intro level, characters, guns and uniforms look similar to Halo. Theres not much of a story besides Samus is the chosen one of a dead alien race. Theres federation soldiers you meet around the map and they feel out of place.

Graphics wise the game looks good. I’m sick of people bragging about specs and how many pixels are on screen. This looks better than most games today and has a good art direction. The levels look unique and have their own atmosphere. 

The levels of the game don’t feel like connected ones of the earlier games. It feels like a regular shooter, but with extra rooms you need to come back to later. You can guess where the save rooms are. They also divided levels into smaller rooms where it doesn’t feel necessary. The biggest issue is the open desert level, it ruins the pacing of the game. No one wants an open world Metroid game. It’s almost like the dark world problem in MP2, but worse. I would like an MP game on a desert planet, but with stuff it and the old level design. They need to use those loading screens with Samus on the motorcycle when going place to place. They say you can do the levels in any order you like but thats not true. You drive through the desert to find a new level or dungeon, go inside into another loading screen, and have to comeback out since you don’t have the powers to go into it. Then you need to drive back across the desert and find a level you can do. You also have to go back to the original area to upgrade your blaster. There is also two loading screens and a desert drive to get there. Why do many doors look like certain organs?

Gameplay wise the shooting doesn’t feel precise, but lock on makes up for it. The psychic powers are disappointing. Its basic powers from every other Metroid. The morph ball grenades, grapple and others are now psychic powers. In psychic mode they made the charge beam steerable. It has bad controls and isn’t precise, but you can lock on. You have to use it in a lot of boss fights and makes them last longer. The psychic orb thing is interesting, but why do you need to go into a ball to use it?

The boss fights have the same issue I had with the ones in 3. Most were shoot these different colored sections over and over to drop their shields and shoot them again. Most have the same charge and ground pound attacks. The Sylux fight was the best and most unique of them. I don’t think Ridley is in the game. It also seems like the scanning is too much. You usually need to scan stuff, but it feels like you have to scan to do anything.

After seeing people say how bad the game was, I thought they were exaggerating. With its flaws, I was enjoying it. What made me question if I wanted to keep playing was the driving across the desert to upgrade my blaster. This game could’ve been pretty good, but shows how open worlds can ruin a game.