Samus' New Psychic Abilities in Metroid Prime 4 Adds Fresh Gameplay

I already got to try out the first 15 minutes of Metroid Prime 4: Beyond at the Nintendo Holiday Showcase in September and liked what I saw. Now I've had the chance to play an additional hour of the long-awaited first-person adventure game, and the more I get to play of this, the longer the wait feels for its December 4 release on the Switch and Switch 2.

Nintendo's preview event was split into three parts. First up was the same demo of the game's opening I'd played before, though this time it was playable in handheld mode, and seeing just how crisp the graphics look on the Switch 2's handheld screen is the most persuasive case yet in favor of finally upgrading to the new console. The second section of the preview remains embargoed - nothing playable, but a presentation of cutscenes and plot elements to best situate us for the third and final part of the preview.

At last, we get to the new stuff I can actually talk about: an hour of gameplay in the forest world of Fury Green. As usual in Metroid games, Samus loses most of her weaponry early in the game. What's new here is that instead of just retrieving her old weapons, Samus gains new psychic abilities that work just differently enough to create fresh gameplay possibilities. For example, instead of regaining the old Morph Ball Bomb, she now gets Psychic Bombs that she still places in Morph Ball mode, but can then move psychically to different locations inaccessible to the Morph Ball.

The game's puzzles are intuitively designed, sometimes almost too much so — at one point, I encountered such a clear opportunity to use one of the psychic abilities that I got ahead of myself, not realizing the puzzle that would use such abilities hadn't yet been activated. In classic Metroid style, some puzzles will be unsolvable until you get a new ability and can backtrack to do what you couldn't before. The creature designs are all excellent, with a plant-like monster that attacks with vines and thorns, making for an exciting boss battle.

Samus isn't working completely on her own in Fury Green. Partway through the demo, she picks up a distress signal from another Federation soldier. After rescuing him, he accompanies her in her exploration, firing additional shots while still needing a good deal of protection when swarms of monsters attack. The one thing I didn't really vibe with in this demo is the sight of this other character with his mask down. I'm so used to humans in Metroid games being depicted with shiny anime graphics that seeing realistic skin textures here just a bit Uncanny Valley. I already fear the Discourse that will occur if we ever see Samus unmasked in this style.

Despite featuring so heavily in the game's marketing (including as the big photo op at this event's exit), we still haven't had a chance to demo any use of Samus' new motorcycle, Vi-0-La. I wish I could have found out more about that — or that I could tell you about some of the embargoed plot details, for that matter — but all the more to look forward to in the final game. We've waited 18 years for a new Metroid Prime game; now it's only a few more weeks. The mix of old and new in the gameplay and the striking visual presentation here seems to be exactly what fans have been waiting for.