Metroid Prime 4: Beyond
I do not envy the staff at Retro Studios. They were tasked with the monumental challenge of both A) unfucking whatever was going on at Namco Bandai during the game's first few years of development and then B) also delivering a world-class experience that's true to the franchise on top of that, with one of their previous games being mentioned among the literal best games ever made. It would hardly be surprising if something had to give, and while the game certainly shows a lot of scars from the long development time, the fact that what we ended up getting was "fine" as opposed to "Duke Nukem Forever" is something of a miracle in and of itself. This is not to say the game is perfect, god no; even at its best, this is very much a sequel to Corruption (itself a relatively divisive title as far as Metroid is concerned) and that's before we even start to talk about the new additions for Beyond. But I think we should at least start by saying that yes, the game actually came out and is broadly pretty good, which puts it near the top of the "development hell" project list by default.
So, what does Prime 4 actually bring to the table, you might ask? Well, broadly speaking, it is a game divided in two halves. On one hand, the game boasts five new major areas - Fury Green (a lush jungle), Volt Forge (a manufacturing plant in a perpetual thunder storm), Ice Belt (a science lab on a frozen mountaintop), Flare Pool (a geothermal energy plant at a volcano), and The Great Mine (self-explanatory). Each of them has a beautiful, distinct look and tone, great music, and they play out in different ways as you explore them. If I were to be uncharitable, I would call these the parts "where Prime 4 decides to actually be a Prime game" - and they are, unsurprisingly, far and away the best parts of the game.
Now, even with that praise, it should be said that these are largely one-shot, mostly linear affairs with at most one major offshoot path that is The Designated Backtracking Area™ in this zone. Prime 2 played around with this concept a lot - and to be fair, it had much more complex zones than Prime 4 does - but it largely kept you in one place until you had thoroughly explored it, then sent you on your way to the next one aside from a very brief return trip to pick up a single powerup. This is fine! In many ways, it almost makes the game feel like a pre-BotW Zelda game, in that you explore an area, get a couple new toys that let you interact with the world in a new way, and then repeat in the next zone. The problem, then, is that Prime 4 takes that model and applies it to Prime 3's much more linear and straightforward level design. There are generally only a couple power-ups you can't get on your first pass through an area, and there are almost never any alternate paths to follow, aside from the one directly in front of you. This is not a value judgment, per se - I am not saying that Prime 4's levels are bad - but I am saying that if you come in expecting Prime 1 or 2's twisting level design, you will be disappointed by what you find.
And this is the point at which the first of Prime 4's Big Ideas™ enters the chat: rather than a single, unified world to travel around (a la Prime 1/2) or several distinct worlds that you select from a menu (Prime 3), Prime 4 makes the curious addition of Sol Valley, a large, open desert that separates the five main areas. I do not understand this decision at all, and have to assume that the desert is something that stuck around from an early build of the game, because it commits pretty much every sin that one can imagine regarding deserts. It is big (sort of), the same ugly shade of tan over the whole thing, filled with annoying enemies to to fight, and contains nothing but a handful of puzzle shrines and a few items to pick up if you stumble across them along the way. It adds nothing to the game, and it would be drastically improved if the desert was cut entirely and the levels were interwoven instead like in Prime 1.
That said, the game's other big selling(?) point is the Vi-O-La, a motorcycle that Samus gets early on to let her quickly traverse the open world. With the bike, your travel speed is increased to the point where crossing the desert feels more like getting across Ocarina of Time's Hyrule Field - a little annoying, especially if you have to go from one end to the other, but generally not long enough to actually be a problem. This is good, because you're going to need to do a lot of exploration in the desert - this game's artifact hunt involves collecting Green Energy Crystals by breaking them with the bike out in the wild, and while I had roughly 85% of what I needed by just making sure I cleared all my map squares and hitting them as I saw them, someone who hates the desert and doesn't go out of their way to explore is going to have a very bad time at the end of the game. You do get a few benefits along the way (most notably a beam upgrade at 25% crystals), but the game never communicates these benefits, nor does it tell you that this is something you have to do until you hit the end of the game and have to go drive around for an hour before you can go to the final boss.
And then there's Myles. See, in addition to Samus, a handful of Galactic Federation troopers have also found themselves on this planet, and it'll be up to Samus to keep them safe until they can make their way back to base camp in Fury Green. Myles Mackenzie, fairly or not, becomes the face of these escort missions - he is a mechanic, so he's largely useless in combat, he's a little too chatty in general, and when he does talk, he has a bad case of the Marvel Quips. But he's mostly just notable because he's the most prominent member of the bunch. Ice Belt, Flare Pool, and the Great Mines each add a new trooper to the crew, with such great personalities as "Gun", "Robot", and "Samus fangirl" - whether this is better or worse is up to you to decide.
But Myles also draws the short straw in how the game chooses to utilize him. It would be one thing if he was merely annoying for an hour while you traversed Fury Green before disappearing until the end of the game, but Prime 4 chooses to make him your Mission Control as well - which means that when you boot up the game and head out into the open world, the first thing you'll hear is "Hey Samus, did you check out [thing] at [place]?" Or after you finish a zone and return to the open world. Or if you've spent too long out in the desert without making any actual progress. Or...anything, really. Prime 4's radio chatter is tuned way too high, which means you're constantly getting hints that you neither asked for nor wanted. I really wish there was a way to just turn it off, because there's already a dedicated radio button on the pause menu for calling Myles to get a hint! It would massively help both the game's general feeling of solitude and save at least a little bit of poor Myles' reputation in the process.
And that brings me to another weird thing that this game does: Why does Samus not talk? I'm not saying she needs to be a chatterbox or anything, lord knows we got enough of that in Other M. But if you're going to have all these side characters, each of whom has a dedicated plot mission and is regularly directly addressing her, she should probably at least say something in response? Like, early on, Myles is trying to get a computer started but he can't read the Lamorn language; thankfully, Samus is nearby and gives him a translation chip so he can get it started, but she doesn't tell him this, she just kind of shoves it in his face. Would a "Here." have been too much to ask for? The fact that the game actually manages to get across a "they're dipshits, but they're MY dipshits" vibe for Samus' relationship with the GF troops is almost impressive, given its utter refusal to let Samus say anything.
Anyway, that's a whole lot of words about what this game does poorly. Something this game does pretty well is its storytelling, as most of the Prime games do. The Lamorn society is neat to learn about, as you see pieces of their history, what they created, and what ultimately led to their downfall throughout the game. While the premise itself won't be winning any awards (it's basically a rehash of Prime 1 with "Phazon" hastily scratched out and "Green Energy" written above it), the parts of it that you do get to explore are really cool, with the Ice Belt labs being the standout of the game for me. Somewhat less successful is the integration of Sylux as the game's villain, as he shows up at the very beginning of the game and then pretty much disappears until it's time for the final boss. I love the idea! He was a cool design in Prime Hunters, and it sure as shit beats fighting Ridley for the 18th time, but he needed to actually show up a lot more than he did. Plus, the backstory that the game gives him is...well, you don't really need much more than "He's an asshole who wants to kill Samus", but locking his REAL motivation behind getting 100% collection is certainly a decision.
Ultimately, I think how one feels about Prime 4 is going to depend a lot on their expectations coming in. Some people want a new Metroid Prime, another adventure where Samus explores a new planet and gets a bunch of new power-ups along the way. These people, I think, will be mostly satisfied by what Beyond has to offer; they might not necessarily appreciate the GF troopers or the desert, but on a fundamental level, Prime 4 will give them what they are asking for. But there's a lot of people who want a new Metroid Prime - something that justifies all these years of waiting, that moves the genre forward in a way similar to the original game back in 2002. Prime 4 is not that, and I feel pretty confident in saying that these people would have been disappointed regardless of how Prime 4 came out (but ESPECIALLY by the version of Prime 4 that released). For what it's worth, I fell into that first group and had a pretty good time with the game. I'd be lying if I wasn't yelling "Shut up, Myles!" like everyone else 10 hours in, but even those dweebs eventually grew on me enough that I didn't hate them. It's a solid 7.5 or so, albeit one with a lot of caveats.
See you next mission, eh? Hopefully not in another 18 years.