Metroid Prime 4: Beyond

Metroid Prime 4: Beyond ended one of the longest waits in gaming history when it launched in late 2025 simultaneously for Switch and Switch 2. After the restart, development returned to Retro Studios, the team that originally created the Prime series, and the result stays very faithful to their work. Samus Aran once again moves through a first-person perspective, but this isn't a classic shooter: a substantial part of the game involves scanning the environment, reading logs, finding routes through an interconnected map, and gradually unlocking areas you'd merely passed through before.

The new addition is a psionic component. Samus gains abilities that let her influence objects from a distance, solve puzzles, and switch between shooting and manipulating her surroundings during combat, adding another layer to the series' classic room design. Boss fights remain a ritual of finding the weak point and the right moment, environments often loop back on themselves, and the reward for exploration is a new ability rather than just a stronger weapon. On Switch 2 the game can also be controlled using mouse mode, which sharpens aiming considerably and is a very welcome option for players used to a keyboard and mouse.

Technically, the new console offers a noticeably richer version: higher resolution, the option to play at an increased refresh rate, and steadier performance than on the original hardware. The atmosphere rests on solitude and silence broken only by ambient sounds, with the music working through ambient textures that only fully open up in the most intense moments — exactly as the Prime series has done from the start. Reception was positive, and most players appreciated that the game didn't try to modernize everything at any cost. Today Beyond feels like a reminder that first-person exploration action still has plenty to offer, even though the market has long since stopped treating it as mainstream and few similar titles get made anymore. It's also a good entry point for newcomers to the series, since the story doesn't require knowledge of earlier installments.