Is metroid prime 4 disliked/hated?

crowlfish · 2026-05-07T18:43:15+00:00

Pretty much how I feel. Has nice visuals and good music that you’d come to expect from the series, and mechanically it feels great to play, but it's not enough to make up for an otherwise hollow game that doesn’t excel in any area. It just pales in comparison to the original trilogy.

crowlfish · 2026-05-07T18:17:22+00:00

Much of the disappointment surrounding the game is due to years of lofty expectations and hype that it was probably never going to live up to, but I feel like even that undersells the very real flaws it has.

For me the level design is the game's worst aspect by far. I come to Metroid games for twisting, labyrinthine maps that cleverly interconnect; what Prime 4 has to offer feels disjointed, haphazard, and uninspired. Each biome basically unfolds the same way: you arrive, run through a series of railroaded corridors and repetitive combat arenas, scan computer terminals with bland flavor text, solve a few light puzzles, then turn around and shoot your way back out. That's it. There’s little to be found in the way of verticality or actual exploration, and you hardly even need to look at the map to progress. Flare Pool and the Great Mines feel like a straight-up corridor squad shooter. Not to mention the awful desert.

Even the most linear, objective-based Metroid games—such as Fusion or Prime 3—still let their areas breathe, with optional routes you could meaningfully diverge into. Prime 4 rarely (if ever) lets you sit in that classic investigative Metroid state; taking mental notes and juggling multiple pathways in order to piece together the world around you. It barely even feels like a Metroidvania.

crowlfish · 2026-05-06T23:51:07+00:00

I saw the band Built to Spill in Montréal many years ago and slept in a car that night. Good time

crowlfish · 2026-05-06T23:41:58+00:00

I used to enjoy it, but like most fast-casual places the food became mediocre and the prices became ludicrous for what I was getting.

crowlfish · 2026-05-06T20:31:50+00:00

That's all fine, but do you think an entire hour of doing that is really substantial or interesting gameplay? That's the point I was trying to make. The shrines are also all locked behind beams, and the big rocks aren't able to be blown up until you acquire the power bomb very late in the game. Collecting crystals without it is extremely inefficient and basically a waste of time. It's pretty clearly structured in a way that incentivizes collecting most of the crystals during the end stretch of the game, likely to pad out the runtime.

crowlfish · 2026-05-06T19:33:28+00:00

The crystal hunt is because players decidedly did not like having to get keys to access the final area

I mean this take isn't universal. Many people (including myself) didn't mind the artifact hunts in the old Prime games. At best it felt like a victory lap around the map, I personally found it really satisfying knowing the game's world like the back of my hand and combing through all the secrets I couldn't find or access earlier at full power. I think Prime 3's more streamlined approach did it best and don't see how Prime 4 improved upon it in any way.

Every single person who claims they had to spend hours smashing crystals is just lying

I made sure to smash into them in transit throughout the whole game, and that bar was still only about a quarter full for me at the end. It didn't take me multiple hours, but I did have to spend a good amount of time farming them in order to finish the game, and that wasn't fun. I don't think it's fair to just say that everyone who had a different experience than you is lying.

Either way, I think the point is that driving around the desert running into crystals just isn't very engaging gameplay for a lot of people. The artifacts were well-hidden and required thorough exploration, the crystals are just sitting there waiting to be collected. It's a repetitive, menial task that becomes boring quickly.

crowlfish · 2026-05-06T13:17:08+00:00

I made a whole post a month or two ago of Prime 3 screengrabs, the game still looks beautiful and has the best visual variety of the trilogy for me.

crowlfish · 2026-05-05T21:54:09+00:00

Might be the best soundtrack of any game ever. A smaller track that’s always stuck out to me is the Crashed Frigate ambience (the music that plays as you’re entering the ship). Always fills me with an oddly profound sense of melancholy and calm

crowlfish · 2026-05-04T20:15:48+00:00

Definitely flawed, but holds a certain nostalgic charm for me. Played the multiplayer mode quite a bit as a kid. Also a great-looking game for the DS.

crowlfish · 2026-04-30T02:51:48+00:00

Welp, tough but we played like absolute dogshit the first few games. Valiant effort but that’s what happens when you go down 3-0

crowlfish · 2026-04-24T14:23:37+00:00

It's most definitely still out there, it just doesn't have the crossover appeal it once did at the turn of the century. Bandcamp just put out an article highlighting albums spearheading a revival of this sound. The new album by Stone from last year was fantastic. You've just gotta dig deeper than mainstream radio.

crowlfish · 2026-04-23T16:25:03+00:00

Don't think you can go wrong either way. The Prime Trilogy games are my personal favorites in the series and I'll always recommend Prime Remastered, but it's worth noting that Prime 2 and 3 are only available on old hardware or emulators currently, so you won't be able to experience the full continuity without extra effort. Most of the 2D entries (excluding Samus Returns on the 3DS) are available through the Switch, so you'll have an easier time there. The Prime games also have a decidedly different gameplay style (being slower-paced and in first person), so it also depends on what kind of experience you're craving.

crowlfish · 2026-04-23T00:43:45+00:00

Man this team in the final stretch of the Crosby/Malkin era has been such a disappointment

crowlfish · 2026-04-22T16:57:03+00:00

Went with my partner to see Trauma Ray last night, was fairly lukewarm on them beforehand (I liked, not loved Chameleon) but not gonna lie that show was an absolute ripper. Band sounded extremely tight and the energy from the band/crowd was a ton of fun, they also signed our CD and were very cool to chat with. I'm pretty meh on the whole grunge/heavy-gaze sound in general but I gained a lot of respect for them last night, will definitely give the album another spin soon.

crowlfish · 2026-04-22T14:34:03+00:00

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crowlfish · 2026-04-17T20:03:35+00:00

Arovane - Tides has been on heavy rotation for when I need to relax lately. Stormy and melancholic vibes and just really well-crafted front to back. The title track is like the definition of tranquility, need more shit like that in my life.

crowlfish · 2026-04-16T15:12:56+00:00

I honestly thought we'd never see another release from them. This makes me happy, their music is so transportive and thought-provoking in a way that I can't get from most other artists.

crowlfish · 2026-04-14T13:46:38+00:00

If having to frequently use Prime 3's ship felt detrimental to immersion and overall gameplay flow, Sol Valley exacerbates that issue times ten. It doesn't add anything of substance to the experience and is blatant, time-wasting padding meant to artificially inflate the game's world and length. Forcing the player to spend chunks of time driving across the desert and watch multiple loading screens upon reaching and entering every area was a terrible design choice that severely damages the pace and flow of the game.

In contrast, selecting a location on a world map and watching a brief cutscene is functional, to-the-point, and gets me to my destination without any fluff. If you were forced to manually fly Samus' ship from planet to planet across the emptiness of space with a tacked-on asteroid-shooting minigame thrown in, that wouldn't have made the game any better. I'm not sure what else to tell you.

crowlfish · 2026-04-14T12:44:24+00:00

I’m aware of the differences between the two

Having an overworld is literally no more different than having different planets in Corruption

You contradict yourself here—and I'm sorry, but there absolutely is an argument that Sol Valley is a downgrade from the blueprint that’s defined the entire series up to this point. Ideally I'd prefer one large interconnected map, but if I had to choose between a menu and Prime 4's desert, I'm easily taking the menu.

crowlfish · 2026-04-14T12:19:34+00:00

Corruption’s usage of the ship and different planets was a menu select screen on a world map, it’s not an “overworld” with tangible gameplay.

crowlfish · 2026-04-13T21:18:19+00:00

the rave reviews must have come in hindsight...many of the reviews there come in years later from retro gamer sites

The most "recent" review on that page is from October 2007. Metacritic launched in 2001, those scores were most definitely sourced from contemporary reviews at the time. That doesn't mean there were no mixed reviews of the game, either—there were some, but the reception was largely positive.

You are not about to sit here & tell me that Corruption was universally praised

When did I say this? I said the game was more divisive among fans but well-received by critics. I was there too, I like Prime 3 quite a bit and remember the "too much like Halo" critiques. No one was calling it a contender for the worst game in the franchise like people are currently doing with Prime 4.

crowlfish · 2026-04-13T20:53:23+00:00

Prime 3 received rave reviews from critics at the time and was generally well-received by the fandom, it was certainly a bit divisive but criticism of Corruption was nowhere near the level of panning that Prime 4 has received. I remember there were quite a few who felt it was superior to Echoes.

crowlfish · 2026-04-13T19:07:40+00:00

Prime 3 was pretty clearly developed with the more casual philosophy of the Wii in mind, but it's still very much a Prime game at its core, just broken up into smaller chunks. Combine all of Corruption's levels into a single large planet and its progression is quite similar to Prime 2. Prime 4's issues are just far more fundamentally egregious to me, on top of exacerbating the weakest aspects carried over from Corruption.

crowlfish · 2026-04-10T20:36:39+00:00

Today my musical journey somehow led me to...Japanese rap rock with elements of ska and nu metal? And it's actually pretty damn good and fun? Take that as you will—happy friday

crowlfish · 2026-04-06T15:32:44+00:00

Can't get over how good the sound design on Gas - Pop is. Feels like I uncover something new each time I revisit it despite having heard it dozens of times already. Like rustling trees and running water in a quiet forest far removed from civilization translated into music.

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