A 8.6 on Metacritic is not "a majority left feeling very disappointed", that's more like a minority.

Sure but a 3.2 on Backloggd and 71% on HLTB is lower than that of Brothership and concerningly similar to Paper Mario: Color Splash— two very controversial entries in their respective franchises which are often viewed with a minority favorability perspective. MC is often review bombed (whether in the negative manner of MKWorld or positive manner of Sonic Racing Crossworld); the other two are not so much due to their sites focus not being on review scores.

Mmm… IDK I feel kinda bad arguing that “well actly everyone hates the game you’re enjoying!” I’d say just ignore what others think— I remember a highly vocal minority trying to convince everyone back in 2023 that actually TotK was actually an underwhelming follow up to BotW. Same thing with Pikmin 4, two games I consider to be among the greatest of all time.

In other news: Metroid Prime 4: Beyond performed only 15% lower than Metroid Dread in UK launch week. Very solid start! Likely a bigger opening when digital is accounted for. Seems primed for 2-3mil this holiday quarter— again, great news for Metroid!

Ratio between NS1:NS2 was 17:83.

If it sells as well as Dread (or close to it) I definitely think we'll have a Prime 5 and maybe even Prime 6 depending on how that game sells.

That probably would be a slight loss or breaking even, but only because of the development hell the game went through (would be a profit for a game with say 3-5 years of dev time), and Nintendo likes to keep franchises alive for their IP strength, so long as they aren't extremely unprofitable.

Hoping it does even better than that though and the series experiences real user-growth.

Digital Foundry have done an analysis of the game:

- In Switch 2's quality mode, the game is native 1440p/60fps in docked mode, (with Samus's visor rendered at 4K) and 1080p/60fps in portable mode.

- In Switch 2's performance mode, the game is 1080p/120fps in docked mode, and 720p/120fps in portable mode.

- Switch 1 is 720p/60fps docked with a 900p visor, and 504p/60fps in portable mode with a 576p visor.

- Performance is near perfect, with only a few very rare single dropped frames that are basically imperceptible. 

- Switch 2 version has higher resolution textures, the addition of SMAA, and faster load times

the game is great, but is bad in the same way the original three are. i’m constantly scanning everything even when i know that they are pointless or uninteresting scans. i can’t help myself. otherwise it is a privilege to still be playing metroid prime in 2025. the open world is wonky but not unwelcomed as far as i’m concerned. doesn’t change the game much. and the argument that it is not metroidvania is stupid. it is obviously metroidvania.

the thing i dislike the most is the constant reminders from npc characters regarding what you should be doing. it feels like the least necessary part of the game. but even then it’s not as intrusive as i thought it might be.

Last night beat the Ice Belt and gained the ice shot, also completed a few of the Sol Valley "shrines" and cashed in my green crystals for the power beam upgrade.

While it may not be traditional for a Metroid game, I think the whole BOTW-esque idea of self-contained shrines scattered around the open world actually works well here; my only issue is that in a game where you will often find yourself blocked from progressing and have to leave and come back later, the size of the world means backtracking takes longer here than in say Prime 2 or 3, and the game could have benefitted from more of those Lamorn travel pods that shoot you from Sol Valley to near base camp in Fury Green.

Just finished my evening session now; started working my way through Flare Pool and met Sergeant Duke. He's easily the best of the troopers so far, being better acted (by Jason Kelley, voice of the Doom Slayer among other things) and less corny than Myles and the Sniper at Ice Belt. 

Flare Pool is also brilliantly atmospheric, strongly evoking Prime 1's Magmoor Caverns but with shades of Prime 3's Pirate Homeworld. Great stuff.

Yeah, this is my main complaint about this game. Backtracking takes quite a long time due to the huge distance between the main areas + the (short) loading times to enter and exit them.

I'm very close to you actually. Got the Ice Shot, but instead of heading towards Flare Pool I went to Volt Forge as for Miles suggestion. Let's see what we find.

Is it just me or the bosses are one of the highlights of Beyond? So far, I think they are among the best in the series.

Yes, the bosses are amazing. Even the people who hate the game and say it's a 0/10 seem to begrudgingly agree that the bosses are good, so it's pretty clear that's the highlight for most. 

Yeah the bosses are great, I'd agree they are the best of the Prime series so far, with strong designs and a good balance of challenging but not annoying.

The main strengths of the game for me are the world, visuals/performance, soundtrack, and bosses. Main downsides are the VA/dialog and how long it takes to backtrack sometimes. Still, the good outweighs the bad comfortably.