What is Metroid Prime 4: Beyond?
The fourth Prime, finally: a new planet, an old rival, psychic powers, and a motorcycle.
Metroid Prime 4: Beyond released on December 4, 2025 for Nintendo Switch and Switch 2, eighteen years after Corruption. A clash with the rival hunter Sylux, a thread left hanging since the DS era, strands Samus on Viewros, a dead civilisation’s planet that answers her with something new to the series: psychic abilities.
The new mission
Switch · Switch 2 · December 4, 2025
Post-launch reporting places Beyond in the timeline after Super Metroid and before Fusion. Its structure borrows openly from Zelda: a hub world crossed on the Vi-O-La motorcycle, opening into regions. Reviews were generally positive (a 78 on Metacritic, warm on the shooting and the planet, cooler on the hub), and combined Switch and Switch 2 sales passed one million copies before the end of its first month.
WHAT IS NEW
The Beyond toolkitPsychic abilities
Samus can bend beam shots mid-flight and move objects with her mind: the first genuinely new verb the Prime series has added since the visor itself.
The Vi-O-La
A motorcycle for the hub’s distances. Samus has had a gunship for forty years; Beyond is the first time the games let her drive anything on the ground.