Metroid Prime 4: Beyond finally showed up after years of silence, delays, and hopes stacked higher than any Power Beam upgrade.
Everyone expected the return of a series that once lived in the 90s on every review chart, and after almost two decades, it felt like the kind of comeback that could only end in a victory lap.
Then the first batch of reviews took things in a different direction. The reception is strong, though the score sits in territory untouched by any mainline Prime title.
Why Is Metroid Prime 4: Beyond’s Score Creating So Much Discussion?
Metroid Prime 4: Beyond has landed in a strange spot for a series that has lived most of its life in the critical stratosphere.
After years of silence, memes about development hell, and the kind of hype that only builds over almost two decades, the game has settled at around an 80–81 average on Metacritic.
On paper, that’s firmly in “good to very good” territory. The pressure really comes from history, with the first Metroid Prime still ranked near the top of Metacritic’s all-time list and its sequels, Echoes and Corruption, sitting comfortably in the 90s.
A series that usually lives in the high-score zone will always make noise when it lands almost ten points under its previous lowest mainline entry, especially when people have been waiting since the Wii days for a real follow-up.
How Have Review Standards Changed Since the Early Prime Games?
A lot of players are pointing out that review standards back in the early 2000s were very different, with percentage scoring and magazine trends pushing even average games into the 80–90% range.
Modern outlets use stars or 10-point scales more evenly, and the whole range actually gets used, so an 8/10 now doesn’t map cleanly to a 9.5/10 from twenty years ago.
That’s why some fans argue that comparing Prime 4’s score directly to Metroid Prime 1–3 isn’t completely fair.
Critics are now judging it against two decades of progress in first-person adventures and shooters, not just against what existed on GameCube and Wii.
For Prime purists, the fact that Beyond still feels like a classic Prime game is a strength.
Players who are used to snappier enemies, tighter gunplay, and today’s faster pacing might see that faithfulness as old-school, and those little bumps start to pile up once a review score enters the picture.
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