With a title that long, who needs a subtitle?
Off the heels of a limited demo experience from May’s Switch 2 preview — and later, a similar experience available at October’s PAX Australia — Nintendo Australia offered Stevivor an extended hands-on session with Metroid Prime 4 Beyond Switch 2 Edition ahead of its December release. As we felt about the title back in May, this one is set to be a banger.
May’s Switch 2 preview featured Metroid Prime 4 in one specific control scheme, dubbed Dual Stick Fusion, that allows a user to hold a Joy-Con 2 in either hand, playing in a traditional sense and gripping both controllers in-hand, using joysticks to move and aim. You can swap on the fly too, using the left Joy-Con in that same configuration whilst the right-hand Joy-Con is turned on its side and used as a mouse.
“I played Beyond with a Joy-Con normally in my left hand, and with a Joy-Con as a mouse in my right. My left Joy-Con was used for movement and things like locking onto enemies — almost like a keyboard would on PC — while my right-hand was looking around, firing my weapons, and doing things like scanning and changing into morph ball form,” I wrote at the time.
“While your left hand is akin to using a keyboard, your right-hand is doing a lot of keyboard-like things too. I initially found myself having to lift my Joy-Con mouse to look at its side so I could figure out how to get into morph ball mode or scan an object,” I continued. “In short, if you’ve used one of those upright, ergonomic mice that you basically place your hand around rather than on top of, you’ll have a small advantage here.”
With more Switch 2 experience behind my belt — both using mouse controls and just remembering that A and B are swapped as compared to the controller I usually use — Dual Stick Fusion was my go-to control scheme of the day, though we were allowed to play in handheld mode and a third mode, Pointer Fusion, which is basically as if you were on a Wii playing Resident Evil 4; the right Joy-Con is used to point at the screen in order to aim and move the camera (a la Duck Hunt if you want to go old, old-school). Handheld mode, of course, is just Dual Stick Fusion without any mouse capabilities, and latched onto the Switch 2’s screen.
As I noted in my Switch 2 preview, Joy-Con mouse sensitivity is way too high for me; I found that by changing mouse sensitivity (in the case of Metroid 4‘s menus, “cursor sensitivity”) down from 9 to 5, I was able to control Samus far more easily.
As with our May experience, the Metroid Prime 4 hands-on preview consisted of the opening mission of the game, followed closely by a section almost immediately afterward as Samus finds herself transported to an usual, alien area. It’s there, naturally, that she gains the favour of said alien race, the Lamorn, and is bestowed a special Psychic Crystal (seen embedded in her helmet, below). And, as per usual, Samus loses most of her abilities and embarks on a quest to reacquire her arsenal.
I fought a variety of enemies in the opening, alongside a new lush and green area known as the Fury Green. Both worlds concluded with a big boss fight, and in true Nintendo style, specially locked doors acted as small tutorials, giving Samus the info she’d need to succeed. The first instance taught Samus how to hold down ZL to auto-lock on an enemy, set auto-lock, and then move your right stick to target weak points around that centre. The sequence really trains you in that form of combat, and then forces you to mix it all up with traversal; jump, dash, and Morph Ball around the arena as you wait for enemy shields to fall and unleash damage of your own.
The second boss required a charged shot that you needed to control, Batman Arkham batarang-style, through multiple targets. In fact, most of Fury Green reminded me of Batman Arkham in one way or another; I found myself in Samus’ scanning mode most of my playthrough, just like I lived in Detective Mode in Rocksteady’s trilogy.
Metroid Prime 4 is a great mixture of exploration, combat, and traversal, and a human companion named Myles rounds out the mix by adding some much-needed humour and exposition (so that Samus can keep relatively stoic and mysterious). Myles, once rescued by Samus, hung out in a hub area of sorts; it looks like it’s a place you’ll be revisiting.
No matter if I was playing on a TV or in handheld mode, Metroid Prime 4 looks fabulous. Right after entering Fury Green (basically looking like the image above), I stopped to look up at a gigantic tree that sparkled as if it was out of Avatar. I never stop to look around in games, especially in previews, so that had me make note. If you can play on Switch 2 over Switch, I’d certainly recommend that.
Expect Metroid Prime 4 Beyond on Switch and Switch 2 from 4 December.
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Metroid Prime 4 Beyond4 December 2025Switch Switch 2
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Stevivor travelled to Nintendo Australia’s Melbourne-based office to preview Metroid Prime 4 Beyond at its own cost. Non-alcoholic beverages and snacks were provided at the event.
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