The Best Games To Play While You Wait For Metroid Prime 4

Fans rejoiced when Metroid Prime 4, the first installment in the series since the GameCube days, was announced with a cryptic teaser at E3 2017. Unfortunately, that teaser, which amounted to little more than a logo reveal on a spacey background, is all that has been officially seen of the project. In 2018, Nintendo of America announced that Metroid Prime 4 would not be seen at that year's E3, explaining, "We show things when we think we're ready to show them."

Unfortunately for fans, it appears that Nintendo was much less than ready, as production on Metroid Prime 4 was scrapped and restarted. The project was taken from its original team and handed over to the creators of the Prime series, Retro Studios. While this could potentially result in a superior product, it certainly leaves a Samus-sized hole in our hearts. 

So while you wait eagerly for Metroid Prime 4, here are some games that will keep you busy in the meantime. These are a healthy mix of action-adventure, first-person shooter, and of course, some good old-fashioned non-linear exploration (a sub-genre oftentimes referred to as "Metroidvania"). Basically, everything a galactic bounty hunter needs to keep them sharp.

From the exploration of ancient technological ruins to the seemingly impossible metallic creations lurking behind each mountain range, fans of the Metroid Prime series should find quite a bit to love in Horizon: Zero Dawn on an aesthetic level. It's a gorgeous game, filled to the brim with unique and brilliant enemy and weaponry designs. Beyond that, though, the gameplay offers plenty of mechanics reminiscent of the adventures of Samus Aran, including upgradable weaponry and the ability to scan your enemies and learn their weaknesses. 

Not only that, but the game's lead protagonist, Aloy, is every bit as badass as Samus. They share very similar viewpoints, fighting for honor and the respect of their peers. The vast open world of Zero Dawn begs for every canyon to be traversed and every discarded voice memo to be listened to, as Aloy seeks the truth about her past and the fall of the world of man. 

At first glance, the lack of combat and the immediately open world kind of make Outer Wilds feel nothing like a Metroid Prime game. However, as one Reddit user points out, it eventually sinks in that much of Outer Wilds captures "exactly what made the Prime series so great: exploring ruins of a long lost civilization, figuring out their fate, [and] getting sucked into the mystery."

Outer Wilds is an exploration-based science-fiction game with an interesting twist: every 22 minutes, the sun explodes and engulfs the solar system, killing everything in it. Afterwards, you wake up and discover that you're in a time loop and you have the same amount of time before everything goes up in flames again. It's up to you to explore the planet and figure out how to stop the destruction. Kotaku called it, "meticulously crafted, brilliantly structured ...  a game you have to play."

While it is indeed very different from the Prime games, Outer Wilds still rewards exploration and curiosity in much the same way that the Metroid series often does. 

Upon its release in 2017, Hollow Knight was a critical darling, and it's easy to see why. Despite its cute hand-drawn graphics and general appearance, Hollow Knight has a surprisingly affecting atmosphere with some occasionally grueling and intense boss battles. As you guide the Knight through the world of Hallownest, you will find and defeat enemies and take their weaponry, which allows you to progress into new areas in your quest. Also, unlike many other similar games that force you to look in every little corner to try to find the next area, there are helpful map salesmen from which to purchase world maps, giving you a little more of an leg up than most Metroidvania titles would in the exploration department.

Not only is the base game enough to tide you over for a bit, but there have been multiple expansions released for Hollow Knight that continue the story and give players plenty of new challenges to put their adorable little blades through.

Make no mistake: the first SteamWorld Dig is no slouch; it's also a fantastic little game that has the same exploratory spirit of the Metroid series. However, SteamWorld Dig 2 does everything the first game did, but bigger and better and with even more satisfying (and subtle) worldbuilding. Set in the distant future, you take control of Dorothy, a little robot who is searching for her friend who went missing in the mines of the old world. 

Despite the cute graphics, there are some genuinely unsettling moments, especially as Dorothy ventures deeper into the underground. Though it's rarely explained in any blatant way, it begins to become clear that the age of humanity didn't exactly end peacefully. Luckily, Dorothy will find power-ups along the way that allow her to upgrade her abilities and reach even greater depths in her quest. This one should appeal to fans of the earlier Metroid titles that were lighter on story, but big on atmosphere. 

Created after a wildly successful Kickstarter campaign, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is a Metroidvania from one of the folks who knows them best, former Castlevania producer Koji Igarashi. In many ways, from its gothic tone and character designs to its steep challenge level and non-linear story progression, Bloodstained feels like a true successor to the much-beloved Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. 

In Bloodstained, players take control of Miriam, a woman inflicted with a strange curse and a knack for killing demons. The plot is your standard "demons and prophecies" fare, but that's beside the point. PlayStation Lifestyle's review praised Bloodstained for the fact that it "isn't afraid to have fun with itself, and uses its scale and fidelity to really let players goof around as little or as much as they want. On top of the critical path, several distractions ... can be found throughout the castle, each giving completionists more and more to stress over." Which, let's be honest, is exactly the kind of experience that Metroid fans go gaga over.

Developed by Arkane Studios and published by Bethesda Software, 2017's sci-fi horror-fest Prey takes place in a timeline separate from our own, one in which President John F. Kennedy survived his assassination and the world's governments harvested technology from alien crash sites. The main story concerns the struggle of a man named Morgan Yu, who has been trapped on a space station with all manner of extraterrestrial monsters. The tight corridors bring to mind the claustrophobic environments of some of the early Metroid entries, while the many fantastical weapons and upgrades make this FPS feel like the gory cousin of the Metroid Prime series. 

Due to the many different obstacles throughout the game, backtracking is sometimes a necessity, something else that should sound comfortably familiar for Metroid fans. Adding to the replay value is the fact that, much like Bethesda's Dishonored series, the choices made by the player will impact the story in different ways. There are three different endings and two different post-credits scenes, depending on how you play. 

Honestly, if you're hankering for a solid Metroidvania game, then you can't do much better than to seek out one of the games that originally coined that term. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is one of those ubiquitous games that everyone accepts as a masterpiece, even folks who are only peripherally aware of it. Symphony of the Night famously took the exploratory template of Metroid and Super Metroid and applied a gothic RPG filter to it. The game's intricate dungeon design, which can be explored in a wonderfully non-linear fashion, has spawned countless imitators even within its own franchise. 

Best of all, Symphony of the Night has received a high-profile rerelease on the PlayStation 4 in the form of Castlevania: Requiem. In addition to Symphony of the Night, Requiem also includes the under-played Castlevania: Rondo of Blood, to which Symphony serves as a sequel. Both get a graphical facelift and some fun extras, including Easter eggs. If you've never played either of these games and you love the Metroidvania genre, there's never been a better time to check these out.