Playing a first person shooter on a Nintendo console with mouse controls was certainly something I had to wrap my mind around as I navigated the demo of Metroid Prime 4: Beyond. It was interesting to say the least, and by the time I finished the boss fight at the end of the demo, I was somewhat sold on the feature.
Somewhat.
Metroid Prime 4: Beyond has been long in development, so when it made an appearance at not just one but two Nintendo Direct presentations in a week, It felt too good to be true as a long suffering Prime fan.
I remember the first time I booted up Metroid Prime on the GameCube as a teenager and being utterly blown away by the visuals. It was, hands down, one of the best looking games I had ever seen on a Nintendo console before.
I’m happy to say that Metroid Prime 4: Beyond lives up to that pedigree. It retains that art style that really pops from the franchise itself, and even though our demo was in 1080p, despite the company’s claims it can hit a cool 4K when docked, it still popped on the screen in front of me.
It helped too that the demo ran at a silky smooth 120fps the whole time, and during my nearly 15-20 minutes with the game it never felt like it suffered from framerate drops throughout.
This is good because framerate in a shooter is more keenly felt with a mouse-like control input, and despite the Joy-Con 2 Mouse feature not necessarily being super comfortable for my hand, I was determined to try to play Metroid Prime 4: Beyond this way.
I didn’t need to, mind you. One of the great things about the Joy-Con 2 functionality is the ability to just pick it up and use it in gamepad mode seamlessly. I absolutely adore that all you need to do in order to kick off mouse mode is to set the Joy-Con 2 down on its side, and then to exit the mode you just pick it back up again.
Not requiring a toggle in menu makes the whole thing super intuitive, and despite my issues with ergonomics in this mode, it’s such a cool feature to have.
The level itself that played out in my Metroid Prime 4: Beyond demo was clearly a tutorial, refamiliarizing me with Samus and her arsenal of tricks. She’s got her blaster, rocket launcher, Morph Ball mode and more to toy around with, and the demo slowly drip fed those different tools to me as I progressed.
At first, I’ll admit, it took some getting used to using the left Joy-Con 2’s analog stick as the main way to move around. Gone is the WASD of my keyboard, and it took some getting used to. But once I got the hang of things, I started to feel like second nature.
What broke my brain a little bit was still having to use the face buttons on the Joy-Con 2 that was acting as my mouse to control Samus. Hitting one button would see Samus jump, while another turns her into the Morph Ball.
Apparently this was mapped to both the left and right Joy-Con to make it easier, but since the first prompt on screen was via the right Joy-Con 2 acting as my mouse, this is what stuck in my head. I do wish that the prompts themselves were contextual in this way, seeing which scheme you’re using, which Joy-Con is acting as the mouse and reacting accordingly.
Thankfully, this confusion was short lived because blasting enemies with Samus’ array of weapons was just so fun. The Joy-Con 2 mouse controls felt surprisingly precise as well, though the DPI was a little low for my tastes.
That said, because the Joy-Con still features rumble, it was such a new sensation that even with my doubts of the mouse feature overall, I honestly think this is the way I’ll try to play when Beyond comes out sometime this year.
It helps too that the gameplay felt like such classic Metroid Prime, which was never bad to begin with. Each blaster shot brought me back to my GameCube days, from shooting doors to open them to dominating Space Priates with a few well placed rockets.
Mteroid Prime 4: Beyond also brings the lock-on feature to the shooter, and I’ll admit this was a little weird to use with the mouse. It was in these moments when I picked the controller up, reverting to gamepad mode, especially one those puzzles that required a lock on to move on.
The highlight was the boss fight, however. Facing down a menace that had been corrupted by a Metroid. The boss arena itself felt big, and it’s here where the mouse controls really shined for me.
It’s a boss that telegraphs where it wants you to shoot – and having that added precision was so appreciated, especially when the boss would raise his arms that were covered in energy shields. As I dodged energy waves thrown my way by the boss, the one time where lock on in mouse mode became clutch for me was when I needed to down projectiles launched my way. Locking onto the nearest one and firing off a few shots, only to be able to immediately refocus on the boss himself really felt like everything came together at once.
I’m really happy that Nintendo chose to showcase Prime 4 with mouse controls thanks to the hardware of the Nintendo Switch 2, and while it wasn’t the quirky control scheme highlighting the new tech like Drag x Drive is, this was a great way to highlight the feature in a way that is inherently familiar to many, many gamers.
I do wish we had a release date for Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, but I’ll settle for 2025 if the rest of the game is as good as that vertical slice was.
