It has been 18 long years since the last Metroid Prime. Nintendo has not produced one since Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, so the question lingering over the announcement of Prime 4 has been: Does anyone still know how to make one of these? A lengthy hands-on ahead of its release in December reassured me that Retro Studios has the look and feel of Metroid Prime well in-hand, but more importantly, has its objective marker set on expanding the world with new psychic powers that feel just as natural as Samus's other abilities.Our first taste of Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, playable at the debut event for the Switch 2 itself, was composed of an initial tutorial section--an action spectacle as Samus comes to the aid of Federation forces under assault. That initial mission was meant to be a showpiece for both the game and the new hardware, and I walked away suitably impressed. This second hands-on event took place shortly after that slice of the game, still early enough to walk me through some of the core pillars of Prime 4, but more open-ended and familiar to Metroid fans. In the midst of Samus lending aid to the Federation, she gets transported to a strange planet, cut off from communications and not entirely sure where she is--and of course, missing some key pieces of her equipment. At that point she discovers a psychic crystal, which fuses itself to her helmet and imbues her with the ability to interface with the planet's technology. The Lamorn, an ancient race native to the planet, believes Samus is their people's Chosen One, as the crystal chose to fuse itself to her. So in a way similar to how Samus has traditionally found Chozo artifacts that augment her suit, now she's finding psychically imbued Lamorn power-ups. It's familiar territory for Metroid Prime.Samus isn't quite starting from zero this time. With the crystal comes a Psychic Beam, Psychic Hyper Beam, and Morph Ball abilities, but she's lost everything else. Most importantly, she's gained a new Psychic Visor, which pulls double-duty as both the scanning visor from the old Metroid Prime games, as well as the interface for many of her snappy new psychic abilities. This makes sense thematically, as it gives the feeling that you're moving objects with your "mind"--aka, your line of sight--instead of your arm cannon. You even see her raising her left hand to her temple in a classic Professor X gesture. And this sense of psychic power is accented by the only other speaking character in the demo commenting on how objects seem, from his perspective, to be moving by themselves as you manipulate them through telekinesis. More on him in a bit.You quickly learn that to get off-planet you need to gather five master teleporter keys, and so the adventure begins in earnest. This is where Prime 4 opens up into more expansive exploration, but I could still feel the presence of training wheels. It's an early part of the game, so this is the first taste of exploration, with some limitations. It was still relatively linear and easy to tell where exactly you had to go, so I didn't feel overwhelmed by the alien landscape. I trust that feeling will fade as more areas open and get more complex, but I couldn't tell from this limited demo if the five sections will have interlocking exploration or if they're more segmented. The first one, at least, was almost entirely standalone, but I did see clues of things to come back to once I received other powers.Samus is stranded, but she's not aloneThis section took place in an overgrown jungle in the shadow of a massive tree that's sacred to the Lamorn. And on a visual level, I had mixed feelings about this area. Nintendo excels at art direction and makes the most of its comparatively low hardware power, especially when it comes to the rubbery, cartoonish styles of Mario and his pals. When it comes to a more realistic style with lots of organic elements, the Switch 2 limitations, or perhaps Nintendo and Retro's inexperience with realism, are more apparent. The jungle looked merely fine, with overgrown brush mostly along the edges of flat dirt paths. There are moments that it looks surprisingly great, though, like when you navigate through vines as a morph ball and get to see the organic elements in a tightly controlled space, or viewing the sheen of calcified resin that blocks certain doors. It's not a bad-looking game by any means, but attempting a realistic art style for a familiar biome like "jungle" invites unflattering comparisons to PS5 and Xbox Series X|S games.In this initial section, enemies were mostly minor nuisances and the emphasis was on exploring, learning about your powers, and acquiring a few new ones. Finding a missile power-up lets you crack through the resin. But you also get psychic twists on both new and old powers. You can grasp a psychic mote of light with your mind and then toss it into a receptacle to power up a door, or move elements with your mind to activate them, for example. That element adds a twist to your usual suite of powers, and gives you that much more reason to flip into your visor mode and see what you can interact with. One power, the Control Beam, lets you steer a projectile in slow-mo to aim it towards control switches or enemies.As you explore, you run into Myles MacKenzie, a Federation engineer who has been marooned on this planet with you. Samus Aran is a bona fide legend, so Myles is obviously impressed, giving the relationship echoes of classic Halo games when ordinary people would come face-to-face with Master Chief. Myles is obviously in way over his head on a hostile planet where everything is trying to kill him, but he knows his way around machinery, so he's an asset. Your mileage may vary, but I found his hapless dorky chatterbox persona endearing, especially contrasted against Samus's quiet stoicism. Myles even comments on it at one point, which makes me think the relationship is intended to be comedic. After briefly escorting Myles to safety--and thankfully, without feeling like he was a burden--he mostly stuck to a control room and I was back to exploring the alien planet on my own.The demo culminated in a boss battle against Carvex, an aggressive, sentient plant. The fight started by using your weapon to cut through weak points in the vines, but as more appeared, you had to use the Control Beam to cut through several sections of its vines near-simultaneously, which couldn't be done through normal fire, all while dodging its swinging and swaying tendrils. It was an exciting combat puzzle in the way the Prime games have excelled. And I was pleased to see that scanning it treated me to a little bit of extra story context, informing me that it had been rendered unable to communicate by fusing with a Metroid.Samus faces off against CarvexGallery The prize for defeating Carvex was another new power, the Psychic Bomb, which ordinarily operates like a standard Metroid Prime bomb but can be charged to create a floating version that can be grabbed with your mind-powers just like the psychic motes. That lets you activate switches remotely, which then allowed me to open a transport pod.What lies beyond that point is a mystery, and will be until the game releases on December 4. What I've seen so far, though, feels promising enough to fuel my anticipation. Nintendo and Retro Studios appear to understand the fundamental core of what makes a Metroid Prime game, with satisfying exploration, tense combat puzzles, and meaningful new abilities that change how you look at the world. The long wait is finally almost over, and Nintendo and Retro have shown themselves up to the task of matching a classic Metroid Prime--the final game, in its entirety, will let us know if the decades have helped Beyond exceed them.