Metroid Prime 4 hasn’t been the triumphant return to the Prime series that many were hoping for, but judging from both critics and fan reactions, it’s still a pretty damn fine game. If you can get over some pretty dodgy decisions, such as locking desert music being an expensive amiibo, and the game being filled with chatty companion characters, it sounds like there’s still a lot of fun to be had.
However, there is one aspect of the game for many players that seems to be getting in the way of the fun for many people, and it all involves one very classic Metroid Prime feature that is proving to be a bit more frustrating this time around.
Metroid Prime 4 Fans Are Frustrated With Long Scan Times
Anyone that’s played a Metroid Prime game will know just how important scanning enemies and your environment can be. You’re usually stranded in a hostile and unknown environment, so gathering information is obviously a vital boost to Samus’ chances of survival. Metroid Prime 4 appears to have made the whole process a little bit more tedious though, increasing the time it takes for Samus to successfully scan an item of enemy. To say that it’s annoying a lot of people would be an understatement.
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In a post on the Metroid subreddit earlier this week, a user called Rube complained about the game’s scanning”, arguing that it “takes way too long” and wishes that it could just take a second or two rather than feel more realistic. Rube’s post then acted like a bit of a lightning rod for other disgruntled scanners, who began voicing their own complaints about the feature.
Another user called Paradox52525 argues that there are too many things to scan in the game, a lot of them not very useful or helpful. They suggest that things that are important to scan, such as a new enemy, should be highlighted in a different color and take longer to scan, but that simple scans such as crates and vehicles should be a lot quicker.
Surprisingly, another one of the big complaints regarding scanning is the colors. Unlike in the first three Metroid Prime games, which highlighted scans in blue and red, Metroid chooses to make unscanned objects green and scanned objects grey, which threw off players such as VaatiReborn. Even those that think the scan times are fine are baffled by the change in colors.
Pretty much every reply in the thread complains about the scanning in some way, with many people admitting they stopped scanning almost everything the further they got into the game, either getting tired of the whole process, or getting sick of not being rewarded with new information or lore. Sounds like it’s a feature that needs work, so let’s hope Nintendo is working on a tweak as we speak.
- Released
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December 4, 2025
- ESRB
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Teen / Animated Blood, Violence
- Developer(s)
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Retro Studios
- Publisher(s)
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Nintendo
