The Besties · Russ Frushtick, Chris Plante, Griffin McElroy, Justin McElroy

Metroid Prime 4 vs. Ooo: Showdown of the Search Action Games

December 12, 2025·55 min·4 clips

Justin says Metroid Prime 4 feels like a fan project — not as an insult, but as a precise description of how it plays.

The count starts rough. A cold open about failing to reach six turns into a weather trial, with California softness, sweaters, jeans at the beach, and 75-degree betrayal all taking damage. Then the games show up. One game comes off technically solid enough, the sort of thing that can run fine and still make the room stare at a few choices like something has gone wrong. The verdict stays messy. One host thinks the performance side seems good and competent, but the ideas underneath sound perplexingly bad, which is about as polite as an alarm can get. Another game turns into the counterweight. The host frames it as a stronger match with the first game than expected, so the comparison has some bite. There is Switch 2 meat, too. The panel gets into what Nintendo Switch 2 even is after its first year, treating that as more than hardware housekeeping. Then the ads barge in. Rocket Money becomes a bit about streaming services, magazines, theater, and a local paper subscribed to for one lonely story. Ritual follows with digestive-health travel anxiety. The ad reads keep the same loose rhythm as the show, so the sponsor copy still sounds half improvised. Later, the year-end pile starts looming. The panel talks about returning to a game that may have been too punishing earlier, hoping later balance changes made it easier to meet halfway. Audience picks are still alive. Indiana Jones, Root Trees, Citizen Sleeper 2, and Dispatch all stay in the remaining stack. By the end, it is backlog panic. Everyone needs to play more games, because the bracket is still hungry and nobody sounds done arguing.

As heard by us

A loose but pointed Besties matchup uses Metroid Prime 4 and Ooo to take the Switch 2's temperature.

The Besties set Metroid Prime 4 beside Ooo as a search action matchup, and the most interesting stretch is not a verdict so much as a contrast: one game sounds technically solid but dragged down by some baffling design choices, while the other gives the conversation a better…

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You want a sharp take on Metroid Prime 4 that gets paired with Ooo.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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