We’ve been hearing the term “metroidvania” a lot recently haven’t we lads? What started as a singular word to describe the specific formula that the Metroid and Castlevania series follows is now it’s own subgenre of video games. Mainly with independent developers and how much easier it is to develop 2D environments and characters compared to 3D models. It’s always that one specific trend with indie games like roguelikes and RPG Maker games. Not saying it’s a bad thing because I’m the type of guy to enjoy anything he plays, but to others it does get repetitive to see. I don’t care, because I love metroidvanias and some of the best games I played are metroidvanias. I’ll never get sick of the metroidvania genre and the magic that comes from it.
“Metroidvania”, if only the two franchises the subgenre’s name took from, were still active these days. Well that’s not entirely true, because Castlevania has an anime series on Netflix and it mostly rocks. I say mostly, because the pacing can be slow at times and the animation can be all over the place. However, we haven’t seen a new 2D Castlevania in what feels like forever now, and we aren’t going to see a new one since the main director Koji Igarashi broke off from Konami. Meanwhile, on the other side of the spectrum there is Metroid which is walking on a tight rope. Should have fallen by now, but for some reason it found a way to maintain balance. Metroid is one of those franchises that isn’t bad, in fact a majority of entries are fantastic, but we don’t really get to hear from it often. When we do get another entry in the Metroid series though it usually comes out of nowhere. Like no one was really expecting “a new Metroid” and it’s hard to get excited when you weren’t expecting it at all. I think that’s why Metroid never really flew off like Super Mario Bros or The Legend of Zelda did. Nintendo never hyped Metroid up, and when they try to they don’t do a stupendous job. Metroid does have a following though and the people who love this franchise are willing to stick to it.
Reminding us what this franchise has done, achieved, and set up for what was to come. Here we are again with the latest installment in this long running franchise, Metroid Dread. Developed by MercurySteam who worked previously on Samus Returns from four years ago, and serving as a sequel to Metroid Fusion which was the last truly new 2D Metroid game which wasn’t a remake. The concept for Metroid Dread started way back in the early 2000s after Metroid Fusion, but soon the project was put through development until it ultimately got scrapped. Never seeing the light of day. That wasn’t until recently when Nintendo decided to bring it back and assign MercurySteam the rights to work on the game. I think Metroid Dread is also supposed to keep Metroid fans fueled with how long Metroid Prime 4 is spending in the works, and…… and…….
Well, sh*t. I guess I should say this to you all before moving on. I used to be a big Nintendo fan a few years back. Their games truly amazed me and they brought me tons of joy like many others. Nintendo consoles were the only systems I played on back in middle school, but at the time I didn’t mind. The Legend of Zelda series and the 3D Mario games were some of my favorite games growing up. Kids made fun of me for how all I talked about was Zelda and Mario, but they did have a point though. Hearing about the same topic over and over again. Especially if it’s games that mainly aim towards a younger audience. Soon I began trying out other games and that’s how my horizons grew. During this time I learned of the terrible practices that Nintendo have performed in the past, and the toxic relationship that they and their fans were stuck in. My image on Nintendo changed and I find it difficult to get excited for their games these days. Metroid Dread comes along and I’m skeptical of whether I would enjoy it or not. Would it be a low effort attempt or decent enough? Well, it was much better than decent. It was tremendous. Metroid Dread made me fall in love with Nintendo again and showed me the wonders I used to have a few years ago. It was such an awesome experience and may be one of my favorite games of this year. Metroid is 35 years old now and to celebrate I want to talk about why this game has sparked some happiness out of me at the moment. Today we’ll be talking about why I love Metroid Dread and why it deserves your attention. Let’s jump right into it then.
Story
Let’s take a quick look back at the previous Metroid games and what happened before we move onto Metroid Dread which is the latest in the franchise’s timeline. A little girl named Samus Aran was taken in by a tribe known as the Chozos after her parents died during a space pirate attack. The Chozos trained Samus to become a highly skilled fighter and gave her access to the technology the tribe had possessed for eons. The Chozos are basically a highly intelligent species of space birds and they have studied the ruins and creatures of other planets far away. Including a parasitic species known as the Metroids who feed off of living organisms, reproduce like rabbits, and transform into stronger more terrorizing forms within seconds. When Samus grew older she became a badass bounty hunter who accepted jobs no one was willing to handle, but a majority of her tasks are assigned The Galactic Federation who are in charge of keeping peace throughout the galaxy. Samus had been sent to destroy an intelligent supercomputer-like process known as Mother Brain, was once sent to the home planet of the Metroids to exterminate every last one of them, and even battled Mother Brain once again who tried to get her hands on the last Metroid out there. Once the Metroids were finally gone and Mother Brain was defeated, Samus thought peace finally came to the galaxy. However, one day a new parasitic species known as the X sproughted within the research facility deep within a faraway planet and Samus was sent to take care of it. The X had the ability to possess bodies and take on the form of other creatures. Basically, The Thing from John Carpenter. Samus was infected with the X immediately when she arrived, but was saved when she was injected with a drug that made her immune to the X. That drug is made out of Metroid DNA. Samus soon battled her way through the facility and blew the whole thing up so not a single glob of X could make it out. Peace was finally brought to the galaxy, but remember peace isn't permanent.
Until most recently when The Galactic Federation discovered the X had survived the explosive events of last time and transferred over to a new planet named ZDR where they have now made themselves at home. Rather than send a team of space marines or Samus Aran this time to exterminate the X, this time the federation sends in specially built robots capable of navigating difficult terrain and hitting a virus where it hurts most. These robots move extremely quickly and are made out of material that not even simple man made laser blasters can penetrate. These robots are known as the Extraplanetary Multiform Mobile Identifiers, otherwise when abbreviated the E.M.M.I. About seven EMMIs were sent to ZDR to exterminate the X, but upon arrival they encountered something strange before all connection was lost. The EMMIs were very expensive pieces of equipment and the Galactic Federation was wondering how the most advanced piece of technology they had was somehow ripped out of their control. So they hire the best person they know to look into what happened. Samus Aran, the most badass woman in the galaxy. Surprisingly they didn’t do this from the beginning especially since she is technically immune to the X parasite by now.
Anyways, Samus is sent to planet ZDR to figure out what happened and she is helped along by Adam. A Galactic Federation official who helped her out on a previous adventure, but they departed soon after. He now mainly speaks with her using network connections deep within the planet, but for a majority of the time Samus is exploring the planet alone. When she reaches the depths of ZDR she meets a tall heavy armored figure that resembles a Chozo. The species that raised and trained Samus into being the figure she is. The unnamed Chozo is the one responsible for the lost signal with the EMMIs and he seems aware of the X spreading around the planet like crazy. The unnamed Chozo begins to head menacingly towards Samus and when she tries to fight back her current equipment isn’t enough to pierce through his armor. The unnamed Chozo grabs Samus by the neck and begins to charge up a strange energy that Samus had never seen before. Samus then falls unconscious and wakes up to find that the figure is now gone and her armor has been stripped of a majority of the abilities and equipment she came with. Samus navigates her way through the caverns and finds a network system that allows her to contact Adam. He tells Samus that she is now trapped deep within Planet ZDR and the EMMIs that had been sent to the planet have now been reactivated and are now patrolling for Samus. He does tell Samus that Chozo ruins and structures lie within ZDR and she can recover the abilities and equipment she lost. Her goal now is to track down where the devious Chozo went, find a way to exterminate the X while they take on new forms, and reach the surface to hopefully escape the planet. She may even learn a little bit more of the people who raised her and the consequences that drag on from her last adventure.
Gameplay
If you’re a Metroid fan or a hardcore metroidvania player like me then you know the drill. Side scrolling adventures that plop you into a huge open ended map that twists and unfolds the further. With later areas sometimes taking you back to previous areas to make you go down a path you weren’t able to access until now. There is a lot of backtracking, but there’s a huge emphasis on exploration and discovering secrets. With upgrades like health boosts and resistances allowing you to survive more dangerous situations and stand a chance against later enemies and bosses. Then there are the major upgrades which change how you navigate the environment and open up passageways. Meaning you have more ways to take on fight and can now access the areas you weren’t able to get to, like I stated earlier. Here's how Metroid Dread does it.
The game starts you off within the deep caverns of ZDR. Having lost all of your equipment you can only perform the basic abilities Samus has. You can jump, bounce off walls and reach higher areas if you time the jump button just right, slide through narrow gaps, and use your arm cannon to attack enemies around you. You can grab onto ledges and use them to pull yourself upward. Simple as that. What does make a return is the parrying from Samus Returns. It was a mechanic that mostly worked and it added more patience to the combat while also making it more aggressive. I say it “mostly worked”, because all you had to do half the time was wait there patiently until the enemy flashed and you could counter. It didn’t slow combat down as some encounters still kept you on your toes, but there was heavy reliance on waiting for attacks in Samus Returns and some bosses couldn’t be damaged unless you parried them. Rather than making the player adapt on the fly during a fight they instead turned it into a game of stop and wait which isn’t bad, but it makes the combat disruptive.
Metroid Dread fixes this problem in a couple of ways so now combat is not only less disruptive, but more faster and fluid at the same time. You can now parry while moving, jumping, hanging off a ledge or ceiling.Samus no longer grinds to a halt when performing this move and it means she can be rapidly firing at an enemy and quickly perform a parry without having to stop all of a sudden. Every attack in this game can be avoided, but not every attack will be parryable as well. Forcing you to dodge attacks, analyze their attack pattern, and figure out when to do what. The enemies can also delay their parry windows or trick you into thinking when to parry. Meaning you don’t just wait until they flash. You have to do it immediately once they get up close. It’s parrying done right and this is only a fraction of how Samus can dish out damage.
Samus has a multitude of weapons as well and the further you go into the game the stronger your limited arsenal becomes. Her simple arm cannon can go from firing singular shots to a three wave projectile that can be charged up, explode into a miniature burst upon contact, and pierce through walls at some point. Her missiles do more damage than her blaster, but the ammunition is limited. However, the game does balance this out by making it so that there are stations where you can refill on missiles and practically every enemy you kill is bound to drop ammunition if you have used some of it. The missiles can be strengthened inton green missiles later on which are more powerful, and you even transform them into ice missiles which can freeze enemies and blow them up at the same time. The ice ray is no longer an alternate weapon like in Samus Returns, but it’s for the better since it means your items and inventory won’t be as complicated to navigate through during stressful situations.
Your artillery isn’t the most important feature to survival as well. The way Samus can dodge attacks is rapidly varied and no I don’t mean crouching or curling up into your Morph Ball. That slide ability is not only used to slip through gaps, but can be also used to dash right underneath attacks and follow up soon afterwards. Some enemies will even need to be slid underneath so you don’t get cornered. There’s a new blink ability which allows Samus to dash quickly across the screen and gaps, but you can also use it to quickly dodge enemy attacks. Combat in Metroid Dread is more aggressive and engaging than others and the boss fights you encounter are there to really test your skills and capabilities. This is half of the delightful dish that Chef Dread cooked up.
The exploration is solid and there was less time I got lost in Metroid Dread compared to a majority of metroidvanias out there. The game is more linear than before and does a really good job at guiding you towards where you need to go next. By structuring levels and events in a way so that pathways you just went through are now blocked off and you can’t backtrack to previous areas until later. This may sound like a problem because it makes it so that you can’t look for items you missed or you now have the abilities to possibly reach them, but there is never going to really be a time when the reason why you can’t beat a boss is because you don’t have the physical capabilities to do so. Some doors can’t be opened and gone through unless you have the upgrades and power ups to do so, and some blocks can’t be destroyed as well unless you have the right ammunition. It feels really satisfying to go through areas you were in before and start blasting down enemies that gave you trouble in the past. It also feels when you are jetting around at breakneck speed because the speed and controls in d Dread are faster, tighter, and snappier than before. There’s even a speed booster power up which allows Samus to fly around like a comet and completely break traversal.
The last new addition I do want to touch upon are the EMMIs which are the most dreadful feature of Metroid Dread. Get it? Anyways, certain areas will have EMMIs patrolling about for your position. Once they detect the position you are in they will start homing in on you, but they won’t go into full chase mode unless you end up in their line of sight. You can either try to out maneuver them so they don’t catch up, or turn on the new cloak ability which turns you invisible for a short amount of time although it slows you down. If the EMMI spots you though, make a run for it. If it catches you within a tight corner then you have a quick second reaction to parry them and run away. The parry window for an EMMI is really small though and if you mess it up two times then they kill you instantly. Navigating your way through an EMMI zone will eventually take you to a Central Unit, giant floating eyes protected with metal shelling and turrets that surround the room. If the Central Unit is defeated then Samus can harness the strange energy they possess. Powering up her arm cannon into the Omega Blaster. It has a rapid fire mode designed to melt away the EMMI’s face plating, and a charge mode which takes time but if shot correctly it can instantly kill the EMMIs. Once an EMMI is defeated the zone it patrolled around is now safe to navigate without risk, and Samus earns an upgrade the EMMI was protecting. Certain EMMIs have special abilities like increased speed or a freeze projectile, so be careful around them.
Bosses are also a special part of Dread as well, because unlike Samus Returns they don’t recycle the same four bosses ten times each. You’ll be facing ferocious beasts, warriors of equal size and strength, and one of the first few bosses in the game is an iconic fight a majority of Metroid fans will recognize. Like earlier, these fights are purely based around skill and analyzing attack patterns. You’ll have to get good and bring them down to the ground. Besides that there really isn’t much else to say about Metroid Dread. It’s an incredibly well designed game and it never punishes the player for taking their time. Hopefully you can reach the surface and find the true meaning as to why Samus is being kept on this planet. The ruins of the past have come back to haunt.
Thoughts
Metroid Dread is some of the most fun I had this year and made me feel like a kid again with how much it emphasized on that fun. There is just so much to love and the stuff that is worth complaining about aren’t really game breaking flaws and are things the developers tried to consider and not make them suck as much. The controls are responsive and it never feels like Samus is going towards or aiming at a direction you weren’t pointing towards. The movement is fluid as well and Samus navigates environments with ease. This may actually be the best movement I have seen in a sidescroller and it makes speedrunning this game more fun than it should be. The only thing I would change is how the speed booster upgrade works and how it’s propel ability is activated, but other than that the movement in this game is flawless.
Combat is more satisfying than in Samus Returns and compensated for this by having the best fights Metroid has seen. This is the most challenging game in the series and when fights are kicking your ass they whoop it hard. This isn’t the hardest metroidvania I played though. Let alone the hardest game Nintendo has made. Metroid Dread is a challenging experience, but it never gets overbearing to the point where you feel like you are bashing your head against a brick wall. When the game is hard it’s usually fair and most deaths are on the player rather than on the game and throwing some form of randomness at you. There was also never a point in Metroid Dread where I felt like I was lost as the game is structured in a linear fashion and doesn’t open until you unlock a majority of the upgrades and power ups. It may get annoying when you want to see what upgrades you can get at the current moment, but it means the player doesn’t backtrack so much that the game drags on longer than it really should. Also the environments do a good job at guiding the player towards the right direction as well.
Metroid Dread is a 2.5D game and during most cases 2.5D games don’t usually look that great. Bloodstained: Ritual of The Night was a 2.5D game and it was passible since it was a small indie title, but to be honest it looks awful compared to how shiny and stylistic ymphony of The Night was. Metroid Dread is a 2.5D game and it makes use of the hardware it runs on. Generating some absolutely stunning backgrounds and details, and trying to make what is a side scrolling adventure with a limited view look lively as possible. Metal surfaces have a nice shine and gleam, the colors are vibrant, and just looking at the artstyle is enough to take you away. This is the best looking Nintendo Switch game since 2017 with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild.
The story is pretty good in my opinion and the game does a great job at hyping you up for what comes next even though we are following a quiet protagonist who doesn’t really interact with people. It doesn’t really acknowledge there is a plot at first, but when it does pick up it starts to get really good. The game acknowledges what happened in Metroid Fusion and shows how the events of that game ties into what is happening now. They give more lore in the Chozos, their history, and what they thought Samus would become. Those moments when Samus is being a total badass and is characterizing herself through growth makes her an entertaining protagonist. This is probably going to be a poor comparison and it’s going to rile up the fanboys of this community, but in some ways the story and pacing of Metroid can be compared to the recent Doom entries. A protagonist who can be awesome without having to speak two paragraphs worth of text, a plot that moves forward at a consistent pace, and action that is there to fuel your fiery soul. Except, the way it differs is that the Doom Slayer is a mindless killer within a mindless shooter. He has a backstory, but it’s nothing to really make you care about who he is. He’s awesome, but to some degree he’s not really all that compelling or someone who you would like to be. The lore of Doom never really interested me either and Doom Eternal never made me really care what was going on. In Metroid Dread when they reference the Chozos and what happened in past games I feel interested. Like I’m adding pieces to a puzzle I already thought was complete. Samus Aran who I already explained the backstory to is a woman who does have a mind and soul. You’re wondering to yourself how she is able to stay calm during all of this. How does she maintain this fighting spirit that allows her to push through even when the truth is being forced onto her shoulders. Not many people are going to imagine it like this, but that’s how I like to depict it.
There’s only a few complaints to be made really. The soundtrack is great and Metroid soundtracks are often really well composed, but there’s nothing that really sticks in my head. I like the iconic cybernetic hum that plays whenever you boot up the game or pick up a new power up. Nostalgic to the right degree. There aren’t really that many times when you are going to use the cloak ability and it’s kind of useless to be honest. There’s a scan ability which should have been given to you earlier in the game, but it’s also pointless since the game does a good job at showing you what blocks are destructible, or where upgrades will be by plotting them onto the map after passing by them. Finally the parry windows for the EMMIs are extremely wonky as sometimes the button command will wor won't work. Running is usually the best solution. Trust me.
In the end I strongly recommend Metroid Dread and the quality of the entire experience makes the sixty dollar purchase justifiable. The game goes on for around seven to eight hours, or ten hours if you are trying to one hundred percent this game. It doesn’t overstay its welcome and there is some replayability to be found. Is this the best metroidvania I have played? No. Does it mean Metroid isn’t blowing up and never will? Also no. I really want people to experience how amazing Metroid Dread is as this may be one of the few chances the franchise will get to reach popularity like The Legend of Zelda and recently Fire Emblem. This game is a masterpiece in metroidvania design and it made me fall in love with Nintendo again. Thank you MercurySteam. I do hope this game gets nominated for a couple of rewards by the end of the year. In the end I am going to give Metroid Dread a 9.5/10 for excellence at best.
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