I don't want to sound like a moralist or exercise armchair activism, but how long can you continue defending a game that has ended the careers of so many workers? So many devs abused while Nintendo and Mercury Steam get the accolades for creating another continuity metroid.
In case you don't know, mercury steam did not credit several devs who were dismissed improperly or were forced to leave the project due to force majeure, such as poor mental health or, I don't know, THE FUCKING PANDEMIC.
There is plenty of information on the internet about this and, hey, probably several of my favorite games were developed through Overworking, unfortunately in Japan it is common and surely, there will be similar or worse cases than that of metroid dread, but at a time when The fact that social conscience and mental health is such an important and controversial issue, I find it inconceivable that so many praises are given to a game perpetrated under the worst business practices I have seen in years, it is pure meritocracy.

Please, if you love a game, its perfectly okay, but do not defend it that if has been created under bad praxix and has screwed up the careers of some of its devs, on the contrary. Do not stain anyone's memory

Despite being one of the more recognizable and prestigious flagship titles from Nintendo, Metroid has always struck me as being more of a niche franchise than what its historical legacy would suggest. In a similar fashion to what Link to the Past did for the Zelda series, Super Metroid polished and perfected the open ended design and progression concepts of its predecessors, eliminating much of their more frustrating aspects, and established a success formula that the franchise has religiously followed from then on. In doing so, Metroid has been the same game for more than two decades, and putting aside its 3D detours with the Prime series, it has been trapped in an ever increasingly enclosed bubble of self reference and iteration.

Metroid Dread wastes no time with introductions, and the moment you grab hold of Samus Aran, it feels like coming home again. Take away the new coat of paint, and you are back to the same old Metroid song and dance, rushing past grid like corridors of underground caves and industrial lab rooms filled with alien critters to waste away and locked doors that you will inevitably open once you get the next power up on the checklist. Ever the stimulating power trip that characterizes the series, Dread's biggest achievement is how it seamlessly paces itself and constantly rewards the player in quick succession as it twists and turns the map, demostrating a seasoned understanding of the Super Metroid formula that makes putting down the controller a very hard thing to do. After what felt like a deliberate eternity, getting the Morph Ball power up was a non spoken mutual understanding between game and players in the know.

Unfortunately, that's only what Dread ever is. While the E.M.M.I. cat and mouse chase segments are the most inspired Dread ever gets, they are restricted by a need to appease the fandom's rejection of inconvenience, and so are sectioned off into clearly identifiable areas where a death only amounts to setting the player back to the start of said area. A brief pesky light detour into survival horror before going back to business as usual. For a series so deified for its somber atmosphere and exploration of the unknown, Dread contents itself with regurgitating the same landscapes and biomes we have grown tired of seeing since Super that rarely give an excuse to trade the foreground for the background, and the story, apparently a passion project in the works for many years, hardly justifies its purpose other than continuining on the concepts and themes that previous entries have already expanded upon in a much more meaningful way. Metroid Dread does not earn its title. So I ask this question: how many more times must I expect to get the space jump near the end of the game? How many more instances of blowing up a glass tunnel with a power bomb will I be subjected to? How much longer must the Chozo be the center of the universe?

Thanks to the flourishing of indie development of the last decade, the metroidvania genre has since seen a vast increase in experimentation that has given every kind of Metroid fan something to look forward to. I have made my peace a long time ago with the notion that the Metroid series now occupy a very specific set of qualities and standards meant to appeal to an audience that values the power fantasy of the franchise above everything else, and I can gladly say that Dread fits that bill perfectly with the most fun to control Samus and a plethora of movement and combat options that I'm sure will be exploited for years to come. If I want that old feeling of treading an alien and hostile environment by the skin of my teeth, I'll play Rain World. If I want to revel in indecipherable mystery and obtuse puzzle solving, I'll play La-Mulana. If I want to experience Metroid's atmosphere, I'll play Environmental Station Alpha. I just hoped that Metroid Dread could have once again been all those things for me.

Metroid Dread is good. It's great for most of it, even. But it's never exceptional. And as long as the franchise decides to live under Super Metroid's shadow, it will never be again.

Metroid, in its own way, has always been a series about transformation. Early on, this was only in the most abstract sense, as Samus accumulated power-ups and the morph ball. The second entry begins to make its themes of transformation more literal with the metamorphosis of the metroids. From Super Metroid, to Fusion, to now Dread, Samus’s suit is a protean machine that constantly changes shape, color, and function. The Prime sub-series, too, deals with transformation constantly. Even if you stripped these thematic trappings away, you would still be left with a game that is fundamentally about transformation. It’s a series in which Samus (and thus, the player) constantly change, their abilities constantly expanding and shifting in scope.

So perhaps it’s fitting that Metroid went through its own dramatic transformation over the years.

Metroid Dread was pretty universally considered vaporware until recently. All that was really publicly known about it was that it existed at one point. Now, we know a bit more: it was originally planned for the DS, but the team felt they couldn’t create the game with the technology at the time. And so, Metroid Dread lay in its tomb for nearly two decades, like a dormant torizo, until Mercury Steam, the team behind Samus Returns, came into the picture. That this game even came out is shocking. But here it is, somehow.

Here is my question: where is all the dread in Metroid Dread?

It can be easy to forget, now that we live during a golden age of Metroidvanias, that the Metroid series was pretty radical at the time of its inception. It was a strange hybrid of platformer and exploration that wasn’t really seen before. Super Metroid might seem trite or quaint now that it is recognized as a blueprint for the genre, but it was (and in many ways still is) deeply ambitious. Decades later, select elements of those games’ design were absorbed into the cultural landscape, improved upon, experimented with, and modified. Metroid Dread reflects these changes by adapting to them, but the result is something that feels fundamentally different from its origins.

That isn’t a criticism. If Metroid has taught us anything, it’s that sometimes change can be good. Dread is a slick, visually stunning package, informed by well over a decade of iteration and innovation, designed with precision and intention, never letting you lose forward momentum for a second. Dread is a sublime action game that represents a peak in the 2D series’ combat. It all feels dynamic and sharp in a way fighting as Samus has never felt like before. In the early days, though, Metroid wasn’t really ever a game about combat.

Metroid Dread is an action game. Early games were games with action in them. Maybe that seems like an awfully fine distinction, but it represents a long lasting shift in a design ethos. This isn’t new, either; the series has consistently drifted closer towards action. Prime also showed this change, as the third entry, Corruption, was a far more linear action title than the first venture into 3D. Zero Mission perhaps exemplifies this the most clearly, as a remake of the original NES title that was far more action heavy and far more directed. The NES game was awkward and janky. Even in the ever-venerated Super Metroid, Samus can feel unwieldy and floaty. This would typically be seen as bad, but it also lends itself to a feeling of spaciness, weirdness, and unwelcomeness that fit the games well.

With the release of Dread, we’ve seen more and more newcomers come to the series, and this is perhaps the perfect entry point for many players. (Speedruns of this game are going to be beautiful.) The game is loaded with affordances and quality-of-life improvements. The whole game is designed to be an almost frictionless exploration experience. While past entries’ attempts to become more approachable had previously been fraught, Dread feels elegant and beautiful in its execution. Zero Mission and particularly Fusion were controversial because their sense of direction felt like hand-holding. Exploration was explicitly guided, and it was overbearing. (Personally, I think this could have been fixed by just providing the option to ask for hints, rather than forcing them onto the player.) Dread has no need for wordy signage, as it’s designed to guide the player silently and subtly through its world, rarely needing to instruct. Following along the critical path is a blissful glide through ZDR. There’s always a ragged edge, another door to open, another room to explore. It’s deeply satisfying and engrossing. Many of Dread’s optional upgrades are also puzzle-like, requiring strategic movement and platforming. This is a far cry from the old days when secrets were often hidden in random blocks with what seemed to be no real care.

Early on, Metroid wasn’t really about a frictionless experience, though. It was often just about getting lost. The original Metroid is filled with friction, with labyrinthine and repetitive corridors and dead ends. Metroid 2, on the other hand, pivoted hard into linearity, while Super established a more concrete formula. In it’s finest moments, Metroid was often about exploring without direction, beating on with uncertainty as the intrepid bounty hunter Samus. They were scary, weird, often incoherent games. For many, this makes the games altogether unapproachable, but it also conjured an enchanting mysteriousness that still affects me to this day.

Of note is also the series' gradual emphasis on plot. This climaxed in the near-universally maligned Other M, but Metroid had been showing more of its story for years, with dialogue and lore. (Yes, I read the manga, too, don’t @ me.) Dread has a veritable plot, with plot twists and worldbuilding and an antagonist with motives. It’s apparently the end of the so-called Metroid arc, and how it goes about wrapping that up is interesting indeed. Meanwhile, Super Metroid was a masterpiece of wordless narrative, telling a story about very little, but filling it with contemplation and moodiness. (Prime did this well too, while also featuring robust lore in its scan logs.) It didn’t really have characters, and the writing essentially boiled down to an opening monologue. The rest was told by the shape of space and its inhabitants. They were tone pieces, at least for a moment, ever brief. The series has shied away from silent storytelling, despite always being capable of it when it wants to be, and supplements with big dialogue boxes.

The truth is there is very little dreadful in Metroid Dread. After all, it’s designed to be an empowering and engaging experience, not an off putting one. There is plenty to be seen that is horrific or intense, but there is not much dread, no oppressive weight hovering over your shoulders as you stride into the dark. Even the E.M.M.I, the poster child of Dread, which upon encountering can be heart-pumping and tense, do not feel dreadful. They can instant-kill you and are unkillable (at first), but this design choice means that the generous checkpoint system implemented here was more or less necessary. As a result, the E.M.M.I become more like puzzles, and less like looming threats they seem to be. All of the game’s challenges can be overcome. The game is designed for you to overcome it. Metroid Dread is actually quite welcoming, inviting players both new and old into ZDR to romp through its caverns.

This is, by all accounts, to be recognized as good design. All these affordances, from improved game feel to improved world design, are what is considered in most circles to be good design. And I agree. Metroid Dread is impeccably well made. It is the current apex in years of iteration. Cruising through an alien landscape as Samus Aran has never felt so good. But it’s important to recognize that all these improvements end up changing the character of the series significantly. It’s still Metroid, don’t get me wrong. Dread is bursting at the seams with series staples. But it has also taken on a very different tone. It has fundamentally different design goals. The series is allowed to change. It doesn’t need to be ambitious and weird anymore, and in many ways, it can't be. It’s allowed to just be a great game. And Metroid Dread is not only a great game, but also one of the best in the series. After years and years of waiting, Metroid Dread finally emerged from its cocoon, and while it is fundamentally different, it really is stunning.

But I can’t lie. A part of me longs for the mystery and unease of the past, a past that perhaps barely existed at all. When Metroid was an eerie tone piece haunted by uncertainty and melancholy. When it was a world filled with dread.

08:53:45
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hubo un tiempo en el que nadie más hacía lo que metroid dominaba con tanta maestría. previendo el diseño metroidvania, otorgándole la mitad del nombre, pero haciendo hincapié en algo que a partir de symphony of the night no haría más que irse perdiendo de forma progresiva.

el METROID en metroidvania, ante todo, era exploración, era experimentar con el escenario, intuir por diseño espacial dónde podían haber secretos. los power ups cumpliendo un rol de volver más versátiles tus habilidades, permitirte hacer más y con ello comprender mejor tu entorno

el vania en metroidvania, lastimosamente, marcó un cambio de paradigma que afectó a títulos por venir. de golpe todo debía ser más rpg, regirse por números y, por consiguiente, poner mucha más atención en el combate. variedad de armas o estilos, posibilidades expresivas en dicho respecto. pero el mapeado poco a poco pasaba de ser un lugar donde primaba la exploración para centrarse en un mero trámite donde los objetos ahora eran meras llaves, un bloqueo artificial para justificar una idea a medio cocer de mapa unificado. y ahí la peor sensación que un metroidvania puede ofrecerme: el ver un objeto ahí, a la vista, saber cómo obtenerlo, pero que el propio juego te reniegue de poder hacerlo, que todavía te faltan 3 horas hasta conseguir el objeto que te permitirá llegar hasta allí.

metroid hace tiempo que dejó de ser la cúspide de dicho formato, no solo porque otros títulos hayan realizado su propuesta a niveles más altos e insospechados (el mismísimo la-mulana, mi juego favorito, me parece que puede ser superficialmente reducido a leerse como un "metroid hasta sus límites"), pero también ha venido vaticinando una falta de sentido para con sus propios intereses, ya desde fusion percibo una continua desintensificación de sus más grandes virtudes para distraerse en adornos que le restan, que parecen exigirle modernizarse, que no puedes ser un metroidvania sin hacer hincapié en la parte vania.

metroid dread toma lo malo de samus returns y decide convertirlo en su atractivo principal. el combate? más elaborado, más oportunidades de parry, más espectáculo, un exceso de munición que llegado un punto desaprovecha por completo la gestión de recursos para navegar adecuadamente el lugar. menos sensación de perderte, ahora hay más cinemáticas que fuerzan un contexto. el escenario? aún con sus momentos de genialidad clásica, extremadamente señalizado, confuso de leer y guiarse, restringido por mera propuesta de avance y consonancia narrativa, con la presencia de unos emmi que más que aportar frescura al conjunto solo seccionan el recorrido, proveen espacios vacíos como excusa para las piruetas y una falsa sensación de peligro (por el propio modo en que los checkpoints están distribuidos), convirtiendo un mundo potencialmente interesante en una contienda de pequeñas sub-secciones con problemas por resolver, uno tras otro.

metroid es una franquicia a la que llegué tarde, desde hace unos tres años apenas, y ha sido ciertamente decepcionante estamparme contra el primer lanzamiento que quiero vivir próximo a su publicación con el que me ha parecido el peor de la saga 2D hasta la fecha. mi opinión de los prime es similar, yendo de un primer título fantástico a juegos que me resulta difícil tolerar, por lo que incluso la alternativa de un prime 4 solo me genera desconfianza.

quiero quererte metroid, pero viendo el éxito de este título y que la estela del 'buen diseño' compitiendo con los mejores momentos donde activamente consigue rehuirle a dichas convenciones no augura un buen futuro para mí. seguramente me quede aquí mendigando los próximos juegos que saquen, pero con muy poca confianza de que puedan transmitirme lo que alguna vez lograron. sencillamente, ya no es ese el METROID-vania que el público anhela.


pd: piratear a nintendo está de sobra moralmente justificado, y que bien te jodan mercursyteam por el maltrato a tus trabajadores.

Almost 20 years have passed since Metroid Fusion took the niche Metroid series for a turn with its more linear and atomspheric take on a Samus Aran mission. The series has always been one of the lesser known Nintendo franchises, so when a game like Metroid Dread is teased and mentioned in passing for several years, it creates a thick fog of mystery. I'm honestly shocked Metroid Dread is a real game, even when I was not a fan of the franchise I knew that this elusive title had been in development for many many years and had for some, become merely a dream. Well, props to Nintendo for giving Metroid a chance to shine again, and what a shine it was...

To say Metroid Dread is excellent would be the understatement of the year. It combines every aspect that makes the series great into a sprawling canvas of world, with enough combat encounters, exploration and atmosphere to last dozens of hours. I marveled at the detailed backgrounds, that offer some of the most unique and memorable vistas in the Metroid series to date.

The tutorial area by itself is so extensive and filled with secrets, it only teases the player with how much they will be exploring and experimenting with the mechanics. And oh, how they have improved on these mechanics. Every upgrade feels substantial and opens up a multitude of paths that lead to even more upgrades. This cycle of exploration and reward does not get old and the escalating challenge of the combat.

Metroid Dread was so fun, challenging and suspenseful. The EMMI encounters are terrifying, tense and designed to fulfill multiple strategies This exact same design philosophy is applied to the whole world, with sequence breaks all over, shortcuts and obstacles to overcome. Metroid Dread is the best game in the series, I haven't had this much fun with a game for a long time.

This is the best game on the Switch since launch. Play this ASAP.

While I still believe Super Metroid is my ideal 2D Metroid due to how incredible its atmosphere, this game is a fantastic new direction for the series. It takes all of the interesting, if oddly-executed introductions of Samus Returns and puts them to fantastic use, while having some of my favorite action to come out of these games. It did take a while to really love it as there were some elements I found fairly annoying at multiple corners, but some point in the late-game, everything just... clicked. It builds up to a fantastic-feeling experience that really shows the power Metroid has as a series.

And that final boss... OH, THAT FINAL BOSS HOLY SHIT METROID ROCKS.

Dread's a really pleasantly surprising game. I wasn't sure of the EMMIs at first, but I ended up finding them to be a really refreshing spin on the Nemesis-esque "pursuer" type of enemy usually only found in horror games; it's lovely to have them in a game where you're just as nimble as they are for a change. The fact that the timing of EMMI counters is randomised is an impressively bold choice too and really helps sell the feeling of dread™ whenever they're nearby, which is itself strengthened by the tense music and the heartbeat-like pulsating visual filter that their areas have.

The 2.5D visual style initially had me hesitant as well, but it ultimately allows for some beautiful animation fluidity that likely would've been unreasonably difficult and/or expensive to achieve with sprites, which in turn helps Samus feel smoother to control than ever. The bosses are all quite demanding in terms of how good of a grasp they need you to have on all the different movement options, which is a great change of pace for the series, and the hitstop on successful parries also strikes an unexpected balance of being tastefully short so as not to feel repetitive but also just long enough to still be satisfying each time you pull it off.

Apart from that, Samus' characterisation is nicely handled too. The cutscene after the first boss made me slightly worry that Mercury Steam had tried a little too hard to make her seem cool, but they deserve credit for their restraint. The animators did a fantastic job conveying her usual pragmatic, stoic attitude through body language, and when she does have a big climactic moment of catharsis near the end it feels earned because of it. I also think Dread's art direction and music are a fair bit stronger and more distinctive than they're often given credit for, even if they're not the series' best (Prime 2 reigns supreme, baby).

The movement in Dread is already so ace that I don't feel much is lost by not having this, but I will say that I would've liked it to take a bit of inspiration from Environmental Station Alpha's implementation of the grapple beam. In ESA, your grapple beam can attach to any surface (apart from in puzzles which are specifically designed around you not being able to do so) and builds momentum when you swing on it. Dread allowing you to use the grapple beam on spider magnets, certain doors/blocks and even a couple of enemies is already a decent step towards making it more versatile, but it'd be nice to see something like ESA's implementation in a sequel to really take the movement to the next level.

That's a thought for another day, though. Outside of that, the game ending slightly too soon before you get to really enjoy having all the powerups and a little bit of boss re-use, I'm happy enough with Dread that I don't think a sequel is needed for a while. I tip my proverbial arm cannon to Mercury Steam.

Eu não sou fã de metroidvania. Joguei muitos poucos, e zerei só o Metroid: Zero MIssion (passei mais raiva do que diversão). Mas esse é um caso beeem diferente.

A gameplay é muito gostosinha, e acho que o que contribuiu pra eu gostar bastante é o design das fases ser um pouco mais intuitivo, indo na direção oposta do que eu não gosto nos que joguei desse subgênero.

Outro ponto que curti muito foram os bosses. Pega uma cutscene de entrada deles e dá até pra enganar que é de Elden RIng. Isso sem falar nas batalhas muito intensas.

Não esperava gostar tanto assim desse.

Are you ready for some rambles? (Reason at the bottom)

Metroid itself is a lot to many different people, something impossible to really balance altogether. It's the nonlinearity like Super but not Fusion. It's the sequence breaking like the original Metroid but not Zero Mission. It's the environmental storytelling like Prime but not the original Metroid. It's the anti-power fantasy like Metroid 2 but not Super. It's the action-oriented bounty hunting like Samus Returns but not Federation Force. (I don't actually believe some of these, just throwing out things I've heard)

I said to others while playing this that it felt like Dread was actually thinking about the DNA of the series in terms of what to focus on more than the prior games. And the last hour DEFINITELY did, what a goddamn rug pull. Samus has always toed the line between being used by a literal police imperial force to basically blow up planets and commit genocide, while also still doing so for the sake of the galaxy and saving people (although only a few games ever show a more human side to her that felt like she had her own agency around the mission itself, like saving animals). Metroid 2 was a literal genocide simulator. But Dread turns everything that came before completely on its head. She's originally here for the mission, but it immediately becomes the quest to get out, literally putting you at the bottom of the map, the furthest from her ship in any game so far. Without spoiling, the ending turns the entire concept of its formulaic approach on its head, actually using its gameplay to a strong narrative point around Samus' identity.

Spoilers

I LOVE how a lot of the strongest tools that you got in earlier games actually take longer to get. I initially thought it wasn't enough but I realized at that point you'd have to remove them wholesale. I like how the Morph Ball actually takes its time to get there to force you to find ways of navigating along with the Speed Boost.
The game rarely tells you where to go like its original idea. It's a lot closer to the DNA of the original than it has been in years, albeit an amalgamation of design quirks, focused around the concept of a hostile world that you are alien to, structured in a weird balance between structured factories made out of sprawling alien worlds. It's almost like the game is balancing on a scale, trying to connect its environmental storytelling while also being, by far, the most action-oriented title so far. It also has pretty good environmental storytelling through the regions and vibes, while trying to push the player towards being conscious of the world, and then continually doing its best to make you second-guess what you knew.

The EMMIs are the new idea to the series of adding a real stealth component that's less cinematically scripted and more dynamic. They're good on paper, especially the second and third one that genuinely challenge your pathing and stealth, but I kinda wish they weren't boxed in to the EMMI areas and they could actually surprise you outside of it. They give the greatest challenge of suddenly pushing a stealth option but around the 4th or 5th EMMI the patterns of the EMMI rooms tend to coalesce and you're more knowledgeable of the movement by then that they become a joke and more of just running away execution. The areas also look too similar so it somewhat approaches novelty if not for the ending.

I really like the emphasis this game has on its environments in terms of a factory-controlled world, where it feels more in tandem between experiments and the enemies adapting to what the Chozos have done, although I think it goes... too much on the factory. Some of the areas start to blur together in terms of color design, which is fine (it still does a good job signposting without maps, with the environmental storytelling literally helping as landmarks), but it also made the areas a bit less distinct. The starting zone in particular is bland as hell regardless of it being a "tutorial" zone or not.
Some of the item collection was a bit frustrating but I liked how much of it actually challenged my damn movement, with some really cool speed puzzles with tight as hell situations.

I'm on the fence on whether the world changes a bit too quickly is a good thing or bad thing. It's great narratively and mechanically for keeping you on your toes and feel alien, but it slightly messes with the general idea it ends on.

I think the overall vibes are good-ish. I like the factory SFX along with a few of the songs, but its imitation of previous games weren't as good this time around, and honestly I think the game should've been even quieter. There was an area where it was in darkness with very few noises but it was for such a short time! The other rooms have too much sound (even the break rooms), especially by the last hour. Some of the songs fell flat but I'm going to listen again at some point, could be audio mixing.

Didn't find the parry remotely broken and that could be because I'm just bad (>_<) but I also found the game literally challenging how you approach parrying anyway as it progressed. You could just shoot from a distance until they come at you for parrying, but then they get faster than you can even go, they get armor, and then you have to approach them. There was more attention to enemy placement in the last two zones as well.

Some of the bosses were ACTUALLY GOOD THIS TIME, albeit almost all of the good ones were in the last hour. If you include EMMIs, the speed boost one freaked me the hell out when I thought I could just figure it out while running.
I think the biggest highlights were the implementation of the Chozo Warriors (I'm always gonna dig enemies that have your movesets, even if they're still pretty weak they make you fucking learn your moveset). That and the final boss were amazing strengths of challenging combat as opposed to keyhole or puzzle bosses from prior games. You really have to be good with your mobility, the execution of space jump, flash shift, etc. The final boss really kicked my teeth in.

The bosses that suck usually are the ones that don't challenge your movement at all and just have very little error for mistakes. While I died to Kraid a few times, it had way more to do with ridiculous damage output.

People keep saying I should play Rain World because I had a lot more fun in this game when I was trying to get away and figuring out how to navigate rather than shooting and parrying. The final boss was amazing, sure, but I was drawn to Metroid moreso for vibes, its environments, and figuring out how to move forward. Something for me to think about.

Gonna come back to this game a lot for some of its environments though. That one region with all the flowers and plants that react off-screen to Samus' presence. By far the most gorgeous region.

(Note explanation: I'm doing rambley reviews instead of structured ones as soon as I finish games as an experiment to actually put something out. I have huge issues of wanting to be detail-oriented and understanding every corner of something, and unfortunately that brain worm is never going away. So a lot of these will get follow-ups at some point, but I wanted to, y'know, put something out there on why I loved a game for the time being :D.)

I'm probably stating the obvious opening my review this way, but whether or not Metroid is truly BACK with Dread depends entirely on what you look for in the series. It's Samus, it's caverns, it's bombing random blocks, but is it intricate world-design and schmovy survival action? Ehhhh.

Mechanically, Dread picks up where Samus Returns left off, which itself picked up where Fusion and Zero Mission left off more than 15 years ago. Samus snaps onto ledges, automatically curls up into a ball when you approach tunnels, accelerates and decelerates immediately and falls like a rock. For the average person, the adjectives that will come to mind when comparing these controls to the "old" and "clunky" Super Metroid are likely "tight" and "slick" and "modern."

I find it interesting to think about Dread in this context, because it illuminates how we often cling to obvious answers for why certain games are the way they are, instead of simply looking at the experience for what it is. And the experience Super Metroid provided was to let the level design essentially act as a blank canvas for your consistent, non-arbitrary moveset. The tiniest bit of wall can still be kicked off of, and the morphball lets you squeeze through whatever gap you feel you should be able to, because so little of Zebes's geometry was put in place specifically to require the use of individual movement mechanics. One of Super's most famous skips involves barely rolling under the metal gate in Brinstar just before it shuts, which works not because it's a set piece specifically crafted for the morphball, but because the collision boxes are so generalized and speed is retained so naturally.

Look at Zero Mission meanwhile and if you try to wall-jump off of a small platform at a low angle, you won't be able to, because for as saucy as its movement tech may look, the game still expects you to contend with its rigid ledge grabs and pull yourself into arbitrarily positioned morph ball tunnels. All the way back in 2004, we were already playing a Metroid game where speedruns end up hinging more on deliberately hidden shortcuts in the level design, rather than deep exploitable movement tech à la Super.

And don't misunderstand; it is cool that these newer Metroids try to specifically cater to that kind of player mentality. But it's also at least a little mistrustful toward those same players, to expect them to learn all these incredibly specific ways the level design can be broken, rather than hand them a deep set of movement mechanics and let them look at any given part of the game world and say "hmm yeah I can probably do that." If anything, these games have to rely on deliberate speedrun shortcuts because the mechanics on their own give you so little to work with.

Dread's exact place in this debate is confusing, as it's already proving to have far more speedrunning tricks up its sleeve than I personally expected. Originally I was going to go off on how dumb it is that the game bars you from using your power bombs if you find them early, how that proves that the game doesn't really work in a systemic fashion (like Super Metroid, where pick-ups function completely independently of each other within the game's logic,) blah blah blah.

Clearly though, a lot of the skips we're seeing in this early stage of Dread's life are simply the result of clever hitbox manipulation and routing. With how many power-ups come as direct rewards for completing set pieces and killing bosses, I sincerely didn't expect people to reach sub-two-hour playtimes within mere weeks of Dread's release; my expectation was that Dread would be too reliant on tight event triggers. For what it is, it's impressive the game doesn't just come apart at the seams when you break its sequence, and it would be short-sighted to dismiss Dread purely based off that earlier power bomb example.

That said, that fundamental philosophical difference between Dread and a game like Super is still deeply felt in every fiber of the experience. Dread is ultimately still a game that tries to restrict you at every turn, with its rigid wall-jump arcs and doors that conveniently lock behind you even when you're closing in on the final boss already. You can go into either experience with a solid grasp of Samus's movement, but no knowledge of specific level design skips, and Super will feel far more spontaneous and freeing than its 2021 successor; that sense of "yeah I can probably do that" is never coming back. And I feel this says a lot about MercurySteam's priorities with Dread: dogged surface-level adherence to Super's tropes, items and hands-off vibe, without genuine mechanical follow-through.

Instead, Dread is a 2021 video game through and through, meaning it's highly concerned with having you go through a tight progression of escalating challenges. Here's the part where you pull out blocks with your Grapple Beam, here's where you Shinespark through a billion walls in a row for a bit, here's where you're ambushed by a mini-boss. And you know what, I'll say Dread pulls off that modern action romp thing as well as you could hope for. The high movement speed, instant acceleration and low input lag make for a game that's immediately fun to pick up, being able to 360-aim or parry while running and slide right into tunnels without ever breaking momentum makes Samus feel like a fresh bar of soap in your hands. Sprinting through ZDR's many expansive rooms, evocative panoramas stretching out behind you, rays of light softly flowing in, thumping sound effects massaging your ears as you light up the entire screen with big neon-yellow laser shots -- it hits.

The bosses are a surprising highlight. They'll often use different types of projectiles in conjunction with each other, which either can or can't be removed from the screen with your own shots, and some even have relatively dynamic movement and spawn patterns. As rigidly as these enemies tend to cycle between individual attacks, there is enough variation and opportunities to stay on the offensive within those attacks for them to stay remarkably fresh over repeat attempts. I was especially impressed with this duo of mini-bosses you encounter a few times over the course of the game: you can freely bait each one of them to any given part of the sizable fighting arena, resulting in dynamic outcomes and spontaneous situations that feel like relatively uncharted territory for this kind of 2D action game.

But Dread's pursuit of action movie bombast comes at a cost. As I said, it's a tight progression of escalating challenges: the game never stops funneling you forward, often going as far as locking anything that's not the critical path behind you, the proverbial carrot always right in your face. In fact, if you've gone through Dread with the creeping suspicion that the game never actually lets you stray from its single intended path (unless you specifically sequence break or backtrack for capacity upgrades,) then I'm here to rip that band-aid off and tell you that that seems pretty accurate. I'd do more serious testing into this if I were writing something a little more legit than a Backloggd review, but: every one of Samus's key upgrades (minus Space Jump and Scan Pulse) has a corresponding type of lock in the world, and it seems there's never a point where getting one upgrade opens up enough paths that you could, for example, choose the order in which to get the next two.

This is my fancy way of saying that Dread is basically a straight line, except for those few cheeky shortcuts that let you adjust the item sequence a little bit. But that's really only shocking if we forget that, again, it's Fusion and Zero Mission that set Metroid on this exact trajectory in the first place. Comparing Dread to its GBA predecessors, I can kinda take or leave individual aspects of either style. Zero Mission for example showed that you can have a pretty linear game without inhibiting wall-jumps so aggressively, but at least Dread has the decency to not put big glowing waypoints on my map. Etc., etc.

Dread is forcing me to accept that I'm a bitter 16-bit boomer and how, for as much as games can't stop using the same ingredients, the particular way the Super Metroid dish is assembled has just not been matched by anything. Everyone who's played Super Metroid remembers making it back to the surface, to Samus's ship, the dreary rain giving way to triumphant horns, after running a whole lap around Zebes and getting all the key power-ups you need to explore the rest of the planet. It's not only emotionally powerful, it's where the real game begins, finally letting you search for the path forward in whatever way you see fit. This is complimented by a whole slew of genuinely optional upgrades like the Spazer or Plasma Beam, which present a much stronger backtracking incentive than Dread's endless supply of Missile Tanks.

This structure -- first a guided tour around most of the planet, then letting you loose to kill the game's remaining bosses -- hasn't been replicated by any other Metroid. But approaching Dread in particular under this lens reveals just how haphazard MercurySteam's approach to level design is, and how it and Super are too fundamentally incompatible to really be compared, even though Dread is constantly setting itself up for that juxtaposition.

I urge you to play close attention to how Dread's world is assembled. The game world's elevators always connect to these one-way horizontal tunnels: a dead-end to one side, a door to the rest of the area on the other. Individually, many of the rooms have dense, zig-zaggy layouts, but they're stacked together in a relatively linear fashion: the path keeps snaking West for example, until you reach the end of the respective map and the room suddenly curves backward, to naturally guide you back toward where you started.

This way, Dread essentially always auto-pilots you exactly where it wants you to go. Try any alternative door on this path, and they'll always feed into some kind of dead-end (again, unless it happens to lead to a sequence break.) It's to the point where, sometimes, you're funneled into a random teleporter that connects to a random room in a totally different area that you would never think to visit otherwise, and once you're there, the cycle I just described begins anew. Unlike every other Metroid, even the games outside Super, Dread never actually asks you to backtrack or figure out where to go yourself. The level design always curves and bends conveniently to guide you forward, and at best you might have to intuit which wall to bomb next.

The difference is easiest to explain with Super: here, every area is instead entered via a vertical shaft, which ends up functioning as a kind of hub, with many different spokes on either side. These can fork into one-off rooms, long horizontal tunnels, or even another hub-like vertical shaft. You play around in that set of rooms for a bit until maybe you get a new power up, which is where you're meant to draw the connection that "hmm maybe it's time to go and check out some of those other rooms."

It's not just that Super is asking you to understand its level design as an actual world, it has the knock-on effect that you can understand it in the first place. The layout feels planned and internally consistent, rooms have actual navigational functions (again, singular tunnels and shafts that connect to many different rooms on their own) instead of just being video game levels for you to blast through.

Maybe you also played through Dread and couldn't shake the sense that it was kind of flavorless? That it lacked pacing? And the sense that I'm actually moving through a world? You may find those feelings hard to pin down exactly, but they have real game design reasons behind them, and as much as Dread tries to wow you with visually stunning one-off rooms and events at key progression junctures, the way there can't help but feel hollow. MercurySteam stacked together all these set pieces and micro-challenges in the most seamless 2021 way they could, but once you take a step back and look at the whole picture, it's clear you're dealing with an un-traversable clustered mess of mini-video game levels, rather than a world you're meant to understand every inch of. It's telling you unlock the ability to warp freely between any of the game's previously one-way teleporters in the post-game: the map is just too fucking cumbersome to navigate otherwise.

This lack of commitment to actually capture the essence of those older Metroids is even more evident in Dread's use of a modern auto-checkpoint system: we're at least back to dedicated save rooms to lock in your progress and get a break from the action after Samus Returns, but anytime there's even a slight chance of death, you can expect to respawn just one room earlier. Under that light, you can't help but feel incredibly underwhelmed with how inconsequential the EMMI prove to be to the overall experience, considering they're the game's only major gameplay element not cribbed verbatim from older Metroids.

I suppose this is another aspect that has me thinking on how design and player sensibilities have fundamentally shifted over the years. To me, many of Dread's challenges felt fleeting; often satisfying to learn and execute, but ultimately with no real tension or significant room for error... and that last part is what's crucial. I'm going to state the obvious again, but if EMMI kill the player instantly, that means a single mistake will be enough to erase all their progress since the last checkpoint. It stands to reason then, that as a designer you'd make these runs as short as possible to keep possible frustration at a minimum.

So really, what makes the EMMI fall flat is less the lack of real consequence for failure specifically, and more how that reverberates on the design of the EMMI sections themselves. You never actually spend significant time with the first four EMMI (this does not include the first tutorial variant,) the run to the exit is so short you're actually likely to get it on a random attempt without having had to consciously study their behavior or the level design much. Early gimmicks like having to stand still to raise the room's water level do get the blood pumping a bit, but they're far too infrequent to turn the EMMI zones into something more substantial-feeling.

Here's the contradiction many game designers and players don't seem to want to acknowledge: if you give me a trial & error challenge that lasts a minute, kills me instantly, and will take ten attempts to get past, you actually use more of my time than if you'd given me a more substantial challenge with more room for error that sets me back circa three minutes in the event that I fail (which I might not.) Not only that, while the latter situation actually has stakes, the former will have me go through the motions and get used to it so much that I'll be too emotionally numb to feel much of anything by the time I succeed. It's too easy to forget that the idea behind game design is to elicit feelings from the player; you have to understand that they're going to be way more afraid of punishment than they actually need to be. That's the whole point.

It wasn't until the purple and blue EMMI where I got into extended tugs of war and felt legitimate... well, dread, having to move through their domains. The way water is used to slow Samus down in places is especially intelligent, as it becomes impossible to outpace the EMMI once you enter. You'll have to carefully estimate how long it will take you to get across, and you may even want to lure your predator somewhere else first based on your planning.

Consistently exciting was the use of the Omega Blaster, where you get to flip the tables and need to assess the ideal spot in the level design to shoot at the EMMI from (since you need to deal damage consistently to take out their armor.) It leverages your previously gained knowledge of the room layout back when you were the prey, and having to gauge distances and movement timings in this way feels legitimately original in the 2D game space Dread is occupying.

And UNLIKE Metroid Dread, I don't have a smooth convenient segue into my conclusion for this review. It's ultimately a game that left me excited and disappointed in pretty much equal measure. It's undeniably fun to have Metroid's base mechanics back in this giga-polished AAA 2D 2021 Nintendo game, but Dread is not really any less conservative than Samus Returns was four years ago. And even if all you wanted was "more Metroid," is Dread really meeting that bar when it's following up at least FOUR games that were all incredibly daring, sometimes even groundbreaking in their time? The most disruptive thing Dread does is not giving the normies an Easy Mode.

I was never really a huge Metroidvania fan, so I'm surprised to say this but I was completely hooked from start to finish. This game was way better than I expected. Almost everything in this game is masterfully designed, the environments, the animations, the difficulty, the power up progression and the challenging bosses (though some reskinned bosses can be annoying).

There are so many little touches to the point where you could tell the developers really cared about making this game great, which they did. Honestly, I think this game just made me a Metroid fan.

Review basada en mi primera playtru en dificultad normal

Lo que puedo decir de este titulo a la rápida es que ya me veo venir comentarios como "es un buen juego, pero mal Metroid" porque lo peor que me pareció de Dread son justamente elementos muy reconocibles de la serie principal.

Toda la exploración de principio a fin es un bait constante, muy pocas veces servirá una bifurcación y cuando te encuentres con una se sentirá que la tryhardeaste mucho para llegar a ella, como si no hubiese sido planeado ese salto o abertura. No existe mucha experimentación con tu movimiento, de hecho el juego te restringe incluso físicas que eran base del control de Samus para luego ponértelo como power up o que solo lo puedas usar en ciertos lugares. El juego es completamente lineal y no es sino hasta que consigues todas tus mejoras que realmente puedes explorar todo el planeta como te plazca, pero yendo a la pelea final con todo lo que te encuentras en tu ruta principal lit ya te llevas como mitad de objetos totales. También se nota un miedo de los desarrolladores para que nunca te sientas perdido en ningun momento, ya sea las conversaciones con ADAM, los miles de tutoriales que hay o la absurdisima cantidad de savepoints que hay, siendo hasta las zonas donde descubres el mapa un savepoint. Incluso hay checkpoints en este juego, algo bastante raro en la franquicia.

Ahora el tema de que le doy el visto bueno es porque también tiene muchas cosas buenas y, en general, son las que me termino llevando luego de haberlo terminado, y curiosamente no son cosas que se destaquen en los juegos de Samus. Es normal esperarse que en un Metroid de ahora tenga una calidad similar a los nuevos pilares del género, como Hollow Knight o Bloodstained. Pero lo que me demostró el título es que va más encaminado a esa subrama que desarrolla más el combate que la navegación por el mapa, como Guacamelee o Luna Nights. Lo que no hizo que Dread me embole es lo bueno que me resultaron las mecánicas ofensivas y evasivas, llegando a ser creativo en tus formas de eliminar a los enemigos y hay cuartos donde te recontextualizan algunos para que los mates de formas diferentes. Esto va ligado a los jefes también, que si bien tristemente acá está la peor versión de Kraid y no está Ridley (por cuestiones de canon supongo pero de ser sincero me esperaba otra excusa boluda de traerlo de vuelta como siempre ocurre) la gran mayoría me parecieron bastante buenos, demasiado de hecho, con un moveset muy amplio y que te pueden matar en pocos golpes que me llegaron a recordar a jefes de Order of Ecclesia. Hasta incluso tiene un combate contra un oponente igual que Samus pero muchisimo más chetado, un tropo que me agrada bastante y es encima el mejor jefe del juego. Lo que la caga son que la mayoria de estos jefes se tienen que rematar con QTEs, pero por suerte no llegan a niveles de estupidez como God of War.

Los EMMIs acaba siendo lo mejor del juego sin duda, siguiendo la dinamica del SA-X pero elevado a la enesima potencia. Mi gran pero con Fusion es que justamente habian formas muy evidentes y, en ciertos momentos, penosas, de burlar al SA-X, y la mayoría de las situaciones eran puro scripting. Los EMMIs son unas perras todas, cada uno con una gimmick diferente que debes adaptarte a ella para sobrevivir, y esas perras mamadas necesitas ser super preciso con el QTE cada que te atrapan, porque encima te hacen instakill todos ellos. La forma de derrotar a cada uno acaba siendo igual (conseguir el mismo power up temporal para gastartelo contra ellos) pero no me resultó repetitivo porque el escenario donde debes matarlos difiere de cada EMMI, y acomodarte y apuntar muy bien para romperles su coraza y cargar el disparo. Me hubiese gustado que estos enemigos ocupen todo el mapa, como si de un stalker de Resident Evil se tratase, pero ya es un dolor de huevo lidiar con ellos en sus zonas asignadas así que le veo el visto bueno.

En un todo, no es para nada el Metroid que esperaba ni esperabamos muchos, y en cierto sentido, sí, es el peor Metroid de la serie principal junto con el primero de NES. Pero decir que este es el peor es como decir que el peor MOTHER es el 2 y ese sigue siendo bastante bueno, o que el Resident Evil más fome es el 5 pero si lo juegas coop ni en pedo puedes decir que es un titulo deficiente. Si lo que buscas es full exploración acá definitivamente no lo vas a encontrar, pero si quieres una supervivencia stalker bastante decente y un combate cool es una muy buena elección, que de paso acaba siendo uno de los Metroids más desafiantes. Finalmente es un juego de Mercury Steam que me gusta, y hay una real evolución entre esto y Mirrors of Fate. Si llegasen a trabajar mejor el diseño de niveles para la próxima la verdad no me molestaría que volviesen a hacer ellos el Metroid 6, solo quiero eso: que aspiren a que sigan mejorando.

Edit: This review got flagged lmao
I'm not finished with the game yet but it's pretty alright.

The sign is a subtle joke. The shop is called "Sneed's Feed & Seed", where feed and seed both end in the sound "-eed", thus rhyming with the name of the owner, Sneed. The sign says that the shop was "Formerly Chuck's", implying that the two words beginning with "F" and "S" would have ended with "-uck", rhyming with "Chuck". So, when Chuck owned the shop, it would have been called "Chuck's Fuck and Suck".

Feels good to truly adore another 2D Metroid besides Super. And while Dread isn't quite as cohesive as the former, everything that makes the series great is on full display. The progression, intuitive level design and minimalistic approach to storytelling are especially phenomenal, and this is by far and away the best Samus has ever felt to play.

Playing all the previous 2D Metroids before it was also deeply rewarding, and I'd recommend it to anyone wanting the optimal experience with this game, despite not being a requirement.

last year i marathoned through almost every metroid mainline game in a week and spent the rest of the month playing metroid prime trilogy . that being said i had humorously persistent withdrawal symptoms because of the sudden absence in my life of fat ass samus so i feel like this game was made specifically by nintendo for this incurable disease of mine which astonishingly doesnt have an official name as of yet

well after a year or so i ended up being reunited with my naughty annihilator girlfriend who is now a dna genome fuckfest and spent something like 6-7 hours daydreaming about her using her big strong thick cannon on me . also the raven final boss was very hot i have to admit it like when he tore his own wing off . birdie im sold get to my house asap this saturday which is today

anyway this is a good game a great game even idk why im here writing a review like this but my feelings for samus aran had to be written down somewhere in the infinite stream of the internet

no, this wasnt supposed to be left in the drafts

yes, i am gay

In many ways, Metroid is a franchise I've always wanted to get into but kinda couldn't. I enjoyed Metroid Prime a lot and I did like reading up on the lore of the franchise, but Samus... I dunno. Whenever I tried to explore fan stuff, I would just be inundated with ~sexy Zero Suit Samus~ art and everything about Other M and it just seemed like the franchise would never be the version of it I was interested in. Despite her non-gendered armor, she'd get treated as this sex object and kind of tone and well-handled emotional core I was looking for wouldn't happen. I would never Get the love people have for Samus Aran.

WELL. THAT CERTAINLY CHANGED.

This game is carefully manufactured by people who LOVE Samus and LOVE the universe and want to drive it towards new directions. The storytelling is almost all visual and environmental. Its devastatingly hard, but you're always learning patterns and improving your tactics and getting just a little bit better every single time you die. Samus gets an emotional arc built on the roots of the story, without turning her into a "cuter" more "marketable" anime wife.

And she's just fucking COOL. I feel cool playing as her, I feel thrilled by the dangers she encountered, and I'm a fucking lesbian for Samus Aran. Completely won me over as one of the greatest protagonists in all of video games. I'm so thrilled to finally fall in love with this universe and I can't wait to explore it more and see where it goes from here.

Lack of consequence is the real killer here. While the EMMI encounters are pretty enjoyable to navigate, the fact that you're given an automatic checkpoint before and after you enter each one of their areas negates the majority of their potential. When getting caught by one barely inconveniences you, there's no tension or fear, let alone any dread. The worst part is that the standard Metroid save system would've worked perfectly for these sections, which makes it one of the most frustrating changes to an existing formula I've come across recently. Just imagine how thrilling landing an escape parry would've been if the threat of losing progress loomed over your every move. Beyond that it's your standard Metroid game, but with all the ups and downs that come with modernization. I guess it was foolish of me to hope that the storytelling through gameplay that the series has historically excelled at would continue into the modern age, since Dread's story is told entirely through cutscenes and text boxes. As chatty as Fusion is, wordlessly stumbling across Ridley's frozen body is one of my favorite moments in the entire series- Dread never attempts anything similar. The game also has the tendency to "let you out" right in front of where you're supposed to go next whenever you get an upgrade or fight a boss, meaning it's only possible to get really lost if you purposefully get yourself lost, which I can see rubbing some people the wrong way. Ultimately, this one gets a "worth playing" from me due to some changes that make the world pretty fun to traverse, like the new mobility options and improved elevator system, but more importantly the presentation. The backgrounds are especially well done- they're so detailed and they really do great work to make the areas feel distinct and alive in a way that the older games in the series couldn't capture. But there were also some small decisions that really caught my eye. Samus being the only source of light in a save room before she saves. The loading screens being silent, wordless cinemagraphs. The map being divided into much smaller squares than usual, making it impossible to reach most tiles until you get some upgrades, which mimics the entire Metroid concept. That's what I want to see more of.

A triumphant return for our favorite bounty hunter

In 2021, the year of long overdue sequels we had a lot of sequels that were over a decade between titles. Psychonauts 2 being 16 years apart from the first title, NEO: The World Ends with You being 14 years apart, No More Heroes 3 being 11 years apart from the second title (though you can argue that TSA also fulfilled the fan's urges during the time here for a full fledged numbered title from Suda51 here) and each one of them as surprisingly delivered considering the climate of bringing back these series and hoping some of the magic is still there for what people want after so long. Metroid Dread is almost a whopping 19 years apart from Fusion which was Metroid 4 and probably the game people have the most eyes on. A lot of eyes were on seeing if MercurySteam can do the series justice and after what seems like a decent showing for Samus Returns, it seems like they learned a lot from the last 4 years and delivered a title that has lived up to the title that is Metroid Dread.

Samus has never felt this flexible and smooth bringing her into the 2.5D space with several options that make traversing through ZDR a much more seamless experience. The addition of a slide feels like a small addition but it actually brings a lot to how Samus interacts with the world and reduces the downtime of going into Morph Ball for a small space that isn't long. The traditional tools of the trade are here such as Space Jump and Speed Boosting but there are also some new tools that bring even more movement options for Samus and bring a much more fluid combat flow with Flash Shift that make dodging attack much more manageable. The bosses in Dread are honestly the most fun I've had in Metroid bosses period. Each boss truly feels like an ordeal and hit pretty hard in a Normal playthrough but the best part is that they are never bullshit considering "No attack is unavoidable shows up as a tool tip during loading after you die to a boss and that couldn't be even more true. Each attempt never felt long and you always feel like you make progress during each attempt to the point sometimes you might be untouchable for a while until you finally beat a difficult boss. There are also specific moments that reward you with a action cutscene of Samus doing some action movie stunts and you can fire missiles/beam shots during this that actually feels rewarding and almost a power fantasy with how flashy and cool these cutscenes make her look. Level design is surprisingly great here since it feels like you're never stuck while still giving you the feeling that you're actually exploring things at your own pace. It's sort of a mix between Fusion being extremely linear to the point of locking doors in specific areas for no reason and Zero Mission where the game is pretty open but you sort of have a clear and cut case on what to do here. In Dread, you will give a hint on what to do next but you won't get any indicator on the map showing you specifically where to go which feels like essentially "go do this and figure out the rest yourself" feeling. The backgrounds themselves are actually full of detail such as animals scurrying about, specific machinery working in the back, detailed environment of ruins in a specific area and even what looks like different pathways that go into the background itself. I feel like the atmosphere is really understated in this game, I personally think Fusion and Super Metroid had it better, credit where credit is due here as there is a lot of moments that add what the game is named after being "Dread". The EMMI sections do a wonderful job of this from an audiovisual standpoint as the muted black and white, the lighting going on and off with various beeps coming from the machines and the EMMI itself. While the initial difficulty of these EMMIs progressing do get harder as they each get a unique tool, if you're good with platforming and have really great reflexes then the "Dread" will eventually get lost on you but fortunately these segments never last long and aren't really punishing as a death will just put you back right before entering the zone. The music is alright here but there are some pretty good mood setting themes such as each visit to the Network Station playing a electronical yet mysterious tune or the Save Station sounding omnious with the background of two chozos in the background. The puzzles themselves for gathering the upgrades are mostly just using a resource to get an upgrade while there are some elaborate puzzles that give you a feeling of satisfaction of pulling it off considering it's a combination of reaction, knowledge about the abilities you have and technique to do it properly.

There are some questionable decisions that I came to think of that I felt like the game added a few too many abilities and didn't put them out properly. You essentially get weaker versions of two iconic abilities you don't get until the end of the game and you rarely really use them since they essentially get phased out pretty quickly. The final item you get sort of feels like a waste considering you don't really use them other than to backtrack for 100% and gathering what feels like pointless upgrades considering you essentially get them at the end of the game. A nitpick is that when you get a specific power up for defeating EMMIs, the whole process is pretty repetitive despite only doing it a few times the whole playthrough and never really changes other than one instance where you have to run and make the perfect amount of space to pull off the damage you needed.

After playing through several games of the series this year (Metroid, Super Metroid, Fusion, Zero Mission in that order), I can understand why fans wanted a new game for so long. A series that created "Metroidvania" along with Castlevania unfortunately being in the background for the last 2 decades. The previous games have made me interested in the series and Metroid Dread has now made me a fan and excited to see what is to come next.

See you next mission, Lady.