good game that never really excells in any area, so many of the upgrades just end up being missile packs (i had ~120 by the end and there were still a ton that i didn't bother getting) the game is also way too short for the price point; took me 8 hours to beat the game and i've playe better action games that have cost for less (or are even free!) the controls also felt kinda janky by the end with all the abilities you unlock but they were never too big of an issu. best thing about dread is definitely the bosses. almost all of them were challenging and fun, and while I thought the emmi sections would end up being pretty annoying (and they were at times), they ended up serving as a nice break from the normal gameplay loop

A well crafted experience. It's not especially long, but what is there is done quite well. Part of the reason it achieves such brevity is that it is essentially linear - if you can follow the path the devs left for you. Which is sometimes not easy, especially when Adam doesn't tell you where to go. I once missed a little hole I needed to crawl through and lost 30 minutes meandering through the map until I looked up a walkthrough. That meandering was somewhat rewarding, because I was able to get to new hidden upgrades, but it was generally not terribly fun to sprint past all the enemies, redo all the minor platforming, just for 2 extra missiles (especially when I really wanted to find the next place to go for story progress). Despite my relative inexperience with the genre (I've only really played Ori 1 and Hollow Knight, where it should be noted the latter might be setting unfair expectations) but that feeling of being lost felt antithetical to a metroidvania's ideal lost-feeling. Maybe it's because the stop-and-shoot nature of her missile arm felt a little awkward to me for most of the game, or maybe it's because the 2.5d actually hurt the immersion, where I felt like I was looking at a doll house rather than controlling a character in a world. That's not to say I didn't enjoy the combat or the world environments. I actually really enjoyed that the boss fights rewarded learning the patterns and didn't overstay their welcome once you learned them. And the the background art and environments were beautiful, along with a well done sci-fi/Alien/spooky vibe. The EMMIs were exciting encounters, and really helped with immersion. You acquire new powers at a good pace, very steadily increasing in power and capability, which also feels great. The story was nothing to write home about, but I'm trying to be fair and not compare it to Hollow Knight.

This game was pretty fun when I first got it. It was really fun to explore the different areas for the first time and it was cool to keep getting new power ups and abilities as rewards for exploring. The boss fights were all interesting and kept you on your toes when doing it for the first time. All of the cutscenes are also animated really well. Also, the robots did their job well since I was terrified every time I had to enter their areas. Being chased by them was enough to get my adrenaline pumping.

The only part that got annoying was trying to collect everything from all of the areas, but that was expected. I stopped playing this game when I first got to the final boss and I just came back and finished it today after several months and all I had left to do was collect the rest of the items and defeat the final boss. After doing some re-learning of the controls while item hunting, I was able to defeat the final boss after a couple of tries without too much trouble.

As I said already, the only part that I didn't care for was trying to collect everything in the whole world, but that is just part of all games of this genre. But, the only thing that really made me annoyed while doing it was that there were icons all over the map, even for things that were no longer there or usable, so I wish they were removed from the map after being used. This would probably make the late-game more enjoyable and slightly less tedioius.

Best game in the 2D Metroid franchise, perfected the Metroid formula It really feels like a love letter to everything Metroid with how it mixes everything that's great about every single one of them like the Gameplay from Samus Returns making Samus feel incredible to control than ever, Or having the great story beats of fusion with the E.M.M.I. feeling what I thought the SA-X should have been. All in all Dread is just perfect from start to finish and I honestly wouldn't be upset about this being the end, It's just incredible I love Metroid.

Dread llega a la Nintendo Switch después de lo que pareció una eternidad para demostrarnos porque existen los metroidvania, entregando un mundo interconectado lleno de peligros, mejoras, secretos y una historia bastante sorprendente teniendo en cuenta a lo que el género nos tiene acostumbrados. En esta entrega Samus es más ágil que nunca debido a las nuevas características gráficas que son posibles gracias a la potencia de la Switch. La calidad del título no se improvisa y por donde se mire hay detalles que solo se ven en las grandes producciones de la industria, con animaciones impecables y un trabajo sonoro inmersivo. Es muy agradable volver a este universo lleno de parásitos, peligros y razas alienígenas, controlando a la cazarrecompensas más hermosa y poderosa del universo. La espera fue larga, ojalá no suceda lo mismo en la próxima oportunidad.

Metroid Dread sits in a strange space, albeit one that Nintendo exclusives often inhabit. A place where the incredible pedigree of game design is clear from the very start of the game (and sometimes made apparent to the audience through audio cues that adapted from titles that came out 30-40 years ago). At the same time, these games tend to exhibit oddities and, in my opinion, design mistakes that make them appear amateurish and poorly planned - a quality that Nintendo games rarely display, if you ask the average gamer. Describing Metroid Dread probably makes the point for me, in many ways.

Firstly, the animation is wonderfully executed. Samus navigates the world with a smoothness that other 2D platformers rarely replicate. There is a childish quality to it too that I really appreciate. Samus turns towards the came before saving for, instance. She adopts a questioning posture, almost addressing you directly, "Do you want to save?". It's almost a The Office shot of Jim turning towards the camera and giving a 'What can you do?' pose. By the end, that comparison was making me laugh every time I saved. Samus communicates with you in really subtle ways, through excellent animation work.

I love that the game often presents obstacles that clearly need specific new abilities and then subverts expectations by giving you a different one. The chronology of each ability rarely fits with the chronology of when matching obstacles are presented to you. The abilities are really well-designed, except for the rolling space jump, which I now think is a deliberate janky addition made by the developers in all 2D Metroid games to annoy me, specifically. The game also demands that you use your abilities in smart ways and often in combination. I love that each ability has a use case and its use cases are potentiated by the additions of other abilities. It's clear that real care has been put into designing these and the game world, in conjunction.

Despite all of these details, I have four specific issues with this game that brings it down from 5 to 3.5:

1. Enforced game length through fights with repeated and minor evolutions of Mawkins. I beat the game in 7 hours. It would have been 5 had it not been for the repeated Mawkin fights. I appreciate each one having minor evolutions of the last, but it's never enough to justify that many battles

2. E.M.M.I.s - I liked the first 3 or 4. I like that each teaches you how to use your newly gained abilities efficiently. I especially like that I managed to sucker punch the purple one three times in a row, after getting the omega cannon, allowing me to finish him off. But by the end, the repeated usage of them, much like the Mawkin's, made me weary and annoyed.


3. Enforced 'fake' non-linearity. The game often shuttles you from one place to another and then back and forth over the course of the game. It makes you feel like the game is non-linear (and that it is allowing you freedom to explore), but it's quite clear, once you get through 1/4th , that the game is almost entirely on rails. Veering away from the obvious path often results in drawn out backtracking which maybe rewards you with extra rockets, a resource that gets replenished incredibly quickly anyway.

4. No resource management. You don't have to be economical with your rockets and you don't have to hit with that many of them, as a result. They are replenished way too quickly. Just use your rockets, they do more damage. This is not good game design.

Last boss fight is difficult but amazing and a joy to overcome. I wish more of the boss fights had eased us into that difficulty curve. It was quite a substantial jump up in difficulty.

Metroid Dread is a evolution of its genre and its series as Metroid Dread is a great place to be introduced to the Metroid Series. Metroid Dread provides a sense of fear but also discovery when exploring the map that is provided to the player. There is always something that is hidden as this game rewards you for finding all its hidden secrets as Metroid Dread may be a difficult game and may make you feel dread but Metroid Dread has a satisfactory feeling when beating a boss battle along with its fluid controls providing tight platforming and traversal making this one of the bet 2D Metroidvania's to exist.