Metroid Dread is without a doubt one of the best 2D platformers ever made. It perfects the classic Metroid formula while also bringing in many new twists to the gameplay to freshen up the experience. It is going to be very difficult for me to name everything amazing about this game, so forgive me if I miss one of the many things this game gets right.

Metroid Dread has some unbelievably smooth controls. Samus nearly always does exactly what you want her to do. You almost never feel like you're losing any momentum while performing any given action. The returning melee attack from Samus Returns really helps with momentum as well. Rather than having to stop and shoot if an enemy is in your way, you can simply time your melee attack correctly to get a really satisfying camera effect and keep all your speed. All of this is aided by the game's incredible animation fluidly connecting everything together. Samus never clips into any other objects, and her model never jumps around from pose to pose. Everything she does while controlled by the player looks as if it could be found within a cutscene as well.

One of the things Metroid Dread does best is fooling the player into thinking they're a genius. Despite being a metroidvania, Metroid Dread doesn't really open up that much. There are many times where there is only one set route for the player to take and get to where they need to be, but the game does a very good job hiding this. The map is so naturally designed to point the player to where they need to be at any given moment that most players will likely just take the game's intended path first. They'll feel clever about it too, because from the player's perspective they just figured out how to navigate Metroid Dread's maze of a map on their first try. It is a personal skill of mine to be able to get lost in the simplest maps imaginable while playing literally any video game, so I feel like the fact that I was never confused on where to go for more than 5 minutes, not even once, really says something about how great this game's map is.

Now for one last subject on the topic of gameplay, THIS GAME HAS AMAZING BOSSES!!! I am generally someone that struggles while playing difficult video games, but Metroid Dreads bosses had me coming back for more every single time I was defeated. Despite most of them having huge flashy attacks that seem impossible to avoid, they slowly become more and more recognisable the more you fight each boss over and over. You’ll need to be able to remain composed in frantic and crazy situations and have full knowledge of each boss's moveset if you want to have any hope of taking them down. But once you finally do, it seems hard to believe that you ever could have struggled at all in the first place. You learn so much during each fight that you feel (in a similar way to mastering navigation) like a genius after every one, despite that being (also similar to navigation) the game's exact intention.

I touched on presentation briefly before, but I'll go into more detail here. This game looks absolutely amazing. As I previously mentioned, all of the game's animations are great, but there's more to it than that. To start, the game graphically looks really excellent. Despite the map you interact with being fairly blocky and video game-ish, It always blends perfectly into the beautiful backgrounds on each map. All of the backgrounds manage to be unique in their own way through incredible lighting, wonderfully realistic weather effects, meticulously crafted environments, and a general sense of life to everywhere you visit. I have never before played a 2D game that was able to make me feel so small in such massive areas. Also, because every location on every map is so detailed, the camera can pan all over the place and never has to be restricted to a purely 2D perspective. It's another major reason this game looks so good and feels so fun to play. When fighting bosses or discovering major locations the camera can go absolutely crazy and make you feel like you're watching an action movie.

One aspect I did not feel so positively about was the story. All of the game's cutscenes look great, it was very cool to see Samus interacting with real life chozos, and It's certainly cool that the game tries to be a conclusion to the original 2D metroid storyline. The problem is that it doesn't really conclude anything. I really wish Nintendo wasn't allergic to having a full proper story in their games the way other developers do. While it's true that story isn't absolutely necessary and fun is most important, stories in games can elevate them to much higher levels than they would otherwise be able to achieve, and I feel that there was a significant amount of missed potential here. It was very disappointing for the story to end simply with the planet exploding and then 5 seconds later… credits. Samus being a metroid is cool, but what does it mean for her? What are the consequences? Why do her powers suddenly disappear at the end of the game? Why does the X parasite become loyal to her? None of it is properly explained. It feels like it all happens for the sake of an easy ending. It's disappointing both as a conclusion to the series and as a reward for beating the game's very tough final boss.

As I’m writing this I’m realizing I never wrote anything about the E.M.M.I. sequences, so I'll put that here. They are pretty horrifying and stressful at first, but similar to the bosses they begin to get predictable and avoidable over time. It is very satisfying to become more and more skilled at evading them throughout the course of the game, Especially while each new E.M.M.I. ends up being better at hunting you than the last. I’d say that they do initially succeed at creating the desired feeling of dread the game tries to give you.

Overall metroid dread is incredible. Despite my disappointment with the narrative, the game presents itself so well it's hard for me to be stuck on that one issue. The fluid gameplay, amazing boss fights, excellent level design, and great sense of atmosphere is what really makes the game for me. Here's hoping we don't have to wait another 19 years for the next 2D Metroid game.