When I began Metroid Dread one of the main things that stuck out for me was the immense amount of friction I felt between my desire to explore and the game design telling me to follow the path. A lot of people are comparing Dread to Metroid Fusion but fundamentally their flavor of linearity is vastly different. Fusion will lock you into specific areas to explore that you can look for the objective, or take time to look for side objectives that you can grab or will be able to grab later when you come back with more powers.
In Dread, once one path opens up the gate behind you shuts and won't open again until much later in the game. Mind you, I don't mean area to area, I mean room to room. A majority of the time there are switches that must be hit that will change the environment such as pushing blocks or changing energy flow. These decisions can never be reversed and will often lock you out of rooms you were just in for hours until the games lets you off its leash for a bit. Specifically this only lets up once around the midpoint point of the game (after defeating the 4th EMMI) and for the last stage while getting ready for the final area.
Like I said before, I find this frustrating. When given the movement tools like you are given with Dread I want to spend time searching to find small upgrades and environmental puzzles. I would always try and explore when I got a new ability but the only way open to me was the correct direction.
The core path is still fun with some particular high points like the 8th boss and unlocking the gravity suit, but it feels like they sacrificed an immense amount of freedom to make sure you NEVER get lost.
Quick side note on the bosses, I found most to be boring. 2D bossfights are hard to make well, just ask Retro Studios, but most of these felt boring/uninspired. Rather than relying on actual skill in the combat, most bosses just obscured their weakness/attack patterns so you have to waste time until you figure them out. The best bosses will still require you to put in work and effort after figuring out their patterns (just see boss #8 in the game), but most of the bosses in Dread are trivialized once you figure out what you're supposed to do. Most are closer to a Super Meat Boy boss rather than say a Hollow Knight boss.
As for the story, everything here is bunk. Metroid was never known for particularly great storytelling, but before there was a heart and soul in reflecting on the morality of killing an entire species just to stop other intelligent beings from weaponizing it. Now the story is all about Samus and her backstory, which is the exact great idea that Other M used to carry it's plot.
Here in the year 2021 technology has gotten to the point where we can completely eradicate the most deadly animal on earth, mosquitoes, simply by releasing a small genetic mutation in just a tiny fraction of the total population. You would hope following the grim themes on human intervention from Fusion that Dread would have even the slightest discussion on the real world issues and ethics that have come up in the past two decades since it's release, but I was probably just hoping for too much.
At the end of the day, Dread plays well and was fun enough to go through, but it lacks the soul of
its predecessors. Better than the worst of the series, worse than the best of the series. More polished than your average indie Search Action game but also 3x as expensive.
In Dread, once one path opens up the gate behind you shuts and won't open again until much later in the game. Mind you, I don't mean area to area, I mean room to room. A majority of the time there are switches that must be hit that will change the environment such as pushing blocks or changing energy flow. These decisions can never be reversed and will often lock you out of rooms you were just in for hours until the games lets you off its leash for a bit. Specifically this only lets up once around the midpoint point of the game (after defeating the 4th EMMI) and for the last stage while getting ready for the final area.
Like I said before, I find this frustrating. When given the movement tools like you are given with Dread I want to spend time searching to find small upgrades and environmental puzzles. I would always try and explore when I got a new ability but the only way open to me was the correct direction.
The core path is still fun with some particular high points like the 8th boss and unlocking the gravity suit, but it feels like they sacrificed an immense amount of freedom to make sure you NEVER get lost.
Quick side note on the bosses, I found most to be boring. 2D bossfights are hard to make well, just ask Retro Studios, but most of these felt boring/uninspired. Rather than relying on actual skill in the combat, most bosses just obscured their weakness/attack patterns so you have to waste time until you figure them out. The best bosses will still require you to put in work and effort after figuring out their patterns (just see boss #8 in the game), but most of the bosses in Dread are trivialized once you figure out what you're supposed to do. Most are closer to a Super Meat Boy boss rather than say a Hollow Knight boss.
As for the story, everything here is bunk. Metroid was never known for particularly great storytelling, but before there was a heart and soul in reflecting on the morality of killing an entire species just to stop other intelligent beings from weaponizing it. Now the story is all about Samus and her backstory, which is the exact great idea that Other M used to carry it's plot.
Here in the year 2021 technology has gotten to the point where we can completely eradicate the most deadly animal on earth, mosquitoes, simply by releasing a small genetic mutation in just a tiny fraction of the total population. You would hope following the grim themes on human intervention from Fusion that Dread would have even the slightest discussion on the real world issues and ethics that have come up in the past two decades since it's release, but I was probably just hoping for too much.
At the end of the day, Dread plays well and was fun enough to go through, but it lacks the soul of
its predecessors. Better than the worst of the series, worse than the best of the series. More polished than your average indie Search Action game but also 3x as expensive.
3 Comments
Agreed, but if we get rid of them what will the bats eat? You wouldn't kill a bat would you?
wait are mosquitoes really apart of the bat diet. thats fukken crazy
SimonDedalus
2 years ago