flashback to my fusion review: I am not a fan of that game. the new concepts it brings to metroid are interesting, but the design language it draws from previous metroid games is not. as the game takes a more linear approach to its map design, it often locks you to a small set of rooms at a time to figure out how to proceed, and when it provides a legitimate puzzle it works wonderfully. however, the game mostly relies on tedious invisible blocks instead of properly testing your understanding of the tools at your disposal. likewise there's an increased focus on bosses, but with little added depth to the encounters past the "shoot missiles like crazy and occasionally dodge attacks." even SA-X is mostly restricted to scripted encounters and of no real threat to the player other than a couple of chase sequences. the concepts and mechanics they draw from super metroid work in super because that game has a slower pace, a wider realm to explore in, and a relatively forgiving difficulty overall. the mixups that fusion presents are novel but can't thrive when they're welded to mechanics meant for a different kind of experience.

what dread succeeds at is rewriting the mechanics of old-school metroid to make the fusion concepts work. the world structure is now not meant to be a contiguous space but a linearized series of discrete areas broken up by items you need or challenges you must overcome. bosses are now fleshed out with phases of discrete attacks that rely on samus's wider set of movement options. rather than the sparse SA-X sequences of fusion, you now are chased by EMMIs as you criss-cross their zones in order to progress, with stealth moves now baked into the mechanics. the environments even draw heavily from fusion's synthetic/organic dichotomy. it's hard to argue that the resulting project really feels like old-school metroid, but it's a very fun simulacrum of that style.

of course, I think it has to be said there's a sense of artifice to the "metroidvania" aspect of it, since your progress is so tightly constrained that pushing against the game will yield no quarter. the doors are locked behind you at every opportunity to keep you moving completely forward, and the planet itself isn't really explorable in a traditional metroid sense until the point of no return at the end of the game. the upside to this is there's really no getting lost, and hidden items are generally laid out so that you'll always run into them when you have the power-up you need to get them. it's a very western take on the series where the areas are laid out like a series of Skinner boxes, where you have just enough in each place to solve something cool and get your dopamine before you're shuttled to the next one. the biggest downside of this is once you actually get out into the world it doesn't feel like it breathes like in older games. I'm not really gonna fault it for its level design on the micro scale, as fusion does basically the same thing this one does. what makes it feel more jarring is that fusion at least had ludonarrative coherence for why the areas were so choppy, whereas this game seems like it should flow like a living area.

to combat the superficiality of the exploration content, the devs chose to raise the execution ceiling to keep the gameplay satisfying. this is definitely the hardest metroid game other than fusion, but it's balanced out by a wealth of new movement and combat options. bosses pretty much follow the same pattern as in the latter half of samus returns: multi-phase fight, spend most of your time dodging, and use the parry when you can. I didn't really have complaints about any of these, though I could've used maybe one more big boss fight towards the end, maybe instead of golzuna. samus now has access to a "flash shift" dash move that puts the game in line with a lot of other big western platformers like hollow knight and celeste, as well as a very handy slide maneuver that doubles as insta-morph-ball when you're standing still. these two really extend the expressiveness of the player's tactics beyond a point that space jump alone allowed.

there's also the EMMI areas, which I think do a better job of capturing the fear of being chased than SA-X did. the early section where you're forced to drain the right amount of water to get into a chute leading out for the area while the EMMI creeps up is a perfect implementation of this concept. later EMMI zones don't really capture this however... it ends up being more like walking in and out until you get a cycle where the EMMI is far away and then running like hell. part of this is because stealth does not seem to be the viable option the developers intended, or at least that's how felt after trying it for a while. the EMMI is so highly mobile that it feels better to evade it rather than hide and hope that it doesn't decide to blindly run right into you. the omega cannon sections make up for this a bit in how they encourage you to search the environments you were previously hauling ass through to look for long areas you can comfortably fire from. even with the flaws present, this exceeded my expectations of the quality of these sections from the trailer, so I'd say it's a net win in the end.

the presentation didn't strike me the wrong way at any point - thank god for how good the framerate is - but it isn't all great. the UI easily trumped all other aspects for ugliest aspect for me: that font feels so wrong to be slapped on absolutely everything, and it reeks a bit of Unity project style menus in a way. the actual environments mix up locales often however, and hit a variety of both natural and constructed styles. it's unquestionably a very bright game tho, as it's kept in line with nintendo's in-house graphics style for the most part. however, there's still a great deal of detail to be had, even if the areas end up a little on the generic side.

there's a couple other random things I wanted to bring up: there are honestly too many items in this game. there's not enough time to enjoy a new upgrade before you get another one, and getting major upgrades super late in the game is a letdown considering how little you get to use them before the final boss. the map could use some fine-tuning to make it less visually dense, or at least a better way to see what items on your map hasn't been collected. the parry is utilized much better than in samus returns, and doesn't impede the action remotely as much as it used to. the story is not really at the forefront, but there's a very cool cutscene halfway through that was a fun treat for fans that put a grin on my face.

it's odd to play an official metroid game that draws so much from the indie games that came many years after the last mainline titles, but mercurysteam really felt themselves with this one. the game repackages the old standards of metroid into an extremely polished experience that stands as one of the most solid switch titles to have dropped on switch up to now. if mercurysteam keeps working on this series, I'll be happy to play whatever they put out without the reservations I went into this game with after samus returns. there's still room to go up from here if they keep listening to fan feedback.