In many ways, Metroid: Dread is an obvious triumph, a display that there is still passionate investment in a series of games that would go on to inspire a whole genre. Obviously, it hasn't been that long since the same developers did Samus Returns, but this is their chance at making a fully new Metroid game.

And for what it's worth, it's pretty good. The way it incorporates many of the series old ideas to the new one it introduces gives this game its own unique identity. This game is utterly dripping in atmosphere, the environments are beautiful and haunting, and although it lacks any memorable music, the way the score sets the mood for each area is still wonderful.

None of this is even mentioning the game's encounters with the E.M.M.I. robots who, although far too heavily tutorialized at the beginning, do invite a certain sense of tension that calls back to the series' horror roots once you unlock the Phantom Cloak ability. In stealth games, I usually feel like I'm cheating when an enemy hears me but then I get back behind cover and they go back to their usual patrol, forgetting my existence. In this, though, stealth is rarely expected to be successful. No, the fun comes in the search.

I don't know if the E.M.M.I are programmed to do this, but the amount of times I managed to turn invisible and find a safe place to activate cloaking, only for the E.M.M.I. to get extremely close to me, scan and find nothing, and then leave, was very high. The feeling of danger is very much real because if one of them so much as touches you, even accidentally, you are most likely dead. I quite enjoyed these sequences.

The problem is that there's a weight dragging this game down. Another game it's trying to be on top of the game they're selling you. The Metroid game where you explore a completely new alien world and get stalked by killer robots is great, but it's also trying to be something else: the finale to this era of the Metroid series.



I don't think anything sums up this problem better than the game's halfway point. After spending so much time in the lower depths of the planet, you finally unlock the grapple beam and use it to take an elevator upwards for the first time in what feels like forever. And what awaits you is unlike everything else you've seen so far.

Ferenia is a grand old citadel of the Chozo, a race of bird-like aliens who are responsible for most of the technology Samus uses. Without words, you immediately understand everything about this place. The simple, ominous chanting the game establishes as the theme of the Chozo echoes through the halls as you realize you've stumbled onto a place of great importance. This once great place has been abandoned, yet its beauty is still preserved.

It's short-lived, however, as you soon find yourself in yet another cold, mechanical environment signaling the presence of an E.M.M.I. robot. This sudden clash of environments is already not great, but it can be forgiven. What's worse is what happens just moments later. Before you really have a chance to encounter the latest E.M.M.I. robot, a cutscene plays where it catches you and suddenly a living Chozo appears and shuts it down, saving you. What follows is one of the most clumsy ways at storytelling I've seen in a while.

Before we continue, let me make something clear: I'm not an expert on this series. The only Metroid games I played before this were Super Metroid and the remake of Metroid 2. I know the stories of the other games, but I haven't played them myself. However, the two I have played are regarded as some of the more important series narratively, so I have to assume that my problems with this story aren't that I'm missing out on important details, but rather that the attempts to tie everything together in this game were handled poorly.

The Chozo introduces himself as Quiet Robe and goes on an exposition dump that feels like an hour long, explaining the Chozo's presence on every planet Samus has been to over the series. I cannot stress enough how little this matters. The only thing of importance you learn is that the villain Samus encountered earlier in the game is named Raven Beak and that he's after Samus because he wants to use the Metroid DNA she was injected with in Metroid: Fusion to clone a new army of Metroids.

This concludes with Samus, for the first time since the universally panned Metroid: Other M, speaking. In the language of the Chozo (which I guess she knows because she also has Chozo DNA inside of her?) she tells Quiet Robe she'll stop Raven Beak's plans. As cool and impactful as it is in the moment, it rings kind of hollow. Familiar, heroic music may be blaring in the background but this tells us nothing about Samus' character. Certainly less than what other entries in the series were able to communicate completely non-verbally.

Quiet Robe robe then gets unceremoniously killed off now that his role as exposition machine is complete and he's informed Samus of her "destiny" or whatever, and a boss fight ensues. In this moment, it becomes clear that the game you've been playing up to this point is over, and it's become something else. This isn't inherently bad, one of this game's best strengths is its ability to surprise you, but the haphazard way it's implemented leaves something to be desired. The game's signature E.M.M.I. robots are basically a non-presence from this point onwards and this is now a sequel to Metroid: Fusion.

Again, the way the game surprises you is interesting. I hadn't played Fusion so the moment where you accidentally release a swarm of X-parasites and they suddenly revamp every single enemy in the game's behavior was genuinely cool. There's also a lot of cool new boss battles, my favorite being Experiment Z-57 who forces you to use the Space Jump in a lot of fun ways.

It's not that the gameplay stops being exciting or fun, but that what was once a genuinely atmospheric, chilling game, filled with the intended feeling of dread, is over now. However, as much as I criticize this shift in the story, there is one moment where these two story threads converge: the last E.M.M.I. encounter.

There are very few E.M.M.I. encounters after the big "twist" if you want to call it that, but the final one is a complete curveball. Throughout the second half, they've been teasing that something physically is changing within Samus because of her encounter with Raven Beak at the start of the game. And in this final E.M.M.I. encounter, it awakens. The Metroid DNA inside of Samus activates and she completely drains the final E.M.M.I. of its energy. YOU have become the terror, the thing your enemies should be afraid of. I do have some problems with this story thread broadly, but I won't deny that this singular moment is effective.

There unfortunately isn't that much left to talk about, the game is mostly typical Metroid fare once the E.M.M.I.s are out of the way. Which is a shame, because without this twist, I feel like the game could have built on the E.M.M.I. encounters more, had to spend longer amounts of time with them hunting you, and genuinely had to use your powers to navigate the environment. Instead, all of your focus is spent solely on trying to find an exit and make your way to it. Again, I feel like this could have been fixed had the E.M.M.I.s not been effectively tossed aside in the second half, but as it is, it's a major missed opportunity.



Where things take a turn for the worst is the game's final act. Again, gameplay-wise, it's pretty fun. There's a long and genuinely challenging boss battle that allows you to make use of all the game's mechanics in a way that's frantic and exciting. However, story-wise, I again have to express disappointment.

I know it's a bit rich complaining about the story in a Nintendo game, but in this case, even if the game isn't riddled with cutscenes all over the place, it's trying to have one. If it wasn't, there'd be no reason to have the cutscene just before this boss.

For you see, just before your last encounter with Raven Beak, Samus reports to ADAM, her ship's AI named for the character Adam from Metroid: Other M. One of the most widely-criticized aspects of Other M was Samus' relationship with Adam (the person, not the AI), where this once fully independent character now wouldn't do ANYTHING without specifically being told to by Adam, her commanding officer, who she was also in love with. I haven't played Other M to confirm, but these criticisms were ringing in my mind during this cutscene.

Because, in this moment, ADAM (the AI, not the person) tells Samus that the Metroid DNA awakening within her makes her a threat to the galaxy. The only way the Galactic Federation will allow her to live is if she follows every single one of their orders to the letter from now on. This gets weirdly personal as ADAM tells her that following orders is always what she's done and that this should come naturally to her. Samus responds by blasting ADAM right in the face, or rather, computer screen. I can't describe how much this felt like a direct response to the criticisms of Other M.

Of course, before Samus even fired the blaster, it was clear that something was wrong here. ADAM had already had some... strange dialogue throughout the game, talking about Samus' "destiny" and constantly telling her that she's totally not strong enough to take on the super cool villain Raven Beak. So it wasn't a huge shock when ADAM was revealed to have been controlled by Raven Beak all along in this moment. This makes the moment ring completely hollow, as now it's not really Samus asserting her independence, it's just her seeing through the disguise of this one specific villain.

The villain also drops another minor lore dump, which is that one part of the alien DNA cocktail that Samus has been injected with is that some of the Chozo DNA she has actually came from a transfusion from him. I honestly could not tell you what adds to this story other than to haphazardly justify why this previously unseen and unmentioned antagonist should be the final boss of this series. For the record, I really don't care that the final boss was never mentioned before, rather I care that this game tries to pretend they've been building to this Raven Beak guy all along when they really haven't.

After the genuinely spectacular boss fight, the ending sequence has Samus' Metroid DNA fully take form as her armor becomes green and Metroid-like. She completely drains Raven Beak much like she did to the E.M.M.I. from earlier, and then leaves the planet in the obligatory escape sequence. For all my complaints, this feels like a cool ending for the series. Even though all the Metroids are gone, the series' title of "Metroid" will live on through Samus. This new design and potential for new Metroid abilities for her would allow the next game to be a complete breath of fresh air and shake up the formula.

And then there's a moment that just crushes me. Right before Samus tries to take off, her ship warns her that if she touches the controls, she'll just accidentally drain it of all of its power. But Quiet Robe, who for plot reasons that are way too complicated to get into, shows up and reverts Samus back to her human form so she can activate the ship and fly away.

This continued the game's pattern of teasing something interesting and then immediately going back on it, so I guess I shouldn't have been surprised. But I'm really bothered by this ending for a lot of reasons. This is the literal last beat of this series until whatever the next era of Metroid looks like. This does line up with that moment I was talking about earlier, with Samus taking the place of the E.M.M.I.s as the one who instills fear, so this ending where she gets healed is meant to be a good thing. But here's why I think it was a mistake to handle it that way.

The Metroids, at least in the games I played, were framed fairly sympathetically. In Metroid 2, Samus is sent to wipe out all of the Metroids. But throughout the game you'll discover that these Metroids are not all energy-sucking monsters. They've evolved into different forms and even seem to have a queen and hive system. They are hostile to you, but only because you came into their home to wipe them all out just because they could "potentially" be a threat. This is reinforced by the ending, where Samus chooses to spare the last Metroid, the recently-hatched baby of the Queen Metroid she just killed.

Super Metroid continues this. In the ending of the game, the baby Metroid from the first game who has now grown in size, sacrifices itself to save Samus. It drains the boss of its power and then gives that energy to Samus to give her the boost she needs to win the fight. Without words, these two games have formed an emotional arc between Samus and the Metroids. That moment where it gives the energy to Samus also establishes something else, which is that the Metroids aren't only capable of taking energy away, they're also capable of giving it. They're not just the mindless destroyers they were made out to be. They were simply used as a weapon by others.

Metroid: Dread basically throws all of this out of the window. Quiet Robe just casually mentions in his big exposition dump that he and the members of his tribe wanted to wipe out all of the Metroids and this is seen as a good and heroic thing by the story and never questioned. This isn't helped by Samus becoming more Metroid-like and having to be "cured."

Yes, obviously Raven Beak trying to create an army of Metroids to use as weapons was bad, but what is the point of this ending where basically the last trace of the Metroids gets wiped away? This series basically regresses its own stance on the Metroids completely for no good reason.

It's genuinely bizarre that they both had a chance to move the series forward in an interesting way AND deliver a satisfying conclusion to Samus' journey with the Metroids by having her end the series as this half-Metroid, half-human being, and then chose to undo it at the last minute. To not only do that, but to actively derail the new ideas this very game was exploring just to deliver this nothing of an ending, is disappointing in many ways.

I say all of this and I still give it 3 and a half stars. Why? Honestly, it's because the game is just too fun to play. Aside from the game locking you into areas just a few too many times to the point where intentionally backtracking to get items you missed becomes practically impossible until the very end, this game is genuinely enjoyable. As the first fully new Metroid experience in over a decade, it delivers... if you ignore the story.