I'm so glad that my first Metroid happens to be the best video game-ass video game of 2021.
Samus also is the second-best playing character in all of 2021. She is certainly the most badass.
Metroid Dread reaches its peak when you get a firm grasp of all the mechanics and you're just zipping through the whole thing, which is only something I bothered to do because it just feels so damn good to control Samus. It's reinforced by the pacing too, as it shuttles you towards the critical path and drops abilities at a rapid clip.
The boss fights are the obvious highlight for me, with the last boss being the number one boss battle with a bullet in all the 2021 games I've played. They're mechanically interesting with a bunch of openings for you to optimize your DPS, the right level of difficulty to create intense back-and-forths with varying attack patterns that never feel cheap, and a sprinkling of totally awesome cutscene direction to punctuate climactic moments.
I was so obsessed with this game that I played it four times in a row within a week, doing a 100% run the first time, doing a faster second run, beating it on hard mode for the third go-around, and then getting a 3:04 clear time on hard mode for the fourth and last playthrough while employing some cool speedrun tricks to whittle downtime during boss fights. I was convinced there wouldn't be another 2021 game that I would just devour and replay to such a degree.
Samus also is the second-best playing character in all of 2021. She is certainly the most badass.
Metroid Dread reaches its peak when you get a firm grasp of all the mechanics and you're just zipping through the whole thing, which is only something I bothered to do because it just feels so damn good to control Samus. It's reinforced by the pacing too, as it shuttles you towards the critical path and drops abilities at a rapid clip.
The boss fights are the obvious highlight for me, with the last boss being the number one boss battle with a bullet in all the 2021 games I've played. They're mechanically interesting with a bunch of openings for you to optimize your DPS, the right level of difficulty to create intense back-and-forths with varying attack patterns that never feel cheap, and a sprinkling of totally awesome cutscene direction to punctuate climactic moments.
I was so obsessed with this game that I played it four times in a row within a week, doing a 100% run the first time, doing a faster second run, beating it on hard mode for the third go-around, and then getting a 3:04 clear time on hard mode for the fourth and last playthrough while employing some cool speedrun tricks to whittle downtime during boss fights. I was convinced there wouldn't be another 2021 game that I would just devour and replay to such a degree.