This review contains spoilers
Samus could shoot me with her Hyper Beam and I would thank her for disintegrating me :)
This is my first 2D Metroid game since Fusion and has now got me extremely invested in the franchise as we eagerly wait for Prime 4 to cook. I was a tiny brainlet child back when I picked up Fusion, so I completely failed to understand anything about the Metroidvania structure which resulted in dropping it. I then picked up the Prime series much later as a more competent human and kinda breezed through those and Other M without much thought put in, so I need to replay those too.
Something I loved about playing Dread is that it doesn't hold your hand with exploration, it doesn't tell you where to go within the UI but instead leads you to those next objectives through dialogue, this forces you to pay attention to the exposition through Adam as well as observing your surroundings and glancing at the hidden areas on your map. If you ever happen to miss dialogue from Adam, the game has a neat logging system to retrace everything that was said which I appreciate in games.
As this is a Metroid game - its obviously got great level design that can really get your brain going, locking you off from certain obstacles until you have the upgrades to get past them. The new enemy type E.M.M.I. have some amazing zones that really make you clench your butthole since they are a 1 hit kill. They push you to think quickly utilising all of your abilities to either evade them or kill them, and man, killing them feels so good at point blank with the Omega Cannon. If the E.M.M.I. catch you, there are very tight windows for parries that will temporarily stun them, doing this is like doing crack (not that I have done crack) which has me addicted to parrying in this game, its just that satisfying.
The abilities you unlock are so much fun to use, especially the Flash Shift so you can go fast, Speed Booster that makes you go even faster, Space Jump for infinite jumps, and Screw Attack which is just OP.
The 2.5D interactive cutscenes/QTEs with parrying was one of my favourite aspects of the gameplay, I always felt engaged and on my toes during these moments compared to standard cutscenes with other games. These sequences where they played with 3D space also occured during uses of certain abilities like the Shinespark jump, and were always cool when they happened.
Playing through Dread's story was great for how short the game is. Reveals like Quiet Robe being an X and helping Samus was really cool and a nice callback to Fusion (yes I watched a story video before playing), as well as the reveal with Raven Beak and how he was posing as Adam to lure in Samus to get some of that DNA.
Loved this game, I would give it a 4.7/5 but we can't do that here so I'll just give it a 5. This is a must play especially now that we have a 2D Metroid on Switch.
This is my first 2D Metroid game since Fusion and has now got me extremely invested in the franchise as we eagerly wait for Prime 4 to cook. I was a tiny brainlet child back when I picked up Fusion, so I completely failed to understand anything about the Metroidvania structure which resulted in dropping it. I then picked up the Prime series much later as a more competent human and kinda breezed through those and Other M without much thought put in, so I need to replay those too.
Something I loved about playing Dread is that it doesn't hold your hand with exploration, it doesn't tell you where to go within the UI but instead leads you to those next objectives through dialogue, this forces you to pay attention to the exposition through Adam as well as observing your surroundings and glancing at the hidden areas on your map. If you ever happen to miss dialogue from Adam, the game has a neat logging system to retrace everything that was said which I appreciate in games.
As this is a Metroid game - its obviously got great level design that can really get your brain going, locking you off from certain obstacles until you have the upgrades to get past them. The new enemy type E.M.M.I. have some amazing zones that really make you clench your butthole since they are a 1 hit kill. They push you to think quickly utilising all of your abilities to either evade them or kill them, and man, killing them feels so good at point blank with the Omega Cannon. If the E.M.M.I. catch you, there are very tight windows for parries that will temporarily stun them, doing this is like doing crack (not that I have done crack) which has me addicted to parrying in this game, its just that satisfying.
The abilities you unlock are so much fun to use, especially the Flash Shift so you can go fast, Speed Booster that makes you go even faster, Space Jump for infinite jumps, and Screw Attack which is just OP.
The 2.5D interactive cutscenes/QTEs with parrying was one of my favourite aspects of the gameplay, I always felt engaged and on my toes during these moments compared to standard cutscenes with other games. These sequences where they played with 3D space also occured during uses of certain abilities like the Shinespark jump, and were always cool when they happened.
Playing through Dread's story was great for how short the game is. Reveals like Quiet Robe being an X and helping Samus was really cool and a nice callback to Fusion (yes I watched a story video before playing), as well as the reveal with Raven Beak and how he was posing as Adam to lure in Samus to get some of that DNA.
Loved this game, I would give it a 4.7/5 but we can't do that here so I'll just give it a 5. This is a must play especially now that we have a 2D Metroid on Switch.