Metroid Dread

Metroid Dread is ultimately a middling game of great spectacle. It’s questionable E.M.M.I. gimmick, lack of accessibility features, and it favoring a heavily directed path will like turn off both hardcore fans of the genre and people looking for a fun casual experience.

(Note: This review will talk pretty openly about many things in this game, including abilities. Outside of one thing, it does not have any truly major spoilers.)

There is no small amount of games falling into the Metroidvania category coming out in recent times. But most draw more from Castlevania, Dark Souls, maso-core games like I Want To Be The Guy, or are doing their own thing. Rarely do they really take one of the genre’s namesakes for inspiration. That's one of the reasons why Metroid fans are always chomping at the bit for a new official entry. The heavy character movement, the labyrinthian alien worlds, the atmospheric and foreboding music. Few other games do that like Metroid has done that. Dread hits some of those marks and misses in other places.

Dread’s music is pretty good overall with some stand out tracks like “Artaria (Second Theme)” or “Cataris E.M.M.I. Zone (Safe)”. The best stuff is atmospheric without being just ambience that has interesting rhythms and a sense of foreboding, but a lot of it is very simple ambient tracks, electronic nonsense battle music, or orchestral movie soundtrack styled bits. The music feels like it is mixed very low and is pushed to the background. It’s possible you may not even actively notice the music, let alone remember it once you’re done playing. It’s such a shame too because there’s a lot of music and much of it is quite good. I think this is going to be one thing that folks keep coming back to though. Eventually this game will be remembered for having a fantastic soundtrack, because people will forget a lot of the throwaway tracks but keep on listening to the area exploration and area boss tracks. I’ve started to listen to the OST outside the game and I think it might be one of the best Metroid OSTs to be honest.

The alien planet of ZDR is very alien and very labyrinthian. There are many vastly different looking areas that loop in and around each other. It’s a vast improvement over Samus Returns where the areas were not visually distinct making it difficult to recognize what area you were in by sight alone. In Dread, you’ll likely not have that issue outside of the E.M.M.I zones which all largely look the same. But even those have unique and memorable geography.

A game this large would be difficult to navigate without a map. Dread’s map is extremely detailed and useful. The map is flushed with icons and information about items and other points of interest. You can see what kind of doors lead to each room, where items are that you missed, bosses you’ve beaten, and so much more. It pretty much has all the information you could possibly want from a map for this style of game. You can even place custom markers (though they’re limited to colors instead of various icons). It would be nice if you had the ability to filter out icons however. Some folks may find all the information a bit too much all at once. You can get around this by hovering over an icon and setting it to “highlighted”. This will remove all the other icons, but as far as I am aware, you can only have one highlighted at a time. Still, that’s better than nothing!

Much like with the music, the positives of the environmental design are undercut. Often this game will lock you into a set path in a way that feels arbitrary. Suddenly a zone is cold and doors are frozen over or you turn on a generator and now there’s invincible mushrooms blocking the way. The game is at its best when it lets you explore it’s frankly massive world, but those instances are few and sandwiched between very directed (sometimes just linear) sections. There are multiple points in this game where it’s just: get cool new ability > linear path > boss battle, repeat. It doesn’t often give you time to really experiment or get used to your new toy.

There’s an argument that’s “well, just explore at the end of the game”, but I feel that is a misunderstanding of the strengths of the genre. Exploring and stumbling on something cool is part of the joy of these sorts of games. So much of the “something cool” in this game is locked behind the intended and very directed path. That’s not always the case, and as mentioned earlier, when it’s not is when the game is at it’s best. Folks have already come up with a number of different sequence breaks and there’s some nifty things added if you do those, but that’s not really what I’m talking about.

One thing that other metroidvanias have done is give you access to a few areas at a time and let you pick which you want to explore with some nudging towards an intended path. Not just having one set sequence but a handful of possibilities at any given time with more general objectives. This is the direction I would like to see Metroid go in. Dread, while it may not be as directed as Fusion, is not too far off. That’s disappointing considering there’s been almost 20 years between the two.

On a related topic the way this game doles out upgrades is kind of uneven. At the start you go a long time between upgrades or even items. By the second major boss many players will only have two e-tanks (unless they do some risky sequence breaking to get a third). At that point in the game the only thing to be found is missile upgrades. Most of which only give you two additional missiles. Exploration there doesn’t feel rewarded. After that upgrades start coming in at a regular pace. Then eventually it gets the point where you’re getting upgrades every 10 to 15 minutes, some of which will replace upgrades you just got. Then when you get to explore again, you’ll mostly find missile upgrades and some difficult shinespark puzzles for e-tank pieces. (This game has Zelda-styled heart pieces for it’s e-tanks. They are thankfully rare, but so are full e-tanks.)

I am glad to report that the new-to-the-series abilities are all pretty cool. While many classics like Charge Beam and Morphball return, they are joined by brand new ones like Spider Magnet and Storm Missiles that carve out their own unique niches in Samus’s arsenal. The concept of Aeion abilities from Samus Returns make their return, but they’re quite different in this game. Essentially a handful of upgrades you get take a unique resource that is represented by a yellow bar under your health. This bar refills on it’s own and mostly serves to just limit the use Aeion abilities. These upgrades don’t really have any connection to one another outside of all being obtained from cubes instead of orbs.

There is one big downside that this game shares with Samus Returns regarding it’s abilities. Many of them are just keys. Just about every ability you get will have a type of literal door associated with it. This is especially true for beam and missile upgrades but is also true for many of the other abilities as well. It just kind of feels bad. “I got this cool new thing! Oh, it’s mostly used to just open these doors…” This is not nearly as pronounced as it was in Samus Returns fortunately. In Dread, they’ve done a better job of alleviating this feeling, but it still exists. For example, shortly after you get the Plasma Beam and start to feel real powerful against regular enemies, all the enemies also get stronger, and it is mostly used to just open green doors.

Dread also has an issue with it’s abilities that you often see in Zelda games. Namely, you’ll get an ability and then use it a ton in the area you got it and then never really use it much anywhere else. This is especially true of the Speedbooster. Once you get that, you use it briefly in the area you get it and then it is never really necessary outside of shinespark puzzles to get missiles or e-tank pieces and some cheeky quick kills on some of the bosses. Much of the level design isn’t really made for you to be running through it with the Speedbooster. Which is unfortunate because they made running with it a lot more forgiving and enjoyable.

Before I get into what I really did not like about this game I want to mention something I did like. The art direction in this game is great! I love the redesigned suits, even if in the Gravity Suit Samus looks like she’s wearing neon green suspenders. The enemy designs are great and interesting. Lots of really good weird flesh monsters and the way the E.M.M.I.s move is creepy and unsettling though their faces kind of look like the drones from Half Life 2. The environmental art and design is also wonderful. Each zone has its own identity and, for the most part and outside of the E.M.M.I. zones, no two rooms really look all that much alike. There’s so much personality in the backgrounds. Like huge monster corpses being operated on, generators sucking up lava, wildlife that runs off when you get close. Lots of really nice touches. Especially when compared to the pretty lifeless scenery of the previous game.

One of the big new additions that was heavily marketed is a new gimmick, the invincible and unkillable E.M.M.I. robots that are hunting Samus. They’re not really hunting you. Much like Mr. X in the Resident Evil 2 remake, E.M.M.I.s are locked in specific rooms of each zone and you only ever encounter one at a time. Here’s what you need to know about them: They Suck. They're the worst part of the game. They say there are seven, but there’s really five since one is a short tutorial and the last one is killed (thankfully) in a cutscene.

Here’s why they suck. If you so much as graze them you enter into an animation where they’re going to kill you. You have a very small window where you can parry them with your melee attack. This window is different for each variant of the animation and is affected by things like water. But you’re not supposed to reliably parry them. You’re supposed to avoid them by either running or using the ability that makes you invisible. The problem there is that they like to stick around. So you pop your invisibility and wait. Then wait some more. Then your juice runs out and you have to move to recharge it. That triggers their sound sensors and they lock on to you. Then you’re dead. Or you escape back the way you came and try to reload the area only for them to spawn right on the other side of the door and you’re dead again. Or you’re just exploring and happen to fall right on it. Then there are times when they make you go through water before you get the Gravity Suit while being hunted. All of the encounters with the E.M.M.I.s are a test of frustration rather than skill. There’s no tension, just pure annoyance.

In each area you’ll find a weird blue brain thing that is almost certainly some sort of prototype Mother Brain. Defeating it will give you access to the Omega Beam temporarily. Only with it can you defeat the E.M.M.I. of the area. Doing so is not so easy. You have to lure them into a straight path so you can damage their face plate with continuous sustained fire. Once it’s broken, you then have to charge up a shot and hit them directly in their eye. I’m playing, like I assume the majority of Switch owners, with joycons because that’s what I have. The analog stick on the joycon is very sensitive. In some ways this is good as it lets you really dial in your aim. However, if you do not have the required dexterity or motor skills you can very easily move the stick wildly off course. There is no sort of aim assist or lock-on either despite other moments having lock-on.

Conceptually I think they’re really interesting, but their implementation just does not achieve anything other than misery. They’re supposed to be these tense stealth and chase sequences, but since you’re likely going to die to one over and over again, they’re not really tense. They’re just a barrier you have to bang your head against until you get lucky enough to get a good pattern or have a good run. I think something like them could work in a metroidvania if it was treated more like a mini boss that could either be defeated or temporarily stunned only to return sometime later. That could be really interesting and turn any room into a potential boss arena.

Speaking of arenas, the bosses in this game are, well, mixed. The best are close to Samus in scale and involve a lot of moving around. The worst are the large monsters that don’t really have easy to read patterns and a lot of randomness. Many of the bosses are just bigger versions of enemies in boxy arenas. Nothing too different from most Metroid games, but there’s a distinct lack of arena hazards outside of some mini-bosses. Bosses also hit like a truck. Sometimes even taking off multiple e-tanks worth of health in a single hit. This is true of early bosses as well. There’s a bigger focus on dodging and recognizing when you can parry. Recognizing when and what you can use your melee attack on is key. Much of the projectiles can be swatted out of the air. Once I figured that out and got more health, I started to enjoy the boss encounters a lot more.

Fortunately, the checkpointing in this game is extremely generous. I don’t think I would have finished it if it weren’t. When you die (via E.M.M.I. or boss) you’re never sent too far back. No more of this reloading at your last hard save like in the older games. You’re usually put right in front of the door. Easy enough to jump back in or to go explore for more upgrades. It will start you with whatever health and missiles you had when you entered the room which isn’t always great. There were a few times that I had to go grind out health and ammo before fighting a boss.

Dread’s biggest issue is it’s lack of even the most basic of accessibility options. The default layout for this game sucks shit. I’m not even being hyperbolic here. To fire missiles accurately you have to hold L for aim mode, hold R for missiles, aim with the left stick and fire with Y. All of these holds could have been toggles instead. There could have been an option to switch them to toggles. There are no options of any sort for controls. The new Storm Missiles make up for this issue a bit since they’re a paint-and-lock-on sort of thing, but you get them pretty late and you still have to hold R to use them.

To be blunt I could not play this game with the joycons attached on the Switch. It hurt my hands considerably to the point where I wasn’t sure if I could play this game at all. Playing with them in the little comfort grip thing felt better, but the ideal thing would be if the game had robust button rebinding options like any modern video game.

Layout isn’t the only issue. I mentioned the issue of analog stick sensitivity against the E.M.M.I.s, but it also affects other parts of the game. For example, often when I go to crouch the game will turn me the other way so I’m shooting the opposite direction. Another example is trying to grab a ledge and hang from it. More often than not the game will cause you to move up the ledge instead. Stuff like this could be addressed with a deadzone setting.

Issues like this make this game a pain in the ass to play. Perhaps it's better on a pro controller but I don’t have money for that. It shouldn’t come to that either. These are features that should be in every game regardless of the developer's “vision” or whatever. Especially when Super Metroid on the SNES had them!

The game does end extremely strongly. Both the final boss and sequence after it are fantastic. The boss itself contains not just the themes but also abilities from across the entire series. There may even have been a nod to AM2R in there. It’s probably a good thing the game ends so strongly and it makes it easy to forget the not-so-great things about it.

Dread is ultimately an improvement over Samus Returns but still feels like it could innovate on the genre’s formula. It’s been said this game was originally planned to be a DS game in like 2006 and you can really see it when comparing it to modern metroidvanias and adjacent genres. It feels very set in its ways rather than looking at what could be done with the genre that, despite its popularity, still has a lot of room to grow.

As a game you can play, Dread is OK. It has fairly high highs and really low lows. If you didn’t enjoy Samus Returns then this game probably won’t do much for you. If you really loved that game, you’ve likely already bought and played through Dread. If you’re a fan of the genre, you could do a lot worse. Though I think there are better metroidvanias out there (like Axiom Verge 2), many of those just do not have the budget or team size to deliver the sort of spectacle this game can and that’s not nothing.