Metroid Dread

Yeah, I got Metroid Dread.  Physical of course, I ain't no chump.  I got it late because reasons, deal with it.  Anyway, here's my thoughts.  Spoiler-free, in case you care about that.  As a bit of background, I'm incredibly used to how Super Metroid does things.

The overall gist of this game is as follows: Samus goes to the planet ZDR after receiving evidence that an X parasite exists on the planet.  Also on this planet are seven robots, called E.M.M.I., that have uber hax armor, and surprise, they're trying to hunt her down.  Samus gets stuck deep into the planet and needs to make her way back to her ship.  ...And then you gain control.

The graphics, music, and overall atmosphere are amazing.  The use of darkness lets the illuminated parts of level geometry and Samus' Power Suit really stand out.  I don't really recall any true bangers on the soundtrack, but it does fit the atmosphere very well, and they brought back the Green Brinstar BGM for a cutscene, which was a nice throwback.

Walljumps are somehow simultaneously better and worse at the same time.  And by "better" I mean "dumbed down".  You no longer need to press a direction to wall jump, just be in a spin jump next to a wall and press jump.  That's it.  The "worse" part is that they're still Fusion walljumps, so you can't single walljump.  Except you sorta can in some circumstances.  An upgrade you get early on that lets you climb the blue walls and hang from the blue ceilings doesn't have the "no single walljump" restriction on it.

The lack of single walljumping is sad, but it's a minor nitpick seeing as later upgrades make walljumping far less necessary, and even take precedence over walljumping.  Bomb jumping and infinite bomb jumps make their triumphant return, though.

Gonna say it now: this game is hard.  And in my eyes, not really in a good way.  Sure, things are challenging, but everything hits like a truck, even at the very beginning.  So you've managed to find six E-Tanks and are headed into a boss?  Congrats, you can get hit maybe seven times.  I've said it before, and I'll say it again: tedium is not challenge.  The challenge of a boss fight is figuring out its attack patterns and how best to deal with them, or when you can tank a hit to get some extra damage in.  But here, even glancing blows take ridiculous amounts of energy.

Movement and related techniques still feel incredibly satisfying to do and when you get a sequence of tight movement right, it looks amazing.  The game has puzzles you have to figure out how to use Speed Booster and shinesparks to complete in order to get 100% items, and they take full advantage of this.  They vary in difficulty, and you may not even recognize some of them as being puzzles because a bunch of the early ones feel pretty straightforward.  Most of them have multiple valid solutions, which was a nice touch.

However, later on you need to be familiar with a specific mechanic of shinesparking that I was not aware of coming in: if you shinespark into a slope, Samus reverts back to the Speed Booster state and you can store another shinespark to use later.  The only place in the game that this ever gets communicated to the player is a loading screen hint that has a very low chance of showing up.

I know the melee attack thing was added in the 3DS remake of Metroid 2, but... why is it necessary?  Samus isn't a melee character.  Sure, melee countering things gives you more drops, and sure, dash melee is nice; but the whole point of Samus having that arm cannon isn't so she can whack things with it.  It's so she can shoot things with it.  The melee counters just slow down gameplay outside of boss fights.  In boss fights, however, they're useful to end the fight faster, and in some cases, required to progress through the fight.

I feel like the controls could have been done slightly better.  I am by no means a fan of analog stick click actions, and this game has one for both analog sticks.  Speed Booster should've activated like it did in Super Metroid.

The game offers you the ability to place markers on the map, which is very nice in a game like this where you're going to want to return to an area later.  However, the markers are incredibly tiny on your minimap, making them very hard to see, and limiting their usefulness.

The new abilities are all really cool.  Flash Shift is great in boss fights, Phantom Cloak is essential to evading the E.M.M.I. until you gain the ability to destroy each one.  Pulse Radar is basically a better version of the X-Ray Scope.  Cross Bombs are a neat addition to the morph ball repertoire, they can blow up stuff vertically and horizontally from where you drop one.  They offer an easy way to bomb jump horizontally to cross gaps and groups of crumble blocks in morph ball tunnels as well.

A lot of the time, by the time the game's progression is giving you a major item, you've been hurting for that item for quite some time.  I have a love-hate relationship with this, because I liked how it handled reduced mobility in water before getting the Gravity Suit, where you gradually gain abilities that slightly increase your underwater capabilities (in addition to being useful elsewhere) before finally getting full movement.

However, one of the major item timings is questionable.  This game suffers from Fusion-style Convenient Debris™, wherein once you progress the story or do something to get through an area, the way back is blocked until you return with a new upgrade.  Most of the time, this new upgrade you need is Power Bombs.  To add insult to injury, you can collect Power Bombs well in advance of being granted them by the game's progression, but they remain an "unknown resource" and thus completely unusable.  Super Metroid wouldn't have done that.

"Super Metroid wouldn't have done that" was a phrase I echoed plenty of times during my playthrough.  This game took entirely too much from Metroid Fusion's playbook.

Is Metroid Dread a good game?  Absolutely.  100% worth picking up and playing yesterday.  Is it perfect?  No.  Is any game ever perfect?  No.  Is it as good as it could be?  No.  Is it better than Super Metroid?  No.  Is it better than Metroid Fusion?  Fuck yes.

And if you're still on the fence, there's a demo on the eShop, so you can get a little "try before you buy" action.