Dread is ||pretty good!||
||There's an incredible amount of character in Samus's animations! Especially during boss fights. I can understand mixed feelings about Samus fighting like [a Monty Oum character](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL-mR79GErU&t=2m49s) but I love that stuff.||
||I love that enemies put up a decent fight. Combat moves quickly, even when you have to stop to aim Contra-style—love this—and melee counters feel good. That the game runs smoothly is a very nice thing indeed. I am thankful for my hands being able to put up with pushing all those shoulder buttons at the same time. Holding L to aim, R to load a missile barrage, and flash-shifting with A during one of the last boss's attacks felt awesome.||
||The boss fights really did it for me in this one. I don't care if it does or doesn't make sense Kraid is here—they made the fight _feel new_, which is what matters, and anyway there have been 200 Ridley fights in this series and they didn't do another one of those! The fights with the robot Chozo soldiers were not very fun—I could never get the counter timing down—but dying and reloading is painless enough that it didn't leave too bad a taste in my mouth. The last boss takes too much damage in his second phase.||
||EMMIs are cool. That it is so difficult to counter them was obnoxious at first but I grew to appreciate it—as a previous poster said, when an EMMI catches you it's really supposed to be Game Over.||
||I'll be interested to replay it someday (I borrowed my friend's Switch to play it). The level design seemed pretty cool—I enjoyed the huge map even though it was visually annoying to parse on occasion. I feel like there are a lot of fun items to hunt down which I missed (cleared with below 50%).||
||Aesthetically it is not to my taste. It turned out looking nicer than I thought it would, but I am not really down with the 3D sidescroller look of deep, detailed backgrounds and foreground platforms which all look black in cross section. In fact the dark platforms actually caused problems a few times for me as I was playing in a room during `gasp` _the daytime with open blinds_ and was having a hard time gauging where I could stand in order to counter some enemy. Disappointed in the space jump animation.||
||The music is... interesting? I am glad it is almost entirely new tunes and I appreciate that they went for different textures and instruments compared to series history, but it's kind of a get-Kuniaki-Haishima-to-score-Other M situation—it doesn't really work, or at least it doesn't leave any kind of impression on me. I finished the game three days ago and can barely remember what it sounds like. My friend was playing through Prime in the same room and half the time I had one earphone out so I could listen to his music instead.||
||@"captain"#p37969 [I love this tune.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjNa7TS-heM) [Bring me every version of it.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuWS67EXlRg)||
||the one in Dread is [kinda blah](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxIW_duj_zM&t=4959s) but I was surprised it was one of the few old tracks to make an appearance||
||Didn't care for the story. There are way too many cutscenes at the beginning, and the extremely huge exposition dump from Uncle Chozo at the halfway point felt like too much. At one point Adam is like, "There must be some reason Raven Beak spared you..." and I said, joking, "Ah, so he's my dad." :\ That Samus becomes a Metroid, however, and that Adam says, "Samus, you are now a Metroid," is hilarious and awesome. Computer Adam shouldn't have a voice. I prefer my head voice saying his lines as I read them.||
That's it for now. Is it the Metroid renaissance? I dunno. I had a fun time.
THE END