at last i emerge from my hole: the last Metroid is Samus, the galaxy is at peace
first thoughts
“I direct ye, composers Abe and Doi, not to put any tunes in the game!”
:'(
HOWEVER
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 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.
the one in Dread is kinda blah 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
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@captain I appreciated that Adam sounds like a cartoon robot from the 80s. BEEP BEEP I’M A ROBOT
@MegaSigil It is of course not such a problem considering it is not actually Adam at all (right? was it all Papa Chozo all along?), but if it had to be given a voice I would have at least preferred something more similar to the Aurora units in Prime 3. BEEP BEEP TO EACH THEIR OWN
@captain There is that scene at the very beginning where Adam is briefing Samus in her ship on the way to ZDR, which by the end of the game i realized is the only time he ever says “any objections, lady?”
@MegaSigil It is, and I think that is where my issue with the voice is coming from: when he says it in the BLEEP BLOOP '80s robot way I don’t get the sense of “dignified sarcasm” Samus describes the computer having in Fusion (or whatever she says).
So I got to the part where the game suddenly springs some heavy-duty Plot on you (been progressing through this quite slowly as most of my Gaming Time is still going to wrapping up Nocturne) and for better, worse or both it’s mostly got me thinking about how exciting I would have found this had the game actually released for the Nintendo DS while I was still in high school… Metroid lore being a somewhat less significant part of my life at the age where I am teaching high school.
@captain Yeah Samus Returns and Other M both had conspicuously tuneless “cinematic” OSTs as well which leads me to suspect this is another direction from Sakamoto as part of his “vision” for the series, which, idk
@2501 Watching my friend play Prime recently I did wonder, what exactly is the goal in having the player listen to these extremely cool jams while they’re walking around? When we talk about the saw, did, felt of Metroid it’s usually all about exploration/unraveling of an unknown world—does feeling whatever feeling the kind of music in the series pre-Other M inspired fit into that? Can it be extracted from the experience without altering the, uh, gestalt of what Metroid even is???
I don’t really care, I just want my tunes back
Aaah… If only I had access to power bombs in this game…
Been continuing my way through the game at a reasonable pace (for me (and my non-Metroid responsibilities)) and still generally enjoy it quite a bit. There are two things that I’m finding worth discussing.
The upgrades come so fast that they sometimes obsolete each other immediately. I love getting new powers, but you get the flash dash and then minutes later you get the speed boost. I think they should have dropped one or another and I think they should have been courageous and dropped the speed boost. The can easily serve the same purpose in the design.
I’m also curious about how some of the discourse about the game has gotten so combative. There’s almost been a backlash to it - even in this thread if you scroll up. Being fully aware that this next anecdote sounds petty and insigificnt, I un-followed someone in the games space on Twitter over a post. It was a straw on a camel situation obviously, but it got to the point where I didn’t want the toxicity and swearing about a game that I think is flawed but perfectly enjoyable.
I’m intentionally not calling individuals out because that’s genuinely not what I’m trying to do. I’m questioning what our collective expectations were of a “Metroid” game as “Metroid Fans” or at least “People who were in the market for a Metroid game in 2021”. Is this a side-effect of the fact that it’s called “Metroid” or a side-effect of the explosion of Metroidvania-alikes in gaming?
The game has sins, but none of them are cardinal.
I totally agree with this. I got to the point of the underwater boss which required use of the grab beam. Since my joycon is sort of busted I ended up remapping it to the left stick click. I havent unmapped it yet, effectively getting rid of the speed boost. I dont think speed boost should even be on a button, just turn it on after a certain length of running. Isn’t that how it used to be?
Also I did the Chozo Soldier boss fight, it was kinda simple but quick paceed and a lot of fun.
It was mapped B in Metroid 3. It activates after a period of running in Metroid 4.
Yeah. I also enjoy how missiles continue to be useful throughout the game. And the animation of them flying off inert if you shoot one into a fan is incredible.
I assume it will be followed worldwide but Nintendo released a demo of Metroid Dread in Japan for this Halloween weekend, and there is a cute seasonal illustration that goes with it.
I beat the game it only took me 15 hours and 21 minutes, lmao. There was a good chunk of time getting lost, dying to EMMIs and doing speed booster puzzles. I also got 100% items which may explain the length.
I really enjoyed that game and that final boss fight was a really good level of difficulty. I like that they had been teaching the parry during the chozo soldier fights so I was ready when Mr Raven Beak got angry. The boss fights are good but I only beat the first one with one try, all the rest I had to learn the patterns while dying. I don’t think there’s any solution to that which wouldn’t make them a lot easier.
Upgrades, huh. There sure were a lot of them. I think the only excessive one was the cross bomb, it didn’t need its own button it should have just upgraded the bomb. Grapple beam didn’t need its own buttonSpeed boost will always frustrate me with how technical it is (there’s an easier way to do that puzzle). The flash shift is so good for exploring and boss fights, it also helped with escaping from EMMIs. I thought that delaying the morph ball so long was interesting.
From the small amount of Metroid games I’ve played, this one felt new, fresh, modern. Samus was agile, she wasn’t helpless when a random bug divebombed her. The animation was smooth and flowing. Most bosses felt like they had a motive, from wild animal, to I HATE SAMUS ARAN, to hostile parasite, to I want to rule the galaxy. I don’t get why they chose Ravenbeak to be Samus’s Father/Creator, is she a clone? It could have been something like “I rule the Chozo so you will obey me”. At one point I thought Samus was cloned and that’s why she lost her powers.
I thought the game was good, the only things missing was some control help and a short epilogue.
I started this this evening and have just got the Varia suit. Generally liking it so far but will echo the frustrations of the navigating the EMMI sections, I’m not that fussed on the QTE element of it as such, more the “not being able to get to where you want to go because you have to run away or change your route to avoid capture” aspect of the sections, and they really need an “I Get It” button.
Otherwise I’m broadly enjoying the controls, movement and action, as well as the general progression guidance. I’ve not really found myself stuck aside from one deeply embarrassing and very obvious moment early in the game.
I’m by no means a connoisseur of Metroid or Metroidvania games but as much as a good time I’m having, I can’t see this threatening to become one of my favourite games any time soon.
I got stuck after about 20 minutes for 20 minutes because I didn’t see one of those pink explosion organ things hidden in a block underwater
I finished Metroid Dread a couple days back, my final verdict is that the game is pretty good, but Not My Metroid.
I really like the movement and fluidity of this game, it feels super nice to play… especially once you’re familiar with the controls, you can really glide through the world in a satisfying way. The graphics are not amazing but, crucially, they are 60fps which makes a huge difference and the visual design is pretty nice. The background detail is really impressive in a lot of places (although I have to make an effort to notice it - I am pretty much just attuned to take in relevant foreground visual information). I mostly enjoyed the bosses as well, I managed to “solve” most of them in a couple attempts. I think I would have preferred if the most of boss fights were a little faster, having a little bit less health and perhaps doing more damage to compensate. Also the repeated bosses got a bit irksome toward the end.
The EMMI were a big disappointment for me. They are cool conceptually, they look pretty weird, move in a really creepy way and their sound design is awesome. I just think they are let down by the game mechanics. If you get caught by an EMMI, you die instantly and respawn outside. This is so incredibly low stakes that there is absolutely no fear of getting caught. I think they gave the EMMI insta-kill to make them super scary and deadly, but they can kill you so easily that it will definitely happen quite often, so they added the respawn points in to stop people getting frustrated. The problem is this completely undermines the initial premise of them being really scary and dangerous. I actually got to a point where I would just try to sprint through the area and not worry about running or hiding at all. If I got caught I would attempt a parry and then respawn and try again. Waiting around being invisible takes longer than just respawning, and at least once you respawn you’re actually doing something. The sense of “dread” is something I really love about my favourite Metroid games,. Descending into a new area, not knowing whether I will be able to handle whatever enemies I come up against, trying to remember when I last saved, deciding whether to gamble and push on or make a trip to the nearest save point. Dread has none of this at all, death has barely any consequence most of the time and happens extremely often. I think if the EMMI were just unkillable and hit you really hard (or maybe like a three strikes and you’re dead system), but if you died you had to go back to a save point, it would have been a much more engaging experience for me. The only dread I felt entering into an EMMI zone was akin to seeing the little “Ad in 5…” box pop up on a YT video. “Great, gotta sit through another one of these…”. The later EMMI’s new abilities just make them even more annoying, and the fact that the way you kill them is basically identical for all seven is totally lame.
I still don’t like the parry mechanic. It’s a step up from Samus Returns in that at least this time you can use it from pretty much any position, but they still lean on it way too heavily. A lot of the enemies are just so annoying to fight unless you parry them, and in some of the boss battles you are just going through the motions, waiting for a QTE like prompt to play out the same exact animation you already watched 3 times. These set pieces get really old for me and just don’t feel like a Metroid game. It’s one of my favourite things about SM that you are in control for pretty much the whole game. Dread is constantly broken up by these set pieces, not to mention the 30fps cutscenes.
Watching the FPS suddenly cut in half is a really unpleasant experience for me. I never don’t notice it, so I am never really immersed in them at all. I really don’t think the cutscenes add much at all. The story is pretty much trash as far as I’m concerned, or at least the way it is delivered. Again, my favourite Metroid games tell their story through their world. Little tidbits dotted around, instead of exposition dumps dotted throughout the game. One in particular is so clumsy it feels like a child wrote it.
While I like the general feeling of the Metroid Dread world, the different areas and the general stage design. I can’t stand the way you are constantly funneled down a linear path. On several occasions in the game I spotted an obvious hidden powerup or a path I wanted to check out, but decided on a different one first which then immediately closed in behind me. That is incredibly frustrating for me, and the game quickly trained me to abandon hunting secrets altogether (I ended my playthrough on about 50%, then went and mopped up all the secrets at the end). Honestly I’m not sure this game really even qualifies as a Metroidvania, there is one very obvious path through the game, each ability unlocks a very obvious next step that you are funneled toward. I know there are a lot of sequence breaks people have discovered, but the default experience offers essentially nothing in the way of exploration, problem solving, learning your way around, etc. The world itself also doesn’t feel particularly cohesive, every area is connected to all the others by elevators and teleporters (and loading screens), so they are all totally isolated from each other and have no real geographic relation. I know lots of the games have occasional elevators, but it feels like Dread really doubled down on it. I suspect it was a technical limitation.
Anyway, sorry for the wall of text. Despite my complaints… I did enjoy playing this game a fair bit. It just wasn’t quite what I had hoped it would be!