Metroid Dread Review

Mighty Morph Ball Powers

There are games which I will play sporadically and finish after a few weeks or even months. Then there are games like Metroid Dread which I obsessively play and complete in just two or three days. In case you couldn’t tell from those two sentences, I really enjoyed Metroid Dread.

Let’s get one thing out of the way first. When this game was first shown off, I thought the character models and overall graphics looked a little too plastic-y for my taste if you know what I mean. It was a little off-putting for me. Well, I’m happy to report that I was wrong and that I found the game to be very aesthetically pleasing as it were. Not only did the environments and enemies look nice but all of the animations were fantastic too.

One thing I really appreciated was how fast our girl Samus could move through the levels. This may come down to the 60 frames per second (I assume, anyways) but I believe there is also a certain flow to Samus’s movement. It was simply a lot of fun jumping, sprinting, and sliding around. This is especially true later in the game when Samus has most of her items and abilities.

Oh yes, there are abilities and items aplenty in Metroid Dread. This should be unsurprising to everyone given this game is a part of the series which makes up one half of the namesake for the Metroidvania genre of video games. The grappling hook, a dash (called speed booster), and the iconic morph ball make getting around the world a breeze. It was quite liberating at the end of the game to be able to blast and power my way through levels I had been through a few hours before.

The ease of movement was a double-edged sword, however. Samus would sometimes grab a ledge when I didn’t want her to or would fly off in an unexpected direction if I was in a hurry. Now, this probably wouldn’t happen if I was more in control or used my abilities properly but it happened more times than I would have liked which leads me to believe that it wasn’t just me. And why was I going fast in the first place, you ask? Well, I was hauling ass because I wanted to get away from the EMMIs.

EMMIs are nearly indestructible robots which pursue Samus in (thankfully) certain areas of the game. It is imperative that Samus avoid detection because these robots will relentlessly chase her after detection. Not only can they see Samus but they can also “hear” her if they use a scanner when she happens to be moving. Never fear though, there are ways to avoid an EMMI.

For starters, Samus can become invisible using a power called Phantom Cloak although that only works if an EMMI has only heard Samus and not actually seen her. Don’t make my mistake and activate the Cloak after an EMMI has heard Samus and then proceed to stand in the same spot because the EMMI will run into you. Also, if you’re spotted and it starts chasing you, make sure you break line of sight before activating your Cloak. Those are my pro tips for you.

Being chased by an EMMI provides quite an adrenaline rush, let me tell you. This is because EMMIs insta-kill Samus when they catch her. There is a way to get out of their chokehold although I found it to be a little difficult. Samus can parry an EMMI (and other enemies) but the timing is very precise. The EMMIs are stunned for a few seconds after a parry which gives you time to escape. There were a few times early in the game when I stood there dumbly after successfully parrying an EMMI because I thought I had missed the parry window. I quickly came to my senses, however. Sometimes not quickly enough though. The good news is that I could reliably parry an EMMI by the end of the game because I finally figured out how to do it. I won’t tell you all here though. You’ll have to find that out for yourself.

Do not worry if you do die to an EMMI. The checkpointing is very generous in Metroid Dread. It spawns Samus just outside of the door leading into an EMMI’s domain so I always got back into the action rather quickly. This is true of any death by the way. The game doesn’t force you to redo large sections of the map just to get back to where you died. I was a fan of this feature since I don’t like walking through the same sections of a map over and over again.

I enjoyed the combat for the most part. There are a variety of weapons to use, i.e. beam shots, missiles, bombs, etc. Most of these must be found somewhere on the map (remember, we’re talking about the Metroid in Metroidvania here) so don’t expect to be able to use them all right away. I mentioned the parry for the EMMIs but you can also use them on normal enemies. It felt great pulling off a parry because Samus could usually kill an enemy in one hit afterwards. I didn’t have too much trouble with the normal enemies in Dread. The bosses were where the real challenge was.

I both loved and hated the bosses in this game. I would like to begin this section by apologizing to my neighbors for yelling and screaming while I was fighting these sons of bitches. I had the most trouble fighting the second boss. His (or her, I have no idea) name is Kraid and he was an asshole. Bosses do a hell of a lot of damage which I wasn’t a fan of to be honest. It didn’t allow me to experiment very much with all of Samus’s weapons for long because I died in just a few hits.

There was one boss that, for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out how to beat. I was so frustrated that I looked up how to beat him. Just for the record, there’s no shame in looking things up especially for fights that I think are bullshit. I was a little embarrassed after looking it up though because it was, in hindsight, obvious how to beat him. I blame my inability to figure it out on the fact that I was so pissed off because I kept dying in half a dozen hits or less. Like I said before, I’m just glad the checkpoint system always plopped Samus down just outside of the door where shit went down. If the game didn’t do that, I probably never would have finished it.

Having finished the game, I can now say that I enjoyed the bosses despite their difficulty. It did feel like I accomplished something whenever I killed one of them f@*#ers. I would like to say “Fuck you!” to the devs for making these fights so difficult. I mean, I enjoyed your game but fuck you nonetheless, you know what I’m saying?

I really liked the final boss of the game in particular because it felt like a no holds-barred fight in which you had to play a perfect game and learn his attacks. Trust me, if you don’t, you will die. I not only enjoyed the last boss fight but the cutscenes between each stage of the fight were badass as well. Don’t worry, they’re skippable so you don’t have to watch them multiple times after your many inevitable defeats. Unless you’re so good and you killed the final boss on the first try. In which case, aren’t you so cool.

Since this is a Metroid game, exploring is a big part of the experience. There are a ton of items to be found in every section of the map. Speaking of the map, Metroid Dread has a bunch of features which made finding all of these items easier. For starters, the map will flash to indicate if there are hidden blocks nearby. Metroid is known for having hidden blocks so I guess they felt the need to include this feature in the game.

Not only that but you can highlight certain doors or blocks on the map. This is useful for when you find a new weapon or ability because you can then use it to find any doors you may have passed which can be unlocked now. This made backtracking and finding items a lot easier. And lastly, each section of the map displays the percentage of the items you’ve found so you don’t have to waste time in an area once you’ve gotten everything. I loved all of these features since it saved me a bunch of time and boredom meticulously looking for secrets or items. I know purists will hate all of these things though. I guess they could always not use the map if they are so upset by it. That’s one way to avoid these features.

Additionally, even though these features allow you to find items rather easily, they don’t allow you get them automatically. What do I mean here? Well, you can technically see the items or the general location of where they are at but you still have to use Samus’s abilities correctly to obtain them. I gave up trying to obtain a few items after spending a lot of time trying to get them. The people who designed this map knew what they were doing is all I’m saying.

One last thing about the map, I thought it was well-designed. Whenever I play a Metroidvania, I always get lost for an hour or two but not so with Metroid Dread. The map was designed in such a way that the right path was always just around the corner or very close by at least. There was one time I got lost but it was for only five minutes which is nothing compared to the usual amount of time I spend lost in one of these games. Again, purists will hate this about the map but I loved it because I have better stuff to do than getting lost in a video game map.

The only downside to the map were the loading times between areas. I am the first to admit that this is a nitpick of mine. The PS5 and Xbox Series X have spoiled me in this regard. I’m not used to load times anymore which is why I noticed them in Dread. They’re not too terrible but they are noticeable now that more advanced hardware is on the market.

Perhaps what was most surprising about Metroid Dread was the amount of cutscenes in the game. There weren’t that many when compared to other games but there were way more of them than I was expecting there to be. If you want to understand the setup to the story, you should watch the opening cinematic for Metroid Fusion. That is how I started playing Dread. I saw that they had added Fusion to the Switch Online service and I booted it up for a bit. Instead of playing that game, however, I had a hankerin’ to play Dread instead. Unsurprisingly, I had bought the game right after it came out back in 2021 and never played it until just last week because I’m the worst. Anyways, I was talking about the story, wasn’t I?

As I was saying, there was a lot more story than I was expecting in Dread. Let’s just say it involves something called an X Parasite which leads to Samus doing her favorite thing: journeying to a new planet (ZDR in this case) and killing the local fauna. Perhaps the greatest compliment I can give the story is that I was invested in it by the end of the game. Which, coming from a person who hasn’t played any (and I do mean any) of the older Metroid games, is saying a lot. It doesn’t end on a cliffhanger per se but it does leave some very important unanswered questions which I take to mean that there are more Metroid games on the way which I’m happy about. That’s enough about the story. I don’t want to give too much away.

Conclusion:

I enjoyed the heck out of Metroid Dread. I don’t finish games very quickly but I did so with Dread because I was having such a good time with it. I also finished it quickly because I was on vacation last week. I was supposed to be playing Zelda but I played Metroid Dread instead. I enjoyed the game so much that I’m playing through Metroid Prime Remastered as we speak. I also have my eye on Fusion as well. I think I may have a problem. A good problem but a problem nonetheless. Anyways, that’s my review. Bye!

Have any of you played Metroid Dread yet? If you did, what did you think about a new 2D Metroid game after so many years without one? Let me know down below!