Metroid Dread: Gotta Go... Kinda Fast

 So, second run of Metroid Dread, I've mostly avoided doing any serious item searching. I've just beaten the red elite chozo in Hanubia, so I've basically just got to go to the golden one and then Raven Beak to beat the game.

And I'm at about 4h30m in terms of time, which means I've missed the 4 hour mark to get the fastest time.

After one-shotting several of the early bosses, it turns out that the bosses in the latter game are still pretty tough. Escue, oddly, gave me a fair amount of trouble, despite my not remembering that as all that hard (then again, four or five tries the first run through didn't seem like a whole lot). The twin robot chozo fights have proven way, way easier than the first time I tried them, in large part due to the fact that my "hey, maybe focus one of these down at a time" strategy is really, well, good. But I've managed to slip on the elite chozo fights.

I still think that maybe four robot chozo fights and like... five elite chozos is a bit much, though the fact that I've been churning through the game with little "smell the roses" time set aside means that everything's rushing by.

I think perhaps to prove something to myself I did the really hard shinespark puzzle in Burenia on this run as well - the hardest part of it is honestly just getting the shinespark in the first place. But it did mean that I actually wound up skipping a pretty huge swath of Burenia, which is a shame because, despite being an underwater zone, I think it's my favorite (I don't know if the fact that it doesn't have an EMMI zone has anything to do with that.)

I've always had complicated feelings about time limits - the somewhat relaxed pace of grabbing 100% of the items appeals more to my sensibilities. Naturally, Metroid games have always been built for speed-running, and Metroid Dread was 100% designed with that in mind (consider, for example, the special way to kill Kraid that requires you to sequence-break.) I do like to think that the "canonical" way to play the game is more of the slow, deliberate and cautious pace that I imagine most people take on their first run.

I really do hope that they do some DLC for this, or that Nintendo greenlights a new Metroid game via Mercury Steam. They've clearly proven themselves (though I think there was some controversy vis a vis credits - maybe something they can fix with a patch?) Really, just having any excuse to control Samus again in this fluid way would be very welcome.

I think that, much like the Metroid Prime trilogy (and I'm still looking forward, however distantly, to Metroid Prime 4,) it'd be cool to see the next Metroid game give us some new upgrades. Prime 2 used the classic Varia suit as the starting suit, and then gave us the Dark and Light suits, which were both very distinctive in their appearances. Dread was pretty light on brand-new abilities. The Cross Bombs were truly new (though I don't think they got much use) but the Spin Boost and Diffusion Beam were really just underpowered versions of better upgrades you get later on. I guess the Spider Magnet was also new (though it evoked the Spider Ball of earlier games.)

I'd be curious to see new designs rolled into the mix, but I guess it's a bit early to start speculating on future Metroid sequels. Granted, I think they've got a really solid base system here. If this were earlier in the Switch's console generation, I'd advocate for another Metroid game to come out with the same basic framework, a bit like how Majora's Mask game out not long after Ocarina of Time.

But then, I also don't really know what a "new console generation" means anymore. Nintendo just game out with the Switch OLED model (marketing it along with Dread) and I don't know if or when they're going to announce their next console (I think it would probably be wise to go with a similar hybrid home console/mobile system, maybe the "Super Switch" or something).

Anyway, this all boils down to: Metroid Dread is really good, and I hope we'll see Nintendo pushing this franchise as one of their major ones in the coming years.