Crazy to think it's almost been five years since Metroid Dread came out.
While the long-awaited (and supposedly disappointing - I haven't played it yet because I don't yet have a Switch 2) Metroid Prime 4: Beyond has come out since, this is still the most recent classic 2D Metroid game.
Having gotten to the final boss of RE4 Remake on my second playthrough, I felt I had more or less done what I wanted (other than a single missing treasure in the Castle and the Island each before points-of-no-return) and was trying to find a game that would scratch whatever itch it is that I have, and I've found myself thinking about the Metroid series a lot lately.
In large part, this is in reaction to RE2 Remake. After a brief prologue, you enter the RPD headquarters, and until the game's final act, you gradually open up more and more of the building and the sewers below.
It's not technically a Metroidvania - while characters get new weapons over the course of a Resident Evil game, their fundamental capabilities don't really change all that much. In Metroid games, something like the Ice Beam both allows you to freeze enemies in place to make combat a little easier but also allows you to use frozen foes as platforms to reach previously-inaccessible areas - whereas the Club Key, valuable though it is, is there to let you open a certain number of doors and is then discarded when all such doors are opened.
Metroid Dread was a long time coming. Metroid Fusion, 19 years prior, was the previous entry in the main Metroid series (a series that, interestingly enough, has split its time between home consoles and handheld ones, from the NES to the Gameboy to the SNES to the Gameboy Advance, and then hitting Nintendo's home/handheld hybrid on the Switch).
Anyway, what's interesting to me is the parallels that Dread has with RE2. Not only is there an ever-widening environment for you to explore, but there are also unkillable stalkers that you have to spend a significant portion of your game fleeing. RE2 has Mr. X, the hulking tyrant-zombie in a fashionable trenchcoat and fedora (this was 1998, so the fedora was just a throwback to men's fashion in the 1940s, not some Incel-coded red flag). Dread has the EMMIs, robots that are nigh-indestructible who can potentially one-shot Samus if they catch you and you can't pull off the (very tight, difficult) counters (I guess technically two-shot, as you have two chances to counter).
The EMMIs are limited to EMMI zones, unlike Mr. X, who can enter almost every room in the RPD (though I think he stops wandering the police station after you go down into the sewers - he chases you there, though on my second run I don't know if I even bumped into him there). While you might expect that once you enter an EMMI zone, you can complete it and bring the robot down with the special beam weapon you get, the truth is that you'll often need to traverse them multiple times before you can actually deal with the Pursuer. Their appearance will throw you off - you might be heading for a particular exit, but especially if they're in an active pursuit (which seals the exits,) you need to prioritize fleeing them, which might send you in some crazy direction you didn't intend - which is honestly quite a lot like Mr. X - I think that I always seemed to be getting chased by him when I finally got the lever that lets you move the bookshelves in the library and had to circle back to that room multiple times to get the opportunity to use it. (Evidently that very lever is a key item in the visit to the ruined RPD in RE9, and it's right where Leon and/or Claire left it.)
Once again, playing Metroid Dread is really exciting because of how fast and fluid Samus is. My only significant experience with the rest of the mainline series (I played the original Metroid Prime trilogy as well) was Super Metroid, and Samus is pretty slow, her weapon's fire rate especially.
Actually, as someone who is turning 40 in about two months, I have to say that the rate at which Samus can blast things is maybe more of a hinderance than a help, as my thumb gets sore from mashing Y over and over. (Funnily enough, I remember that the Super Metroid default control scheme didn't really work for me, but you could customize it. Dread effectively canonizes my preferred scheme, with Y for shoot, B for jump. A isn't for dash, but it is used for your Flash Step, which functions similarly (it's actually sort of the classic spot for a dodge button, like in a Souls-like, and that is one major use of the Flash Step). The sore-hand issue was also true when the game came out and I was five years younger (I think I may have freaked out more over being halfway through my 30s more than being at the end of them, but then, I also started seeing a therapist that year).
Samus' agility is fitting for her role as an action hero, and I wonder if her relative sluggishness in previous games was intentional or just a limitation on what they could pull off. One of the really weird things to get used to initially is that she'll angle her shots as you move forward, so you have to learn to really point the stick truly right if you want to ensure she hits things in her direct path. Aiming is far freer than it was in Super Metroid, where you could only angle up or down at 45 degrees (though crouching to shoot low enemies or other targets is still a thing).
One thing I remember about Dread is that there are a fair number of one-way paths. Most of these become two-way once you get a relevant upgrade, and by the end of the game you have free reign on ZDR to go everywhere. I suspect that the creators wanted to help you from getting lost. By cutting off the path behind you, your options narrow and thus it becomes easier to know what you need to do next. This can, however, leave you a bit frustrated when you really don't know when you'll be able to go back to a previous area. Metroid games often tease you with optional upgrades just outside your reach, and a promise that you can get it later. But these are mixed in with environmental puzzles that can be solved immediately, so there's a tension on whether you want to stick around and figure it out or move ahead.
Given that those upgrades help you survive, that's a big deal. I think I died maybe twice to Kraid, until I made a change in strategy on the last phase (charging up to hit the little balls he launches out of his belly rather than trying to take them out with normal beam fire - the rate at which they come is actually just about perfect for this). But while I find I'm a little more comfortable being cavalier with Missiles, for example, given how many enemies drop them on death, it's certainly nice to have a large reserve.
There's a saving grace to these one-way doors, though, which is that you truly can return everywhere (at least everywhere with an upgrade) at the end of the game. There's no point of no return where if you saved the game after going through some barrier, you lost that upgrade forever. This was the huge frustration I had in my second, completionist run of RE4. I was able to do all of the Merchant Requests (I had like two blue medallions left on my first run,) but infuriatingly, I had literally just one treasure left behind on both the Island and in the Castle - evidently I already mentioned that in an earlier paragraph, but that should tell you how frustrating it was). RE4 pushes you through the story and its settings - it's not a totally linear path, as there is both opportunity and necessity to revisiting various places you've been to (for all the complaints about escorting Ashley, she actually functions as a Metroidvania-like tool for all the places you can send her up to go through a high gap in a wall and unlock a door or kick down a ladder).
While it doesn't come until right at the end, the fact that Metroid Dread does allow you to eventually sweep ZDR for upgrades before your final confrontation with Raven Beak is very appreciated - he's a very tough fight and you want everything you can get for him. Power Bomb capacity upgrades are arguably only for one specific move of his. Unlike in Super Metroid, where they're a sort of mid-game tool, Dread makes Power Bombs the endgame nuke.
I'm really curious to see how the Metroid franchise is doing - naturally, Prime 4: Beyond was the most recent release, and while I haven't played it, I know it's gotten a lot of flak online. I'm always a little cautious about taking online buzz too seriously especially in the space of gaming, where not only are "hot takes" prioritized by social media algorithms, but there's also a powerful far-right agenda to shift conversations and culture and get people mad about stuff that we used to consider either neutral or just good.
But that being said, there's plenty of legitimate criticism to be had about any medium of art, and the "just let people enjoy things" attitude sometimes veers into "just always like what you're given."
It's neither here nor there, of course, because I haven't played the game and so don't know how I'd feel about it (best guess - I'll probably have mixed feelings about it, enjoying some aspects and disliking certain choices the makers made. Remember that you can like things and still find faults in them, and you can dislike things and still find virtues in them).
Dread felt like a really cool update to a classic franchise, and after nearly 20 years of waiting for it, I really hope that I'm not going to be pushing 60 by the time that we get Metroid 6.
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