Damn near perfection.
Lifting her blaster hand, Samus fired off a volley of wave beam blasts, but his golden glimmering armor barely noticed them as she darted back, hoping to create some distance as her attacker seemed all but indestructible. “It’s no use, Samus, you can’t damage me!” he shouted, telling her something she already knew. It’s when she saw it, a crack under the right side of his helmet. He taunted her, beckoning her assault with a cockiness that would be his undoing. Charging in, Samus parried his attack, shattering his helmet in a strike that would only further fuel his rage. While he stumbled back, collecting himself after the surprise assault, he started to alter his form, with Samus’s eye wide with fear, but her blaster at the ready.
Metroid: Dread is a stunning return to the mainline series many assumed Nintendo had no plans to really return to. Hell, this is a sequel to a GameBoy Advance title released some 19 years ago. Since then, we’ve had the Prime series, Other M, and remakes in both Zero Mission and Samus Returns, but to see the once announced Metroid: Dread finally release, well, I’m glad Nintendo waited until they had the hardware capable of creating this absolute masterpiece. Whether docked at home, or in glorious color on the Switch OLED, I savored every single minute of this game. hitting credits after some 15 hours of both getting lost and numerous bouts of trial and error, culminating in a clear time of just under 10 hours.
As mentioned, Metroid Dread follows the events of Metroid Fusion, as Samus is dispatched to the far reaches of space, to a planet known as ZDR. However; Samus was not the Galactic Federation’s first choice, as Extraplanetary Multiform Mobile Identifiers (E.M.M.I) were sent in ahead of her arrival, but they lost contact with them a short while after. As Samus touches down on the planet, she is attacked and defeated by a mysterious figure who simply overpowers her, strips her of her abilities, and surprisingly, leaves her alive. Contacted by her ship’s AI, Adam, she is instructed to return to her ship and escape the planet. However; It’s not long before Samus is attacked by the missing E.M.M.I robots, which are impervious to her currently equipped weapons. As Samus investigates what is going on, she’ll uncover just who the mysterious attacker is, his reason for keeping her alive, and how to dispatch these seemingly invincible robots, stalking and hunting her at nearly every moment. While previous knowledge of the series isn’t required, as there is a recap, being a long-time fan is certainly going to make some narrative elements really stand out.
Being a Metroidvania game, you’ll become very familiar with the map, backtracking to previously blocked areas, and investigating nearly every surface in hopes of tracking down a new shortcut, or an upgrade or two. While you’ll eventually gain a pulse ability to detect those very secrets, there are some that will be shown on the map as certain rooms will flash white to indicate that something is indeed there, waiting to be discovered. Overall, you’ll find more missile, powerbomb, and energy upgrades than you’ll likely need as it’s more than possible to complete the game well under 50% of all items found. Still, for completionists, that carrot is there for you if you want.
Having the right tool for the job is a crucial component to the Metroid games, and Metroidvania titles as a whole, as your progress to certain areas will be gated behind a series of progression blocks. These range from needing certain abilities to access out-of-reach doors, locations, suits to withstand harsh climates, or even weapons capable of destroying shielded doors. You'll track down the morph ball pretty damn soon as well, allowing you to roll into a ball to traverse down narrow tunnels, as well as a grappling hook that you can use to swing up to blue elements scattered around the map, that and pulling free platforms to open up shortcuts and more. The game uses nearly every ability you have in not just traversal, but in many of the game’s epic boss encounters, especially the final confrontation that tests nearly everything you’ve learned along the way.
Traversal is also the name of the game as you'll be backtracking to previous areas a lot, so making sure you have fun while doing that is crucial, especially if you are spending hours lost and wondering where to go. While some teleporters exist to make travel from area to area a lot faster than taking the transit system that may be on the other side of the map, it's the room-to-room motion that has Samus often moving in a blur. You’ll have a speed run that can allow Samus to almost fly straight up after charging it, smashing through breakable flooring, to your grapple that when used correctly, can almost have you zipping around like a certain webhead. Eventually you'll upgrade your jump a few times, allowing for an additional spin before you’ll upgrade it further to not just be unlimited, but being able to damage enemies and special environmental blockage as well.
This spin jump, in all its forms, is my only major complaint present in Metroid Dread, one that resulted in a lot of unintentional hits and several deaths when it just wouldn't work when I wanted it to. There is a finesse to hit the timing right, but I rarely felt confident in a pinch when I would be required to use it consistently fast in some tense encounters, especially during a golden battle near the end of the game, and a boss encounter when I went to track down the heat controls. While yes, I did eventually get the hang of it, I do wish the jump was more of a traditional double jump than having to hit it just right. While it is my only major criticism I have of the game, I don't feel it really soured my time overall and instead forced me to get to know the in's and out's of why it wasn't working and keep working on it to nail it when it counted.
Samus has a wealth of upgrades to seek out, aiding her in numerous ways. I felt you were constantly rewarded around almost every corner from new suits, new blaster types, missile variations, and bomb upgrades for your morph ball. Each affects their own share of blocks that range from having to spin attack through the floor or firing off a barrage of Storm missiles to open a multi-switch door. The variety of abilities range greatly, and while your blaster and missiles largely work the same way when upgraded, combat always felt fresh as I never felt that every enemy could be defeated in the same way. While some enemies do fall into different versions of the same design, they often would present unique attacks to differentiate themselves from one another. I never found any particular enemy to feel lacking, and a late-game moment allows some previously explored areas to see some encounters reinvented, allowing for some variation at just the right moment.
The E.M.M.I threat has been a huge part of the marketing, and for good reason, these fights are do or die, literally. If any of these robots get close to you, you have two brief moments to deflect their attack and stun them. Fail, and you’ll be sent back to the room leading into their domain. I found that half the time I could pull off the first deflection, and then dash between their legs or scamper off in the opposite direction. Each E.M.M.I acts differently in at least some way, offering slight variations to keep you on your toes without reinventing each one you encounter. You’ll need to track down a sub-boss to defeat that grants you the ability to destroy these enemies, but even then, the tense firefight that ensues after is a damn impressive thrill, each and every time.
Apart from these seemingly invincible threats, you’ll fight a series of Chozo guards periodically as well, and it wasn’t until watching some streams of the game that I realized you can use the grapple to pull at their shields, making the fight almost trivial at that point. I was constantly impressed in how the abilities and weapons kept making encounters feel new once you had a new trick up your sleeve. Now, granted, that sense of freshness does go away once your abilities and new weapons start to have diminishing returns, but I was never once bored in any aspect of combat, especially as I mentioned previously, certain encounters get a refresh later on in the adventure.
Bosses themselves are engaging and challenging as well, with unique patterns, attacks, and cutscenes that have you riding atop them, pumping them full of blaster fire, or jumping through a swirling tail as you gut them from the inside. While several of these encounters are incredibly difficult, learning the patterns they present does allow you to start working your way deeper into the fight, learning the basics needed to feel like you have it mastered. I will say that two encounters certainly kept trouncing me, as they are mechanically very involved and rely on a lot of abilities to be used back to back, often having you performing a lot of controller gymnastics to pull off. Still, pushing past them is not only satisfying as hell, but the way in which the cutscenes are handled always manages to make Samus look like a complete badass as a result.
Given that Samus has a wide assortment of abilities, it does take a while to get used to the controls as you’re going to be pressing a lot of buttons in most cases to even perform one action, let alone doing that with some split-second timing and mastering each and every input. While it likely would have felt more natural to aim with the right analog stick, all aiming is done with the left stick while moving or locking Samus in one place, since aiming and working the face buttons on the entire right side of the controller would have been a nightmare. You can lock Samus in place with the L button, and holding the R button allows you to swap to missiles. You’ll fire off either your blaster or missiles with Y, and you’ll have a variety of weapons and abilities that will use variations of those inputs.
When everything is firing on all cylinders, you certainly feel like a badass, using your Phantom Cloak to go invisible to get the jump on your prey, darting through corridors and sliding under low gaps, to pulling off a powerbomb and screen-clearing whatever happened to be in the way. Combine that with your basic blaster fire and missiles and some encounters are just an absolute riot to take part in. You are certainly going to press the wrong button at some point or forget to hold down the Left bumper to lock Samus in place, but those mishaps are few and far between when you’re in sync with the world around you. Honestly, few action games have honestly felt this rewarding when you are just in the moment.
While Fusion allowed Samus to collect her thoughts between zones, letting us know how she was doing, Dread doesn’t give us that much character input from Samus herself. There are a few conversations in the game with some characters, but her own input and replies are not really what you’d expect. While Other M went the opposite direction and had her constantly talking, Dread has Samus detail a lot of her thoughts through her animations. There is a scene where Samus is aiming her gun at someone, and once realizing they were not a threat, she relaxes, and the animation to indicate that is perfect. We get a lot of emotion from her eyes, as we see them pretty often, but I do agree that there are some story beats here where Samus could have and should have had some sort of dialogue or vocalizing her thoughts in at least some way. Did I feel this impacted my time with the game? No, as I wasn’t expecting Samus to even talk, let alone the few lines we get.
Despite the remarks that the Switch is an underpowered console for competing with the AAA machine found on other consoles and PC’s, Metroid Dread is a visually stunning experience, regardless of it being on the Switch. Enemies, blaster fire, cutscenes, backgrounds, Samus herself, all look incredible. While the game plays out in 2D, the visuals are 3D from a fixed camera. Cutscenes certainly play around in the visual space given to them, but when I say this is one of the best-looking games this year, I’m not joking. Samus alone looks incredible, and playing this on the OLED is a damn impressive treat with how bright and colorful most of this game looks. I’ve often played most of my games docked, but the OLED experience made me actually play Dread almost 90% of the way through it as a portable adventure, giving a lot of props for how good that on-the-go experience truly is on the OLED.
With hard mode to unlock and take on a more challenging option, Metroid Dread is either going to be a one-and-done experience for many or a gauntlet of replayability to others. Regardless, if your time is done with this adventure when the credits roll, this is without question one of the best games on the platform. I certainly hope that Nintendo smartens up and brings some of the previous games to the Switch, especially with the latest Prime entry to release in the near future. Still, if you own a Switch, Metroid Dread is certainly a challenging experience, but one that rewards you with making it feel like you can truly pull off some remarkable badass maneuvers as the best bounty hunter in the business.
Developer - Mercury Steam, Nintendo, Nintendo Entertainment Planning & Development. Publisher - Nintendo. Released - October 8th, 2021. Available On - Nintendo Switch. Rated - (T) Animated Blood, Fantasy Violence.
Platform Reviewed - Nintendo Switch OLED. Review Access - Metroid Dread was purchased by the reviewer.