GAME REVIEW: Metroid Dread

 (The Finality Of It All - Project AER)

Anyone who is even remotely familiar with my taste in video games will know that I am a gigantic pushover for a good Metroidvania.  This is a genre that is full of excellent 2D side-scrolling, platforming, and exploration.  It's a genre founded on two of my absolute favorite Metroidvanias, one of which is Super Metroid for the SNES.

The 'Metroid' series of games is pretty synonymous with excellence in the field.  It's a game that has jumped successfully from 2D to 3D without losing an ounce of its fanbase, and then promptly jumped back to 2D without missing a beat.  Amazingly, it's done all of this pretty much without missing a single beat.  Every entry in the 'main' Metroid series of games -- we're not talking about you, Hunters! -- is pretty much a masterclass in the industry.  For those of you counting at home, that's TEN GAMES:

Metroid
Metroid 2: The Return Of Samus
Super Metroid
Metroid Fusion
Metroid Zero Mission
Metroid Prime
Metroid Prime 2: Echoes
Metroid Prime 3: Corruption
Metroid: Other M
Metroid: Samus Returns

Yes, I know that the first half of Zero Mission is basically just a remake of the original Metroid, that Same Returns is just a remake of Metroid 2, and that Other M had some of the most breathtakingly crap voice acting and story we've all ever seen.  None of that changes the fact that all three of those titles were excellent video games in every other respect.

Of all of those phenomenal titles, Super Metroid is widely regarded as the best.  It's pacing was excellent, it was a perfect example of how far video games could be pushed in that era, and it opened the door for one of the most interesting and technically demanding eSports that exists today: 

Speed Running.

Super Metroid is -the- granddaddy of wide-spread, organized speed running as we know it today.  Nintendo didn't build the game with that in mind -- indeed, runners have found any number of ways to warp the game in ways that Nintendo never intended -- but that didn't stop it, along with a healthy dose of zeitgeist brought on by the widespread availability of the 'modern' internet, from claiming its place in history.

It was over ten years ago that gamers were given their last dose of new Metroid content.  'Other M' was released in August 2010, and while the game itself was a functionally sound title, the afore-mentioned poor storytelling and voice acting left many players with a sour taste in their mouth.  We'd all been expecting another entry in the 'Prime' series after 2007's incredible Metroid Prime 3: Corruption.  What we got was still a very good game...but so much less than we'd come to expect from the masters.

Years passed.  Nintendo would tease us with a remaster of Metroid 2 in 2017, but the next Prime game was nowhere to be found...until suddenly, four months ago, an announcement was made at E3 for Metroid Dread, a long whispered-about project from Nintendo that had never managed to materialize.  

And it was set to release just a few months later, in October.

Fans went absolutely apeshit trying to force time to pass faster.  And then it arrived.

Was it worth the wait?

THE SHORT VERSION:

Yes. The crew who did it first are still one of the best in the business.  Buy it. Play it.

THE LONG VERSION:

Indie games have spoiled me.  

I almost didn't buy Metroid Dread because of the price tag.  It's been a long time since I paid $60 for a video game, especially a Metroidvania.  My game library is full of incredible titles, many of them from this genre, and almost all of them cost me $30 or less.  Games like 'The Shadow Complex', 'Ori And The Blind Forest', 'Ori And The Will Of The Wisps', and of course, 'Hollow Knight' have hours and hours of gameplay attached to them, to say nothing of fond memories...and all for half the price of a normal AAA game title.  It took a friend basically telling me, "Dude, just buy the damned game." to finally pull the trigger.

I owe you a Coke for that one, Randy.

I could spend many more paragraphs debating the worth of games, but the simple fact is that, especially with their track record, there was virtually no way that Metroid Dread wouldn't have been worth the money.  Having spent many hours running, jumping, and blasting my way happily through a new world, I can absolutely confirm that fact.

There's just...so much to say about this game.  Let's get the low-hanging fruit out of the way first though:

- Graphically and sonically, the game is very nearly perfect.  The production values on display here are absolutely off the hook, though the music does fall short of some of the series' historic best work.
- Gameplay is buttery smooth, running at unfaltering frame rates even while docked.  And dock it you should, because the game deserves to be fully enjoyed on the largest screen you can find. It's gorgeous PERIOD, especially when you consider that it's a Switch game.  Controls are exactly what you'd expect from a Metroid game: Razor sharp and ultra-precise.
- There's just enough fan-service here to serve as a lovely reward for players who have stuck with the series for the last 35 years.
- The gameplay mechanics in this game are both new and familiar.  Nintendo hasn't been sitting around doing nothing over the last ten years. They've been watching some of the other studios who've been hard at work.  

At its core, this is a Metroid game.  That means, like the tide, you can pretty much guarantee a few things are going to happen, and they do:

- The game finds yet another way to strip you of your powers before you start playing.  It's old hat at this point; you'd figure that Samus would have figured out how to avoid this, but at least they've found a somewhat creative way to justify it this time around.
- You'll wander around a variety of zones in different conditions snatching your powers back from Chozo statues.
- You will shoot everything. Then you'll backtrack to pick stuff up, and shoot that same stuff all over again.

Indeed, the biggest difference with this Metroid title are some new power-ups, a fast-ish travel system, and the introduction of an enemy that you can't shoot your way past.  None of the power-ups are so new or original that they'll really blow your hair back, and the fast-ish travel system still involves a LOT of hiking around, certainly more than is, strictly speaking, necessary.  Ori And The Will of The Wisps did fast travel MUCH better. No, it's that last item, the new enemy, that really sets this game apart.  

Each major zone in Metroid Dread is broken up into a series of smaller areas.  Serving as a hub -- and frequently a convenient shortcut -- through most of these areas is something called the EMMI zone.  And when I say 'convenient', what I mean is...not really convenient at all.  As the name suggests, each EMMI zone contains an EMMI, a robotic hunter who actively -- and alarmingly effectively -- stalks you so that it can give your neck a big hug with a giant metal spike.  I'm not sure how Nintendo did it, but these things are frustratingly good at finding you.  Worse, you can't kill EMMIs using any of your conventional weaponry; all you can do is run. A lot.  

Dealing with the EMMIs is one of the game's most frustrating points.  Nintendo took a serious risk using this particular mechanic.  It's not easy to deal with the EMMIs, and one of them frequently stands in the way of you progressing forward in your gameplay.  EMMIs will kill you quickly if they find you, and I meant it earlier when I said they were good at it.  I have more deaths to EMMIs in this game than anywhere else combined.  When you pair this with the fact that, like most Metroid games, there isn't really a way to make the game easier, some players may very well run the risk of getting so frustrated that they walk away from the game.

...That sensation will last about as long as it takes for you to neutralize one for the first time.

After running from an EMMI over and over again, dying while trying to find a safe path through the zone OVER AND OVER again, the satisfaction of suddenly being able to turn the tables on it permanently is absolutely massive.  My first EMMI takedown is easily one of the most satisfying things that I've ever had playing a game, and you'll almost -- almost -- look forward to the next one.  

The game makes it very clear that you'll never, ever be able to just brute force your way past an EMMI.  Unlike every other enemy in Metroid that will eventually fall prey to your upgraded armaments, the EMMI is never an easy foe to deal with. It evolves with you, which means the satisfaction from taking one offline never gets old.

The story of Metroid Dread, to say nothing of the ending, shouldn't be spoiled, except to say that it's an above average fare that serves as a fitting ending to the main Metroid storyline.  Nintendo has said that, at least chronologically, this is the end of Samus' story.  It's a very nearly perfect one.

Very nearly.

Metroid Dread does have one REALLY terrible weakness, and that's its tendency to hide the path forward behind walls that you need to shoot to reveal.  It's VERY bad at this, and it does it several times early in the gameplay.  I had to fall back on a guide twice within the first several hours of gameplay, though it got a bit easier to figure out Nintendo's tricks after that.  Still, I'm not a novice to this genre by any means and I would probably have walked away from the game without help.  I'm not interested in shooting every single wall I come to JUST IN CASE, and I'm especially not interested in doing that in a goddamned EMMI zone.

Metroid Dread hides a LOT of the game behind destroyable walls.  I HATE this.  Yes, you'll get an ability later in the game that, like the old X-Ray Specs, but you still have to know to USE the damned things, so it's not like the problems go away.  This might sour my opinion of the whole game, except for one small detail with huge implications, something that makes Metroid Dread far more than the sum of its parts:

Metroid Dread contains developer-intended sequence breaks -and- it acknowledges you for leveraging them.

If you don't know why this is important -- or don't care -- you should probably stop reading now. The rest of this article is about sequence breaking, speed running, the gaming community, and the acceptance of nerds everywhere.  If you were here for the review, it's over.  The game is wonderful, shoot everything, don't give up.  It's worth it.

If you -do- know why this is important, you'll understand that the discovery of developer-intended sequence breaks is a love note 35 years in the making.  It's a gesture of deep significance, especially for those of us who have been playing games since before it was popular to do so with our parents.

For those who aren't intimately familiar, sequence breaking is the act of using precise control and movement - or a glitch! - to reach part of a game that you're not supposed to be at yet.  It's typically done so that you can obtain a power earlier than the designers intended or skip a section of gameplay that you would otherwise have to work through.  This is really cool on its own but it reaches entirely new levels of excellent when you consider its application in the quickly evolving eSport of Speed Running.

Speed Running is the act of completing a video game as quickly as possible, sometimes under certain conditions.  How quickly can you complete the game if you get all of the power-ups?  What about if you get NONE of the power-ups?  These are just a few examples of how people 'Run' games today.  Speed running has been around since gaming started to gain in popularity in the early '80s.  As I mentioned in my introduction, it was Super Metroid that put speed running 'on the map'.  

Sequence breaking is something that people have been doing with games for a -very- long time now. Even the first Metroid back in '86 contained ways to 'break' its play order, something that the designers had very specifically NOT intended when the game was built.  The original Metroid was all about the environment, all about making you take your time to explore the game organically.  

Fast forward to Metroid: Zero Mission, a game that Nintendo released in 2004.  By this time, speed running had been happening on a larger scale for around ten years.  The result of this was Nintendo slyly building in deliberately ways to sequence break their game.  This was a subtle acknowledgement that Nintendo knew what was going on and that they were willing to be a part of it, a little easter egg for the observant player.

What we have today with Metroid Dread is something even better though.  It's not simply that the developer included ways, by design, to get around portions of the game.  Nintendo took it a step further here, not just allowing the breaks, but rewarding players for them with new cutscenes, and actual acknowledgement.  This is, to my knowledge, the first time this has ever happened in a series of games that made sequence breaking and speed running famous.  It is the ultimate acknowledgement that both practices are valid, that they're encouraged.  It is the ultimate endorsement of a hobby that has turned into a practice responsible for a wide array of charity events every year.  Speed running has had a widely positive effect on the world, and Metroid Dread is Nintendo's way of saying, "We see you."

That's not dreadful at all.