Metroid Dread is Exciting, Tense, and Fun

It took me long enough to get here, but I finally played Metroid Dread.

I actually started it last October, but played only about an hour or so and then put it on hold until this year, when I started over since I’d made so little progress the first time.

Metroid Dread is set after the events of Metroid Fusion, which makes it the latest game in the timeline, and follows Samus as she heads to a remote planet to investigate the loss of contact with the EMMI robots deployed there.

EMMI featured heavily in the marketing, because it adds a new element to the gameplay. While most of the world is the usual Metroid-style exploration and combat, certain areas are “EMMI zones,” patrolled by the rogue EMMI robots intent on destroying Samus. You can’t fight them normally, and they can kill you in a single hit, which means you need to use stealth and/or run to avoid them.

The EMMI sections are tense and exciting, although there were times when I started to get annoyed with them (especially when it seemed like the EMMI was intent on staying in the tiny area I was trying to traverse instead of patrolling).

Dread was developed by MercurySteam, who also did Samus Returns, and the melee counter system from that game returns. In general, the combat feels really good, which makes it a lot of fun to play. That’s good, because I found some of the boss fights to be really hard. There were several where I started out thinking the fight was impossible until I slowly learned how to react to the various attacks.

As far as exploration goes, to some extent the progression feels a bit too guided, with the game making it clear where it wants you to go first. However, once things opened up a bit more, I got to enjoy its design anyway. It felt like it wasn’t geared toward backtracking after each upgrade quite as much, but I had fun sweeping through each area once I had all my abilities to get as many upgrades as possible.

Now, this one is a bit more story-driven than the others in the series… but I kind of played it as though it wasn’t. I don’t know how to explain it. Maybe I’m just not attached enough to Metroid lore or wasn’t in the right state of mind for Metroid storytelling, because even though I wanted to be interested, I didn’t pay as much attention to it as I normally would.

But regardless of my lack of attachment to the story, I definitely enjoyed my time playing Metroid Dread. I still need to play Super Metroid and the Metroid Prime games, but if they announce a Metroid 6, I’ll be interested for sure!

(Since Metroid Prime 4 seems to be in limbo, maybe I’ll have time to play the Prime games before it comes out.)

What did you think of Metroid Dread?

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