Metroid Dread — Issue 51

Metroid Dread a return to form for vet­er­an series

That fore­bod­ing sense of … dread. The antic­i­pa­tion of walk­ing into an unknown room and pos­si­bly find­ing a secret. It’s the stuff many old-school gamers and Metroid fans like me cut our teeth on grow­ing up with Metroid­va­nia games. The orig­i­nal Metroid set the tone, but Super Metroid is the house of cards that every­thing in the genre rests on. And Metroid Dread, while an admirable attempt to recre­ate that nos­tal­gic feel­ing, is a few mis­siles short.

Don’t mis­un­der­stand me: I love Metroid Dread. It’s the return to form that we all expect of a Metroid game, and you can tell that with­in the first five min­utes. The open­ing cin­e­mat­ic picks the sto­ry up after Fusion where Samus Aran, the bad­dest boun­ty hunter in the known uni­verse, has simul­ta­ne­ous­ly solved the X Par­a­site threat and ush­ered in galac­tic peace once again. Despite that, the Galac­tic Fed­er­a­tion receives ver­i­fied proof that the X are not extinct and sends EMMI (Extra­plan­e­tary Mul­ti­form Mobile Iden­ti­fiers) to the plan­et ZDR to inves­ti­gate the mys­tery of why the X Par­a­site has reap­peared. Soon after the EMMI land, all con­tact is lost with them. Ms. Aran is sent in to inves­ti­gate their dis­ap­pear­ance, and short­ly after land­ing, finds her­self in com­bat with a mys­te­ri­ous fig­ure that resem­bles a Chozo. Giv­en that the Chozo oth­er than her­self are also extinct, it’s an even deep­er mys­tery that Samus is deter­mined to solve.

The sto­ry is inter­est­ing, and I was gen­uine­ly invest­ed in learn­ing about the EMMI and what they found on the plan­et. I was even more intrigued about the Chozo war­rior because I’m well-versed in the lore of Metroid and any­thing that calls back to Super Metroid and Samus’ ori­gin sto­ry is going to have my atten­tion. It also ref­er­ences Metroid Fusion, obvi­ous­ly, and parts of Metroid II: Samus Returns — which is the excel­lent remake of Metroid II: The Return of Samus. Lean­ing on the old­er sto­ry is a smart move because you’re prob­a­bly going to go back and play the old­er games and the remake, and you’re going to buy into the sto­ry of the cur­rent game a lit­tle bit easier. 

What isn’t a lit­tle eas­i­er, even on the easy dif­fi­cul­ty lev­el, is the com­bat. Lis­ten, I’m a Super Metroid expert and I can even claim beat­ing the orig­i­nal Metroid, but the first hour of Dread is hard. I got stuck on the sec­ond EMMI chase sequence and had to go watch a detailed demon­stra­tion of what to do because I just was­n’t get­ting it. And, yes, I love this about Dread. Metroid, at its core, is about explo­ration, prob­lem-solv­ing and fig­ur­ing out things by tri­al and error. I’m doing that in Dread, though my old-man reflex­es and patience are get­ting in the way. But this is what I want out of my Metroid game to a point. The oth­er side of this, how­ev­er, is that I did­n’t care for the mad dash away from an all-pow­er­ful ene­my in Metroid Fusion in 2002, and I don’t par­tic­u­lar­ly care for the mad dash away from an all-pow­er­ful ene­my in Metroid Dread now. That fran­tic feel­ing of not know­ing what to do in a sequence that means instant death con­stant­ly is not a good one, and I had hoped that it would­n’t return 20 years lat­er, but here we are. I’ll fig­ure it out and learn to live with it, I guess, but it’s not one of my favorite parts of the game.

One of the oth­er things I do love about Dread is the atmos­phere. The music hits the sweet spot of nos­tal­gia and new with leit­mo­tifs of Super and the orig­i­nal game mixed in, and the graph­ics are gor­geous. I’ve long been a fan of the music of Metroid, and this is just anoth­er mas­ter­piece in the long his­to­ry of the series. Also, Samus has nev­er looked bet­ter. She’s more fleshed out with mod­ern graph­ics, but my favorite hero­ine is sim­ply stun­ning even in the stripped Pow­er Suit. And while ZDR is no Zebes, it’s a deli­cious­ly dark envi­ron­ment that invokes the best part of brood­ing moody dark plan­et that fits right in Metroid lore.

While I love a lot of Dread, there are some things that I don’t quite love. First, as a vet­er­an Metroid lover, I can’t help but won­der why it took so long to get a side-scrolling ver­sion of Metroid again and why it fol­lowed Fusion after so many years. Dread is fan­tas­tic, but Fusion was not exact­ly Super, and Dread tries a lit­tle too hard to make Fusion work. I’d rather Dread had its own iden­ti­ty aside from the cleanup of Fusion’s mess. 

And while we’re at it, Dread tries a lit­tle too hard to lean into Super’s lega­cy. It’s well-known that Super is our favorite game of all time. That is not a secret. How­ev­er, unless you’re going to give me a full mod­ern remake of Super, don’t tease me with some­thing almost there. 

Dread is a tease, a “what if we were to remake the great­est game of all time with mod­ern con­trols” exper­i­ment. To quote the awful Ronin in Avengers: Endgame, don’t give me hope. Don’t give it to me halfway and then be like, naw, you know what? Let’s just call it Metroid 5 and we’ll revis­it that Super remake lat­er. This tech­ni­cal­ly isn’t Dread­’s fault, because it’s an excel­lent game and it’s giv­ing me, the Metroid fan who did­n’t want a first-per­son shoot­er Metroid, exact­ly what I’ve been ask­ing for since Fusion. I’m not ding­ing Dread per se; I’m ding­ing Nin­ten­do for being a tease and a ter­ri­ble one at that.

Metroid Dread does almost every­thing right: The atmos­phere is Metroid, the graph­ics are Metroid, the sto­ry is Metroid and the secre­cy is Metroid. It’s a must-play if you’re into the series and even if you aren’t, you still need to expe­ri­ence it just to see how the grand dame of Metroid­va­nia does her thing and cre­ates per­fec­tion. It’s just that if you’re walk­ing into this think­ing you’re going to get Super Metroid lev­els of per­fec­tion, you’re going to be dis­ap­point­ed. It’s not Oth­er M lev­el of dis­ap­point­ment, but the lay­ers of Super haunt the out­come. Then again, let’s face it: Noth­ing is going to touch Super’s lev­el of nuance. And Dread is still fine for it. Dread near­ly hits on every lev­el, and it’s the side-scrolling Metroid adven­ture we non-first-per­son shoot­er fans have been wait­ing for. It’s just that you must be will­ing to look past the dread­ed com­par­isons to Super Metroid to see its true finesse.