Dread Samus Aran Comments

The comments for my Dread Samus Aran challenge video were too long for YouTube, so I put them here.

Here's a challenge I came up with in the new boss rush mode in Metroid Dread. I call it Dread Samus Aran, which is short for:

Dread Rush. Explosives Are Disallowed. Shinespark And Missile Use: Same. Also, Remain Alive, Naturally.

In other words, beat Dread Rush under the following conditions:

• Don't use bombs of any kind (regular bombs, Cross Bombs, Power Bombs).

• Don't use Shinesparks.

• Don't use missiles.

• Don't die.

The primary obstacle is Raven Beak; the easy options for dealing with his black holes and suns are unavailable, and the alternatives are much harder. But nearly every boss is at least a little harder without missiles. Below are some notes on each battle:

Corpius: Pretty easy. I do most of the fight while he's invisible because it's more fun and somewhat faster. When you hit his head, it lights up for a moment and you can see where it's moving, telling you where to aim your next shot. If you lose track of the head, it may take a few shots to find it.

Kraid: A bit annoying due to the randomness, but not very hard. I don't attempt jumping over the fist in the second phase because it's riskier than jumping down (although with practice, jumping over the fist is probably fairly consistent).

Central Unit 1: Once you realize that you can destroy the Froot Loops with the running counter, this battle is easy. You can't take damage after the brain starts its death animation, so I ran into one of the Froot Loops for fun.

Drogyga: A long, boring battle. One thing to watch out for is that if you stand next to the boss while two red fireballs are falling down and he does the triple tentacle attack next, the tentacles might hit you immediately. To avoid this, jump over the fireball in the middle position in order to get away from the tentacles' spawn point. In this video, the boss didn't use his double red fireball attack, so I didn't need to use this technique.

Solo Robo Chozo: Pretty easy if you stay on the upper level the entire time. I prefer to stay far away from his shots so I have lots of time to react to the angle they're moving at and the size of the gaps between the small shots. Ducking in one of the corners usually lets you avoid the shots, but sometimes you have to jump over them.

Escue: With a good strategy, this battle is also fairly easy, although it takes a while and requires you to pay attention. The attack with small shadow flakes is the most dangerous, but the method I use to avoid it works well. First, keep Escue a good distance away before he starts the attack. When you see that he's doing it, run to the corner. Then, when the flakes are about to hit you: jump, spin jump, and wall jump to get over them. The farther away Escue is from you when he fires the flakes, the more lenient the timing is to dodge them. At about 12:40 in the video, I nearly died. I was trying to jump, spin jump, and Flash Shift over Escue. However, I Flash Shifted too soon and almost ran into him, which would have killed me. I then panicked and Flash Shifted back to where I was, which also could have killed me if Escue had started moving slightly sooner. Luckily, I got away with this blunder.

Experiment Z-57: Not too hard. The double swipe attack is tricky to avoid; I had to study it for a little while to understand how the hitboxes work. Once I figured it out, though, the attack became easy to dodge.

Double Robo Chozo: The second hardest battle (after Raven Beak). You can manipulate the enemies to some extent, but sometimes they don't do what you want and you have to improvise. I generally try to keep them apart so I only have to deal with one at a time. In this video, things didn't go according to plan and I had to make some risky moves. The scariest part was at about 20:48. One of the enemies started shooting, which, with my strategy, he almost never does while he and Samus are in those positions and the other enemy is still alive. Instead, he almost always jumps down to where Samus is. However, this time the other enemy was in an unusual position (due to some other strange behavior beforehand), which caused the upper enemy to shoot. I managed to survive, but it was pure luck. Going through it frame by frame, it looks like I should have died. I tested and confirmed that you can get hit by those shots while doing a Screw Attack, so I assume the hitboxes aren't quite where they appear to be. Once one enemy is dead, the other is very easy to kill; the large arena gives you ample opportunity to avoid his attacks while chipping away at his health.

Golzuna: Probably the easiest battle. It takes a while, but as long as you don't get impatient, there's little threat of dying.

Gold Chozo: This battle keeps you on your toes. Many of the boss's attacks require you to react quickly; responding too slowly or in the wrong way often spells death. However, each move has a tell, and as long as you react to it appropriately, you can survive consistently. Of all the battles, this one is the least affected by the conditions of this challenge, at least for me; when I'm fighting him with no restrictions, I hardly use missiles anyway.

Central Unit 2: Patience is the name of the game here. Better to miss an opportunity to deal damage than to die trying to squeeze in an extra shot. The Screw Attack is a great way to destroy the Froot Loops.

Raven Beak Phase 1: Raven Beak has fewer moves in his arsenal than in phase 3, so this phase is much more predictable. When a black hole is out, Raven Beak can only do two moves: the area attack and the swipe. If you're far away, he will only do the area attack. When he does, you need to get to a safe zone, but also leave yourself an escape route--typically either (a) under the black hole, or (b) up and over Raven Beak, then over the black hole. I use a combination of these strategies, always luring the black hole away from Raven Beak first to give myself some space while I wait inside the safe zone. There isn't much time to shoot at the black hole, so it takes a while to destroy it. Raven Beak doesn't have much health; two counter sequences with moderate mashing speed is all it takes.

Raven Beak Phase 2: Pretty easy compared to the other two phases, but very long. The most dangerous attack is the horizontal ram. He follows you up and down for a highly variable amount of time beforehand, which can make it tricky to dodge. I like to go over it rather than under it; if you try to go under, he can follow you all the way to the floor and leave you with nowhere to go, whereas there always seems to be more room to go up in the very tall arena. I had a close call at about 33:31, where I failed to do a spin jump due to a badly timed button press. This same mistake has caused me to die before in various battles, but I got away with it this time.

Raven Beak Phase 3: Here's where it gets tough. The black holes are harder to handle than in phase 1 because Raven Beak has several additional moves he can do, making him less predictable. I also have to deal with the suns. Unless you destroy a sun with a Power Bomb, it will fire either 5 or 6 energy waves. Shooting it appears to have no effect, or else it takes such a huge number of shots that it's impractical to damage it. While a sun is out, Raven Beak can do three attacks: the swipe, the Shinespark, and the mega beam. The first two are much easier to deal with; I just have to stay near a wall (preventing a vertical Shinespark) and jump over them. For this reason, I like to stay near Raven Beak to bait him into doing a swipe. But he will eventually do a mega beam, which is much harder to deal with. Depending on the position of Raven Beak and the timing of the mega beam and the waves, avoiding the many sources of damage is sometimes very difficult. My strategy is typically to wait near a corner until Raven Beak is about to fire, then jump up and get through a gap in the sun's waves. I try to stay on one side of the stage; crossing over while a sun and mega beam are out is hazardous, although it's sometimes the best option. Another danger with the suns is that when a sun disappears, the camera sometimes zooms in and prevents you from seeing where the final waves are. This happened at about 35:55, and I had to guess where the gaps might be. I was fortunate enough to guess correctly.

This was a fun challenge. In the absence of quick and easy ways to deal with enemies' attacks, I was forced to study their behavior and come up with good strategies, especially in the Raven Beak battle. I encourage anyone who's beaten Dread Rush with no deaths to try this challenge. Or, for an easier time, replace Dread Rush with Boss Rush to get the Bread Samus Aran challenge.