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REVIEW -- Metroid Dread

Metroid Dread is an action-adventure game developed by MercurySteam and Nintendo EPD, released on October 8, 2021, for the Nintendo Switch. Players control bounty hunter Samus Aran as she investigates the source of a mysterious transmission on the planet ZDR. It retains the side-scrolling gameplay of previous 2D Metroid games and incorporates stealth elements.

Dread was conceived for the Nintendo DS in the mid-2000s, but was canceled due to technical limitations. Industry commentators expressed interest in a new 2D Metroid game, and listed Dread in their "most wanted" lists. After their work on Metroid: Samus Returns in 2017, Metroid producer Yoshio Sakamoto appointed MercurySteam to develop Dread, the first original side-scrolling Metroid game since Metroid Fusion (2002). Nintendo announced the game at E3 2021.

Gameplay

Metroid Dread is an action-adventure game in which players control bounty hunter Samus Aran as she explores the planet ZDR. It retains the side-scrolling gameplay of previous Metroid games, alongside the free aim and melee attacks added in Samus Returns (2017). As the player explores, they discover new items and weapons, allowing them to access new areas.

Dread adds stealth elements, with Samus avoiding the EMMI robots in certain areas by hiding, reducing her noise, and using the Phantom Cloak, camouflage that makes her invisible but slows her movement. If an EMMI catches Samus, the player has two brief chances to perform melee counters and escape. If they fail, Samus is killed. EMMIs can only be destroyed when Samus obtains the temporary "Omega Blaster" upgrade, which is lost upon using it to destroy one; however, destroying an EMMI grants Samus a new permanent upgrade. Players unlock images in an in-game gallery based on their completion time, difficulty level, and percentage of items collected.

Canonical Metroid series timeline, limited only to the manga and video game releases in chronological order as the events happened in the lore.

In-depth Metroid series timeline, straight from the Metroid Database archive website.

Plot

* SPOILER WARNING *

Metroid story chronology

The Galactic Federation receives video evidence that the X, a dangerous species of parasite that can mimic any creature it infects, survives on the remote planet ZDR. They dispatch seven EMMI (Extraplanetary Multiform Mobile Identifiers) robots to ZDR to investigate but lose contact with them shortly after. The Federation sends Samus Aran to ZDR to investigate.

Samus encounters a Chozo warrior deep underground, who destroys the exit, defeats her in combat and strips her suit of most of its abilities. Samus is instructed by her ship's computer, Adam, to find another path to the surface and return to her ship. Samus is attacked by the EMMI, which have been reprogrammed to consider her hostile. She escapes and absorbs mysterious energy from one of the planet's central units. The energy temporarily enables the Omega Blaster, with which she destroys the EMMI and regains some of her abilities.

In the Chozo sanctuary of Ferenia, Samus is captured by another EMMI but is saved by a Chozo named Quiet Robe, who deactivates them. Quiet Robe explains that, long ago, two Chozo tribes, the scientific Thoha and warrior Mawkin, banded together to trap the Metroids on the planet SR388. The Thoha intended to destroy SR388, but Raven Beak, the Mawkin leader, wanted to use the Metroids as a bioweapon to conquer the galaxy. He slaughtered the Thoha tribe and spared Quiet Robe so the Metroids could be controlled with his Thoha DNA. He planned to use ZDR to house Metroids but had to contain an infestation of the X while Samus eradicated the Metroids from SR388. Raven Beak reprogrammed the EMMI robots and lured Samus to ZDR to extract the Metroid DNA implanted in her during the events of Fusion, which would allow him to revive the Metroids.

Quiet Robe opens a barrier to allow Samus to progress before he is assassinated by one of Raven Beak's robotic soldiers. Adam encourages Samus to defeat Raven Beak and destroy ZDR. In the Elun region, Samus encounters the X parasites and inadvertently releases them into the rest of the planet; one of the X possesses Quiet Robe's corpse and reactivates the remaining EMMI. Samus arrives on the surface, where she is attacked by the last of the EMMI; she destroys it by sapping its energy with her hand, a power gained from her Metroid DNA. As a side effect, Samus is slowly becoming a Metroid.

On the floating fortress of Itorash, Samus confronts Raven Beak, who has been masquerading as Adam. Raven Beak reveals that he spared her before so that she would awaken her Metroid powers, at which point he would clone her to create an army of the most powerful Metroid of all. It is also revealed that Raven Beak was a DNA donor for Samus when she was first accepted into the Chozo, and that he considers her his daughter. Samus battles Raven Beak and is nearly killed, but the Metroid abilities within her grant her incredible power. Samus attacks Raven Beak, draining energy from Itorash and causing it to crash into ZDR. Raven Beak is infected by an X, and Samus uses her newfound powers to destroy him. Samus retreats to her ship as ZDR begins to self-destruct, but is unable to use it due to her energy-draining Metroid powers. The X possessing Quiet Robe appears and allows itself to be absorbed into Samus to neutralize her Metroid abilities, allowing her to escape the planet before it explodes.

The Verdict:

I felt like that I've played more than enough Metroidvanias in this genre over the last two decades between the time that Metroid Fusion dropped and this game's release that I have come to know what I want in a game in this genre.

I'm no stranger to MercurySteam's efforts as I have raved and praised countless times about their work on Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate HD in the past and what I have seen of their work on Metroid: Samus Returns on the Nintendo 3DS. A lot of that love for this genre and more importantly of the Metroid franchise itself has carried over to this game. This is easily the best Samus has ever looked visually in terms of graphics and details in her animations (whether it's while she's idle or moving around throughout the locales of the game - in and out of combat seamlessly). There's so many small nuances to appreciate and take in, such as how her body moves realistically to accommodate for aiming in different angles around her, whether she's standing still, running, or hanging from a wall, ledge, or ceiling. Most of that will go unnoticed by casual players/spectators, but it blows my mind at how much precision and detail went into Samus' animations in this game for not just her, but her foes in this game as well.

The game has a nifty tag system for players can mark points of interest or make reminders on the world map of areas to revisit or doors to open with color coded markers. This reminded me a lot like the notes system for the map in Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate HD that I raved about in that game. The planet ZDR is vast and its easy to get lost, so making notes and leaving markers on the map is one way that can help players retrace their steps if they happen to get lost for they won't have to resort to hunting down a strategy guide online.

E.M.M.I. - Samus' Main Source of Dread

The name of the game is "Dread" and Metroid Dread definitely excels at instilling that feeling into players. The game forces Samus to defeat 7 E.M.M.I.'s that each have one of her abilities that need to be recovered in hopes of restoring her powers back to full strength for she can defeate Raven Beak and escape the planet ZDR. Each of the E.M.M.I.'s have a unique "gimmick" and trait that Samus must overcome to defeat them. Defeating them requires first locating the central core, hidden somewhere within the E.M.M.I.'s zone. Samus then acquires the "Omega Blaster" upon defeating the core and absorbing this resource, which is the only means of defeating an E.M.M.I. The Omega Blaster requires Samus to remain stationary while firing both its rapid-fire bursts and charging it up to full power once the E.M.M.I.'s weak point in its head is exposed after destroying the protective shielding with the Omega Stream. Some of them will make this very easy to uncover while others will pursue Samus so quickly that you have to be quick on your toes and the trigger unless you will be staring down at the Game Over screen from any mistake in these tense situations. It should be known that players CAN counter the instant kill takedown from E.M.M.I.'s when captured but the timing window is so strict and randomized that it's insanely hard to do consistently. The most reversals/counters that I have done personally were a whooping three counters in a row before I couldn't do it again consecutively.

These encounters were easily my favorite parts of the game outside of the brilliantly done boss fights. Metroid Fusion's SA-X encounters gave players a sense of "dread" too, but the E.M.M.I. units took everything that was great about those moments in that game and cranked it up to eleven without it not feeling "unfair" in terms of how overpowered the SA-X was in portions of that game. Samus is severely outgunned against the E.M.M.I. units but you do have means to evade and defeat them with proper patience and planning. Running into the SA-X at the wrong time in Fusion led to a VERY fast Game Over, especially when you weren't equipped with Freeze Missiles to slow down her pursuit.

Boss Fights - A definite highlight not only for this game in question, but for the series as a whole

The boss fights, however, I have a love or hate relationship with. Mercurysteam did a fantastic job making each boss a "final exam" of sorts for ensuring that players have optimized using all of Samus' abilities and weapons that have been acquired at that point. My issue is that while I welcomed the massive difficulty spike about halfway into the game with these bosses where it started to require an extensive amount of muscle memory and pattern recognition to defeat these foes properly on your first casual playthrough. I can understand that some casual players will be turned off to the added difficulty. They aren't "annoying/cheap" like some of the bosses in Metroid Fusion or Metroid: Zero Mission, nor are they merely damage sponges that you can simply tank through in some of the older Metroid titles.

Corpious

Corpious is the first boss that you're going to encounter on Samus' adventure and it's really not that difficult. Just some simple pattern recognition and getting the timing down for your Melee Counter(s) is the key to victory here.

Kraid

I didn't think Kraid was very difficult, but learning to dodge or destroy his incoming projectiles was a chore in its own. I found this fight more annoying than anything else as I couldn't get the timing down for Melee Countering his claw swipes before he could knock me off the ledge/wall Samus was hanging on, thus prolonging this fight a lot longer than it needed to be.

For those who aren't aware, there's an instant kill method for Kraid for players who sequence break and acquire the Bombs for your Morph Ball prior to encountering this boss. It's pretty cool that the developers left a reward of sorts for players who went out of their way to acquire that item. Additionally, if the player has Flash Shift, there's an added cutscene for that as well.

Escue

This boss gave me the most trouble out of everything else in the game outside of Z-57 and Raven Beak at the end of the game. I couldn't dodge its projectiles for the life of me and kept getting barraged by the onslaught of its attacks. This was the point of the game where I recognized that my free aiming sucked royally in clutch situations, especially when trying to use it for Ice Missiles and Charge Beam shots. The moments where this boss is vulnerable to attacks is far and few and you definitely have to make those windows of opportunity count or you might not get another opportunity.

After at least a dozen attempts, I was finally able to overcome this foe - BARELY. In all honesty, this boss gave me PTSD flashbacks to a boss in the original Axiom Verge that gave me similar issues.

Golzuna

I found this boss to be a little exciting as it was a return to form in a sense to the bosses from Metroid Fusion, even down to the Core-X to destroy after wearing it down to finally finish it off. The biggest hurdle for me was figuring out how to maneuver around it without getting hit.

I've seen people instant kill this boss by unleashing a Shinespark upon entry into its lair, so that's something to keep in mind.

Twin Robot Chozo Soldiers

This boss wasn't particularly difficult, but very, VERY annoying from how many times that the game sprung these guys onto you at random points throughout the various locales. They can and WILL try to box you in-between both of them, but the best course of action is to try to single them out and take them out individually. I know, easier said than done, but it's the best (and safest) course of action. When you run into them (again) later in the game, you will have the Screw Attack so this task is slightly easier.

Experiment No. Z-57

Much like Escue, this boss ties with that one as the hardest/most challenging, second only to Raven Beak himself. This is a battle that puts your mastery over all of Samus' acquired abilities at this point to the test, allowing very few margins of error in this battle. Otherwise, you'll be staring at the Game Over screen in a quick and speedy fashion.

You are supposed to use a Shinespark to instantly kill this boss and/or finish it off after the second phase, but the timing is so strict and you only have a very small window of opportunity to pull it off. If you fail to do, so then you have to endure it's extremely lethal final phase where you put your reactions to the test as you dodge its incoming attacks that deal massive amounts of damage to Samus.

Raven Beak

Raven Beak serves as the game's final boss when Samus finally confronts him face-to-face. I thought the first phase was pretty straight forward, even though it's hard to tell at first whether or not that you're dealing damage to him at all. Once you get his pattern down, you will realize that you can dish out even more damage to him throughout the cutscenes that trigger after successful Melee Counters. The second phase was really giving me issues in terms of dodging his relentless volleys of projectiles, whether it came from his 180 degree machine gun fire or focused blasts from his Arm Cannon.

Once you clip Raven Beak's wings in his second phase, he goes all out in his third and final phase. While he abandons most of his projectiles from the second phase, he still is no stranger to dealing out a lot of damage. He even pulls out a Spirit Bomb-like attack out of his bag of tricks to raise the stacks even further. Enduring this multi-tiered boss fight feels like players are running the gauntlet as Samus (along with players) gives it her all against Raven Beak in this exciting conclusion to this game. I'm pretty sure it took me at least two dozen attempts before I finally beat Raven Beak in my first playthrough of the game, but for as difficult as this battle was, I loved every minute of it. It was the icing to top off the cake that was layered with all of the spectacular boss fights up to this point. Beating him was like graduation day in terms of overcoming all of the hurdles that this game threw in your way. The best thing about this fight was while it was definitely challenging, it never felt unfair.

Suit Upgrades:

Varia Suit

This is one of the first suit upgrades that players will find to protect Samus from the damaging effects from high temperature areas. She can also survive running through pools of lava while wearing this suit.

Gravity Suit

This suit allows Samus to move freely in underwater while providing her additional defense against enemy attacks. It also protects Samus from the damaging effects of subzero temperatures - a weakness that she shares with Metroids that she picked up due to the events of Metroid Fusion.

Metroid Suit

This suit is obtained automatically during the final battle with Raven Beak at the end of the game. This suit drains vital energies from anything and everything around Samus - whether its living or inanimate - much like the destructive nature of its namesake, the Metroid.

Weapon Upgrades:

Charge Beam

This beam upgrade allows Samus to charge up her arm cannon to fire off more powerful blasts at her foes. This ability stacks with her other beam upgrades. It's a highly recommended strategy against numerous stronger foes to use charged beam shots over missiles in a lot of situations.

Wide Beam

This widens every shot from Samus' arm cannon into three shots for every single shot fired, allowing somewhat easier hit ratios for when aiming at foes. It still doesn't make up for having piss poor aim in this game though.

Diffusion Beam

This beam allows Samus' shots to splinter off in a blast radius effect upon hit, dealing additional damage to surfaces and surrounding enemies. This is often used to expose weakened or hidden explosive blocks in the environment.

Grapple Beam

This beam upgrade cannot be used offensively, but it can be used to swing Samus across empty gaps when she doesn't have access to the Space Jump nor Spin Boost upgrades yet. It's also used to open Grapple Beam doors as well.

Super Missile

A powerful upgrade to Samus' standard Missiles. This is going to be your go-to option against most bosses when you're not hitting them with fully charged shots from your Charge Beam.

Plasma Beam

In previous Metroid games, the Plasma Beam was Samus' most powerful endgame tools to get a hold of during her adventures. That aspect of this beam remains the same here, but I was honestly surprised at how early into this adventure when you get it. Combined with her previous Beam upgrades, it adds even more destructive power to Samus' arsenal.

Ice Missile

This weapon returns from Metroid Fusion as an upgrade and replacement for your Super Missiles. It allows Samus to freeze enemies and use them as ledges and platforms, thus providing her with even more means of traversing and exploring ZDR.

Storm Missile

This is Samus' most powerful Missile upgrade that is making it's debut in this game, but it's a costly one to setup as there's a lot of charge them to prepare the barrage of 15 missiles that will be unleashed on anything you decide to hit with this multi-lock-on weapon. Keep in mind that a single use of Storm Missiles requires 3 missiles. Storm Missiles also can trigger Storm Missile Boxes as well.

Wave Beam

The final beam upgrade that Samus will acquire is the Wave Beam that allows Samus' beams to pass through walls and enemy shields without issue.

Hyper Beam

This beam is automatically acquired by Samus during the final battle against Raven Beak once Samus obtains the Metroid Suit. This beam is able to instantly destroy anything it hits, including walls and floors. This is easily the most powerful beam in the game, but it's limited to usage in game's climax against Raven Beak and the escape sequence.

Bomb Upgrades:

The Morph Ball ability is recovered after defeating the Green EMMI in Cataris, which allows Samus to duck into tiny little areas where sliding isn't enough to allow Samus to explore further.

Bomb

These are Samus' standard issue weapon for while using the Morph Ball.

Cross Bomb

The Cross Bomb expands upon the original bombs while exploding in a cross-like pattern, allowing Samus to get an extra boost upwards or push forward/backward while in Morph Ball form. This upgrade makes its series' debut in this game.

Power Bomb

This is Samus' most powerful Bomb upgrade and up in the conversation as one of her most powerful weapons in the game. Ammo is scarce for this type as it leaves a full screen worth in its blast radius, destroying just about anything it hits.

Other Misc. Upgrades:

Spider Magnet

This ability allows Samus to latch onto and climb blue surfaced walls and ceilings.

Speed Booster and Shinespark

Once activated, Samus can accelerate at high speed after moving forward for an extended period on foot without stopping nor changing direction. Samus can maintain this "charge" by either storing it or allowing Samus to rebound off of a wall and changing direction. Once this charge is unleashed, Samus can perform a Shinespark in any direction.

Spin Boost

It allows Samus to jump once more during a Spin Jump. When used underwater, Samus cannot gain more height over the first jump without the Gravity Suit.

Space Jump

This ability essentially gives Samus the ability to jump endlessly without limitations.

Screw Attack

When combined with the Space Jump, Samus has an unstoppable means of attacking airborne foes while performing a spin jump. While spin jumping, the Screw Attack surrounds Samus with offensive energy that instantly destroys whatever Samus comes in contact with. It can also be used to destroy blocks with the lightning icon on them. In previous Metroid titles, Samus was completely invincible while performing this attack, but in this game, Samus doesn't have that novelty. Some enemies are able to still damage her while she is in this state.

Aeion Abilities:

Phantom Cloak

This is the first Aeion ability that Samus acquires on ZDR. This will prove to be one of her most pivotal tools in the game when it comes to avoiding detection from E.M.M.I.'s in their corresponding zones. The only drawback is that Samus moves extremely slow while this ability is active.

Flash Shift

Most players will look at this ability as a sort of an early alternative to double jumping without the means of the High Jump Boots or Space Jump (which is acquired later in the game), but as Samus' adventure forces her against more challenging foes, players will have to learn how to use this ability defensively as well to properly avoid attacks. I personally found this ability to be a godsend by the time the game came to an end.

Pulse Radar

For me personally, I didn't find much use out of this ability as you're pretty deep into the game by the time you acquire it. I think completionists and other players looking for find everything hidden under the sun in ZDR will opt to use this in every room and area in the game though.

Completion for Completionists' Sake

If players that are looking for more content after clearing this game on their initial playthrough(s), but are looking for more to occupy their time in terms of getting more bang for their buck, they should be happy to know that there's multiple unlockable graphics (each highlighting some pivotal moments in Samus' history) to collect in the in-game gallery for clearing the game at various playtimes across all difficulty settings. Unfortunately, there's no Zero Suit Samus reward in this game for clearing the game in under 3 hours like in previous games in the series.

Can we take a second to talk about how wild some of these Shinespark puzzles are in this game? I never went out of my way to excel at performing them in the older games, but I started seeing videos like those linked above in my recommended videos on YouTube, and couldn't help myself in wanting to try them out. There's some great tutorials that explain the in's and out's of this advanced technique online, such as the two videos linked below.

Music

My biggest gripe about this game is that the music, something that is usually something that sets the atmosphere for these games in this series is almost nonexistent. It dulls out to the background of most of the action and I can't tell you a single track that comes to mind from playing this game, outside of the eerie sound(s) for the E.M.M.I. zones. I just wish there was a way for the game to crank up the volume a bit in some of the other sections throughout the game. It's a darn shame too as I wasn't aware of how good this game's soundtrack was until I was listening to it on YouTube after the fact.

My Thoughts on the Story

After her controversial entry with Metroid: The Other M, Samus Aran is back to being a mostly silent protagonist for this entire affair. Samus has at least barely five spoken lines in this entire game outside of grunts and shouting/screaming. I was hoping for her to be still sharing her internal conversations about what is going on around her with the current situation on planet ZDR, but we barely get anything here and I think that's to her detriment as those moments were some of Metroid Fusion's best narrative moments to know what is going through Samus' head throughout her entire adventure. She's still accompanied by her companion A.I., Adam, from that game, who provides her with a loose idea of what or where she should be doing or going next to advance the game's narrative. For most of the game, we don't see Samus interact with anyone save for the lone Chozo scientist that assists her halfway through the game, Quiet Robe. I think Mercurysteam and Nintendo missed a huge opportunity to expand onto the Chozo race that raised Samus and gifted her with the Power Suit and abilities that she uses even to this day. That lack of attention to the Chozo is even more jarring after the bombshell of a revelation that Raven Beak drops on Samus in their final battle - that she's his "daughter". Due to the experiments done to her body at an early age, Samus Aran is part-human and part-Chozo (derived of DNA from both of their respective tribes), along with now being part-Metroid following the events of Metroid Fusion. Going into this game, I was wondering how would the story address this that despite getting her full abilities back from the SA-X, Samus is still part Metroid now, due to the mutation of her body after being treated with the Metroid vaccine that saved her life following her near-fatal encounter with the X parasites on SR388. Thanks to Samus' missions in Metroid II: Return of Samus/Metroid: Samus Returns and Super Metroid, Samus Aran has effectively exterminated the rest of the Metroids from the universe while unintentionally inheriting their legacy and powers from the vaccine. Isn't it ironic that the baby Metroid she rescued on SR388 continues to have an impact on her adventures going forward? Without it, she wouldn't have defeated Mother Brain in Super Metroid and the Galactic Federation wouldn't have had its DNA to create the vaccine that saved her life at the beginning of Metroid Fusion.

I would love to know how Raven Beak even found out that Samus Aran became a Metroid hybrid in the first place? If the Federation sent anyone else but Samus to investigate the appearance of the X parasite(s) and recover the EMMI units, then his whole plan was ruined from the start.

Fortunately, I was given some clarification on that from the kind folks running the Metroid Database Twitter account.

I honestly wouldn't be surprised if Raven Beak has some contingency plan for the rare scenario in which he was defeated on ZDR by Samus Aran. Not to mention how many times the Galactic Federation and/or the Space Pirates have magically cloned or acquired DNA from Samus' old foes. I mean, shit, like how many times have we seen and fought Ridley, Kraid, and Phantoon by now? In that case, I wouldn't rule out Raven Beak showing up in a sequel, because he's still got a lot of explaining to do.

As for Samus' Metroid DNA going hostile/volatile, I wonder if that means that Samus will be hunted now as she could easily be labeled as the greatest threat known in the universe if her powers were left unchecked, despite the fact that her unstable powers were calmed by absorbing Quiet Robe's DNA at the end of this game. I have to wonder if the Galactic Federation would continue to allow her to roam freely around the universe once the reports of this entire ordeal on planet ZDR comes to light. That's only going to be a matter of time too as Samus can't keep this mission a secret, especially when she had a hand in destroying all of the EMMI units (that were Galactic Federation property) along with destroying the entire planet, all traces of the Chozo race (at least on that planet), Raven Beak, and the X parasites that escaped and quickly overran that planet in the process.

I'm just hoping that Nintendo doesn't make us wait another two decades for a sequel.

Play It or Don't Bother?

As a long-time Metroid series fan, this is an easy no-brainer to HIGHLY recommend this adventure to fans of not only of the series, but fans of the (MetroidVania) genre. Nintendo has even released a demo on their eShop for people still on the fence about the game to allow them to give it a shot for themselves.

Metroid Dread is a glorious return to form for this series, with MercurySteam definitely knocking it out of the park with a home run in terms of returning Samus Aran's adventures back to their former glory and reminding players - old and new - why she is a force to be reckoned with.