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Metroid Dread is finally real
Oh right, I powered through and finished the back half of this over Christmas. My opinions are wildly mixed, but mostly the negatives seem to float to the surface.
EMMI
A nice stab at mixing up gameplay. Like many others, it didn't land for me. Stealth never seemed to work so I went evasion which meant I played my best and got lucky that the EMMI was in a good starting spot or I didn't. The penalty for failure was too low for it to feel like anything other than a chore. The Omega Cannon bits were at least a little tense sometimes.
Progression
One of the most linear Metroids I've ever played. Sure, it shoots you all over the map, but you have almost zero option to go back and explore previous sections with new abilities until way too late and the path forward... it was always clear and not clear at the same time. I had the simultaneous feeling that the map was far too complex and yet progression was far too straightforward.
Combat
Generally didn't mind the combat. Even enjoyed it in parts. I liked that bosses were fair instead of random messes. I liked that Samus had abilities that played into them. I liked that I didn't one-shot a boss on the first try most times. I like that I couldn't just tank everything. Counter move was less obnoxious than SR.
Controls
I don't like the controls. I like what Samus can do and I like the abilities, but the controls felt like a mess. I'm not talking about responsiveness or anything, Samus did what I told her. I'm talking about using every single trigger, face button, stick buttons and some of the Dpad for all the abilities. It's too much and I would argue unnecessarily complex. I've played plenty of great, combat-focused 2D games that didn't need half that many buttons to be amazing. This feels like a failure of graceful design to me.
100%
A number of the Metroid games, my favorite Zero Mission included, suffer from this. You can't really go back and clear the map for all items until inches before the final boss. Why? Why not make that organic to the process? Super Metroid did not suffer from this. From memory, Zero Mission, Samus Returns, Dread, and Fusion all had this issue (I could be less correct about Fusion, it's been a while).
Finally
I did have fun playing Dread...sometimes. I obviously played it enough to 100% it. I just don't think it's going to land in my regular rotation of games like SM or ZM. I remember a few months ago a news outlet declaring it the best Metroid in a ranking of all the games. I don't see it.
EMMI
A nice stab at mixing up gameplay. Like many others, it didn't land for me. Stealth never seemed to work so I went evasion which meant I played my best and got lucky that the EMMI was in a good starting spot or I didn't. The penalty for failure was too low for it to feel like anything other than a chore. The Omega Cannon bits were at least a little tense sometimes.
Progression
One of the most linear Metroids I've ever played. Sure, it shoots you all over the map, but you have almost zero option to go back and explore previous sections with new abilities until way too late and the path forward... it was always clear and not clear at the same time. I had the simultaneous feeling that the map was far too complex and yet progression was far too straightforward.
Combat
Generally didn't mind the combat. Even enjoyed it in parts. I liked that bosses were fair instead of random messes. I liked that Samus had abilities that played into them. I liked that I didn't one-shot a boss on the first try most times. I like that I couldn't just tank everything. Counter move was less obnoxious than SR.
Controls
I don't like the controls. I like what Samus can do and I like the abilities, but the controls felt like a mess. I'm not talking about responsiveness or anything, Samus did what I told her. I'm talking about using every single trigger, face button, stick buttons and some of the Dpad for all the abilities. It's too much and I would argue unnecessarily complex. I've played plenty of great, combat-focused 2D games that didn't need half that many buttons to be amazing. This feels like a failure of graceful design to me.
100%
A number of the Metroid games, my favorite Zero Mission included, suffer from this. You can't really go back and clear the map for all items until inches before the final boss. Why? Why not make that organic to the process? Super Metroid did not suffer from this. From memory, Zero Mission, Samus Returns, Dread, and Fusion all had this issue (I could be less correct about Fusion, it's been a while).
Finally
I did have fun playing Dread...sometimes. I obviously played it enough to 100% it. I just don't think it's going to land in my regular rotation of games like SM or ZM. I remember a few months ago a news outlet declaring it the best Metroid in a ranking of all the games. I don't see it.
You pretty much read my mind, this is exactly how I felt about them game too (except I didn't 100% it).
Purple
(She/Her)
I was initially feeling this, until I saw this:
And I don't know, I feel like I got naturally looped back around through the same areas with new stuff to scrape out more missiles and E-tanks often enough to feel like the developers did their reading on that being a thing to do?
Yeah the sequence breaks exist and are even intended. But I don't count that part of the core experience. I'm of the opinion that a casual play through should feel more open than it did. I shouldn't be blocked out of returning to past areas with new powerups. I shouldn't be forced continually forward. And yeah, you did get looped back but each time it was with more funnels on to keep you on a specific path. Let me venture a little further away to see the areas I can't go. Or... Gorb Forbid... let me return the way I came to an old area to use the new powers I got. I think that failing was my biggest gripe.
Whether you're okay with that experience or not is personal preference of course. It just wasn't what I would expect from any metroidvania title, let alone Metroid itself.
Whether you're okay with that experience or not is personal preference of course. It just wasn't what I would expect from any metroidvania title, let alone Metroid itself.
100%
Sure there are sequence breaks, but like in a way overly done? Like i never felt like I was actually exploring a well designed space. I was always forced into a corner. No one puts baby in a corner
Oh absolutely. But generally doesn't feel like a literal door shut behind you. The big example I feel is being stuck in norfair until you get freeze beam to freeze zippers up the shaft. Feels cool, not rote?
Hehe. For real
Phantoon
I cuss you bad
There's actually quite a lot of it in Super. There's a one way door before Noob Bridge so you're forced to work it out. You're stuck in a very small area when you're due the Power Bombs (iirc all the doors forward and back are orange). Just two off the top of my head.
Generally you don't notice it in Super unless you're watching somebody completely new to it play who hasn't picked up on its invisible design elements. It's a lot less open than it appears to be if you're being dense.
It happens in Super, sure, but it's nowhere near as pervasive as it is in Dread. In Super it feels like the exception to the rule, and in Dread it feels the opposite, like it's the rule with rare exceptions.
As for why Dread is structured the way it is, I feel that the answer is pretty transparently the decision to make the EMMI sections as central as they are. Those sections a high-risk/scary/annoying enough (take your pick) that if there wasn't such a heavy hand a very large portion of the playerbase would get stuck trying to avoid them. (Regardless of whether or not the EMMI stuff was a good idea, it certainly placed some intractable design challenges on the shoulders of some folks attempting to make a mass market game.)
Watching some people play SM for the first time, it clearly shows a defter, lighter hand than Dread does, but it still does a lot more gating and funneling than I realized. Like, if you go down at bubble mountain you can't go back up (unless you can double bomb jump or mid-air morph) --- you're locked into doing the loop to the top of bubble mountain (and there's even a rising lava room to limit your exploration further!). Same thing with the loop in Crocomire's Lair, and with the rising acid room in Ridley's Lair.
(I think it's interesting that Maridia, the part of SM that is most genuinely interested in having the player solve a difficult navigational challenge, is by far the most hated section of the game. And on the flipside, Lower Norfair seems rather well-loved despite being a largely linear gauntlet of rooms (it's the music, isn't it?).)
I think the operative difference between Super and Dread in terms of how they gate and funnel (ignoring the questions of why or how much) is that Super's gating tends to be much softer than Dread's. For instance, the only hard requirement for the Speed Booster in Super is the hallway before Botwoon (and that can be circumvented with an easy ("easy") ice clip) --- everything else is something soft like those shutter gates or speedbooster blocks that can be circumvented by another route. Likewise, Super only hides one (1) single item behind a grapple block (Spring Ball), compared to who knows how many crumbly grapple blocks are in SR and Dread. By having mobility upgrades be the keys to solving mobility challenges (rather than passing special blocks/doors), Super allows for people fluent in its systems to largely bend the game to their will.
And that brings me to my main, personal disappointment with Dread. While I understand why they nerfed walljumping (everybody knows it), slide jumping isn't quite a full replacement for that. I wish that there were a few more new pieces of (non-glitch) advanced tech to circumvent the kinds of barriers this game puts into place (e.g. something to circumvent heat damage, something to make early supers even slightly useful, etc).
Watching some people play SM for the first time, it clearly shows a defter, lighter hand than Dread does, but it still does a lot more gating and funneling than I realized. Like, if you go down at bubble mountain you can't go back up (unless you can double bomb jump or mid-air morph) --- you're locked into doing the loop to the top of bubble mountain (and there's even a rising lava room to limit your exploration further!). Same thing with the loop in Crocomire's Lair, and with the rising acid room in Ridley's Lair.
(I think it's interesting that Maridia, the part of SM that is most genuinely interested in having the player solve a difficult navigational challenge, is by far the most hated section of the game. And on the flipside, Lower Norfair seems rather well-loved despite being a largely linear gauntlet of rooms (it's the music, isn't it?).)
I think the operative difference between Super and Dread in terms of how they gate and funnel (ignoring the questions of why or how much) is that Super's gating tends to be much softer than Dread's. For instance, the only hard requirement for the Speed Booster in Super is the hallway before Botwoon (and that can be circumvented with an easy ("easy") ice clip) --- everything else is something soft like those shutter gates or speedbooster blocks that can be circumvented by another route. Likewise, Super only hides one (1) single item behind a grapple block (Spring Ball), compared to who knows how many crumbly grapple blocks are in SR and Dread. By having mobility upgrades be the keys to solving mobility challenges (rather than passing special blocks/doors), Super allows for people fluent in its systems to largely bend the game to their will.
And that brings me to my main, personal disappointment with Dread. While I understand why they nerfed walljumping (everybody knows it), slide jumping isn't quite a full replacement for that. I wish that there were a few more new pieces of (non-glitch) advanced tech to circumvent the kinds of barriers this game puts into place (e.g. something to circumvent heat damage, something to make early supers even slightly useful, etc).
Absolutely. Not just in game design sensibilities, but also in terms of what position the series was in and how much the games cost to develop.
It's like, I get that not everybody will like how this game approaches keeping players on the path, or its sequence breaking, or its primary sneaky-evasive gimmick with minimal consequences for failure. But Metroid is a much bigger series for Nintendo now and they both want and need it to be more accessible.
Phantoon
I cuss you bad
I wouldn't say so. It's appreciably harder than Super. The controls are way more complicated. The only bit that's easier is it's much harder to get lost.
Ludendorkk
(he/him)
Nothing in Dread is so cruel as trapping you in a pit until you learn to do those finicky-ass walljumps lol
Also the control are probably a wash considering Super's controls are like the number 1 thing I hear new players complain about
Also the control are probably a wash considering Super's controls are like the number 1 thing I hear new players complain about
Yeah, that's basically what I mean about accessibility. Even if the game's not necessarily easier to play than Super it does put more of a focus on aspects that try to make sure the player will stay on track and get to the end.
Super had its linear points as well, but it was much more willing to let you get lost.
conchobhar
What's Shenmue?
I don't think Dread's linearity has anything to do with a concession to a casual audience (I think this is what you mean by "accessibility"), because the game doesn't seem concerned about its difficulty level (there are checkpoints to make retries quicker, but there's no easy mode— the first thing you'd do if you wanted the game to be enjoyed by a wider range of people). Rather, I think it has to do with the general thrust of the game: to be maximally engaging at all times (hence the frequency of upgrades, the lock-and-key design, the EMMI zones, the Omega Beam sections, and so on). Dread is seemingly designed under the belief that the player being bored, even for a moment, is a critical failure of game design; and since a looser structure allows for that possibility— as a player could get lost, confused or stuck— it's simply not compatible with the intended pacing.
I touched on this months ago in my own wrap-up post, but I mostly find it bothersome because I feel that the design is at odds with the narrative. The narrative acts like this is a big expedition and investigation, but with how carefully the level design restricts and directs movement, I never felt like I was actually doing any exploration or making any discoveries for myself. This had two awkward results: one is that I kept thinking "OK, so this must be when the game opens up" and tried to backtrack or just veer off from the main path, only to bump into the barriers the game put up; the second is that sometimes I'd make it to the next event flag before I actually realized what my goal was, because the funnelling is just that aggressive. I could just never get into the mindset the game expected from me. For comparison, Fusion is also (in)famously restrictive, but because it's upfront about how much it's going to direct you, I was able to quickly accept it as an action game and enjoyed it in that context.
I touched on this months ago in my own wrap-up post, but I mostly find it bothersome because I feel that the design is at odds with the narrative. The narrative acts like this is a big expedition and investigation, but with how carefully the level design restricts and directs movement, I never felt like I was actually doing any exploration or making any discoveries for myself. This had two awkward results: one is that I kept thinking "OK, so this must be when the game opens up" and tried to backtrack or just veer off from the main path, only to bump into the barriers the game put up; the second is that sometimes I'd make it to the next event flag before I actually realized what my goal was, because the funnelling is just that aggressive. I could just never get into the mindset the game expected from me. For comparison, Fusion is also (in)famously restrictive, but because it's upfront about how much it's going to direct you, I was able to quickly accept it as an action game and enjoyed it in that context.
Phantoon
I cuss you bad
I think this is a problem with all modern media. Compare the time between cuts in modern films with old ones - if there's greater than 2 seconds between camera cuts that's fairly abnormal. People are terrified about attention spans; as entertainment is a few clicks away at all times you have to keep people involved at all times or else. I think the fear is right, unfortunately. Discord seems to be killing forums and it's not because the quality of the discussion is any better, it's just faster. There's always something new to read.
This infuriates me every time. "This game doesn't control like other games I play, therefore the controls are objectively terrible". Play the game for long enough to get the controls down (thirty minutes, tops) and see why the controls are as they are. Games shouldn't have to standardise so people can just jump in; engage with your media on its own terms. Super Metroid's controls are perfect for the game it is (once you've sorted out the bizarre mappings, I'll give them that one)
Anyway, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to shout at a cloud for a bit.
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That's a shame, really. More games could stand to slow down every now and then and let the player take in the ambience.
One of my favorite bits of Super Metroid was the opening...both the space station that's eerily quiet and dead until you confront Ridley and all hell breaks loose, and going from the surface of Crateria through the remnants of Tourian and Brinstar before Planet Zebes comes to life.
Every new Metroid game represents an evolution of the controls from the previous one. Whatever generation the game comes out in, Samus inevitably has one of the most nuanced and dense set of behaviors of any of her platformer contemporaries. In particular, the difference between Super and Fusion is a control upgrade with few comparisons. Samus in Fusion could do everything important that she could in Super, plus new contextual actions (that were more useful because some other parts of her kit were nerfed), and she could do it faster and more fluidly using fewer buttons.
That improvement enabled the game to be designed differently. I'm not talking about the map structure, but the use of enemies and bosses. For the first time ever, Samus could be agile. The player was thus asked to dodge more and to do trickier platforming, and encouraged to do so by a reduction in durability, and by shifting the emphasis of collectibles from being challenging to find to being challenging to reach.
With Samus Returns, two more buttons and an analog stick were now available, so they experimented with what new possibilities this enabled. Free aiming, the melee counter, and aeion abilities were the answer they came up with. And, as before with the difference between Super and Fusion, Dread condensed and refined the controls of Samus Returns, making them more fluid and enabling Samus to use them noticeably faster, and putting them in a setting built from the ground up around those abilities.
Metroid Dread is a game about shmovement.
It is a game where the basic idea is that simply moving around a room, let alone moving around the map, should be a skill that the player develops over the course of the game, in such a way that skillfully applying this skill should feel good and be rewarding. This is translated up to the design of the world: if the player simply follows the nearest obstacle course, they will always be moving toward the end of the game; a focus on traversal is rewarded with progress.
This does mean that the overall layout of Planet ZDR reveals its artifice a bit more. There's a clear, strong principle evident if you follow the critical path: if you always use your newest key to open the nearest matching lock, you will always be making progress towards your goal. This is reinforced narratively: from the beginning, Samus is explicitly meant to be trying to reach the surface. On Zebes, by contrast, Samus' goal is to search for the baby Metroid, which is reinforced by a tendency to leave it ambiguous which way is forward.
So yeah, Dread is a less meditative experience than Super. I can't bring myself to see that as a problem, though. It's not like it's Super Metroid Again.
That improvement enabled the game to be designed differently. I'm not talking about the map structure, but the use of enemies and bosses. For the first time ever, Samus could be agile. The player was thus asked to dodge more and to do trickier platforming, and encouraged to do so by a reduction in durability, and by shifting the emphasis of collectibles from being challenging to find to being challenging to reach.
With Samus Returns, two more buttons and an analog stick were now available, so they experimented with what new possibilities this enabled. Free aiming, the melee counter, and aeion abilities were the answer they came up with. And, as before with the difference between Super and Fusion, Dread condensed and refined the controls of Samus Returns, making them more fluid and enabling Samus to use them noticeably faster, and putting them in a setting built from the ground up around those abilities.
Metroid Dread is a game about shmovement.
It is a game where the basic idea is that simply moving around a room, let alone moving around the map, should be a skill that the player develops over the course of the game, in such a way that skillfully applying this skill should feel good and be rewarding. This is translated up to the design of the world: if the player simply follows the nearest obstacle course, they will always be moving toward the end of the game; a focus on traversal is rewarded with progress.
This does mean that the overall layout of Planet ZDR reveals its artifice a bit more. There's a clear, strong principle evident if you follow the critical path: if you always use your newest key to open the nearest matching lock, you will always be making progress towards your goal. This is reinforced narratively: from the beginning, Samus is explicitly meant to be trying to reach the surface. On Zebes, by contrast, Samus' goal is to search for the baby Metroid, which is reinforced by a tendency to leave it ambiguous which way is forward.
So yeah, Dread is a less meditative experience than Super. I can't bring myself to see that as a problem, though. It's not like it's Super Metroid Again.
I was referring mainly to the lead-up there, and I was using them as examples of ambience, not non-linearity.
Yes, hell eventually breaks loose both on the short-lived Space Station Ceres and on Planet Zebes, but it was neat how they both start off without something to fight. Just go look around whatever limited areas you can unopposed before the shit hits the fan.
Finally dragged myself across the line with Dread this weekend. I don't have a tremendous amount of time to play games right now but this seemed a pretty good speed for me.
I like Castleroids but I've always fallen on the Castle side of that equation rather than the Roid. In fact, if memory serves, I think this may be the first Metroid game I've ever beaten? I'm not necessarily a big one for "beating" games these days, but I had osmosed that the game was sub-10 hours and that kept me moving forward.
Can't imagine I have much to say that hasn't already been covered in depth. Checkpoints were frequent and well placed, movement was fun, EMMIs were irritating but elicited legitimate emotions.
I like Castleroids but I've always fallen on the Castle side of that equation rather than the Roid. In fact, if memory serves, I think this may be the first Metroid game I've ever beaten? I'm not necessarily a big one for "beating" games these days, but I had osmosed that the game was sub-10 hours and that kept me moving forward.
Can't imagine I have much to say that hasn't already been covered in depth. Checkpoints were frequent and well placed, movement was fun, EMMIs were irritating but elicited legitimate emotions.
I just started replaying it!
Knowing that ADAM is actually Raven the entire game really reveals the one single critical flaw in his plan; Samus would never listen to anything Adam has to say.
Knowing that ADAM is actually Raven the entire game really reveals the one single critical flaw in his plan; Samus would never listen to anything Adam has to say.