January celebrates two notable dates in science-fiction history, “National Science Fiction Day” on January 2 and Arthur C. Clarke’s HAL 9000’s birthday on January 12. Accordingly, I’m dedicating January to celebrating sci-fi with an event I call “Sci-Fanuary”.
Released: 8 October 2021
Developer: MercurySteam / Nintendo EPD
The Background:
Despite popularising the “Metroidvania” subgenre and the hefty praise heaped upon the franchise, it’s fair to say that the Metroid series (Various, 1986 to present) is one of Nintendo’s under-rated properties. The original release is known as one of the greatest games ever made, to say nothing of the universal acclaim shown to its 16-bit sequel and successful jump to 3D first-person shooting. After suffering a blow with the poor reception of Metroid: Other M (Team Ninja/Nintendo SPD, 2010) and Metroid Prime: Federation Force (Next Level Games, 2016), Metroid bounced back with Metroid: Samus Returns (MercurySteam/Nintendo EPD, 2017), a remake of the divisive Metroid II: Return of Samus (Nintendo R&D1, 1991) that was successful enough to see MercurySteam develop a new Metroid title. Conceived as a sequel to Metroid Fusion (Nintendo R&D1, 2002) and initially developed for the Nintendo DS, producer Yoshio Sakamoto wanted to place further emphasis on stealth gameplay but the project remained dormant for several years when initial prototypes failed to meet his standards. After much speculation, the project was eventually revived for the Nintendo Switch, largely thanks to MercurySteam’s work on Samus Returns. Returning to the series’ roots with a 2.5D perspective and forcing players to swiftly and silently avoid mechanical pursuers, Metroid Dread aimed to live up to its title by marrying the traditional exploration and combat mechanics of the series with a constant sense of dread. The result was a warmly received title that was praised for its return to form, vast exploration options, and challenging gameplay and bosses.
The Plot:
The Galactic Federation dispatches versatile Extraplanetary Multiform Mobile Identifiers (E.M.M.I.) robots to investigate the X Parasites. However, when the E.M.M.I. go haywire, Samus is deployed, uncovering a sinister plot by rogue Chozo to exploit the Metroids.
Gameplay and Power-Ups:
Metroid Dread is a 2.5D action/adventure game very much in the style of Super Metroid (Nintendo R&D/Intelligent Systems, 1994) in which players once again assume the role of famed bounty hunter Samus Aran, fresh off Metroid Fusion, and navigate the many corridors, caves, and laboratories of the creatively named planet ZDR, picking up new items and upgrades and returning to previous areas to obtain even more items or progress further. As ever, Samus comes equipped with her arm blaster, which you fire with Y. Later upgrades allow you to charge up a more powerful shot by holding the button, and you can also switch to Samus’s missiles with the R trigger, holding it to fire and using the L trigger to freely aim with a laser sight. B allows you to jump; holding it lets you jump higher while the Space Jump and the Screw Attack allow infinite jumping and a spinning attack. Samus can slide under narrow gaps or past certain enemies with ZL, transform into her Morph Ball with the same button when standing still (or tilt the left stick down when crouching) and gains the ability to jump, place various bombs, and cling to certain surfaces while in this form with the Spider Magnet ability. Samus’s weapon and suit upgrades are managed from the + menu, where you view an expanded map, which is unlocked at various map stations (though the onscreen mini map is extremely useful). The + menu also allows you to view your mission log and place helpful markers on the map. You can enter a separate menu with – to alter in-game settings such as the rumble feature, use any compatible Amiibos, load previous checkpoints, or quit to the main menu.
All of Samus’s signature abilities make a return in Metroid Dread. They’re once again waiting at various Chozo Statues and will open up the game in various ways, such as allowing free movement when underwater and resisting extreme heat or cold. You’ll grab the Charge Beam for a stronger charged shot, the Wide Beam to fire three simultaneous shots to open certain doors, the Diffusion and Plasma Beam to fire through the environment and destroy tougher, metallic enemies, and the Grapple Beam to swing or hang from certain blocks and platforms and shunt blocks out of the way. Samus can also utilise various missiles, freezing enemies with the Ice Missile and targeting multiple enemies or weak spots at once with the Storm Missile. Unlike her beam shots, these use up ammo so you’ll need to defeat enemies to refill your stock or find upgrades to increase your maximum capacity. Samus’s newest weapon is the Omega Cannon, a situational, finite upgrade acquired by defeating various eye-like Central Units. This temporarily allows you to hold L and Y to fire a concentrated beam that eventually melts metallic shielding and hold L and R to charge the Omega Blaster, which you must then fire with Y to dispatch the aggravating E.M.M.I. robots encountered throughout ZDR. In multiple instances, Samus will enter an E.M.M.I. Zone and must stealthily avoid the clambering, relentlessly E.M.M.I. Until she gets the temporary Omega Cannon, her only hope of avoiding detection is the Phantom Cloak (which consumes Aeion energy to allow temporary invisibility by pressing in the right-stick) and the new Parry function. When E.M.M.I. or other enemies attack, there is a brief flash that’s your indication to tap X. This will Parry the attack, stunning the enemy and allowing you to one-shot them for additional resources, stun them, or deliver massive damage. It’s absolutely essential that you master this technique as some enemies are a chore to fight without it, though the timing required to stun the E.M.M.I. is so tight that you may never get it right. Samus can also find upgrades that allow her to run at super-fast speed, shift past sensors and across gaps (again at the cost of Aeion energy), scan her environment to uncover hidden blocks, and even obliterate enemies and obstacles in the final escape sequence of the game.
As ever, you’ll grab ammo and health orbs from defeated enemies, who respawn when you leave the screen, and can find upgrades the increase your maximum health, missile, and Power Bomb capacity. You won’t find and upgrades for the Aeion meter as it automatically refills over time, but you can still find ammo and health restoration points all over ZDR, as well as interfaces where you are given hints and objectives by the initially condescending ADAM. This also allows you to manually save your game and a waypoint marker will appear on your map, with teleporters, elevators and other transports allowing for a degree of fast travel. However, you will be revisiting several areas of ZDR over and over again, particularly the elaborate halls of Ferenia, a once thriving Chozo temple. As you obtain new abilities, previously impassable ways open up. You can squeeze through gaps and blast around small tunnels with the Morph Ball, clamber up or cling to blue surfaces with the Grapple Beam, and blow up or run through blocks, and better navigate underwater. For such a large and interconnected map, Metroid Dread is surprisingly linear; areas are often impassable due to flaming obstacles or debris, forcing you to go a certain way, though you can acquire abilities and upgrades out of order if you’re persistent enough. Large areas are a death sentence without the temperature resistant suit upgrades, many areas are seeped in darkness and require you to power up generators, awakening enemies and hazards, and you’ll redirect thermal flows to reach new areas more than once. Other times, you’ll blast several targets to open doors, push or drag them out of the way entirely, or use temporary platforms or your Phase Shift ability to bypass gaps or breakable blocks. Typically, though, the game has a very clear structure that it rarely deviates from. You enter a new area, restore power or redirect thermal flow, maybe blow open a glass corridor or dodge flaming or buzzsaw hazards, and endure a gruelling E.M.M.I. Zone until you destroy the E.M.M.I. and gain a new ability to repeat this process in another area.
Presentation:
Overall, Metroid Dread looks really good. The whole game has a dark, foreboding feel to it that’s reflected in its ominous soundtrack and the various environments, which are either dank or in disrepair or swarming with monstrous enemies. Samus herself looks both familiar and different; she’s had a bit of a glow up and doesn’t come to resemble her usual orange and red colour scheme for some time. Her suit changes colour and reflects the environment around her as you progress, which was a great way to add to the ambiance and visually show her becoming more powerful and capable. Though largely silent, taking in ADAM’s patronising tone and the exposition spouted by the likes of Raven Beak and Quiet Robe, she does utter a line at one point (though in the Chozo language) and screams in agony when defeated, her suit exploding and revealing her form-fitting costume beneath. Although the game doesn’t make a great first impression with its surprisingly plain title screen, motion comic-like opening, and long loading times, the pre-rendered cutscenes showcase Samus’s capabilities and wary nature through her body language and action-focused mentality. Each E.M.M.I. is introduced through a suitably ominous cutscene that showcases its different abilities, such as increased shielding or speed or climbing ability, and everything becomes very tense when you’re trapped in an E.M.M.I. Zone, desperately trying to escape to the nearest exit before it inevitably skewers you with its spiked appendage.
While character and enemy models are very impressive and detailed, I wasn’t massively impressed with the variety in the game’s environments. Sure, there are some nice touches here and there, like rain and water raging outside Burenia, Chozo Soldiers scampering about in the background, various wildlife (from insects to writhing tentacles to disgusting slug-like barriers obstructing doors), and areas changing as they crumble and collapse around you, but there are often far too many dark, samey corridors and areas for my liking. While you’ll venture into dripping caves, explore flooded laboratories, wade through lava, and frantically flee from extreme cold, many areas are just the same dark, futuristic locations repeated over and over. You’ll quickly see a pattern of having to traverse these foreboding areas, repute with sparking power lines and small jump scares, and restoring power to them or redirecting thermal energy to access new areas, with little separating one area from the next. Similarly, the E.M.M.I. Zones are all largely indistinguishable, being very cold and grey and military in their appearance, with only more complicated layouts changing things up. Maybe there’s some water, or more E.M.M.I. probes, or you need to slide and destroy blocks a bit more, but the general look of each E.M.M.I. Zone doesn’t change much, which is odd considering the E.M.M.I. have different colour schemes. Thankfully, Ferenia and the Itorash are on hand to mix things up a bit. These ornate, gold-themed Chozo environments are filled with large Chozo statues, banners, windows, and a sense of grandeur that are in stark contrast to ZDR’s other more bland environments, though again you revisit Ferenia so often that each screen starts to become indistinguishable. I think it would’ve helped a lot to give each area a more prominent theme. Like, have a dark, dishevelled lab but just on one section of the map, lump the frozen and water sections together, combine the caves with the lava/red-hot sections, and maybe do a little bit more to make things feel more varied than they actually were.
Enemies and Bosses:
ZDR is crawling with bug-like enemies for you to Parry away and blast with your arm cannon. Many are small and simple cannon fodder, like the slug-like Plys, amorphous blobs, squid-like creatures, spider-like Yampas, swarming eels, and various burrowing insectoids that chase you in narrow tunnels and fly out of the dark. While these are easily bested with your basic attacks, larger enemies (like the crab-like Muzbys and rock-encrusted Obsydomithons) require your Parry to stun and defeat. As you progress, robotic enemies become more prominent; large tetrapot robots blast at you with a powerful eye beam, the spherical Autclast causes flames to burst across the ground, and E.M.M.I. probes either float in place or explode when you get close, dealing damage and giving away your location. When exploring Ghavoran, you’ll encounter the whale-like Hecathon that slowly floats overhead, draining your health with its wide energy beam; a similar enemy awaits in Burenia, but even basic enemies become a formidable threat when Raven Beak unleashes the X Parasites. These gelatinous blobs infect any onscreen enemies, turning them into gooey zombies that absorb a great deal of shots and utilise additional attacks. While you can defeat them in much the same way as before, you must absorb the X Parasite that’s released to refill your health and/or ammo or else it’ll simply attach to another enemy or cause another foe to spawn, which can be quite a headache. Interestingly, though, neither the titular Metroids or the traditional Space Pirates appear as enemies in Metroid Dread.
Easily the most persistent foes in Metroid Dread are the E.M.M.I. robots. There are six of these bastards to contend with, with each encounter being more difficult that the last. Similar to the SA-X from Metroid Fusion, Samus can only avoid the E.M.M.I. upon first entering an E.M.M.I. Zone since her weapons are useless against it. If it catches her, you can try and Parry its instant-kill attacks but the timing is so tight that I rarely managed to succeed. Instead, you must flee through the E.M.M.I. Zone until you find the Central Core. These eye-like mechanical spheres float overhead while numerous projectiles fly at you from the walls and ceilings. You must blast the Central Core with missiles and your charged shot to destroy it and temporarily gain the Omega Cannon, but even then it’s not so easy to put the E.M.M.I. down. Not only does the Omega Cannon take time to charge, the E.M.M.I. are ridiculously fast and often shielded, meaning you need to get some distance and use the Omega Spread before you can even fire your kill shot. E.M.M.I. are soon joined by probes that give away your location, scamper across walls and ceilings, squeeze through gaps, and can even freeze or outright kill you with their spotlight. The Phantom Cloak helps you avoid detection, but keep an eye on your Aeion meter and avoid touching the robots as it’ll instantly give you away. Over time, they become more aware of your presence, and you have less room to charge your shot, though it’s always a relief to blast them in the head and put them down for good. As if the dread caused by these persistent assholes isn’t bad enough, you’ll also be forced to battle numerous Chozo Soldiers, both mechanical and organic and sometimes faced with two at a time! These nimble, heavily armed and armoured warriors leap about the screen taking shots at you and charge with a lance, hiding behind a shield and crashing to the ground from above. Luckily, you can Parry their attacks if your timing’s right and use the Storm Missiles to deal a lot of damage very quickly, but you’ll have to watch out for a massive mouth laser and a wide goo attack when they become infected by the X Parasite and increase in their aggression.
Other, more monstrous bosses also await on ZDR. Corpius (a horrendous mixture of a lizard and a scorpion) lashes with its tail, requiring you to jump or slide under it and pepper its ugly face with missiles or a charged shot. Corpius also boasts an acid spit and the ability to turn invisible, though a shining weak spot remains for you to target, and you must cling to the walls to avoid its acid belch. When it reappears, you have a small window to Parry its attacks and deal massive damage, provided you remember to keep hammering R during the Parry sequence, which is true for all subsequent boss battles. Metroid Dread also includes a rematch with the gargantuan Kraid. At first, he’s chained up and can only swipe at you or rain claws from above (which you can shoot for resources). Blast his head, avoiding his fireballs, and the battle descends to a lower level, where you must rain fire on Kraid’s bulging belly button, which spews purple blobs and splash damage. After enough hits, you must scramble up the temporary platforms to the magnetic strip above to hit his head, which is easier said that done given how much crap is on the screen (though you can make quick work of him if you grabbed the Morph Ball out of sequence). While in Burenia, you’ll battle the tentacled mollusc Drogyga. This takes place entirely underwater and sees you blasting Drogyga’s orbs and tentacles until a button lights up. You must quickly blast it to lower the water, then use the overhead grapple point to reach another and drain the water entirely, leaving Drogyga briefly vulnerable. You must repeat this multiple times and be quick to avoid its massive tentacle counterattack or Parry its attacks for additional damage, which is good practise for the more aggressive and versatile Escue. This enlarged, X-empowered winged beetle shields itself with an electrical field and lunges at you with an attack that can be tough to dodge. Escue also fires destructible orbs that either home in on you or cause massive splash damage, and even keeps up its attack when you whittle it down with missiles and charged shots, reducing itself to a hardened shell of X that spits out smaller parasites and must be bombarded with Ice Missiles.
While exploring Cataris, you’ll’ve noticed the corpse of a massive, mutated spider-like creature in the background. You’ll fight one of these, Experiment No. Z-57, to defrost the region, with the battle taking place in multiple phases. At first, Experiment No. Z-57 lingers in the background, firing a massive mouth laser that briefly irradiates the floor and taking a massive swipe at you. The Space Jump and Storm Missiles are essential here, as is a successful Parry when Experiment No. Z-57 comes into the forefront to take a shot at you. Parrying initiates the second phase where you blast its limbs to keep it from charging a powerful shot, then frantically Space Jump to avoid screen-filling plasma waves and a double-sided claw swipe, before initiating another Parry sequence that should finish it off. Similar to Escue, Golzuna is an enlarged, X-empowered variant of a typical enemy, the Muzby, now completely invulnerable thanks to its rock-like hide save for a single weak spot on its rear. Due to its bulk, Golzuna is slow and difficult to jump over; it charges at you and fills the screen with explosive pink orbs, restricting your movements. Staying on the move is the key to this battle, which eventually reduces Golzuna to a hardened shell that, like with Escue, is destroyed with Ice Missiles. After several encounters, you’ll eventually confront the maniacal Chozo, Raven Beak, aboard the Itorash in a true test of your skills. In the first phase, Raven Beak is shielded by a golden aura and completely invulnerable. He’ll launch a devastating three-hit melee attack, bathe the arena in a health-sapping red beam, and spawn giant orbs that can be destroyed for resources, but take multiple shots to pop. When he stands at the far end, you must Parry his rush to deal damage; similarly, when he taunts, get in close and immediately Parry his attacks to move to the next phase. Here, Raven Beak is much faster and there is no health or ammo to help you. He spawns wings, darts at you (easily slid under), fires a big charged shot (easily dodged), or spews a stream of shots that you must desperately Space Jump to avoid in a circle motion, all while bombarding him with Storm Missiles. The final phase is much like the first, but Raven Beak sports faster, more powerful attacks and a barrage of energy waves. Again, you must hit your Parries and unload all your missiles and charged shots at least three times to win. With no checkpoints between phases and very little health and ammo, this is a gruelling final bout even with maximum health and ammo capacity.
Additional Features:
While you require all of Samus’s weapon and suit upgrades to clear the game, many of the health and ammo-increasing power-ups can be missed. These are marked on your map and it’s highly recommended that you seek them out as you’ll need that extra ammo and health in the later stages, and Samus tends to take quite a bit of damage even with expanded health. If you look at your save file, you’ll see a percentage completion counter for the number of items you’ve found. Your map indicates where items can be found in each area and finding 100% in all areas unlocks art to view in the game’s ‘Gallery’ mode. As is usually the case for a Metroid title, you’ll see different endings and unlock different artwork depending on how fast you beat the game and on which difficulty. At the start, you can pick between “Rookie” and “Normal” mode, and you’ll unlock “Hard” mode after your first playthrough on “Normal”. This is selectable when beginning a new game, though your original save file can be returned to at any time, allowing you to seek out items you’ve missed. You can also unlock and play through a “Boss Rush” mode and grant yourself health and ammo refills using Amiibos. However, there are no other costumes to unlock, data files to scan, or hidden collectibles to find beyond the health and ammo upgrades.
The Summary:
I was excited to get stuck into Metroid Dread. After largely enjoying four of the classic Metroid titles and being impressed by the detailed, moody 2.5D aesthetic, I was eager to get to grips with this more traditional Metroid adventure. Graphically, the game impresses; I may not have liked how samey many environments were or the repetitive gameplay loop, but the depth to each screen and the attention to detail in the ominous lighting, foreboding atmosphere, and detailed character models was very impressive. The controls are tight and responsive; I wasn’t a big fan of the aiming system at times, and the Parry mechanic became laborious as enemies became faster and more aggressive, but Samus has never controlled better, overall, than here, in my experience. I even enjoyed how comparatively linear the game was. I rarely felt like I was lost and enjoyed exploring, even if I potentially played out of sequence at times. Sadly, though, I did not enjoy the E.M.M.I. encounters, which quickly became a frustrating chore, with little variation except it getting harder to line up your shot. I also didn’t like how the E.M.M.I. basically killed you the moment they grabbed you. I liked the tension (the “dread”, if you will) at times, but I wonder if these sections might’ve been better if restricted to certain areas. Like, maybe you travel to Cataris and avoid an E.M.M.I. the entire time. Or if the encounters had been more varied and less restrictive, like maybe an E.M.M.I. stalks you throughout Ghavoran, causing cave-ins and changing the environment as you go. Similarly, the Central Core battles were all basically the same, which is a shame considering how varied the other bosses were. I think merging the E.M.M.I. and the X-Parasite concept might’ve worked better; maybe E.M.M.I. nanobots infect enemies instead of the X, just to mix things up. It’s hard not to be a little disappointed by the gameplay loop in Metroid Dread. It’s fun the first few times but there’s only so many times you can restore power, flee from and destroy an E.M.M.I., then fight a boss before it starts to feel repetitive.
My Rating:
Pretty Good
What did you think to Metroid Dread? Did you enjoy the E.M.M.I. encounters or did they start to become annoying for you as well? What did you think to the Parry mechanic and the more linear nature of the game? Which of the bosses and upgrades was your favourite? Did you ever get 100% completion? Which of the Metroid games is your favourite? Whatever your thoughts, feel free to leave a comment below and be sure to check out my other Metroid content across the site.
Dr. K's Waiting Room 
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