Game Review | Metroid Dread Kinda Let Me Down
Introduction
I haven’t reviewed a game yet since I started being more active with my website, so I’m excited to get my first game review out there! Today, I’m reviewing Metroid Dread, the latest installment in the Metroid franchise, and a direct sequel to my favorite Metroid game, Metroid Fusion. I won’t be following my usual review format for this game because it doesn’t really apply to a game like Dread. Instead, I’m going to be talking simply about what I did and didn’t like and giving a final star rating based on that. This is going to be a less complex review than what I normally put out there on my site and YouTube channel.
If you’d prefer a video version of this review, I always post a video that coincides with each of my blog posts, so please consider checking that out below. Even if the video doesn’t suit your fancy, I’d really appreciate a subscription to my new YouTube channel as I’m still working to get it off the ground!
All right, let’s get on with my review.
The Bad
Let’s go ahead and start with the things I didn’t like about Metroid: Dread. I might be a little unkind here as I have some critical thoughts about the game, so bear with me if it’s one that you loved. Don’t worry, I’ll be saying positive things about Dread later on in this review, so please don’t ditch me just yet. There’s some awesomeness in this game that I want to praise, but let’s get my negative thoughts out of the way, first. I promise I have good thoughts on this game and that I had a great time! I'd just like to get the issues I had with it out of the way first because it pains me to say unkind things about a game in one of my favorite franchises.
Enough delay, let's get started.
Level Design
Yep, I’m starting out with some real hate, here. The level design in Metroid: Dread was extremely disappointing. It made this feel like an experience that just wasn’t Metroid. I didn’t like it. Actually, I hated it. It completely detracted from the experience that I want from a Metroid game. I didn’t get to explore in this game, I was just handheld throughout the entire thing. This wasn’t a game that left me feeling isolated and lost as I explored a foreign planet, it was a game that offered me a guided tour of Planet ZDR and always directed me toward the next point of interest with everything short of glowing arrows pointing me in the correct direction.
It does this a lot with various fast travel teleporters and shuttles between areas that are always conveniently placed to take you to your next destination. Entire sections of the map are often blocked off with one-way paths that close behind you one way or another, resulting in you being constricted to small areas of Dread’s massive map over and over again. Every time I realized I was being cut off from parts of the map I wanted to explore for no reason other than to make sure I didn’t get lost—even though getting lost is a point of the Metroid series, or at least it’s what I look for in a Metroid game—I groaned, rolled my eyes, and pressed onward into the pocket of the map that the level designers were allowing me to explore.
I hated it. Seriously, this was the worst part of the game. I felt like this was a Metroidvania for toddlers, completely removing one of the key aspects of the game genre that is named after Metroid. The absence of real exploration and the ability to get lost and immersed in this world is a severe problem.
Sorry, but I have to give the level design for Dread one star, here. It was great level design if you’re looking for a linear game, but that’s not what I wanted when I pre-ordered Dread. One star.
Controls
This isn’t as significant a complaint as I had for level design, but the controls could be a bit clunky and hard to manage, especially when it came to manual aiming. Swapping between things like the grapple beam, missiles, and your regular beam wasn’t really telegraphed very clearly, either, especially in high-stakes situations like boss fights. If I put the game down for so much as a day, coming back to it was pretty overwhelming, which normally isn’t the case for me with other games.
There are ways I feel the controls could have been improved. I would have liked to see the option to use the right stick as an aiming tool rather than having to hold the left shoulder while I use my movement stick to aim, for example. There are some control customization options, but I don’t think that this was part of that (please correct me if I’m wrong). Especially when you have to run and gun for the majority of this game, needing to use your movement button to aim could be frustrating.
Additionally, there are some puzzles that were made extra challenging not by their own merit, but by ill-considered controls that caused Samus not to respond the way I intended. This was less about my own mastery of those controls and more about the fact that they often just weren’t as intuitive as they should have been. This is less about mapping and more about the overall design of the control scheme and how Samus interacts with her environment in certain situations.
In the end, I’m going to give the controls for Metroid Dread two stars. They just weren’t intuitive enough for me to play with as much fluidity as do with games that have more well-considered controls and handling. Controlling Samus just didn’t really feel natural to me and could even be exhausting after long periods of play (which, because I played this game during my flights, was the primary way that I experienced this game: long periods).
The Ending
I’m not going to spoil anything, so I’ll keep this brief. I’m not disparaging the final boss fight, because that was awesome (more on that later), but after the boss fight I was led to believe that I was going to have an experience like the end of Metroid: Fusion, my favorite game in this franchise. However, I was sadly misled, and this caused the final moments of the game to ring hollow and disappointing. This was a real pain point for me, especially because they really set it up for me to be prepared for a Metroid: Fusion tier ending… and then it just… wasn’t. I’m seriously not even sure why. It’s like they just got lazy when creating this final moment of the game.
The ending is going to get two stars from me as a result. It just hurt the entire experience for me. If you’re not sure what I mean in particular but you’ve played the game, feel free to reach out to me elsewhere and I’ll share my thoughts, I’m just trying to keep this review free of spoilers, like all of my reviews.
The Good
Okay, so those were the bad parts of the game, and I know it probably came off as somewhat harsh, especially my disdain for the level design. Thanks for sticking with me through that part of this review, especially if you’re someone who enjoyed this game and don’t like seeing it disparaged. As promised, I’m going to start praising it, now. While I had a lot of negative feelings toward some parts of the game, I also have a considerable amount of positive thoughts on it that I’m eager to share!
Level Design
Wait, what’s that? Didn’t I just hate on the level design with all the intensity of a thousand suns? Yes, I did. And, yet, what the level designers accomplished in designing Metroid: Dread’s world is an achievement that I just have to recognize. They made a linear game that doesn’t feel linear and, while the path is often part of a guided tour that holds your hand from start to finish, there are often different, unusual paths that you can take to your ultimate destination if you so choose.
A lot of the “guided tour” aspects of Metroid Dread’s level design are done invisibly, too. If you’re new to the franchise or the Metroidvania genre in general, you most likely won’t even notice that it’s being done and you’ll just feel a sense of accomplishment as you hop from point to point without an issue. I personally felt no sense of accomplishment because I saw what was happening and the veil was torn for me, allowing me to see the ultimately linear path that I was being forced to take.
Out of respect for the largely invisible level design and the accomplishment that this represents, I have to give the level designers praise and high marks. I’m going to give the level design a second score because of this, on top of the one star that I gave it earlier, and that’s going to be four stars. This is an accomplishment and I respect what they did with the level design in this game, even if I personally didn’t like it.
The Bosses
Holy crap the boss fights in this game were absolutely excellent. I loved every one of them. Not a single one felt like it was deliberately frustrating or nigh on impossible, even those that were immensely challenging and required multiple attempts. Every failure of mine felt like it was my fault rather than the game being deliberately obnoxious or ridiculous. There were also counter cutscenes that just looked and felt incredible, especially near the end of the game. I loved the boss fights. My favorites were probably the final boss and Experiment No. Z-57, both of which were incredibly challenging yet so rewarding once I completed them.
I’m going to hand five stars to the boss fights in Metroid: Dread. I do have one complaint and that’s that there was one unenjoyable boss fight that repeated over and over again. I lost track of how many times I had to do it, and I only enjoyed it the first time. Even when they changed it up a little here and there, it just got stale and irritating. This isn’t enough to drop the star rating for the boss fights as a whole to four, but it is a frustration I wanted to point out.
Atmosphere
One of the reasons that I play Metroid games and enjoy the franchise is because of the atmosphere that it creates. While the linear gameplay detracted from the sense of disorientation and isolation that Metroid often presents, there were other things that contributed to the game’s atmosphere and helped keep me immersed in the world. In particular, I found the ambient music and effects to be strong, especially in the E.M.M.I. areas. Additionally, each region of Planet ZDR was distinct and memorable in its own way.
I’m going to give the atmosphere of this game four stars.
Visuals
The last thing that I want to praise in this game is its presentation. Metroid: Dread is quite pretty, though I don’t think the graphics are as awesome as some reviewers have suggested. They’re nice, but I think that the textures and models are mostly mediocre. Where the visuals truly shine is in the animations. This game’s animations are simply remarkable, from Samus to the enemies to the cutscenes. I think that the best show of Dread’s animations can be found in the cutscenes that take place when you either parry or kill a few specific bosses. These are incredible and feel so amazing when you reach them, particularly the parry events that you get to interact with, firing your missiles or beams off at the boss as you whittle down its health.
For this, the visuals of the game are going to get four stars from me. This game just looks great, all things considered. A few textures and models were a little lacking and not all that impressive (or even appeared outdated and didn’t make an excellent show of the graphics that the Nintendo Switch is capable of), but overall I really enjoyed the look of this game.
Overall
I really wanted this to be a game that I enjoyed more than Fusion, but the hand-holding nature of Dread absolutely hurt my experience. If this weren’t a Metroid game, I probably wouldn’t be so hard on it in this regard, but the expectations that I have for a Metroid game are higher than those I have for standard 2D platformers. I had fun with this game, which is ultimately the point, but as a game in the Metroid series, this didn’t fit the experience I wanted to have. It was linear and exploration was felt discouraged, the antithesis of the entire Metroidvania genre. So while it’s a solid game that is well made and has some strong points, as a Metroid game it just failed to meet my expectations.
In the end, Metroid: Dread was a fairly average experience. It didn’t blow me away (other than a couple of moments) and often I was left frustrated and disappointed as I was repeatedly constrained to small pockets of a map that I longed to explore at my own leisure. As an average game, I’m going to give this game three stars.
Sincerely, I hope that the next Metroid game we get returns to the roots of the franchise and encourages exploration and freedom, with a more grim and isolating atmosphere. I don’t regret pre-ordering or playing this game and, in the future, I’ll definitely be running through it on the newly-unlocked Hard Mode, but for the moment I’ll regard my time with Dread as fun, but ultimately lacking in the things that I enjoy in a Metroid game.
Conclusion
Thank you very much for taking the time to watch my review of the latest installment in the Metroid franchise: Metroid: Dread. This was a fun experience and I’m glad I had it, even if it failed to meet my expectations and ultimately fell short of what I look for in a Metroid game. I think this is a game I’ll replay in the future, though I’ll probably be replaying Fusion a few times before then. I wanted more from this game and sadly, it didn’t quite deliver for me.
If you agree or disagree with my assessment of Dread, I would love to hear your thoughts on this game. What was your experience like, and what did or didn’t you enjoy? I’m especially curious about newcomers to the franchise, whom I feel this game was tailored toward, as opposed to Metroid veterans.
Your time is really appreciated, I know this was a bit of a long review and I’m sorry that it had to deviate from my standard review structure. We’ll be back to my typical review style next Wednesday when I review Pierce Brown’s Iron Gold, so stay tuned for that! If you want to support me in the meantime, the best way would be to support my YouTube channel. You can also follow me on social media; I’m @tlbainter on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, with the latter being where I’m most active and consistent. Those social media links will be at the bottom of this post.
I’m back to book reviews next week, so be sure to keep an eye out for those! I also have posts that come out on Mondays and Fridays in addition to my Wednesday story reviews, so please consider checking those out if the topics I’m covering interest you. I’ll see you around, but until then, bye!