Metroid Dread: The Final Preview


If you want to know what makes Metroid so special after all these years, consider the opening moments of Super Metroid. After narrowly escaping from an exploding space station, Samus Aran descends on Zebes to investigate the ruins of the pirate base he destroyed in the first game. It’s a perfect example of Super Metroid’s minimalist storytelling, wordlessly conveying the tense anxiety of exploring the ruins of the old Mother Brain tourist base amidst the rain and thunder.

These moments find Metroid at his best, effectively conveying the sense of fear and mystery that propels the series forward. Metroid Dread goes to great lengths to capture that feeling with its own opening, which once again finds Samus descending onto an unknown planet to investigate the mystery below.

It’s the opening moments that give me the most hope that Metroid Dread lives up to its famous namesake. While Metroid Dread doesn’t exactly have AAA production values, its opening scenes manage to be beautiful in their own way, generating that familiar feeling of strained curiosity endemic to the series. A wordless duel serves to set the mood as Samus begins to delve into the mysteries of Planet ZDR, which is rife with aliens, robots, and maybe even Metroids (what’s a Metroid game without Metroids, after all) ?

Metroid Dread: The Final Preview Gallery

The end of the journey

Regarded as the conclusion to the Metroid story arc, Metroid Dread is the first new 2D Metroid adventure since Metroid Fusion in 2002. Other games have been released since then, but all have been remakes like Metroid: Zero Mission, or whatever. have made. been first-person adventures like Metroid Prime. That makes Metroid Dread a special occasion for fans of the series, especially since series producer Yoshio Sakamoto has been trying to make this game for a good 15 years.

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Metroid Dread follows in the footsteps of Metroid: Samus Returns, the Game Boy remake of Metroid 2 released for Nintendo 3DS in 2017. Like Samus Returns, Metroid Dread is being developed in part by MercurySteam, the Spanish studio that was once responsible. Castlevania. : Lord of the shadows. Unsurprisingly, it is a clear step up from the 3DS visually, its color palette allows it to shine despite its simple presentation.

It’s powered by the Switch’s upgraded OLED display, which goes a long way toward bringing otherwise Metroid Dread-free environments to life. Due to its launch on the same day as the OLED Switch, Metroid Dread is being treated as an exhibition game for Nintendo’s new console. And honestly? Looks great. The more vibrant colors of the OLED Switch really help it get off the screen.

Your map is once again huge, filled with a multitude of alien infested nooks and crannies to explore. In addition to her sense of scope, Samus takes up a lot less screen space this time around, making the caverns and hallways feel huge in comparison. I rolled over more than once in my hands with the Metroid Dread, a bit nervous about the lack of a Morph Ball (Samus, as always, doesn’t have his powers to start the game). In particular, the map looks more complex than before, which makes it much more difficult to “just go to the place you haven’t yet explored.” The tour definitely requires some thought in this game, which I appreciate.

This kind of exploration is a huge part of the Metroid experience, and Metroid Dread has it in abundance. Where it separates itself from the rest of the series is in its emphasis on combat. The quintessential Metroid Dread moment comes in the game’s opening minutes, when a damaged EMMI, one of the robots that relentlessly hunts Samus, comes to life and pursues him, moving with the slow but relentless pace of a Terminator. The camera switches to a more over-the-shoulder view as Samus aims her Omega cannon and fires. For better or for worse, Metroid Dread is packed with those “cinematic” moments, which are designed to punctuate the action in a way that resembles higher-budget action games like God of War.

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Fueling this approach, EMMI rooms dot the map, serving as bottlenecks where Samus is hunted by droids who only wish to collect her DNA. These rooms are actually my least favorite part of Metroid Dread, despite forming the core of Sakamoto’s original vision for the game. They look to expand on the famous Metroid Fusion encounters, in which Samus is hunted by a terrifying doppelganger named SA-X. But where those encounters are terrifying in the way that they can appear out of nowhere (the image of the SA-X moving slowly through a tunnel as Samus ducks into a vent below is etched into my memory), the encounters with EMMI are they feel more forced, perhaps because they are artificially limited to certain rooms.

The flip side is that EMMI encounters make extensive use of Metroid Dread’s various walkthrough mechanics, which are as fast and enjoyable as anything you’ve ever experienced in a Metroid game. Samus is able to bounce, slide and run in the air around enemies, and throwing balls while an EMMI glides in pursuit is a cool sight. In particular, the mechanics of Metroid Dread are already attracting the attention of speed racers, a series tradition that dates back to the days of Super Metroid. In that sense, at least, Metroid Dread is very much in the vein of its predecessors.

Metroid’s special atmosphere

My hope is that this is just the beginning, and that Metroid Dread will find ever more inventive ways to make use of its robotic foes while relying on its excellent movement mechanics. I’m also hopeful that Metroid Dread doesn’t suffer from the same bloat as Samus Returns, which somehow exceeded its welcome by drastically expanding its Metroid count and map range. Above all, I want to see what Sakamoto and MercurySteam can do when they are not in debt to an established structure like they were in Samus Returns.

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As the grand finale to the Metroid arc, it will ultimately be up to the Metroid Dread to close one of the most beloved stories in video game history. That’s a tall order, and Metroid’s storytelling history has been decidedly mixed over the past decade (Metroid fans would definitely rather forget about Metroid: Other M). But it’s hard not to be seduced by the opening moments of Metroid Dread, which so effectively establish the mystery at the center of its story. They serve as a wonderful reminder that the atmosphere that has long made Metroid so special is alive and well.

Metroid Dread is out on October 8. Be sure to check out our coverage of the OLED Switch, launching the same day, as well as 7 things you (probably) didn’t know about Metroid.

Kat Bailey is Senior News Editor at IGN.


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