Now Playing: Metroid Dread

I don’t have that much experience with the Metroid series. I’ve played the Prime games, but that was so long ago I don’t recall much about them. The only side-scrolling Metroid I’ve played is Fusion, but I also don’t recall much about that. If I can find the time I’d like to revisit all of these titles but for now, let’s take a look at Metroid Dread.

Dread is very good, but I think you already know that. It’s a game that’s received near universal praise from both critics and fans alike. And not undeservedly so. But as much as I enjoyed playing Dread I can’t help but feel that the game lacks value. At release, Dread had an RRP of £49.99. It’s a premium price for a premium Nintendo brand – but is it worth it?

I don’t often talk about pricing in my reviews but there are times when I feel I have to make an exception and Dread is one of those times. Dread is really good. It’s one of the most perfectly paced and tightly designed games I’ve played in years. It’s exactly as long as it needs to be.

I want to clear about that so you don’t think I’m suggesting that Dread needs more content. It doesn’t. It’s perfect just the way it is. But the way it is also means you can complete Dread in about 8 hours. 8 hours of content – as great as it is – is pretty hard to justify given the premium price. I thoroughly enjoyed playing Dread from beginning to end but there’s simply no way I can recommend Dread at it’s current RRP. But if you see it on sale at 50% off? Go for it!

Okay, so let’s move on from the pricing issue and talk about the game itself and why it’s so good – good, but not as great as I think it could be. The visuals are crisp and clean and easy to read. I’d say the game looks sharper in handheld mode than docked, but docked still looks great and that’s how I primarily played Dread – docked with a pro controller.

The gameplay of Dread is pretty much perfect. The movement and shooting feel good and your progression through the game is perfectly paced. You unlock new abilities or equipment every 30-40 minutes which in turn unlock new areas to explore and new shortcuts through previous ones.

The level design is great in the way that it guides the player with subtle direction – you’ll always instinctively know where to go next. I think during my time with Dread, I only encountered a single moment when I had to consult my map and try to figure out the correct way forward.

That said, there’s a delicate balance to be struck between subtle direction – gently nudging the player in such a way that their progression feels natural – and the less gentle railroading, which Dread is also a little guilty of during its earlier stages where it feels like you’re just being forcibly guided along a very linear path.

The environmental variety is decent with the typical fire, ice and water themed levels you’d expect. Standard enemy variety is also decent, but the game does stumble a little on the boss fights. The early boss fights against various local creatures are great, but the later fights against (without spoiling anything) more humanoid enemies are repeated way too frequently.

You end up fighting this one mini-boss type enemy multiple times and each time they follow exactly the same pattern – they just take slightly more hits to kill. And then we have the robots that will hunt you throughout certain sections of the game. These encounters are pretty intense – at least at first – as you desperately try to evade them and find a weapon strong enough to destroy them.

But once you’ve destroyed 3 or 4 of the things, they just kind of become an annoying obstacle you want to remove as quickly as you can. They can also one-shot you, which is kind of irritating. They become less of a threat, and more of a ‘oh, not another one’.

The final boss was fun to fight, but it’s a fight broken into 3 distinct stages and it’s really just a matter of learning the pattern for each. Once you’ve figured it out (and it might take a few goes because if you die, the entire fight resets) it’s really not hard to beat.

And that’s something that surprised me about Dread. I’d seen so many people talking about how ‘hard’ it was but I found the entire game pretty easy. I’m not mentioning this to brag, and I don’t think making the game harder would have made it better, just that it’s another reason why Dread can be completed relatively quickly.

I know some people may argue that Dread can take longer to complete if you seek out and retrieve 100% of the upgrade items and this is true – but it will still only take another 3-4 hours or so and honestly, you really don’t need them. I collected 64% of the items and I felt kind of overpowered by the time I hit the final boss. Any more health, and it wouldn’t have been a challenge at all.

The story aspects of Dread are kept minimal as the game focuses purely on the gameplay and exploration and that’s perfectly fine. You get enough direction and motivation to keep moving forward with some neat twists along the way.

Overall, Metroid Dread was very good but the pricing really bothers me and it’s very difficult to ignore that. Even if I try to score this game without taking the price into account and judge it purely on the content I still think Dread is lacking a little – it is guilty of railroading the player too heavily at times. The robot hunts become more annoying than tense. The mini-boss fights get repetitive.

There’s also not a great deal of challenge here in terms of exploration (it highlights ‘hidden’ areas on your map, so they’re not really hidden at all), puzzles or combat and there’s not really any immediate replay value either – you do unlock a Hard mode, but if it’s just the same enemies with more health / doing more damage I’m in no rush to play it.

As good as Dread is, I feel like I’ve played much better games in this style at a much more appropriate price point – I’m talking, of course, about the Ori games. There’s a pure simplicity to Dread that is certainly appealing in the way it handles its story, level structure, gameplay, progression and boss fights and I think that will resonate positively with a lot of long term fans of the series and with players who have never touched a Metroid game before. It’s a game I’m happy to recommend either way – but only if you can get it on sale.

7/10