Project Zomboid: First Impressions

This isn’t the first time I’ve played Project Zomboid. My first experience with the game was when I downloaded an early demo in . . . 2011? Was it really that long ago? Spin on several years and Project Zomboid is still going strong – in fact, it’s more popular now than it’s ever been, largely thanks to a recent multiplayer update. After watching some videos of the new build and seeing the game go on sale (before an opportunistic price hike – and hey, who can blame them?) I decided to finally pick it up myself.

There’s a tutorial to play but there’s a lot it doesn’t teach you. You’ll learn the basics of movement, interaction and combat, but the rest you’ll have to figure out on your own through trial and error or beginner guide videos. Don’t expect to start your first game and survive for very long at all. It took me a dozen restarts before I finally felt I had a decent grasp of the game and how everything works and even now, 20 hours in, there’s still occasions I have to pause and google something.

I’d also recommend not starting on the default modes but rather, set up your own custom sandbox. The sandbox tool is great because it lets you almost totally customise your experience making the game as easy or as punishing as you like in so many different ways. Right now, I’m playing a more ‘easy’ version of Project Zomboid with weaker zombies, no respawning zombies and no infections. It’s enabled me to enjoy and learn the game at a more relaxed pace.

There is no real ‘goal’ in Project Zomboid beyond survival. This is a game where you really have to set your own goals. There’s a single, massive map to explore with thousands of zombies to kill. There’s no NPC characters (at least not yet) so unless you play in the new MP, you’re going to be very much alone.

Combat is one of the most tricky things to learn as it can be pretty fiddly until you get the hang of it – that’s why turning off infections is recommended until you do because it’s so easy to get bitten or scratched. This is very much a survival sim so that means any wound needs to be properly treated – ideally with disinfectant and sterilised bandages, but some ripped clothing will do in a pinch to prevent blood loss.

Your character needs rest, food and water to stay healthy. You’ll also need to learn various skills such as farming, carpentry and mechanics if you want to survive long term. The water and power will eventually be shut off (although how and when will depend on your sandbox settings) and you’ll need to plan and prepare accordingly.

How you play is really up to you. You can go mobile – travelling the map, scavenging supplies, never staying in one place for very long. Or you can choose to fortify a particular location, hoarding supplies to prepare for the winter. Right now, that’s what I’m focusing on, but I’m also spending a lot of time clearing out zombies from my local area and transporting the bodies to some mass ‘graves’ I’ve set up.

It’s kind of silly that I’m spending so many hours just disposing of zombie bodies so that the streets are free of them but that’s a perfect example of how easy it is to lose countless hours playing Project Zomboid doing the most futile and ultimately pointless tasks. It’s a great time sink, if nothing else.

There’s still a lot about Project Zomboid I’ve not yet learnt or explored – crafting, farming, vehicle mechanics etc. I don’t know for how long I’ll keep playing. I wonder if it might be a game where it’s much more fun at the start when you’re just trying to survive but once you’re ‘secure’ there’s not really much more to do.

But like I said, this is a game where it’s important to set your own goals. No game has to last forever. Achieve what you want and then start over in a new spawn location with a new objective and more challenging sandbox settings.

Overall, I’m quite enjoying my time with Project Zomboid and I’ve not even tried the MP yet. I don’t know if I’ll do a full review or not because I don’t know for how long it will hold my attention. In a week or so, I might have grown bored of it and moved on. Or maybe I’ll have sunk another 20 hours into it. It’s that kind of game.

Now Playing: Total War: Warhammer 3

With 60 hours clocked and 3 campaigns completed, I figured it was time to knock out my review of Total War: Warhammer 3. If you’ve read my First Impressions post you’ll know that my initial reaction to the game was rather mixed, primarily due to the core campaign mechanics. There’s a lot that’s pretty fantastic about WH3 – the visuals, animations, music, battle maps, faction variety and impressive level of release day content.

The new siege system – whilst needing a few tweaks – is a welcome change. I agree that there needs to be less minor settlement battles, but a simple fix would be that these battles only occur at settlement level 2 or 3, otherwise a field battle is fought outside the settlement. Another easy tweak would be tower / barricade points being one-use only, stopping the player or AI from continually rebuilding them mid-fight.

There are some technical / bug / performance issues that also need to be addressed, but there’s nothing here that I felt seriously harmed my experience. I spoke in my FI post about returning to the Warhammer series from Three Kingdoms and how, in some ways, it felt like a step back. But I’d say that feeling isn’t as strong now I’ve readjusted to the way the campaign in Warhammer plays. That said, I still find the hero spam to be a particularly annoying facet of this series.

The real big problem with Warhammer 3 is the way the core campaign plays out. I’m certainly not opposed to smaller scale, objective focused campaigns. I liked the Vortex campaign in Warhammer 2 because it offered an alternative, more focused way of playing compared to the full sandbox experience of the Mortal Empires combined campaign. And I’m totally okay with Warhammer 3 doing something similar – offering a shorter, more focused narrative driven campaign that offers an alternative to the as yet untitled and unreleased mega-campaign that combines the maps and races of Warhammer 1, 2 & 3. The problem is, the core campaign of Warhammer 3 just isn’t very fun – at least not in its current state.

I’ve completed the campaign 3 times – as Kislev, Khorne and Cathay. Every campaign followed a similar pattern – an enjoyable start, followed by a tedious slog when the portals begin to open, followed by an irritating finish as I just want the campaign to end. Khorne, due to their faction mechanics, was probably the campaign that annoyed me the least. Kislev was an absolute nightmare of a grind and Cathay . . . well, Cathay was just kind of boring.

I’m not talking boring as in how the faction plays – because I love how each of the factions I’ve played work in the campaign in terms of mechanics and units. No, I’m talking about how each faction is faced with managing the core campaign. Kislev is mostly surrounded by hostile factions, constantly facing attacks so it’s not easy having to keep your best army and faction leader out of the fight either in the portal race, or resting in a city to remove negative traits before the next round begins.

Khorne, thanks to their increased movement mechanics makes getting through the portal realms pretty fast – but you’re still stuck waiting around for the traits to be removed which is even more annoying for a faction that relies heavily on momentum. And then we have Cathay which, once you’ve secured your initial province, is fairly easy to confederate the others around you giving you a safe and secure position where you’re not really in any danger. As a result, you just sit back and play the portal race because there’s not really any reason to expand – but this is also kind of dull.

Because despite the fantastic faction variety in terms of mechanics and units, every faction has to play the portal race exactly the same way – a race in which the less territory you hold, the easier it is because you have less portals to deal with continually spawning chaos armies and heroes and spreading corruption. A race in which if you don’t get into a realm before the AI, you’ll likely get kicked out and have wasted your time when they claim the soul before you.

A race in which your faction leader will be afflicted with multiple negative traits once they exit the chaos realms, forcing them to remain in a city for several turns waiting for the traits to be randomly removed. And by the time they are, the next round of portals will soon be ready to open so you have to do it all again.

The general concept of the campaign – entering the 4, unique chaos realms to retrieve the souls and fighting survival battles is something I actually like. The problem is, it’s way too punishing and restrictive towards the player. The good news is that, like the issue with the siege rework, it can be improved with just a few simple changes.

The first is that the negative chaos realm traits need to go – they’re completely pointless. Just get rid of them entirely. The second is that the chaos portals shouldn’t do more than spread a little corruption – no spawning heroes or armies. Right now, you have to keep several heroes strategically positioned throughout your territory so they can play whack-a-mole every time the portal event begins.

It’s annoying and tedious and it means that even if you’re trying to ignore the portal race and focusing instead on territorial conquest, you can’t ignore it entirely – and the more territory you take, the situation only gets worse.

If we really must race the AI, then don’t let us get kicked out if they claim a soul before us – it means we have to sit around and rush into the realm we need on the first turn the portals open or we’ll risk missing out. Let us enter when we’re ready, at our own pace. In fact, why not remove the AI from the portal race entirely? Just let the player engage with it when and if they want to. That’s obviously a bigger change, but probably the best one they can make. It would also make more sense from a narrative perspective.

Okay, I don’t want to drag this on any longer than I have to. Between this review and my FI post I think I’ve made it pretty clear what I think the main problem of WH3 is and how I feel about it. But let’s not forget that, aside from this problem, everything else WH3 does is pretty damn fantastic. I honestly can’t wait for the mega-campaign to be released so I’ll be able to play with these new factions in a pure sandbox experience.

Because the races, their mechanics and their units are all pretty great. And I think that once the mega-campaign is released and a few (inevitable) patches roll out to fix any initial issues, this Warhammer trilogy really will go down as one of the best strategy games of all time. But we’re not there yet, and there’s clearly a lot more work to do.

So I guess the question is – would I recommend WH3 in its current state? If you’re a fan of the previous games but you didn’t like the Vortex campaign at all then I’d say no – wait for the mega-campaign. If you’re like me and you did like the Vortex campaign for the smaller, more focused experience it offered then, even in its current state, I’d say the core campaign is worth picking up and playing.

I just hope CA can roll out some updates over the next few months that change the way the campaign works along the lines I’ve suggested here. Because like I said, the concept isn’t bad, it’s just the execution that needs work. Overall, WH3 is a solid and impressive release with an unfortunately big problem in the form of a campaign system that’s just not very fun in its current state. I am still having some fun with the game despite that problem, but not as much fun as I’d like.

7/10

Cyberpunk 2077: Update 1.5

Cyberpunk 2077 was my GOTY 2021 which I guess might be a controversial pick for some but for me, 2077 delivered exactly the kind of game I wanted. Despite its many flaws and technical issues, the core story, characters, quests and gameplay were superb. I completed the game twice following its release, including an all-content run, clocking over 170 hours of play.

I wrote in my GOTY post that – ‘There’s still so much potential in Cyberpunk 2077, but even if the promised patches, updates and DLC don’t deliver on that potential, 2077 will still be one of the best games I’ve played in recent years. With fantastic visuals, a stunning world, great gameplay and a compelling story and characters, it’s a game that, despite its poor release and numerous little flaws, is still pretty damn special.’

And now, here we are with Update 1.5, the first major patch for 2077 released alongside the next-gen console upgrade. The question is, does this patch begin to deliver upon that potential? Is it worth jumping back in for? And if you’ve not played Cyberpunk yet, is now the time?

My answers to those questions would be sort of, probably not and yes. This patch does improve many areas of the game that needed work, although there’s clearly still a lot more work to do. But I wouldn’t say there’s enough stuff here for a player like me, who has already exhausted the existing content, to jump back in – especially not when Warhammer 3 releases tomorrow (at the time of writing). But if you’re a new player, then now is a great time to pick up the game and experience the world, story and characters of Cyberpunk for yourself.

So what’s actually in this update? There’s been a pretty extensive overhaul of player perks and a rebalance of the game economy, although I’d have to play a new game to really test these out. NPC behaviour has been improved in the sense that they don’t all duck and cover in unison, but now actually scatter and run and sometimes even fight back. Civilian drivers now also react in ways that help the world feel more alive.

A lot of the improvements in this patch may not seem particularly significant but they do stack in such a way that does begin – and I stress begin – to improve the weakest aspect of 2077 – the open world. In terms of new content, the best thing is the inclusion of new apartments to purchase throughout the city. It’s neat, but not really exciting enough for a new run.

I think this is probably the last big update we’ll see for 2077 prior to the first major expansion – assuming it doesn’t get cancelled. I’m sure there will be several minor patches and content updates along the way, but I just don’t see myself going back to 2077 until there’s more new – and substantial – content to get stuck into. I’m also thinking I might prefer to wait and play it on a new PC – when GPU prices finally come down . . . if they ever come down. This patch certainly hasn’t helped with performance on my system and I’d say it actually runs a little worse.

Overall, my opinion on 2077 still hasn’t changed. It’s a fantastic game that deserves to be played and it would be a shame if the developers eventually decide to give up on it. There’s still so many stories to explore in Night City. But for now, I’ll continue to wait and hope.

Now Playing: Resident Evil Village

Resident Evil Village is set about 3 years after the events of Resident Evil 7. Once again, we’re playing as Ethan, this time searching not only for his wife, Mia, but for their daughter, Rose. Rose has been taken by the nefarious Mother Miranda to the titular Village and it’s up to Ethan to rescue her. Honestly, the story of Village is just a load of nonsense but this is Resident Evil so I really shouldn’t be surprised.

Like RE7, Village is a first person experience. And like 7, Village begins strongly but unfortunately loses its way towards the end. The village in Village acts like a central hub from which you will travel to four different haunted houses. That’s essentially what they are – haunted house rides each with a unique theme and boss.

The idea is that in order to rescue Rose from Miranda, Ethan first needs to take out the four Lords (bosses) of the village. Initially I thought I’d get to choose the order in which I tackled each boss but, no – you have to follow a very linear path through the game, taking each Lord in turn.

It’s kind of a shame because using the village as a hub and letting the player decide which Lord to tackle next would be another new twist on the RE formula – and it could have led to meaningful decisions for the player as each Lord could have unlocked different weapons, items or exploration tools and it would then be up to the player to prioritise what Lord to go for next.

But that’s not how the game works. Village is painfully linear. It really is like a haunted house ride – you just sit back and let the game carry you through. There’s always a singular track to follow and it always leads you from one key item to the next. The puzzle aspect that you might expect in RE is almost entirely absent.

Do you remember the Baker family from RE7? They were easily the best part of the game, injecting real personality into the experience and once Ethan had dealt with them, that’s when the game really lost its way. Village suffers from a very similar problem.

The first Lord you’ll face – Lady Dimitrescu AKA The Tall Lady – and her daughters are very similar to the Bakers in the way you interact with them as they taunt and hunt you. But their haunted house isn’t very long and within an hour or so (on a first run – you’ll probably clear it in 30 minutes on repeat play) you’ll be moving on to the next.

The good news is that the next Lord – Donna Beneviento – offers a very different haunted house experience, one without any combat and instead focuses more on tension, simple puzzle solving and horror. It’s great, but it’s also incredibly short – maybe 30 minutes for a first run. Like Dimitrescu and her daughters, Beneviento and her doll Angie are sadly underutilised.

Despite feeling like these Lords weren’t given the time or attention they deserved I was still enjoying Village a lot at this point and I was eager to see what the next two Lords – Moreau and Heisenberg – had to offer. But this, unfortunately, is where Village started to lose its way.

The Moreau section is just a bit crap, to be frank. Moreau turns into a giant fish monster and his haunted house just involves running from one floating platform to the next. You wait for him to pass, run across, then do it again. And finally we have Heisenberg who is probably the Lord given the most amount of development from a character point of view, but his haunted house is where Village shifts focus entirely into mediocre action schlock.

You’ll fight waves of idiotic lycans followed by cyborg type monsters in his factory. But like the other Lords and their haunted house rides, it’s like you’re stuck on a conveyor belt yourself just riding it along to the end. Village, at this point, becomes a first person shooter and not a very good one.

When you strap in to a vehicle armed with a machine gun, a rocket launcher and a chainsaw arm for the upcoming boss fight you know the game has totally lost the plot. To be fair, the RE games have always had their ‘silly’ elements but they’re not well integrated here at all.

And then we get to play as Chris – and his section really is just a crap first person shooter level in which you shoot waves and waves of stupid enemies. The game ends with a pretty lacklustre boss fight against Miranda herself, a character we’ve barely interacted with all game.

I probably sound like I really hated Village but I didn’t – I’m just frustrated by how much squandered potential I see here. Miranda should have been a more active presence throughout the game. The Lords should have had more screen time and more interactions with Ethan. The Village hub should have been more important and changed the way the player tackled the content.

I’m glad I played Village because I did, overall, enjoy the game, but I’m also glad I picked it up on sale – I finished my first run in 8 hours and my second in 4 (on Hardcore). It’s pretty short and that’s largely due to how linear the experience is. I’m sure you can argue that’s in line with other RE games but I guess I was looking for something a little different from Village. Something new.

Instead, I got a game that begins strongly but squanders its potential and descends into silly action schlock long before you reach the end. Overall, despite suffering similar problems, I’d say RE7 is the better game and that’s pretty disappointing because Village, as a sequel, should have identified and fixed those problems, not amplified them.

It’s also disappointing because Village had the potential to offer far more variety in terms of characters, locations and monsters than RE7 in addition to new gameplay twists. It just doesn’t fulfil that potential to any degree that I’d like.

6/10

Total War: Warhammer 3: First Impressions

With 28 hours clocked, I just finished my first Total War: Warhammer 3 campaign and I hate to say it, but my initial impressions are a little mixed. But before we get too negative, let’s quickly run through all the good stuff in Warhammer 3.

Visually, Warhammer 3 looks superb. The units, campaign and battle maps are all impressively detailed. The unit animations are amazing. The sound design is excellent, accompanied by an excellent soundtrack. In terms of content, Warhammer 3 has nearly double at release compared to Warhammer 1 & 2 with 8 races and 12 Legendary Lords available to play on Day 1.

The multiplayer campaign has been expanded for 8 players, with a new option for simultaneous turns. And there are even two smaller ‘mini-campaigns’ for exclusive co-op play – although I wish these were also available to play solo. I can’t say I didn’t enjoy my first campaign and I’m sure I’ll enjoy many more but, I must admit, I’m not in a great hurry to jump into another campaign just yet.

The first problem I have with Warhammer 3 is that it’s not Total War: Three Kingdoms. This might sound a little strange, but allow me to explain.

Three Kingdoms introduced some pretty major overhauls of the campaign side of Total War with numerous improvements to the diplomatic system as well as faction, character and settlement management. Although WH3 rolls a few of these features into its own campaign (such as the Quick Deal diplomatic option) the majority of what made 3K so enjoyable and engaging in its campaign is largely absent here.

Now, to be fair, I did kind of expect this. After all, Warhammer 3 needs to be able to combine with Warhammer 1 & 2, so it simply isn’t possible to radically overhaul these systems, not without breaking or entirely redesigning all of the previous content. And I’m not sure the hardcore Warhammer fans would want that. They’re probably quite happy with how the Warhammer games already play.

But me? It feels like a step back after playing 3K and that’s hard for me to adjust to. Obviously, 3K can’t compete with Warhammer when it comes to faction and unit diversity. That’s the real star of the Warhammer games and it carries WH3 just as much as it did WH1 & WH2.

One thing I was really glad to see the back of in 3K was campaign map agent spam. At times during my Kislev campaign, I had 12 or more enemy heroes running around my territory. Some of the cities had 3-4 permanently camped outside. And no matter how many times I eliminated the f**ks they’d reappear a few turns later – and they’d usually bring a friend.

I don’t recall the heroes in Warhammer 2 being this numerous or annoying. It’s a little silly calling them ‘heroes’ when new ones are popping up every f**king turn. They seriously need to limit how many heroes each faction can recruit. They should be special characters whose placement – embedded in an army or active on the campaign map – is a considered decision.

But they’re not because there’s no end to them and I really got f**king sick of playing whack-a-mole every turn trying to get rid of them. Speaking of playing whack-a-mole we also need to talk about the core campaign mechanics because I have a lot to say about that, but for now, let’s talk about battles and the new siege system.

Battles in WH3 felt a little strange at first and I couldn’t quite figure out why. They all seemed so . . . messy and, if you’ll forgive the pun, chaotic. And that’s when I realised the problem – some unit collisions are totally screwed up. Now, I’m no expert on this stuff, so I don’t know if it’s collision or not, but I do know that when a line of infantry is ‘braced’, enemy units like cavalry shouldn’t be able to just push their way through the formation.

Because that’s what’s happening now in so many battles. Any ‘larger’ unit can just walk through a braced battle line like it’s not even there. And that’s why battles feel so messy – because any attempt to use formations goes to hell when the enemy can just push straight through your line and immediately attack the weaker units such as archers, artillery or spell casters behind. They don’t even take damage as they ‘push’ through. It just slows them down. I never had this problem in WH2 so I assume it’s some kind of bug they need to fix.

And then we have the new siege system which I do kind of like, but I do think it needs a few tweaks such as you or the AI being unable to rebuild destroyed towers or fortifications. Every building ‘point’ should be one use only. That would encourage both you and the AI to hold the outer areas of the settlements first, before falling back and building new defences at a second or third line. But right now, you can just keep rebuilding stuff, even behind the enemy as they advance and it’s annoying when the AI does it to you, and kind of overpowered when you do it against the AI.

And finally we have the main campaign mechanic in which you must race the AI to obtain four souls from the four realms of Chaos. And it really is a race, make no mistake. I actually think this system could be pretty fun but in its current state, its kind of not.

It results in a campaign where expanding too far is actually detrimental to your progress. It’s more effective to play turtle, keeping your faction leader fresh and ready to enter the portals to the chaos realms as soon as they appear because if you don’t, the AI will beat you to the souls. And if the AI reaches a soul before you, you get kicked out of the realm with nothing to show for it.

Keep in mind, each realm can take several turns to complete, turns in which your faction leader and what is likely your best army is mostly sat around doing nothing. To get kicked out with no reward is a total waste of your time. You have to just sit and wait for the portals to re-open. But even if you do claim a soul, you’ll also pick up some pretty nasty negative traits which you can only remove by spending 2-3 turns in your capital city, or in a region with a specific building type.

Which means . . . more sitting around . . . waiting. And whilst this is going on, you’re not really focused on the rest of the map. Your faction leader can’t really get involved in your expansion because you need to clear those negative traits and get ready for the next round of portals. And, like I said, expanding too far is detrimental because you now have more portals to close before they spawn so many chaos armies (and more f**king heroes) it becomes a nightmare to deal with. So you’re playing whack-a-mole, not only with enemy heroes, but the chaos portals and the armies and heroes they spawn.

That’s how I think I spent 70% of my campaign time, running heroes around to kill other heroes or closing portals. Most of my armies just sat in key locations to protect my modest borders because I couldn’t focus on expansion if I wanted to win the campaign.

Which I almost didn’t. One of the AI factions collected all 4 souls before me. The game told me I could intercept this army, defeat it in combat and block it from returning for 15 turns. I expected it to work like the Warhammer 2 Vortex system whereby I’d get the option to teleport and stop them. But no, I just had to send my faction leader to camp the quest point . . . waiting . . . and sitting . . . and waiting several turns for the enemy to finally decide to show up.

But after defeating that army, I tried rushing for my last soul, only to receive the notification that I’d lost the campaign several turns later. Because the AI didn’t get the memo about being blocked for 15 turns, it seems. So I reloaded and returned to the quest point, defeated the army a second time and then returned to the realm to claim my last soul but . . . the realm then reset, and I had to start from scratch. Which meant rushing as fast as it would let me, spamming the end turn button to claim the soul before the AI could re-spawn again.

I managed to do it, but at this point I was really just hating the game. It just wasn’t fun. I took my soul, fought the final boss battle and won. But I was glad it was over. A campaign I’d initially really been enjoying turned into a campaign I just wanted to end.

But here’s the thing – the system isn’t bad, it just needs some tweaks. The portals shouldn’t appear so often or be so numerous. They shouldn’t spawn enemy armies or heroes. You shouldn’t get negative traits just for entering the realms. If the AI claims a soul in a realm before you do, you shouldn’t get kicked out of it – everyone should have an equal chance. And if the AI does claim all the souls before you, you should get an instant notification to teleport and stop them.

The campaign in WH3 right now is just too focused on racing for the souls. My faction leader spent most of the campaign just slowly traversing the chaos realms, one turn at a time, or sitting in a city waiting for a negative trait to be removed so I could go back in. The way it works right now is tedious and it sucks. I just stopped caring about anything but getting that last soul. I stopped bothering managing my territory because it really didn’t matter. My other armies didn’t matter.

That’s why I’m reluctant to jump into a new campaign because I don’t want the same thing to happen again – me just sitting there, spamming end turn not really caring about anything, just waiting for the next portal to open so I can jump in first and win. I guess I could try to ignore it and focus on a domination victory, but I’m still going to be stuck playing whack-a-mole with chaos portals every 15 turns or so.

Overall, although it might be hard to believe after that lengthy rant, I’d still say my experience with WH3 has been mostly positive despite my issues. I do want to start a new campaign, but I might wait for a patch or two to see what changes get made. Because changes do need to be made if they want this campaign to be fun and engaging from beginning to end – not the tedious and annoying grind it slowly turns into now.

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