Metroid Dread Preview: Samus Returns… Wait, Wrong Game

A dark horse in the GOTY race emerges

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Metroid Dread is terrifying. From its opening moments, esteemed bounty hunter Samus Aran is left alone on the hostile planet of ZDR with little more than a basic power suit and a few abilities to defend herself. You immediately feel vulnerable, like the alien ruins and radioactive planetscapes that await you are wrought with horrors ready to make your life a living hell. Following in the footsteps of Metroid Fusion and Samus Returns, Dread is a faithful successor to the classic adventures from Yoshio Sakamoto that modernises the formula in a variety of enticing ways. From the few hours I’ve experienced thus far, this could be an easy contender for GOTY in a year filled with potential classics.

Dread is pitched as a conclusion to the narrative that began in 2002 with the launch of Metroid Fusion. Samus Aran has recently returned from SR388 after wiping out a race of lethal parasites and leaving the planet to stew in its own oblivion. All seems safe until it becomes clear that some of these parasites still remain, having fled to the ancient planet of ZDR in search of sanctuary. In response, a number of EMMI (Extraplanetary Multiform Mobile Identifier) robots are dispatched to the planet in order to scout, analyse, and eliminate any potential threats.

Their signal is soon lost, so our trusty heroine decides to investigate and is quickly dispatched by a mysterious figure who demolishes her suit and leaves her for dead. We’ve lost before the game has even begun, leaving us with a false sense of security that remains throughout the entire experience. When Samus returns (eh?) to finish what she started, her armour is little more than a plugsuit, and her powers are torn away to make you feel weak, vulnerable, and afraid to push forward into the unknown. This hesitance is exactly what makes Metroid Dread so engrossing: It’s an old school approach to the genre with an aesthetic that feels beautifully modern, defined by classic horror cinema and innovative gameplay mechanics that make it a joy to witness – even for someone like me who didn’t grow up with games like this. So much of it feels fresh, and yet it’s still somehow tinged with a welcome layer of familiarity.

Aside from a few light tutorials, Metroid Dread doesn’t hold your hand. You’re offered a simple explanation of basic mechanics and left to explore of your own accord, uncovering new abilities, enemies, and small nuggets of narrative that help the planet of ZDR feel wonderfully immersive. My first few steps into this strange place are expectedly cautious. I stumble through the arid wastes as ominous music and the pervasive sense of dread baked into the atmosphere suggest I turn back before everything inevitably gets worse. But I keep going, killing a handful of ugly slugs and pesky flying creatures with my arm cannon until I stumble upon EMMIs for the first time. The drones that were once tasked with defending humanity have now turned against us, and many fear they might be unstoppable.

EMMIs are Metroid Dread’s equivalent to Xenomorphs, relentless enemies who are designed to hunt you down with a mindset so relentless that often the only option afforded to you is to run away. Metroid has always aped certain aspects of Ridley Scott’s cinematic classic, but now that inspiration has finally come full circle. Whenever I stepped into areas patrolled by these robotic beasts, I knew it was only a matter of time until they hunted me down. If I failed to counter their attacks, I would meet a swift death and have to navigate these sprawling labyrinths all over again. Like I said earlier – Metroid Dread is terrifying, and it knows it.

Fortunately Samus Aran is far from defenseless. Even with all of her powers stripped away, you’re quickly taught how to fight back and survive on ZDR. Aiming and blasting away at foes is no longer the main course of action. Now you are able to instantly dispatch most aliens by countering their attacks with a well-timed button press. You need to learn the timing and animations of their actions, but once you’ve got this down it’s easy to travel throughout each environment murdering aliens like nobody’s business. Successful counters also trigger better drops than taking them out the old fashioned way, so there’s a real incentive to get up close and personal instead of playing it safe from a distance.

In the first couple of hours I played Samus gained access to a number of new abilities, including the use of her trusty rocket launcher and charge beam, both of which proved invaluable in taking on baddies and solving puzzles. Much like previous games in the series, Metroid Dread encourages freeform exploration as you scan environments for clues on how to progress. Sometimes the clue awaits behind a pesky wall that needs to be blasted in order to reveal a hidden entrance, or a door that is impossible to pass through until you’ve earned the charge beam or the ability to turn invisible. Every moment of progress is massively rewarding, whether you’re coming across random secrets or finally figuring out where to go next after minutes of rumination. The other journalist in my preview session was expressing frustration about Dread’s lack of tutorialisation, but it wouldn’t be the same with such guidance – the joy of this game comes from procedural discovery made possible by your own curiosity.

Those who’ve played Metroid Fusion, Samus Returns, or Super Metroid will immediately find themselves at home with Dread. In many ways it feels like an old school adventure, but one that has been generously updated to abide by modern sensibilities and a graphical flair that makes it much more immersive. Visuals are obscenely detailed, and in certain encounters the camera will zoom in on the action to provide a more constrained, three-dimensional look at the proceedings. This is especially true when countering enemy attacks or being ambushed by the aforementioned EMMIs. Moments like these are nail-biting, evoking a feeling of desperation that makes Metroid feel alive in a way that only the Prime trilogy has managed to accomplish before. I explored three land masses during my time with the game, each of which came with distinct environmental hazards and enemy designs that demanded a new strategy to overcome. Like all classic Metroid games, I also came across inaccessible areas I’ll likely return to once I have new suit upgrades and weapons required to conquer them.

I have to give special mention to Metroid Dread’s boss encounters, which are a perfect encapsulation of everything you’ve learned up until the point they transpire. I assume one can be found in each major area, but the beast I stumbled across was a disgusting, poison-spouting scorpion creature that was capable of wiping me out within seconds. So I needed to avoid the swipes of its deadly tail while spamming rockets at its cranium. Before long it would turn invisible, changing up its moveset as I tried to blast away at the obvious glowing weak point situated atop its tail. Once enough damage was dealt, I slid under its legs and executed a counter to initiate a beautiful ballet of choreographed combat that saw me blasting its skull to pieces until it was finally left for dead. This battle took me a few tries to conquer as I learned what made the boss tick, but once I emerged victorious the feeling of joy was unparalleled. Samus Aran is vulnerable in Metroid Dread, but as she learns to fight back the act of surviving on the planet of ZDR slowly starts to feel more and more plausible.

While the tried-and-true tenets of the series’ formula are untouched here and a treat to revisit, the real brilliance lies in its innovative approach to survival horror. Sprinting away from the EMMIs with no conceivable route of escape is a tense delight, with these androids seeming near invisible until you finally gain the means to take them down. Special beam attacks can be used to melt their armour plating and blast them to pieces, but doing so requires you to stand still and charge up attacks while leaving yourself open to being butchered. Having to stand perfectly still, watching as EMMIs stalk toward you while praying your attacks will be ready before you’re taken into their grasp is so scary, and something we’ve never seen this series execute so exquisitely before. Once the area’s EMMI is dispatched they’re gone for good, offering a sense of permanence to overcoming adversity instead of just having them respawn over and over again.

Metroid Dread is a welcome surprise, and has the makings of a modern classic if everything I’ve seen thus far manages to stick the landing throughout the entire campaign. It’s tense and terrifying, maintaining all of the series’ beloved hallmarks while never backing away from unexpected moments of evolution. Samus Aran is made to feel vulnerable in a way that brings the heroine alive like never before, knowing that each small moment of progress is bringing her closer and closer to the bounty hunter of legend we all know and love. In a year that has been relatively lightweight for Nintendo Switch exclusives, this game has come along at just the right time.

Link Source : https://www.thegamer.com/metroid-dread-preview/