GOTY 2022 & '21 - NUMBER 2
(Click here for the video)
If I think about games I'm a little precious about, above everything else, it's how much I love the tone. The amusingly goofy kindness of Resident Evil's STARS teams, the whimsically bleak setting of Pikmin, or the underground pop artists delivering high-concept worlds and packaging them in shlocky teenage anime templates in games like PaRappa or Ribbit King or Gitaroo-Man. It's the atmosphere that's established that distinguishes the games I admire from the games I love, and there's very few games as captivatingly atmospheric as Metroid.
I'm deeply attached to how Metroid games have made me feel. It can't help but feel personal. It's such an isolating experience. The only thing between you and the dark, foreboding space caves is Samus Aran - A Bio Booster Armor Guyver version of Ellen Ripley, and the most quintessential example of everything I thought was cool when I was ten. Metroid fucking rules, and Dread feels every bit like the immediate follow-up to Fusion that Yoshio Sakamoto would have made in the mid-2000s if things had worked out perfectly.
The Sakamoto Metroid is something I hold dear. I'm much softer on Other M than most, and will take it anyday over Retro Studios' GI Joe bullshit that crept into the Prime sequels. It's the idea of space being something akin to death. Entering the unknown in complete isolation. Not just a convenient setting to fill a game with a bunch of crazy monsters and superheroes.
One thing Metroid has always done better than Zelda is the upgrade system. In Zelda, you unlock items that help you navigate dungeons and solve specific puzzles. In Metroid, the upgrades fundamentally add to your abilities, whether that's your movement options, weapons or scanning systems. The gameplay becomes more complex as you're gain more skill with the basics, and more appreciation for what options these upgrades offer you. Dread might do the best job of this in the whole series, largely down to the intricacy and flexibility of the combat and Samus's movement.
Samus Returns did a lot to refine Metroid combat, but it always felt dead cramped on the 3DS. On the Switch, and with an entirely new game, they can really make the most of it. I'll never stop enjoying Super Metroid, but trying to introduce that game to new people is a daunting prospect. Viewing from a modern perspective, it's absurd to think of a Metroid game without analogue control or precision aiming. In old Metroid, Samus felt like someone in a massive, heavy robot suit. In Dread, she really feels like the cool, best-in-the-universe fighter that her biggest fans always saw her as. Boosting over and sliding under enemies, taking critical pot shots at muscular alien creatures, and completely undaunted by something as trivial as Kraid. Samus isn't pinned down by her suit. It makes her electric.
As a long-time fan of the series, so much of Metroid Dread is spent shouting "Holy shit! Samus rules!". Not just by how dynamic and effortlessly precise she appears in action cutscenes or the gameplay, but how the story expresses her character. She's surrounded by vicious threats and power-hungry, colonialistic forces, and she just fucking eviscerates them. Always the only hero in the room, and there's no sense of ego to her. Samus fucking Aran. She's the total fucking best.
Metroid Dread features some of the most complexly interlinked level design in the series. The map is dense and labrynthian, but delicately and deliberately so. The newfound confidence in the less restrictive controls have allowed the developers to create a bunch of optional challenges to reward the most dedicated of its players. You rarely get that old Super Metroid feeling of finding yourself at a complete dead-end and struggling to dig your way back to the last curiosity. You're just not that detached from any point of the map, though they don't shy away from allowing players to feel lost or confused either. There's an appreciation for everything Metroid has been.
On release, there was pretty heated debate over whether or not Dread was the best Metroid game. I think we've all dismissed that notion as empty hype now, but we shouldn't forget all the good, unique things the game has going for it. It's definitely the most fun Metroid game to move around and fight in. It's taken what Team Ninja presented with their fast-moving, high-flying Samus, and actually put her in a proper Metroid game. It's also a thoroughly encouraging sign that Nintendo still care about SNES fans. We shouldn't take this for granted.
(Click here for the video)
If I think about games I'm a little precious about, above everything else, it's how much I love the tone. The amusingly goofy kindness of Resident Evil's STARS teams, the whimsically bleak setting of Pikmin, or the underground pop artists delivering high-concept worlds and packaging them in shlocky teenage anime templates in games like PaRappa or Ribbit King or Gitaroo-Man. It's the atmosphere that's established that distinguishes the games I admire from the games I love, and there's very few games as captivatingly atmospheric as Metroid.
I'm deeply attached to how Metroid games have made me feel. It can't help but feel personal. It's such an isolating experience. The only thing between you and the dark, foreboding space caves is Samus Aran - A Bio Booster Armor Guyver version of Ellen Ripley, and the most quintessential example of everything I thought was cool when I was ten. Metroid fucking rules, and Dread feels every bit like the immediate follow-up to Fusion that Yoshio Sakamoto would have made in the mid-2000s if things had worked out perfectly.
The Sakamoto Metroid is something I hold dear. I'm much softer on Other M than most, and will take it anyday over Retro Studios' GI Joe bullshit that crept into the Prime sequels. It's the idea of space being something akin to death. Entering the unknown in complete isolation. Not just a convenient setting to fill a game with a bunch of crazy monsters and superheroes.
One thing Metroid has always done better than Zelda is the upgrade system. In Zelda, you unlock items that help you navigate dungeons and solve specific puzzles. In Metroid, the upgrades fundamentally add to your abilities, whether that's your movement options, weapons or scanning systems. The gameplay becomes more complex as you're gain more skill with the basics, and more appreciation for what options these upgrades offer you. Dread might do the best job of this in the whole series, largely down to the intricacy and flexibility of the combat and Samus's movement.
Samus Returns did a lot to refine Metroid combat, but it always felt dead cramped on the 3DS. On the Switch, and with an entirely new game, they can really make the most of it. I'll never stop enjoying Super Metroid, but trying to introduce that game to new people is a daunting prospect. Viewing from a modern perspective, it's absurd to think of a Metroid game without analogue control or precision aiming. In old Metroid, Samus felt like someone in a massive, heavy robot suit. In Dread, she really feels like the cool, best-in-the-universe fighter that her biggest fans always saw her as. Boosting over and sliding under enemies, taking critical pot shots at muscular alien creatures, and completely undaunted by something as trivial as Kraid. Samus isn't pinned down by her suit. It makes her electric.
As a long-time fan of the series, so much of Metroid Dread is spent shouting "Holy shit! Samus rules!". Not just by how dynamic and effortlessly precise she appears in action cutscenes or the gameplay, but how the story expresses her character. She's surrounded by vicious threats and power-hungry, colonialistic forces, and she just fucking eviscerates them. Always the only hero in the room, and there's no sense of ego to her. Samus fucking Aran. She's the total fucking best.
Metroid Dread features some of the most complexly interlinked level design in the series. The map is dense and labrynthian, but delicately and deliberately so. The newfound confidence in the less restrictive controls have allowed the developers to create a bunch of optional challenges to reward the most dedicated of its players. You rarely get that old Super Metroid feeling of finding yourself at a complete dead-end and struggling to dig your way back to the last curiosity. You're just not that detached from any point of the map, though they don't shy away from allowing players to feel lost or confused either. There's an appreciation for everything Metroid has been.
On release, there was pretty heated debate over whether or not Dread was the best Metroid game. I think we've all dismissed that notion as empty hype now, but we shouldn't forget all the good, unique things the game has going for it. It's definitely the most fun Metroid game to move around and fight in. It's taken what Team Ninja presented with their fast-moving, high-flying Samus, and actually put her in a proper Metroid game. It's also a thoroughly encouraging sign that Nintendo still care about SNES fans. We shouldn't take this for granted.