Blaster Master 03
The Blaster Master Zero series is a fun callback to the original Blaster Master on the NES, but bigger, and with a much stronger anime aesthetic. The first two Zero games were fun romps that leaned on some solid action-oriented metroidvania gameplay. The third game has mostly similar gameplay, but it places a much bigger focus on the increasingly absurd anime story. I can’t begin to articulate how ridiculous the story gets, so I’ll just spoil a few things to give an idea. If you care about spoilers, skip the next paragraph
First off, a large portion of the game is spent tracking down Eve using her DNA. Except that Eve is an android that absolutely should not have DNA. How does a robot get DNA? She was infected by an extra-dimensional entity and evolved DNA in order to protect herself or something. I don’t remember all the specifics. Anyway, at the end of the game Jason and Eve elope into another dimension because Eve had mutated to the point that she couldn’t live in normal space. In the epilogue you fight against the no-longer-human Jason and Eve as they prepare to release something back into normal space. Turns out it’s babies. They somehow created two perfectly normal human babies while being nightmarish abominations. When the babies are ready, they give them to Jason’s rival - I don’t even remember their name - and have them raise the babies in the normal world, never to know their eldritch parents.
Alright. End of spoilers. I normally like some batshit stories, but this was too far off the deep end even for me. The gameplay probably colored my perception of it as well. While it does have metroidvania elements, the game is extremely linear for two thirds of its playtime. The final third does open up, but it’s a rather clunky macguffin hunt, since most of the “exploring” has been done already. In terms of difficulty, it’s got a pretty wild curve. Most of the game is on the easy side but toward the end the difficulty spikes very sharply, to the point that the penultimate fight in the game took me the better part of an hour to finish. Bizarrely, the final final boss took a single attempt. Be prepared to memorize patterns and learn parry timings.
Zero 3 is kind of a mess, but there’s still fun to be had. The side scrolling gameplay is still quite good and carries the game pretty far.
Captain Toad's Treasure Tracker
Treasure Tracker is a game that caught my interest after its initial release on Wii U, but I never got around to playing it. It got a deep discount this year, so I finally snatched it up. It ended up being pretty much exactly what I expected: a fun and cute romp. The whole game is essentially a series of small, cute puzzle boxes. The whole puzzle box style is something that has always appealed to me - probably a reason why the La-Mulana series is a favorite of mine. I don’t really have much to say except it was a cute and endearing adventure, but it won’t light the world on fire. I wouldn’t mind seeing larger levels, but otherwise I have no real complaints.
Bowser's Fury
Four years after the highs of Mario Odyssey I was craving more. The fabled Odyssey DLC never materialized, but Bowser’s Fury stepped up to the plate. The sandbox-y nature of Odyssey is a big reason of why I liked it so much and Bowser’s Fury stepped it up to another level. Instead of being split into several discreet worlds to explore, Bowser’s Fury manages to squeeze the entire world together on one continuous map. That expands the scope of exploration by an order of magnitude, and if you know me at all, you know that I love exploration-based gameplay.
Bowser’s Fury is a short excursion (only about 6- 8 hours to 100%) that feels like a tech demo for the new open world formula. I’m hoping Nintendo will expand this idea into a full length game because this is the perfect evolution of the formula.
The namesake of the game, however, is probably Bowser’s Fury’s weakest aspect. At certain intervals a giant Bowser will appear and try to blast you with a powerful fire breath. Bowser can appear at almost any time, which can be a huge hassle when trying to get certain cat shines. If you take too long to get a shine, Bowser will eventually appear and make it even harder, if not impossible. At least collecting a cat shine will banish Bowser and reset his timer. Then there’s cases with the opposite problem: sometimes you need Bowser to appear to break certain obstacles. There’s no way to force Bowser to appear, so sometimes you’ll have to simply wait for him to appear which can be quite boring and irritating.
As long as Nintendo doesn’t keep the fury part of Bowser’s Fury, making the next Mario game in this style could easily be the best yet.
New Pokemon Snap
The original Pokemon Snap is a childhood favorite. Annoying the shit out of pokemon just to get a funny photo never gets old, and New Pokemon Snap is just more of the same. It keeps the same rail shooter (get it? shoot as in with a camera) format and just adds more. More tracks, more items, more pokemon, more fun interactions and more story.
One particularly interesting addition is the stars awarded for each photo. Stars are given based on how rare the behavior of the subject is. Each pokemon has one, two and three star behaviors, each of which are recorded and scored separately. Instead of getting just one good shot of a pokemon and calling it a day for them, you now have three different shots with which to try to maximize your score.
New Pokemon Snap feels like the game original Pokemon Snap is in my nostalgic memories. A very cute, fun time. I need to get around to the DLC soon now that I think about it.
Tales of Arise
After how fantastic Tales of Berseria was, and the jump to a new engine, my expectations for Tales of Arise were pretty low. The series tends to bounce between good and bad entries and Arise was in position to be bad. It definitely didn’t live up to Berseria, but I was pleasantly surprised that Arise is a decent entry.
As usual with Tales games, the main strength is in the battle system. It ditched the Soul system from Berseria, which I’m a little thankful for, since it never quite sat right with me, what with being very random in nature. In exchange, each character has a special attack that can be used when the gauge fills up, either over time or with high combos. Each attack has a specific enemy ability that it counters, like Rinwell’s which cancels all enemy artes casting. The gauge fills very slowly initially, but in the latter part of the game, after getting a number of upgrades to speed it up, the attacks are very frequently available when they’re needed. They also have the very useful property of restoring your main resource, allowing you to build up crazy-high combos. Exploiting all of this is where the battle system elevated itself to my second favorite in the series (after Berseria, of course).
Weak writing often plagues the series and Arise is no exception - for the first half of the game, at least. For the initial 20 hours, many of the major story beats felt so contrived or just plain silly that it shattered my suspension of disbelief. The skits, as usual, were fun, but even those didn’t really find their footing until the half way point. After that point, the game picked up in quality and was able to keep my interest to the end and managed to create some fun character moments. It began to fall apart again right at the end by pulling some contrived bullshit out of its ass, but not enough to sour the experience.
Final verdict: It’s fun but it takes a while to get all the way there. It’s below Berseria and Abyss but better than Symphonia and Zestiria.
Axiom Verge 2
Axiom Verge the First was a game that I enjoyed, but it never quite clicked with me as much as it seemed to with others. I can’t quite put my finger on why, but I can say with certainty that I enjoyed the sequel far more.
Where the original had a huge selection of weapons for its many action-y bosses, Axiom Verge 2 puts much less emphasis on combat. There arguably is only one, maybe two, real boss fights and the selection of weapons is far smaller and less diverse. You very quickly learn that trying to fight every enemy you come across is a very bad idea. Stealth, hacking and maybe an occasional swing of the trusty pickaxe will get you past most opponents.
Axiom Verge 2 tries to incorporate a non-trivial story in the course of the game - something that not many metroidvanias manage to pull off or even attempt - but it kind of works here. Even though the dialog can be hard to follow with a barrage of vaguely defined terms being thrown around, it manages to get its point across and give the story events enough context to be meaningful. Those story events often have a significant effect on gameplay as well. So many metroidvanias try to incorporate a story only to have it happen independently of anything you’re actually doing. This was a bit of fresh air that managed to keep my interest and pulled me through the game.
The drone in the first game was a very important part, and in the sequel it’s an even bigger part because it allows exploration of what’s basically the back side of the world: a separate map overlaid onto the main map. Switching between these two maps, mostly via the drone-equivalent, becomes a very important and very interesting part of traversing the world that made me think about traversal in a way I don’t often need to.
Bless Tom Happ. He managed to put together a worthy and superior sequel, and did it almost entirely solo. I hope I can make a game even half as impressive some day.
Record of Lodoss War - Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth
Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth is the next game from Team Ladybug, the developers of Touhou Luna Nights. Luna Nights was a fantastic action-y metroidvania from a year or two back that featured one of the most satisfying real time 2D battle systems I’ve ever played. The DNA of Luna Nights is deeply woven all throughout Deedlit along with a dash more of Symphony of the Night. It embraces the RPG aspect far more, with a bigger emphasis on equipment, a wide range of weapons to choose from and a slightly more open world. Luna Nights was light on the metroidvania and so is Deedlit, but not quite as light.
The Record of Lodoss War part of the name refers to the Japanese media franchise that the game takes its inspiration. It’s basically some guy’s DnD campaign that got turned into a manga and anime. I have almost no experience with the franchise, but it’s pretty clear there’s a lot going on there. Deedlit has a much greater emphasis on story than Luna Nights, and I felt like I was missing heaps of context for it at every turn. It does still have the slightly awkward dialogue as Luna Nights had, so I did enjoy that aspect of it.
While I don’t think Deedlit’s combat is quite as interesting or complex of Luna Nights’s, it’s still extremely well made and fun. If you have any interest in side scrolling action games, play Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth and Luna Nights. Do it.
Bravely Default 2
The Bravely series has, in my opinion, the pinnacle of turn-based JRPG combat. The interplay between the jobs and their skills combined with the brave/default system opens up a ludicrous amount of possibilities. Unfortunately the Bravely series also tends to have something big holding it back in each game. The first game had the final third of the game be extremely repetitive to the point that it soured the experience for many people. The second game thankfully didn’t have the repetition, but replaced it with general blandness. Remembering anything that happened in Bravely Second is very difficult.
The confusingly named Bravely Default 2 is an improvement both in its battle system and souring aspect. The majority of the battle system remains the same, but one major change is that turns are now continuous, instead of discrete like the previous games.
The previous games had you assign actions to all of your party members at once, and then the turn would play out with each character acting. In BD2, it’s more like an SNES Final Fantasy where how frequently a character can act is based on their speed. I’ve seen some mixed reactions to this change, but I think it’s a huge improvement. This setup allows you to be much more reactive to the enemy’s actions, rather than having to predict what will happen and in what order all at once when setting up the turn. Since an action occurs as soon as you confirm it, you have much greater certainty of whatever actions you choose actually going through. This flows vastly better than the old system and cements it as the single best turn-based JRPG battle system.
As for the other major part of the series, BD2 doesn’t have any particularly repetitive chapter, nor is it particularly unmemorable. I would call the story competent but a little disappointingly straightforward and with some unintentional camp. Combined with the all-around likeable characters, BD2 is certainly more memorable than Bravely Second.
All Bravely games include some cheeky meta shit, where it messes with the boundaries between game and reality. That’s been a big draw for me since the first game; I have a thing for games that turn themselves on their head to break the 4th wall. BD2 does have some of this but I was honestly hoping for a bit more. Through most of the game I was expecting some grand revelation where the story would turn out to be not quite what it seemed, but that never really came.
Bravely Default 2 ended up being my most played game of the year (if the Nintendo year-end wrap up thing is to be believed) with about 90 hours played. I played on the hard difficulty and while I wouldn’t recommend it to most people, the difficulty combined with the strength of the battle system made it feel extremely rewarding. Also, they managed to get Revo back to do the soundtrack again and there’s some absolute bangers there; it might even surpass BD1, one of my all-time favorite game soundtracks.
Trails of Cold Steel
After finishing Trails to Azure, I was on a Trails high and finally moved onto the infamous Cold Steel arc. I had some reservations going into Cold Steel, knowing that it centered around school life while building relationships with your classmates. The specter of Persona 5 still haunts me, despite how far removed the two games are from each other. Combined with a Trails superfan friend frequently blasting Cold Steel, I was pretty wary.
Cold Steel 1 is all about getting to know the students of Class VII and the world of western Erebonia. Much like Trails in the Sky (FC), it’s meant to be the setup for the climax of the arc later on. As such it doesn’t do a whole lot to knock your socks off until the very end.
One unusual thing with Cold Steels 1 and 2 is that they take place concurrently with other games in the series - the Crossbell games specifically. This has the interesting property of allowing the events from Crossbell to be interpreted from a very different perspective. Given my investment in the Crossbell games, this other perspective was an unexpected incentive to keep me going.
Right from the beginning, Cold Steel has a very large main cast. You’re immediately introduced to the 9 kids of Class VII, and every last one of them is insufferable. My first impressions of almost all of Class VII was that I wanted to launch them into the sun. I’m not sure if this is intended, since many of the students are at each others throats as well, and becoming close to each of these hellions is a major theme through the first two games. By the end of Cold Steel 1 my opinion of most of them had softened quite a bit. I only wanted to throw a third of them into the sun at that point.
Erebonia is a large country, and CS1 takes you all over the western half of it. While there are some interesting places and interesting people, it’s also a whole lot to see; The opposite of little ol’ Crossbell. The larger cast means each person gets less development overall and reduces them to maybe 2 characteristics each. This all made it much harder for me to get invested in the world and characters.
All of that said, Cold Steel 1 still feels very much like a Trails game. It manages to build a richly detailed world where you’re lead on a wild, winding adventure with plenty of mysteries. Cold Steel 1 is the weakest Trails game that I’ve played, but I would still put it above most other JRPGs.
Trails of Cold Steel 2
Cold Steel 2 picks up right after Cold Steel 1 ends, with Rean waking up in his mech and trying to reunite Class VII. Trails as a series is usually very good at staying grounded and going off the wall at the right time to have the biggest impact. Having a relatively modern settings, players can much more easily see aspects of themselves or their lives in the game. I really like this aspect of the series because it makes it much easier to identify with the characters and makes most aspects of the world feel a bit more believable, giving the wilder parts more impact. Cold Steel 2 is when this starts to break down, unfortunately. From the very beginning you’re neck deep in ancient mechs, magical teleportation and powerful witches doing weird magic. It took me out of the headspace that most of the other Trails games had put me in, and it threw me a bit off for most of the game.
Where Cold Steel 1 was the slow buildup, 2 is much more of a climax. Things definitely start to pop off more here. That alone helps it rise above CS1’s glacially slow pace. The bulk of CS2’s plot sets a clear goal, which you make tangible, incremental progress toward through the game. That’s a pretty big departure from the typical meandering plot that takes you wherever it wants, usually with little predictability. The exact route you take to each point toward that goal still has some unpredictability to it though. I’m still not sure if I like or dislike this structure, but I appreciate the change of pace.
The playable cast was already huge in CS1 and CS2 expands it by a ludicrous degree. By the end of the game, you’ve got upwards of 20 characters to choose from, some who really should not be fighting. The game does its best to make sure each character gets enough screen time to develop, and for class VII at least, it succeeds. I eventually ended up actually liking a few of the students, and only one stayed in the “want to launch into the sun” tier. As if roughly 20 playable characters wasn’t enough, there’s also a good dozen or so antagonists that need development too. It does a commendable job of trying to humanize them, even going in-depth into the backstory of each, but at the end of the day, many of them came off as rather flat and one-note. Duvalie was cool though. Trails is particularly good at Sword Lesbian characters like her.
A big new feature of CS2 is the inclusion of mech battles, where Rean and his mech face off against other mechs, usually in a one-on-one match up. Rean’s mech has the ability to recover EP at no cost and restore a massive amount of HP, so it’s very hard to actually lose. Each of the others from class VII can join in by getting a turn to cast special arts. Unless there was an elemental weakness to exploit, I only ever used Elliot and his ridiculously efficient healing over time art. The mech battles are meant to be very climactic and dramatic affairs, but the severe lack of strategy involved made them long and dull.
I might’ve sounded pretty negative toward CS2 so far, but I much preferred it over CS1. The pacing was a big improvement. It moved away from the school life format and the students of class VII finally started to come into their own. Even though the cast was absurdly large, it made for some interesting strategic decisions, especially since levels carried over from CS1, bypassing the slow build-up of useful arts. The concurrency with the Crossbell games kept my interest pretty high as well, since I already knew of a number of important events would affect Erebonia. I was especially excited because I knew there was even some gameplay in Crossbell, and when that finally rolled around I was extremely pumped. It even featured one of my favorite tracks from Crossbell: The Geofront https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsP7WSySVfk
I had many concerns going into Cold Steel, and while they were mostly valid, the series has still been quite enjoyable. I’ve heard the Cold Steel arc drops off sharply starting with 3, so I’ll try to keep my expectations in check as I continue on Falcom’s Wild Ride.
Monster Hunter Rise
I feel bad for not playing more of Monster Hunter Rise. I never actually reached the actual final boss, even though the game is fantastic. Rise takes most of the quality of life improvements from World and improves on them further while adding the most fun mechanic to the game since I started playing the series over a decade ago: the wirebug.
When Monster Hunter introduced the insect glaive, it opened up a whole new aerial world. Then the aerial style opened it up to any weapon, if the player was willing to sacrifice some other key moves. Now the wirebug lets everyone do crazy jumps and shit all the time with no compromises. It makes Rise into a far more vertically oriented game, which made me shift how I approached the game more than any other single entry in the series. The wirebug also introduces new moves to each weapon, some of which drastically change how the weapon is played. When playing hammer, for instance, I found myself using the spinning jump move constantly because it’s both very effective and very fun.
In a very non-Monster Hunter move, they added what amounts to a tower defense mode called Rampages. They feel reminiscent of the Zorah Magdaros fight from World. Basically I didn’t care for them at all and always groaned whenever a rampage quest was required. Fortunately they’re rarely required, so I was able to avoid most of them.
With how good Rise is, I really wish I had done more with it. I probably will when it comes to PC, but for now I don’t have a whole lot to say.
13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim
I was hoping 13 Sentinels would be ported to PC because I sincerely dislike breaking out my PS4, but it was on sale and people wouldn’t stop talking about it, so I caved and bought a PS4 copy. I’m glad I did because 13 Sentinels is possibly the best written science fiction story I’ve ever read, regardless of medium.
The story follows a number of teenage Japanese students who wind up piloting giant mechs to defend the world from ruthless alien swarms. The basic premise may seem cliched, but there are so many layers to this story that that premise begins to look like a paper-thin veneer once you dig deeper.
What elevates 13 Sentinels most for me is the pacing when combined with the format. Each of the main characters has a number of scenes that reveal bits of their personal story and parts of the overarching story. You usually have a choice of which characters’ scene to play next, with certain restrictions. Despite this non-linear aspect, the story always seemed to flow logically while revealing information at a rate to keep you interested the entire way. In particular, the game has a habit of dropping earth-shattering revelations about the story at a shockingly regular pace. Each revelation making you rethink everything so far with the context of this new information. These reveals don’t usually come out of nowhere as well. There’s always some logic and foreshadowing to it to where it all makes sense when it’s laid out.
The bulk of the gameplay (a mode called Destruction) consists of a mix of turn-based and real-time strategy wherein you move and attack with your mechs to protect your objective. Every mission is essentially just about survival: keep your super weapon safe until it fires, wiping out all enemies. Clearing a mission will net you points to upgrade your mechs, and clearing them while meeting certain criteria will award more points. In a way, it has a bit of tower defense in its DNA. Anyway, while Destruction isn’t the biggest draw of the game, it’s certainly not bad. Blasting a huge swarm or enemies or punching a huge kaiju into next week was always very satisfying. The missions have a bit of story and character development in them as well, even though the context for the characters being there isn’t clear until very late in the game.
Long story short, if you’re a fan of science fiction, you should absolutely play 13 Sentinels.
Taking a quick break between games here to mention the deal with the last 3 games on the list. I always say that the games are roughly in order of how much I liked then, and that holds for everything above, but these last 3 are special. I always try to pick the one game I liked more than any other each year, but this year I couldn’t. Each of the top 3 mean too much to me to bear placing one over any of the others. Instead, dear reader, I intend to name not one, not two, but THREE games of the year. The three following games are presented in no particular order because they are all equally my game of the year.
Outer Wilds - Echoes of the Eye
Outer Wilds was my favorite game from last year. After having more time to mull it over, I think it may even be one of my favorite games of all time. It’s the type of game that left such a powerful impression on me that I’ve watched many streams and lets plays of it in order to vicariously experience it again through whoever’s playing. When I heard Mobius Digital was making DLC for Outer Wilds, I was simultaneously extremely excited and worried. I was worried that adding more to it might trample on the beautiful story and experience of the original. Having finished the DLC I can confidently say that it didn’t tarnish the original and in fact enhanced it.
The Echoes of the Eye DLC is very much more of the base Outer Wilds experience, while at the same time being very different. Like the original, it’s all about information and exploration. You don’t keep anything between loops other than information, so knowing where and how to interact with the world is everything. This makes spoiling the game particularly devastating if you want to experience it yourself.
I won’t spoil any critical information, but if you have even the slightest passing interest in possibly playing Outer Wilds at some point, avoid everything about it, including the rest of this part of the article.
The core mechanics of the DLC are the same, but the presentation and themes take very different paths - sometimes nearly polar opposite paths. One is explicit and wordy, while the other is visual and aesthetic. One is light and curious and the other is dark and fearful.
On that note, Echoes of the Eye leans heavily into the horror aspect of the original. Where Outer Wilds pushed me to the limits of my comfort zone, Echoes of the Eye launched me out of a cannon across the border. While most of the horror is aesthetic, there are (sort of) actual scares. Thankfully they aren’t cheap jump scares which I loathe with all of my being, however my butt and teeth were clenched all the same.
Mercifully there’s an option in the menu to reduce the intensity of some of the scares, which made it a bit less of an obstacle for me. However, they’ve sneakily presented that option in a way that actually heightens tension. The first time you open the game with DLC, you’re presented with a dialogue box telling you that some scares may be too much for some people and that an option to reduce them exists. Simply putting it out there immediately that there are supposedly intense scares sets the player’s expectations to be terrified. This worked almost too well on me.
The most important part of the DLC though is that it manages to recapture the same sense of exploration and discovery as the base game. The epiphanies when I realized how something worked or what something was, had me blurting out something like “holy shit that’s so cool”, and how they all relate to the story were the real core of what made the game click with me so strongly. There’s a strong emotional ride here too that integrates shockingly well into the base game. Echoes of the Eye is pretty much the best additional content I could hope for in one of the best games I’ve ever played.
Trails to Azure
Two years ago when I started on Falcom’s Wild Ride, I didn’t expect I would still be on it nearly 500 hours later. The series has managed to get me invested in this world and characters more than almost any video game. Trails to Azure, the second and final game in the Crossbell arc, contributed to this investment more than any other entry in the series.
Azure picks up a few months after Zero left off, with Lloyd and Noel working together while their colleagues, who are wrapping up various summer assignments, return to Crossbell and the SSS. While Azure starts off fairly quiet, it soon hops on the Chaos Coaster and doesn’t get off until the very end. Every chapter more and more shit hits progressively bigger, faster fans.
Among all of the chaos, Falcom’s character and world building is at its finest. The majority of the game still takes place in Crossbell City and continues building on the stories of all of the various NPCs therein. Like I said last year in my writeup of Zero, the more compact setting does a lot to endear it to the player. You become much more invested in something when you’re familiar with all of the nooks and crannies, and have seen it through tough times. That also makes it far more impactful when wild shit happens to it.
Like I said for Cold Steel, one of the series’s more appealing aspects is that it’s generally pretty grounded. Yes, there are magic orbs that power everything and terrifying monsters everywhere, but the day-to-day goings on feel believable from a modern perspective. Things like business people coming and going, political tensions and dealing with bureaucracy are things most players can identify with. Even though Azure in particular goes to wild places, it keeps that groundedness for most of its runtime, making it all the more special when the off-the-wall JRPG bullshit shows itself.
While my only complaint with the game is that the finale goes on a bit too long, that finale is also probably the most emotionally charged section of any game I’ve played for a few years at least. With the amount of emotional investment the Crossbell arc has gotten out of me, combined with the incredible storytelling and world building, the eminently likeable main cast, the best-in-the-series soundtrack and the generally amazing presentation, the Crossbell arc and more specifically Trails to Azure is easily one of my favorite JRPGs of all time.
Metroid Dread
Where do I even start with Metroid Dread? It’s been 19 years since the Metroid story was advanced and just as long since the last traditional Metroid game. Metroid is my favorite game series, so this is obviously a big deal for me. Dread was made by the same studio as Samus Returns which gave me some hesitation. Samus Returns isn’t a bad game by any means, but it was lacking in the sort of type of Metroid gameplay I was looking for. It might’ve been a product of the game it was remaking, but it also felt like the developer finding their footing with the franchise. Once Dread finally came around, I was very happy to see my fears were unfounded.
Metroid Dread feels like a cross between Super Metroid and Metroid Fusion. It feels far more open than Fusion while also carefully guiding the player where they need to go. This guiding is far less heavy-handed than Fusion, opting for subtle hints in the level design instead. The game tries very hard to prevent you from getting lost. That sounds like a good thing, and for the most part it is, but I’ve always felt that getting a little lost is a good thing in Metroidvanias. Losing your way and exploring the map at your own pace to find the way forward is a very powerful way to make a memorable world. Being mindful about where you’re going - trying to navigate with a specific destination - rather than simply following the obvious path wherever it may lead makes the map stick in your mind much better. Creating a smoother flowing experience is much more appealing to most players, however, so I fully understand the choice.
Ever since That Game Which Shall Not Be Named, Samus’s characterization has been something of a trash fire. Dread mercifully walks that back, returning Samus to a resourceful, stoic and determined badass. Unfortunately “Adam” makes a return: the “AI” that kept Samus on her path in Fusion. Dread Adam is less direct and demanding than Fusion Adam, thankfully, and features drastically less sexism. Dread actually draws on Samus’s backstory, particularly her history with the Chozo, which isn’t often brought up in the games. One of Samus’s two voiced lines being her speaking Chozo and her interacting with Chozo she knows make me unreasonably happy as a Metroid lore expert.
While it had its issues, Samus Returns introduced some very good additions to movement and combat. Free aiming with an analog stick and melee counters are the big ones to return in Dread, this time even more refined. I make no exaggeration when I say that Metroid Dread is one of the best feeling 2D platformers I’ve ever played. Just running and jumping through the world is very satisfying, especially when working in the surprisingly easy to do wall jumps.
The whole EMMI thing is a topic that could fill an entire essay on its own. They’re meant to capitalize on the fear evoked by the SA-X in fusion. In that regard, they fail. The fear from SA-X stems from the unknown and its total invulnerability. While they’re certainly unsettling at times, the EMMIs are very much known quantities, with even their patrol areas being conveniently outlined on the map and their special abilities demonstrated on the first encounter. As soon as you meet the first EMMI, you’re given a way to defeat it. That alone drains a lot of the dread they’re intended to evoke. Having power over the monster stalking you basically reverses the role. The fact that this happens in a regular pattern for each EMMI shows the player that any vulnerability you may have is fleeting, killing most of the actual fear. The EMMI are very neat additions and do add a lot of tension, just not dread.
All in all Dread is a fantastic game and a return to form for the Metroid series. It may not be the platonic ideal of a metroidvania like Super Metroid is, but it probably shouldn’t be. It carves out its own path while saying true to the series roots, and does it in style.
