by Amr (@siegarettes)
With over a decade since the last mainline Metroid or Castlevania game, it’s hard not to notice that MercurySteam has been given the keys to both parts of the Metroidvania namesake. And when looking at their catalog it’s hard not to ask “Why them?”
They opened their career with a series of derivative action games–with a special 3DS entry that has the pleasure of being one of the worst entries in both the series and genre writ large–then moved onto a ramshackle remake of Metroid II. A game that aspiried to make the story of Samus doing genocide into a sick fucking action game.
It’s as if someone saw the work that a small studio like Climax did on Assassin’s Creed Chronicles, and went “those are the people we gotta get to do our next big game.” To be fair, that gamble did work out for Shattered Memories.
So here we are again, with MercurySteam left to bring to life yet another long awaited title to life–but this time without the baggage and tonal issuses of Samus Returns.
A decent chunk nto Metroid Dread the gamble still hasn’t paid off. But it doesn’t exactly bust either, leaving us at more of a break even point.
Dread starts out at a sprint, and as long as it keeps its momentum the breathless pace and fluid movement carries it. The array of movement options here makes it fun to simply run around the planet, sliding, grappling and bounding off walls. Later powers let you move even faster, with dramatic effects that make you appreciate the technical effort into making such a seamless experience, on a system where that’s not always a guarantee.
But every time the pace slows, it gave me too much time to reflect on the frustrations that have been accumulating the whole time.
The opening hours of Dread repeatedly force you down one way passages, often collapsing your entrace as it opens a new exit. Meaning you’ll have to go around the long way–through the entire damn section–just to get to where you were standing ten seconds ago. It’s as if they took VVVVVV’s “Veni Vidi Vici” and applied it to the map design of the entire planet.
When you finally find the ability that blows the map open, I found it in an area I’d been frequently discouraged from exploring, past a one block opening I had to pixel hunt for. And this isn’t the only place where progress is going to be blockaded behind some easy to miss clue to a hidden area.
I can see what they’re aiming for. All of this is in service of their biggest gamble–creating a claustrophobic environment that forces you into conflict with the EMMI: ruthless hunting robots that can kill you in a single hit. Which did not work for me at all.
What is supposed to be a tension filled hunt quickly devolves with repetition. EMMI are restricted to certain zones, generally giving them the advantage but letting you escape if you make to an exit undetected.
After fighting a few the pattern becomes routine. Get to a zone, die a few times learning the layout, then come back with some other power that lets you fight the same, unchanged boss once again so you can absorb its energy to power the big gun that will destroy this area’s EMMI and award you a new power.
It’s a cycle that reminds me a bit too much of Samus Return’s rigid structure, and simiply gestures toward the format and tension of Metroid Fusion, without having any of the narrative stakes or atmosphere to back it up.
Scratch beneath the surface and it’s easy to see the outlines that make up the color-by-numbers structure filling out this game. But who’s going to complain when the colors are this vibrant? It might be all routine, but for people who’ve been dying to return to routine, this is probably everything they wanted.
Hell, Dread might even turn out to be a good game. But in the time since Samus’ absence the people following in her footsteps have started to outpace her. It’s gonna take a little more than what Dread is bringing to stay in the race.