Analysis of Metroid Dread from Willie Schuppe's blog

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A brilliant reinvention of the classic formula that enters fully into the Olympus of the Franchise.

An instant classic. An exercise of gameplay, reflections and crude charism within reach of very few. The design of all life, the pencil, paper and gradered leaves, going to the rescue and demonstrating that pyrotechnics passes but the intelligence is eternal, and at the same time a game endowed with a huge sense of entertainment. The two dimensions claimed, leaving in writing that the platforms that only seem unattainable will always be a pillar on which to build cathedrals. The definitive test that the design is the king, and everything else is background noise. A new rod to measure for gender, and an almost unsurpassed rival for all who come after. The videogame, in its purest, naked and beautiful essence.

Basic information

Developer: Mercury Steam Editor: Nintendo Platforms: switch Proven version: switch Availability: 08/10/2021

All that was Super Metroid, and before a curriculum so natural is to cower. It could have been the case of Mercury Steam, or even a nintendo faced with the Papel of his life: continue one of his canonic sagas almost thirty years after that colossal impact and specifically nineteen of the Fusion publication, the last numbered delivery up to Our days and a continuation may be less iconic, but brilliant enough so that no one would have dared to pick up the glove.

Perhaps they were those unrealizable expectations that turned the project into a rumor, in a myth, in the kid of the youth who warms up in the band for almost fifteen years to end up jumping on the lawn only a few months ago, in an E3 in which neither He was even waiting for him. Have they taken too long? Did you still have a roll of platforms and exploration in 2D? In view of the army of clones that floods the catalogs of digital platforms every day, it might seem, but that the day of his presentation was followed by more than the absence of Metroid Prime 4 did not seem to augur enough.

[You have obtained an opportunity]

As I say the situation it would have been a peliaguda for the internal studies of Nintendo itself, but let s put us for a moment in Mercury Steam s shoes. From a team not only novice, but something much worse: foreign. From a shortcut of Gaijins in charge of writing a new chapter of the Sacred Scriptures, and faced with a project in which it is no longer worth not to fail. Metroid Dread, Metroid 5 for friends, it is no longer the coquettish exercise of updating a classic that supposed Samus Returns, and although there will be the one who puts you fits the debut of the Madrid study in the saga I would say that as little it served them to show that they deserved they deserved this opportunity. But they only had a bullet. I think they have taken advantage of it, and for that, out of respect and because they have earned it, I will only refer to the title of 3ds to mention the obvious one: that in a first contact it costs to shake the feeling that Metroid Dread is little more than a washing Facing in high definition.

Maybe it has to do with that the precepts of the saga are strict, or that in the 2D platform it seems everything invented, although I think it is precisely the insistence of the study in that small plot of independence that was the counterattack of Samus Returns what It makes it a derivative at the beginning. In Mercury they are proud of the idea, and it is not at least, but the succession of enemies simplon, telegraphy attacks and the already accustomed sequence of handmot and shot to mouthpiece repeating every few meters sounds less to identity and more to result, Insecurity and institute band playing three times your hit because there is not much more repertoire. It seems more of the same, until you look at the details.

[You have obtained mobility]

It will not take it, because the design of the scenarios and the meticulous location of each platform, each line and each enemy is intelligent even for that: to mark the cadence at first, to explain without the need for any tutorial, to make you chain a few Parrys Static in case you skipped the 3DS game and all this catches you new and, suddenly, make you return the suicide chop from a full race and suddenly everything click. It is not only the plasticity of that animation that now allows you to return the hit with an elegant and subtle pirouette, nor the viscerality of that return cannle that we run just by pressing a button; It s, again, intelligence. Lucidity to eliminate the need to aim at that movement against, and cunning when it comes to scheduling a reward of ammunition and health that is always greater if we played with one against the opponent s rival. It is a risk and reward, it is show and it is movement, especially movement.

Metroid Dread is not only the most agile game of the franchise, but also the freer, breaking with the tyranny of the eight directions by allowing us to point how we want: standing, crouched, diagonally, planting both feet on the ground To take advantage of the 360 ​​degrees of the precision shooting modifier or even in the race, tilting the left stick to respond to any threat at a free angle without having to ever stop us. And the result is one of the most beautiful words that can be written about a video game: the flow . To the puzzle that in the fund involves each scenario the player responds with landslides, somersaults, grips and balances that the game implements as building blocks, as elements that go around a choreography that turns Metroid into a more electric experience without sacrificing that essence Cerebral and paused. Nintendo has always been synonymous with control, and I am happy to be able to say that this Samus would be exquisite to limit itself to wander by an infinite empty room. Fortunately, it has never been further from being the case.

[You have obtained show]

And it is not in the most obvious sense, the aesthetic, and what has a visual candy a graphic environment in two and a half-dimensional graphic that never breaks with the traditional Drawing of Metroid, but on the contrary, takes advantage of the technology to vindicate it. It is true that when talking about the mapped the technical factor is by far the least important thing, but if I decided to start here it is because we were talking about first sensations and things that come across the eyes, and because there will be those who think that To bet on a lateral displacement adventure at this point of the film, it means telling you goodbye to the explosions, the laboratories that collapse, the Pieces Pasts of laps and in general to a spectacle factor that seems reserved for another type of productions. They are wrong. Better said, we re wrong.

And in my particular case I am very happy to have gotten the leg, with that and with what the game was ugly. Maybe the first trailer out unfortunate or it may simply be blind, but it is a feeling that vanish just put on the surface of ZDR, the planet with firstborn name of Elon Musk than wonder from the first stay with a colorful overwhelming , with a depth that you can almost touch and above all with a collection of funds that are far from being simple decorated. Undoubtedly here the luxurious animations and above all that extra punch that provides the new screen of the OLED model of Nintendo Switch do a lot (in fact the game seems to have it foreseen, constantly playing high contrast with dark rooms in which the tenuous Lighting of the suit will sell a few consoles), but above all it is a matter of creativity. Of variety Of life.

Of frozen stations, underground lakes, of maritime platforms to burst by submarine corridors and pipes that pure pure magma from the heart of the planet. I will always be a passionate defender of the immortal beauty of the color palette of Super Nintendo, but the collection of sci-fi postcards of playful and absurdly creative that leaves each of the stays of the game shows that something we have advanced since the time of Super Metroid .

And suddenly everything explodes, because Metroid Dread is more than altarpieces static and plenty of chutzpah not only to play with the camera in certain sequences usually associated with heads, but to raise the bet: yes, it is very spectacular drive a parry against a reptile grotesquely oversized and be rewarded with a sequence of a couple of minutes in which Samus will descerraja misilazos on the mouth while the entire complex is coming down, but perhaps it is more seen as the reactor asleep that seemed part of the decorated suddenly collapses and opens a gap in the bottom of one of the rooms so we can keep progressing. These moments are rare enough for special result, and although I would not get into spoilers, eye with the consequences of phenomena such as ambient temperature, which can modify areas of the whole game even affecting the behavior of enemies or opening and closing tracks for which we had already traveled. And it is important, of course it is important. Of course there will come back.

[has earned Level Design]

Until now, with its delicious control their trabajadísimas animations, his collection of mechanical innovations spot on and the pepper Extra putting a vocation unprecedented show in the franchise, Metroid Dread was just a great game, but there is something that really sets it apart others: his overwhelming, and ultimately possessed indescribable level design. If I say that is indescribable it is because I honestly think that I need resources to do justice, just missing me to understand how you can come up with something, and what is the mental process that allows keeping all these moving parts in the air and translate them into the paper and nothing makes water without a slope bad allow the player making progress where it should not, without a path one way we enclose unsolvable. Davey said the good Wreden at The Stanley Parable players who are just looking laboratory mice a piece of cheese in a maze made of cardboard, and Metroid Dread has become an art form.

None of this is exactly new to the series or any of their children bastards, but what love is execution. Intelligence, again for the third time. Metroid Dread is a perfect plan and a maze, yes, but also a series of suicide bets in the form of elevators, trams, platforms Teleport and general systems that retrace our steps turning each areas sealed and numbered principle that make the world a sort of big global puzzle. It is not simply backtracking , it is not returned with a new skill on stage already visited to grab a couple of extra missiles; It is raising progress itself as a line snaking seemingly chaotic manner along all underworlds at a time, very often requiring us we go through a specific broker the initial level to move forward in the fifth or hiding wings whole from resignificarlas the beginning to later and everything fit magically.

Sounds complex, and it is, and not be the first to admit that it has lost more times than the confessable, but there once you ve asked for help and have not repented me in seconds: all you need is in the Map. Always. And if I decipher is a challenge, which is the inexplicable wonder overview of who had to translate it first. For its spatial intelligence, by the way they connect and function as a whole, for their apparent ease to disengage jaws with a corridor and a trapdoor, just think of a reference and is called Lordran.

[has obtained Terror]

And so sure is Metroid Dread itself, such faith is in the unique design exercise representing each of its levels, nor did he hand shakes when raising again the bet and gamble with a new genre and a priori very strange bedfellow: the survival horror, in this case the tireless pursuer side - total defenselessness - death first contact. A particularly complex recipe of land that had every chance of ending up in frustration, JoyCons estrellados and trial and error of the worst ilk, but nevertheless Metroid Dread nails with perfect score on seven occasions. Thus Emmis work, persecutors robotic without pity or feeling any structuring progression at least in appearance and transform every area under its control in a triple puzzle: how to journey it without being caught, how to locate that device to overload our cannon to transferring its armor and how to use the land itself to prepare the coup de grace.

And it works, go yes. It works because it prints the game of two totally differentiated rhythms, because it leaves space to the calm exploration and later tightens the accelerator of the pure survival, and because again the mapping are stellar. Because looking for an exit at full speed and saved by tenths of a second is strangely addictive, and because it avoids falling into repetition plating a new skill in our persecutor and absorbing our own gadgets, playing with camouflage, with climbing, With moving surfaces or with the same temperature so you always feel new and threatening.

And it also works because despite being the star novelty understands that it should not be loaded with all the protagonism, and leaves room for traditional headers (complicated, prepare to die a pile) and for an intentionally misleading structure: reach the third EMMI more or less At the time and a half of departure it seems an unequivocal sign that the game is not going to mark a very dilated chrono at the end, but not everything is what it seems. Again I would like to avoid spoiler, but more or less half it is clear that Metroid Dread wants to tell us more things.

[You have obtained answers]

And that s why I will not be the one who reveals them, but remember that the game takes a five to the back for something. Which is a more chapter of history, that continues the things where we leave them and that has enough entity to answer questions of almost two decades ago, although in this sense a small flip of ears: at a playable level the rhythm of Metroid Dread is impeccable, but interrupt the progression of the game more or less at six o clock to download about the player one of the infodumps more little subtle that are reminded is not exactly an elegant solution. Nor is it a particularly serious sin, because what is concerned and because from then on the argument takes a certain speed, although without losing sight of that here the LORE is only an extra: that Metroid is its history, yes, but above all It is agility, reflections, challenge, discovery and doors that refuse to open. What is the excitement of discovering an improved jump or a new type of suit and see how the possibilities of the map explode, and also to wind the brains looking for an exit until that moment comes when we feel geniuses. Metroid Dread, Metroid 5, Metroid de Mercury Steam, does all this better than anyone, although the weight of its own story can make it difficult to give with a final assessment. Perhaps, as it often happens to Samus itself, to find it, we have to come back over our steps.

[You are ready. Return at the beginning. Now read only the first paragraph of this text]

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