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dread
Signed-off-by: Christine Dodrill <me@christine.website>
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title: "Metroid Dread: A Study on Perfection"
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date: 2021-10-10
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series: reviews
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tags:
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- metroid
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---
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[I'm gonna try to avoid spoilers in this article, however I realize that some
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people may consider something a spoiler that other people will not. For the
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things I'm not sure about, I'm gonna put them in little drop-down things that
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look like this: <br /><br /><details><summary>Spoliers here, click to
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expand</summary><br />These are some words that I'm just making up to fill space
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so you can see what the `<details>` tag looks
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like.</details><br />TL;DR though: 10/10 must-play Switch
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game. All the screenshots in this article were taken from the beginning of the
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game (Artaria and Cataris)](conversation://Cadey/enby)
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This blog is normally about technology, so of course you'd expect me to start
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writing about video games that I enjoy. This game hit me a bit different.
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Metroid Dread is a name that has been up there with Half-Life 3 and Starcraft
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Ghost in the genre of mythical games that have been rumored about for years but
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we've heard next to no updates about in a long time. I had given up on the idea
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of seeing it happen. I thought that the Metroid series was dead.
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Metroid games have always been commercial flops as far as the numbers go. The
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games have never really been advertised that well and usually show up on
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consoles at the end of their lifespans. However at the same time, those games
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end up _defining_ a standard for gamefeel and adventure platforming that have
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made a resounding impact on the industry as a whole. Metroid is half of the
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reason why the genre is called Metroidvania, and a lot of it has to do with how
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it carefully guides the player through the game. Metroid Dread is a masters
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level class in how to show the player how to do things without explicitly
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telling them how to do them.
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This game is dripping with color, detail and brilliance in every room. Samus is
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fluid and deadlier than ever. Movement flows from one jump into the next. The
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game targets 60 FPS and it consistently hits it at nearly all times. The enemies
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will hit you and it will be your fault for not getting out of the way.
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[The following is technically a spoiler, however it's probably better that you
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have this information if you get stuck at the entrance to Cataris. Hopefully you
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won't get stuck there for 2 hours.](conversation://Cadey/coffee)
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<details>
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<summary>Cataris entrance assistance</summary>
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Throughout my 16 hour playthrough, I only ran into one part that you could
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really consider "bad". After I got to the entrance to Cataris, I got stuck and
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had to run around the small slice of the world I could access for a long time
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until I realized you just had to shoot to the left of the elevator. They really
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should have made at least one of those blocks obviously breakable.
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There is a subtle camera movement to telegraph it, but I feel that it's not
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obvious enough. That may have been the point though.
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</details>
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The EMMI are legitimately scary enemies to "fight". They will hunt you down.
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Each EMMI has its own gimmick related to the power you get.
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["fight" may be the wrong word here, it's less of a fight and more of a "run
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away and hide" simulator, however yeah I guess technically it's a fight because
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you _do_ have a 10 frame window or whatever to escape from the EMMI's grasp. It
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feels awesome when you land that hit.](conversation://Cadey/enby)
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<details>
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<summary>EMMI related spoilers</summary>
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Morph ball is usually one of the first powerups you get in a Metroid game.
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Morph ball is a mid-game item in Dread and you have to kill an EMMI to get it.
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All the time the game will taunt you with all these neat powerups and places
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you could go if you just had morph ball. It's effective. It made me remember
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about them.
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The speed booster EMMI comes at you at a speed of a bajillionty miles per hour
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and its stun window is probably frame-perfect. I'm not sure. It's really tight
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though. You barely have time to react.
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The EMMI are defeated by grabbing a powerup from a "Central Unit", and the
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miniboss battles with the "Central Units" scream Mother Brain. Was Mother
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Brain a "Central Unit" that went rogue? What on earth were the Chozo _doing_?
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It feels so satisfying to land the final hit on an EMMI with the Omega
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Blaster. Sometimes you can land a hit mid-air, which looks swag as all hell.
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The music in EMMI zones calls back to the creepy sounds of Metroid 2. Not the
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remake, classic Gameboy Metroid 2. The ambient music from the overworld stops.
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There are no enemies in the EMMI zone, only automated patrol robots. One false
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move and the patrol robots snitch on you to the EMMI.
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I could go on for a while. It's done really well.
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</details>
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<details>
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<summary>Boss spoilers</summary>
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The boss battles are amazingly done. The Chozo Soilder boss gets reused a bit
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much, however it ends up teaching you how to do boss fights damageless. I'm
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sure that most if not all of the bosses end up having cheese strats (you can
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oneshot flappy bird by shinesparking directly into his face).
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Kraid was such a throwback fight. I don't really know how to go into more
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details.
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There were underwater fights and finally a battle in the sky. Everything was
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done so perfectly.
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</details>
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I have been waiting to play this game since it was rumored in 2005. It became a
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meme in the Metroid community for a mythical game like Half Life 3 or Duke Nukem
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forever. People had given up hope. There were worries that Dread would end up
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like Duke Nukem Forever: a hollow shell of its concept that would never really
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live up to the hype. I thought the day that this game would come out would never
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happen. Once I saw the words "Metroid 5" on the screen in E3 though, I instantly
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preordered it. I didn't need to be convinced. Dread was real.
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It is now in my hands. I have played it. I loved almost every moment of it (save
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the mishap in Cataris). I can't wait to see how speedruns develop for it. I bet
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that speedrunners are going to crack this as wide open as Super Metroid has
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been. There's already been some sequence breaking and boss cheeses found.
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If you are on the fence with this game, go for it. It is one of the best games
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I've played in years. I have heard that it works perfectly in certain programs
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that let you play Switch games on PC. But really, buy this game if you can
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afford to. It is easily worth the money. I can't wait to see what's next from
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MercurySteam.
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