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Game Debate #102: Metroid Dread


Reed Rothchild

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29 members have voted

  1. 1. Rate based on your own personal preferences, NOT HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE

    • 10/10 - One of your very favorite games of all time.
      0
    • 9/10 - Killer fucking game. Everyone should play it.
    • 8/10 - Great game. Easy to recommend.
    • 7/10 - Very good, but not quite great.
    • 6/10 - Pretty good. You might enjoy occasionally playing it.
    • 5/10 - It's okay, but maybe not something you'll go out of your way to play.
      0
    • 4/10 - Meh. There's plenty of better alternatives to this.
    • 3/10 - Not very good.
    • 2/10 - Pretty crappy.
      0
    • 1/10 - Horrible in every way.
      0
    • 0/10 - The Desert Bus of painful experiences. You'd rather shove an icepick in your genitals than play this.
      0
    • Never played it, but you're interested.
    • Never played it, never will.


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I enjoyed Dread.  It stays very true to Metroid formula and lore, so fans of the series can breath a sigh of relief.  The controls have never been tighter, and this allows for some fluid fast game play.  The bosses are killer, tough but after a couple tries you should be able to figure out their patterns.

The visuals are fine, but the art design is a bit dull.  Every area feels kind very samey, space station with a bit a planet stuff going on, nothing too alien.  The soundtrack is forgettable, and that is disappointing with how iconic some of the series music is.

Exploration is handled in an interesting way as the game likes to burn the bridge behind several times, in order to keep in a certain level until you find the correct upgrade.  The map is huge, so this keeps on from straying too far from where you need to be without directly telling you where to go.

I think the larger issue is the collectables are pretty boring and unneeded.  Most are just plus missiles, which you never run out of (even at a boss since bosses drop them like candy), or the rare energy tank (which are now split into 1/4ths), or the super bombs (which is the last upgrade you get).  It felt like it wasn't even worth tracking these down because by the time the game really opens up and allows you to go off the rails and explore, you already have the screw attack which one or two shots every normal enemy, so forget shooting and bombing, just keep endlessly jumping and spinning.  I know they want to stick by the old standards, but if you were able to discover and play around with some different hidden weapon or armor loadouts, that would have made exploration more rewarding.

I guess I’ve mastered the claw grip, because I didn’t have trouble with the controls.

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As a Metroid game it's a pretty big disappointment, but it's well enough made that I can't make myself give it lower than 6/10.

The movement mechanics are well implemented, though the forced analog control for a 2D game can be annoying, it gets away with it fairly smoothly, and the game generally feels more responsive than a lot of older Metroid games.

The bigger issues is in the overall design of the game, but I've gone about it in the past, so I'll just repeat the essence of it, that it feels very pointless to design a game as a "metroidvania" style game, and then not ever reward the player for exploring. It's almost a direct antithesis to Super Metroid, which on the other hand is a masterpiece of a game.

Edited by Sumez
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Very good, enjoyed it a lot last year. A little bland, visually, and it's kinda been-there-done-that in terms of the overall game design. Good fun and a decent challenge tho, probably a 7 out of ten seems fair, maybe even a little too harsh, but no way I'm giving it an 8.

7.5

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I'm part of the 8 group, though that comes with an asterisk of sorts.

The game I think both deserves higher yet also lower, so it's kind of a somewhat middle ground.

The game has some issues with some absurd yo-yo difficulty with the sub-bosses and some bosses which is jarring to say the least.  Some of them require having the right personal levels of timing and capabilities to do some high tier multi-button direction kung fu level of work to survive what should be a more basic sequence had the design been done more smartly.

The lame underwater tentacle boss comes to mind, but also the obscenely bad/annoying final sub-boss before the final boss sequences.  Some parts of the game are just naturally well done and nicely challenging, yet you hit these moments, walls of sorts, where the control sequence mashing stuff is hell between directions, a few buttons, etc done in some DDR like succession and it sucks.

If there wasn't a way to bypass the one boss (tentacles) going another direction I'd have put that game down early on due to that shitty design.  Due to that I'd be happier slapping it with a 6 or lower perhaps as it's just disjointed, jarring, and utterly maddeningly annoying.  Yet then you have the general stage design, creatures, most bosses and sub-boss fights, where the game is a real pleasure and keeps you wanting to go and go some more, it's amazing... had the crap parts got knifed out I'd give it a 9 easily.

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I haven't bought it or tired it yet.  I want to give it a shot, but based on what I've seen, I'm not sure that I will be super into it.  It's weird, Super Metroid is one of my favorite games of all time, but I've never been able to get into any other game in the series.  Zero Mission was close, but I've still never fully completed it and I never felt it had the same impact as Super.

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9 hours ago, TDIRunner said:

I haven't bought it or tired it yet.  I want to give it a shot, but based on what I've seen, I'm not sure that I will be super into it.  It's weird, Super Metroid is one of my favorite games of all time, but I've never been able to get into any other game in the series.  Zero Mission was close, but I've still never fully completed it and I never felt it had the same impact as Super.

You may be better off, I'm kind of similar on the 2D/2.5D stuff from that.  One was special being new, but aged horribly without a map unless you had a magazine int he day.  M2 was kind of a dog, unique, but had unique annoyances and again, needed a map even more as everything was too samey with no color.  Super made the franchise, they realized it over the years, that's why when they did come around to bring the original up to snuff with Zero Mission, which they largely did, it still lacked the desirability of the SNES game, but damn it was and still is the closest to do so.  Fusion nannied you far far too much and had a lot of really dumb balancing issues over basic damage.  #5 Dread improved a lot on Fusion, but it also got into the bad balance and button kung fu issues though dragging it down from a potential #3 spot to me.  Samus Returns on 3DS I could not get into it, ti was even more clingy, button juggling, and also forced mechanics too or you're just eat it basically making it a gimmick roll.

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  • 5 months later...
Events Team · Posted

I think I missed this one because I intend to play it but still haven't got after it.  So I'm in the haven't-played-but-interested camp.  Maybe I'll ask for it for Xmas. 🤔

I assume it's good though.  There's not really any bad 2D Metroid games.  Mildly interested in the 3D offerings but I have a hard time getting into 3D games these days.

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