Episode 124 - Imagine Skin - Metroid Dread

You have been stripped of most abilities. You might call it podcast amnesia. Welcome back to the podcast! Today, we’re going to be talking about Metroid Dread, the 5th mainline 2D Metroid game, which is admittedly a lot of qualifiers. Dread picks up following the events of Fusion, a game that was nearly 19 years old at Dread’s release, and carries over its story elements as well as some of the design that made Fusion feel different from the games that preceded it. For example, Dread feels like a more linear experience than previous Metroid games, with less of an emphasis on exploration, but it does so much more with its design, guiding players with a much more invisible hand than Fusion was able to do, and making navigation feel much less daunting than in classic Metroidvanias. Instead, Dread shifts its difficulty more into combat, which is more fluid than its ever been, leaning partially on the newer hardware it’s been released on, but also because you are given a host of new abilities both for movement and combat, chief amongst them being the counter, a mechanic developed in the remake of Metroid II on the 3DS, and put to use again here to great effect. This counter mechanic, as well as the speed and fluidity of the combat, shifts the focus of gameplay from careful exploration and resource management into a more run and gun experience, with the exploration being relegated to uncovering upgrades and hidden paths. While some may lament the loss of a more traditional Metroid experience, it does still provide a mix that keeps the feeling of exploring an unknown planet while smoothing out the frustrating experiences and focusing more on player execution. We’re going to be talking about abstraction in level design and how this can better immerse the player in the game, combat difficulty and boss fights, and we discuss how Samus has over time become a cocktail of genetics. Thank you for joining us again this week! Metroid, being one of the genre naming franchises of “Metroidvania” style games, has largely existed on its classic catalogue, with many years between releases and spinoff games and remakes holding down its presence in the gaming landscape, so to get a new game with comparatively little time between announcement and release was a pretty exciting thing for fans, most notably, me. How do you think Dread handled the franchise’s tropes and design sensibilities? Was it what you were looking for, or do you still pine for another game like Super Metroid? Let us know down in the comments or over on our Discord server where we talk about the games. Next time, we’ll be playing… something. We’re opening up the suggestions to the listeners for next month, so check back in to find out what we were recommended, or drop a suggestion of your own in the comment section!