Metroid Dread: The Game Jon Simpson Waited 19 Years For | Winter Spectacular 2021

“Ok, so what would be a good name an attachment that lights up your game boy screen?”
”The Worm Light?”
”Terrible. I LOVE IT!”

19 years is a really long time. 19 years ago, I was seven years old, sitting in the back of my parents’ car on the drive home from my grandparents’ house playing Metroid Fusion on my original GameBoy Advance. You know, the one without a backlight. I had one of those weird, squiggly overhead lights that plugged into the link cable port on the console. I had played and loved Super Metroid when I was 5 years old, so I was unbelievably excited for Fusion. I didn’t know anything about it other than that it was the sequel to Super Metroid, which on its title screen was called Metroid 3, while Fusion labelled itself Metroid 4. What I didn’t expect was for Fusion to be more tense than its predecessor. Being stalked by the SA-X, a replica of Samus at her most deadly, was terrifying to seven-year-old me. Playing on the dark cramped little screen in the backseat only added to the ambience, and is a memory that has stuck with me for nearly two decades.

Over those two decades, the Metroid series hasn’t quite been absent, but there has been a noticeable lack of games, especially when compared to Nintendo’s other tentpole series like Mario and Zelda. Sure, we’ve gotten Metroid Prime sequels, remakes of older games like Zero Mission and Samus Returns, some spin-offs of varying quality, and...Other M...but there hasn’t been a true, actual sequel driving the series forward since Fusion released in 2002. So when the words “Metroid 5” showed up on my TV during Nintendo’s E3 presentation back in June, I lost it. And when the title Metroid Dread (a codename that was first rumoured to be in development 16 years ago) was revealed halfway through the trailer, I became inconsolably jubilant. Three-quarters of my time on this Earth has happened since the previous mainline game, and once I had calmed down a bit, worry began to creep in. How could anything live up to the expectations that I’d built up in that time?

Zero Mission’s art has aged better than most wines.

Thankfully, I didn’t have to wait long for my answer. Five months later (a comparatively short period of time which itself felt like a decade and a half), I had the game in my hands. And thankfully, it did not disappoint. Not only does Metroid: Dread incorporate classic Metroid elements like an isolated and tense atmosphere, it also pushes the series forward. The E.M.M.I. segments where Samus is stalked by nearly-indestructible robots are legitimately tense, and add a compelling wrinkle to the familiar exploration that the series is known for. 

You ever step back and just find yourself muttering under your breath, “Damn… Samus is so cool.”

Controlling Samus is also quicker and more responsive than ever before and immediately feels good. The combat is more varied and exciting than ever, and even takes cues from action games like Devil May Cry in some later fights. Also, the story is largely a return to form for the Metroid series. In the older games, the story was largely in the background, a light touch which added a lot, unlike ...Other M . The same is mostly true in Dread, but there are some plot twists later in the story that call back to older games in overt ways that genuinely shocked me. The twists were made even better by the fact that they changed the gameplay going forward as well, which as I said in my Axiom Verge 2 review earlier this year, is my favourite kind of video game plot twist. 

Finally, Samus is back to being the character I remember her being, which is a welcome return after her arguably offensive and misogynistic portrayal in Metroid Other M. She’s quiet and collected, but caring as well in smaller, more nuanced ways. Developer Mercury Steam has done a very good job of communicating so much character through her body language rather than explicitly through dialogue. And the end of the game offers revelations and a conclusion to the story that began in 1986 with the original Metroid. 

Hope to see you again… Soon.

Series director Yoshio Sakamoto has stated that he would like the series to continue, so I am very interested to see where Metroid goes from here. Considering Dread is the fastest selling Metroid game ever, the prospect of future games is more likely, and exciting, than ever.

I’ve gone on far too long (sorry, Ollie), so I’ll conclude by saying that Metroid Dread is the best game I’ve ever waited 19 years for, and is undoubtedly my personal game of the year.

See you next mission.