Metroid Dread

Almost done with this and it's a bit too much like Samus Returns for me. I wish it played more like Super/Zero/AM2R. For example lategame bosses take off like an energy tank in one hit with some attacks. The boss I'm on now is some weird bee thing that has almost no openings to actually damage it so the fight really drags on unless you let yourself take hits, and I almost can't be arsed to finish the game.

It was really good for the middle 50% or so once you had some items and exploration was more feasible.

Also, waaaay too much EMMI stuff.
I was mega-excited for the game and I did have fun with it, but it has a bunch of things that unnecessarily detract from the overall experience. Maybe it'll flow better on repeat playthroughs but I don't know how much I want to do a repeat playthrough. Still glad it exists at all though.

Bruuce said:

I really dont mind the EMMI parts at all. I think Ive encountered 4-5 of them and that has prob made up maybe 5-10% of the gameplay.

I think last upgrade I got was ice missles. I thought the game was way too easy when I first started with all of the energy/missile refills every 4-5 screens, but yeah now bosses and even some of the trash are chunking me like like 50+% per hit. Took me a few tries on the underwater boss because I didnt know wtf I was doing first few tries.

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Yeah, the tentacle hentai boss didn't make much sense until I noticed there were switches on the walls.

Runnen said:

I died twice to that boss, then I figured you basically just need to dodge the big purple balls it shoots at you and tank the multiple smaller missiles while spamming it with super missiles. After you destroy that form, it turns into another form that you can shoot to make it lose smaller things you can absorb to heal up, so it gets easier, as long as you double-jump over the roaming big thing that floats around the room.

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I'll give the big flying insect another shot tonight, took a break from the game today after a few losses to that boss last night. I'm sure it's doable, but I've also read that it's the toughest boss in the game for most people.

Not gonna drop precise spoilers here without the tag, but I don't really like the direction the story goes in for the last 40% or so. It just seems very...predictable? And the story I wanted to see more of gets kind of dialed back in favor of stuff we've seen already.

I'll stop dumping on the game though, I think it's a strong 8/10 type game. I probably just set my expectations too high.

I defeated the flying bug after a bunch more tries. Main issue was it chunking a full energy tank off of you per hit. Then things got moving again until minutes later when I ran into Ornstein and Smough. That fight was also obnoxious and took a few tries, but I did it. Got the armor upgrade that increases defense, then the next boss...takes off 2, sometimes 3 energy tanks per hit. Lost a bunch of times, tapped out again. Hollow Knight is a great game but it isn't what I play Metroid for,and the exploration keeps grinding to a halt every time a new boss shows up. The late game bosses have some serious power inflation. And apparently the boss I'm stuck on appears 3 more times before the end, each time with more health.

Initially I was gonna replay this immediately after finishing it, then that slowly morphed into "I just want to get it done". Now I'm considering starting the game over and just replaying it back to where I am now. With some experience maybe it'll be a more fun time, and by the time I get back to this boss I'll have the skills needed to win the fight. Or I might just push through and get it done, not sure.

k^M said:

Think I'm on the final boss at this point, and I'd guess 20% of the time in the game has been loading screens after getting caught & failing the QTE on the robots. I think that could be slightly relaxed and not detract from the game play. Got to the point where I hesitated using the teleport/elevator/train between worlds cause the load times can be somewhat noticeable even if they did Spiderman it up a bit where its usually a different variety of visuals.

I can pickup and play hollow knight pretty much over and over, this I don't know when I'll replay it. Certainly won't 100% it cause looking at some of those speed run blocks, fucking crazy. Only point I thought I got locked and would have to restart was after the world freezes and turns out there was 1 hidden block to get past doors I couldn't find for a good 30 min of running around. That kinda thing is really annoying.

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LiquidDeath said:

I don't understand why Nintendo felt the need to get gimmicky with the bots and the blocking bullshit. Literally everyone simply wants tight controls and classic gameplay. If you are going to fuck with something than do it with itemization. It is mind-blowing that games like Ori and Hollow Knight are better Metroid games than this one, especially with how long they've had to dream up whatever they wanted to do with the next side-scroller.

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Vorph said:

The headscratcher for me is why they made it such a ballbuster to backtrack. Like I missed the very first energy tank + the 1/4 tank right by it because I died after getting it and then accidentally went down one of the many one-way paths instead of going straight back to it after I reloaded. Like 4+ hours later I STILL cannot go back to the beginning to get my tanks. Especially frustrating since I've had 3/4 of one for quite a while now. I don't think I've ever played a metroidvania that managed to be so confusing to navigate while actually being completely linear. I like the game but I keep waiting for each new upgrade I get to finally let me go where I want, but every time I get one the path backwards is blocked by the one I need to go find next....

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All of these address problems I've had too. Got stuck 2 or 3 times in the game and every time it was because I missed one particular block that was the only way forward. Also all of those times would have been avoided if I got into the habit of just blasting everything. Best advice I can give someone new to this game is to shoot freaking everything, every wall, etc.

And yeah, I too have been waiting for that next upgrade that'll let me finally break the world open and start getting all the loot. Instead it's brick wall after brick wall. There are ways to sequence break, and like the boss difficulty, pros can circumvent a lot of these problems. However for semi-mediocre players like me, it ain't easy.

I'm surprised that this game isn't as good as Ori or Hollow Knight because I really expected Metroid to come back and "show them how it's done". It's getting rave reviews across the board though. I'd give it a very respectable 8 out of 10 myself with the caveat that it isn't that fun until you're really good at it. However I'm seeing people giving it 10's, calling it the game of the year, etc etc and I don't really get it.

I took a few days off from it, but tomorrow I'm picking it up and making a go for the endgame. Got 7 bosses left. One way or another this game is getting plowed.

I bet Dread's sales will be half of what they should have been, in part because of Kotaku and PC Gamer doing this shit.

Video is ReviewTechUSA, not Kotaku