Metroid Dread review – a sublime return for a Nintendo icon
It has been, long-suffering fans will not need reminding, some years since Metroid’s last proper outing. How long exactly depends who you ask; four years have passed since Mercury Steam’s solid remake of series curio Metroid 2, eleven since Team Ninja’s action-oriented and highly divisive Other M that some would rather forget, and it’s been just shy of two decades since Metroid Fusion, the last original 2D adventure and the game to which Metroid Dread acts as a direct sequel.
Metroid Dread review
- Publisher: Nintendo
- Developer: Mercury Steam
- Platform: Played on Switch
- Availability: Out October 8th on Switch
For all that, though, it’s not as if Metroid’s ever really been away. Indeed, in many ways Yoshio Sakamoto’s series has been inescapable in recent years, the Metroidvania genre cast partly in its likeness reaching near ubiquity thanks to the likes of the sumptuous Ori, the melancholic, hard-edged Hollow Knight or the perfectly pitched pixel charm of Axiom Verge. How exactly can Nintendo and Mercury Steam make up for that prolonged absence, whilst making sure Metroid remains relevant to an audience that’s gorged on its imitators?
One way is to ensure it’s as lavish a production as possible. Metroid Dread is a project first conceived and teased in the immediate aftermath of Metroid Fusion – passing mention of it was even made deep within the text logs of Metroid Prime 3 – until Sakamoto put it on hold, waiting on the technology to fulfil his vision of a more fear-filled take on the series. It’s achieved that – and how – with what is somehow the first HD take on the series, a 2D adventure that’s told with frequently astounding triple-A spectacle. Metroid Dread is akin to Retro Studio’s Donkey Kong Returns series in that way, its side-on action superimposed on a 3D world dense with detail and ambience, only that character and detail is here serving a different, icier purpose.
This is a sumptuous thing, the planet of ZDR which Samus embarks on in her ongoing pursuit of the X parasite providing the backdrop to what amounts to one of the finest looking games on the Switch. There are abandoned laboratories lined with partly-assembled bots, whale-sized corpses opened-up on autopsy tables and dark, sparking corridors that connect caverns brimming with lava, all gloriously lit and moodily conveyed. Perhaps the finest praise I can lay upon Metroid Dread’s world is that, in atmosphere and splendour, it’s easily the measure of Super Metroid’s Zebes or Metroid Prime’s Tallon IV – no mean feat, really.
