The Nintendo Switch has had many genre-defining games. From “The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild,” with its expansive open world, to “Super Mario Odyssey,” with its intuitive controls. Now with the release of “Metroid Dread” on October 8th, the Switch now has another groundbreaking title, this time in the 2D platform adventure genre. “Metroid Dread” had been rumored for well over 15 years. In other “Metroid” games that weren’t a part of the core timeline, they would tease that, “Project Dread is nearing completion.” Keep in mind that that was said over 13 years ago. Shortly after “Metroid Dread” was announced, Nintendo aired a short interview with the game’s creator Yoshio Sakamoto, in which he talked about the long history of this game.
“Actually, the idea for Metroid Dread first came up about 15 years ago; however we gave up on the idea at the time because we felt the technology back then just couldn’t properly bring the concept to life,” Sakamoto said. “We did have a chance to try again after that, but we felt like we still couldn’t create the game as originally imagined so we ceased development again at that point.”
After a couple of years, when Nintendo felt like the technology was up to snuff, they partnered up with “Mercurysteam” to co-develop “Metroid Dread”. The plot of “Metroid Dread” boils down to this: You, the player, are in the boots of the galaxy’s most infamous bounty hunter, Samus Aran. You receive an urgent distress call from planet ZDR, where a deadly disease (the “X parasite”) previously thought to have gone extinct still resides. Being the best candidate to deal with the disease, you blast off to planet ZDR, only to find out it was a trap! As soon as you land, a mysterious soldier engages in combat, leaving you with “physical amnesia,” losing all your past abilities and waking up far from your ship. From there, your life depends on escaping this planet filled with all sorts of bizarre creatures.
Before you flew out to planet ZDR, the Galactic Federation sent out seven “E.M.M.I” (Extraplanetary Multiform Mobile Identifier) Robots to observe the X parasite. Shortly after arriving at ZDR, the E.M.M.I Robots cut communication. As Samus shortly finds out after roaming around the planet, the E.M.M.I are now no longer friendly, whatsoever. If you enter an “E.M.M.I Zone,” you best be prepared for the chase of your life. You can’t do anything to stop these robots, all you can do is run and hide. These E.M.M.I zones are by far the highlight of the game. They are able to bring out raw fear in a video game unlike any other in its genre. And this is what the most magical part about “Metroid Dread” is, the atmosphere. Horror games are really just jump-scares, but this game is able to have the player fear not just impending doom, but dread the events that will happen hours from the present. The environment is able to create such a mysterious vibe, for example, in almost every zone you can see a future boss in the distance for only a couple of seconds before the creature bounds away.
Almost everything about this game is perfect. The bosses are challenging and the movement is the best it has been in all of “Metroid” history. In fact, this game is definitely going to be the best selling “Metroid” game out there. The ending of this game marks the end of one of the biggest story arcs in the “Metroid” series, but you’ll have to play it yourself to see what it is. Game of the year 100%.