Metroid Dread

This week on Zero Punctuation, Yahtzee reviews Metroid Dread.

Transcript
Metroid Dread is, sadly, not a game about space bounty hunter Samus Aran ill-advisedly putting out a vanity reggae album, but a new Metroid game on the Switch that leans a little bit more into the space horror theme that lurks at the bottom of a lot of Metroid games like all the tasty, cheesy bits in an ineptly-tossed salad. It's also a direct sequel to Metroid Fusion on the GBA, but you kids of today probably won't appreciate that much. "GBA? What's that stand for? 'Granddad's Babbling Again'?" No, you little bastards! Game Boy Advance, a significant handheld in the annals of gaming. "Look, we don't want to hear any more about what kind of advances you've been making on gay boys, Yahtz, least of all annal-related ones." BAH! How could you nipple-chafers understand the significance of a new Metroid game that actually adds to the canon and isn't a prequel, or a remake, or an interquel, or something best cauterized out of memory like Metroid: Other M?

But since it is building on the plot developments in Metroid Fusion, you might be confused by a few things if you aren't up to speed; most significantly, the fact that you don't fight any Metroids in Metroid Dread. The main threat is The X, the shapeshifting parasites that Metroid Fusion introduced, and which are slightly hard to take seriously because they're little, colored blobs that look like they'd be cast as the baddies in an animated toothpaste advert. Anyway, Samus Aran goes off to explore a mysterious, labyrinthine planet - partly because of something to do with The X, and partly because that's all she ever fucking does - and predictably enough, something kicks the shit out of her and nicks all her power-ups, so she has to start the long journey of gathering them all back up, stripped down to her underpants like she forgot to bring her P.E. kit to school.

But you know how it is with tentpole Nintendo franchises; they're a slave to routine: Mario fights Bowser, Link fights Ganondorf, Samus Aran fights her own urge to self-harm every time she finds another secret pickup she needs the fucking power bomb to get. So obviously, it’s a 2D Metroidva-- well, just "Metroid", I guess, with Lava Land, Ocean Land, Jungle Land, Boring Land, etc., gradually opened up by acquiring the same power-ups as always: Varia suit, grapple beam, space jump. Samus gets to call her thing a "space jump" because she's from the space region of space, for everyone else is just a sparkling double-jump.

But for every nine thousand established things a Metroid game has to have, it's entitled to one new thing, and that's where that lean into horror I mentioned comes in; each area features a big, chasey robot what you can't damage, and which insta-kills you if it catches you. I say "insta-kill"; you can escape it if you pass a blatantly unfair quick-time event, that's like having to kill a fly with the swatter taped to your elbow. You're supposed to stealth around the robot, but it moves so quickly and unpredictably that there's a lot of frustrating trial and error, and if I dread these moments, it'd only be in the sense that I dread walking through a park full of small groups of very judgmental teenagers while wearing my silliest hat, if it weren't for the slightly disquieting way the robot holds Samus down and jams its big probe inside her.

You defeat each robot by finding a room with a giant spunk-beam of death that can only be used once, because it has to turn itself over and go back to sleep for a while before it's ready for another round. "Oh, look at Yahtzee seeing sex metaphors everywhere just 'cos the main character's a lady, and he's about as woke as a sloth on nitrous oxide!" Hey, don't tell me this series has never played up the "lady" thing; look at Metroid: Other M, or to give it its more accurate title, "Babies: Other Babies". Even in Metroid Dread, the power armor around Samus' thighs has gotten noticeably double-C "thicc", shimmying those child-bearing hips back and forth like two basketballs on a swing. Samus must be getting on in years by now, right? Wonder if she has ever thought about settling down and giving birth to something horrifying.

Sorry, was I doing a game review? Shit! Better review the game, then! If you like 2D Metroid games, then you'll like this, because it's largely just another 2D Metroid, isn't it? Explore the map, shoot the things. It was a little irritating having to keep in mind the various combinations of buttons that make the beams work, especially with those Joy-Con shoulder buttons designed for people whose fingers don't occasionally get mistakenly covered in sauerkraut by absent-minded New Yorkers, but isn't that largely my fault for not having gotten around to paying kindly Uncle Nintendo another seventy bucks for a Pro Controller that doesn't stick drift like a glue tanker on a wet road-- Jesus Christ, when did I write that?

The process of navigating the maze and developing your map-reading skills is broken up by the odd exciting boss fight against a giant horror and several considerably less exciting ones. It is a bit disappointing how much Metroid Dread repeats itself in the boss department; firstly, there's the non-consensual probing robots that are all dealt with in the exact same way, only with increasingly better detecting ability, because that power armor is only making Samus' armpit stank get worse over time. Then in the latter half of the game, there's an armored dude with a spear, who either keeps showing up in different-colored armor with exactly the same attacks and counters, or has a lot of twin siblings and their mother had to keep track of them with coordinated outfits.

I'm also not a fan of how the story's told. It's like Metroid Dread has two stories: the one that starts and ends things, and the one you're in for all the rest of the time. The dude who duffs up Samus at the beginning and reduces her to naught but her bottom layer of power armor she normally only wears when house-painting only shows up again right at the end for the final boss fight. Although, his story does get touched upon at roughly the midpoint, when we stumble upon a character who might as well be named "Exposition Q. Dumpington", who stands there in an otherwise empty room and explains the entire plot to Samus in one ten-minute monologue. I know it's hard to work plot exposition into an action game without killing the pace, but there were more elegant ways than this! What, was this Skeksis-looking motherfucker waiting here the whole time, rehearsing his speech? It was like going into a men's bathroom in a classy nightclub, and the attendant wants to stand next to you while you're pissing and explain the entire history of urinal technology.

Meanwhile, the rest of the game is telling us a story about Samus having to deal with the constant threat of terrifying sexual assault robots that escalates as the robots become more and more dangerous, before - and I guess if you don't want to hear a spoiler, now is the time to cover your ears, run screaming out of your house, and get run over by a bus - the last of the killer robots just gets punked in a cutscene and kicked out of the way so the final boss can take over the plot. Just feels like we've been spending this whole time fending off these robots' advances, and then that whole aspect of the game gets cheated out of a proper payoff.

I'm not asking that they line up all the robots with canes and top hats and have them do a song-and-dance routine... or maybe I am, thinking about it. It'd grab headlines, wouldn't it, Nintendo? Probably stay in the news cycle longer than casting Chris Pratt as Mario did.

Addenda

 * A dreadful dreadful man: Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw
 * I get that Samus was raised by bird people and they gave her the power armour, what I don't get is why it's got the colour scheme of a Christmas cracker
 * And Aran, Aran so far away