Many Objections, Lady; or, Metroid Dreadful

Like every other longtime Metroid fan, I've been waiting nearly two decades for a proper sequel to Metroid Fusion. When Metroid Dread became available for preorder, I went to great lengths to secure a copy of the Special Edition, and I began a hunt for the game's ever-elusive amiibo. I steered clear of previews, reviews, and anything else that might influence my opinion or spoil anything before I had a chance to play through the game. Once my copy arrived, I played as long and often as possible. If you didn't know any better, you might think I was excited about Dread.

The thing is, I was dreading Dread. Each new installment in the last 15 years has caused me to question more and more what Metroid is, where it's going, and whether or not I still belong in the fandom. Whereas the original Metroid, Metroid II, Super, Fusion, Zero Mission, Prime, Prime 2, and even Pinball are all games I love, like, or at least respect enough to have played a minimum of three times each—making sure to clear Hard Mode (if available) and get all the items and see all the endings—I haven't bothered beating any of the more recent games more than once. If I haven't truly enjoyed Metroid since the GameCube era, then how much longer can I complain about new installments before giving up on the franchise?

You may have noticed the title of this post.

I can no longer consider myself a Metroid fan.

Get comfortable; this is gonna be a long one.

I've played bad games before, and I've played good games that aren't my style. Dread, somehow, is both. If you strip away everything but the puzzles and upgrades, Dread has the foundation for a solid Metroid experience. However, every other aspect of the game contributes to a Metroid experience that I never want to repeat. I'm not playing Dread again, and based on what it tells me about where the franchise is headed, I'm not playing any future Metroid games, either.

It comes down to four key factors: accessibility, conveyance, difficulty, and storytelling. A fifth factor, which I wasn't expecting to be relevant in a direct sequel to Fusion, exacerbated the problems: not having played Samus Returns first. Until I get to the part where I discuss this fifth factor, I'm going to pretend like Samus Returns doesn't exist, so as not to muddy the waters with information I didn't have when playing Dread.

Major spoilers ahead for Dread, Fusion, and the rest of the Metroid series.

ACCESSIBILITY

There is no excuse for a game released in 2021 to have no customization options whatsoever, save for brightness. I wanted to crank up the music—an essential component of the Metroid experience—which I could barely hear over the sound effects. I wanted to adjust the Free Aim sensitivity so I could actually hit an E.M.M.I. in the face with the Omega Cannon; I had to be extra choosy about where to engage, because my aim kept snapping to odd angles that just missed the target.

I wanted to remap the controls to be logical and comfortable. I can't tell you how many times I got smacked around because I instinctively reached for the wrong button, or because it took me a hair too long to get my finger over to the button I needed. I wanted the option to change the "hold this button" buttons to be toggle switches instead; it's physically tiring to maintain pressure on buttons that aren't where I need them to be, and I had a hard time wrapping my brain around holding and releasing multiple buttons in the right sequence (seriously, taking down an E.M.M.I. was a nightmare).

Adding insult to injury, Dread's control "menu" assumes you're playing with the Switch in your hands, not on a television with a Pro Controller like I did. Having never played a Switch game before, I didn't appreciate the extra effort required to compare my controller against a diagram of a totally different one.

I found myself longing for the ability to toggle upgrades on and off at will, like in Super. When I'm attempting wacky acrobatics involving a series of ledge grabs, I don't want the Morph Ball to automatically roll me into the nooks I'm using as handholds. When I collect Super Missiles, I don't want them to replace my normal missiles entirely; the lower rate of fire forces me to aim every shot carefully, eliminating the option of a wild barrage when there's no time to be accurate. (This, in turn, makes collecting Missile Expansions less exciting—if I can't let loose on the bosses, then I'm never gonna need this much ammo.)

Moreover, I'm colorblind. Dread isn't the first video game to overlook my disability, nor is it the worst offender in the Metroid series (remember the final boss of Hunters?), but it's still disappointing. The map is harder to use than necessary because half the teleporter symbols look the same (why not use colors and shapes?). Unless they're on the same screen together, I can't tell a Charge Beam door from a Power Beam door (which doesn't sound like a big deal until there's an E.M.M.I. closing in and the door isn't opening).

Although I've never been formally diagnosed with OCD, I absolutely have some obsessive-compulsive tendencies. I'm the guy who jumps around the landing site in Super until every block of the map is filled in, including the tiny corners you can barely get into. So you can imagine my horror when discovering how excessively granular the map system is in Dread. Instead of splitting areas into chunks that mirror how much of the map you actually seen on your screen, it uses Samus as a paintbrush to color in the map one pixel at a time. Walk down a hallway that's barely taller than Samus is, and your map of that hallway is incomplete unless you're jumping into the low ceiling while you move. My undiagnosed OCD can't cope with that. It took me ~12.5 hours to reach the final boss, which feels absurd, and filling in my stupid map accounts for too much of that time.

Let me toggle the icons on and off so I can actually see the map. Give me textures instead of bright colors to distinguish water/lava regions from normal regions. Regardless of color-coding, my brain equates "dark vs light" as "unexplored vs explored"; I could never immediately tell what was a room I had fully explored that had water/lava on bottom, and what was a room I had only explored the bottom of. Similarly, I kept mistaking fully explored rooms with lots of platforms for partially explored rooms with shadow regions that just look like platforms. Filling in every inch of the map wasn't just a compulsion; it was necessary to simplify the map enough to make it usable. I've never had this much trouble with a map in a video game.

CONVEYANCE

If you're going to tell me how to play Metroid, give me a dedicated tutorial area that finds a narrative excuse to teach me everything I need to know (eg, Prime). Otherwise, don't pester me with things I could learn from the instruction manual. I don't mind a brief explanation of how to use new abilities as I unlock them (eg, Zero Mission), and I don't mind if gameplay tips are worked into the story somehow (eg, Fusion), as long as the information is communicated in a consistent and minimally intrusive fashion. What I do mind is the kind of scattershot approach taken by Dread.

In lieu of a dedicated tutorial area, the part of Artaria where the game begins is packed with challenges that call on a variety of skills and techniques, with tutorial popups along the way. But the tutorial popups have no rhythm. Dread swings awkwardly between back-to-back tutorial popups and stretches of filler that don't seem to teach anything specific. The path is cluttered with a Charge Beam door and a Morph Ball tunnel that only serve to distract the player. Interrupting the training is a visit to a Network Station, where Adam discusses some game mechanics that aren't immediately relevant. Some abilities (eg, grabbing onto ledges, crouching, wall-jumping) are never explained at all.

The tutorial makes a lot of weird assumptions about what does and doesn't need to be taught. It's not nearly thorough enough to be geared toward brand-new players, yet it provides too much information to be aimed at seasoned Metroid players who just need to know what's new in this installment.

The tutorial popups abruptly cease after defeating the first E.M.M.I. Unlike Super, the Prime games, Other M, and Federation Force, there's no obvious end to the warmup, no cutscene or vast new area making it clear that you're on your own now. (You're never really on your own, though; tutorial popups unexpectedly show up at later points in the game, still with no rhythm or consistency.) This is where I got stuck. Dread had trained me to watch for tutorial popups and not think for myself, so when I found a door I couldn't reach because of a pool of water impeding my movement, I naturally assumed that I wasn't supposed to be here yet—I probably needed the Gravity Suit or something.

Except...I didn't see anywhere else to go. I traveled all the way back to the start in search of another route I'd missed. Nothing. I wandered for what felt like 20 minutes in search of the way forward, until I determined it had to be that door. By complete accident, I blew a hole in the side of the pool, which drained the water and allowed me to proceed.

Here's where my colorblindness came into play again: I physically could not distinguish the destructible rock from the rocks around it. But equally importantly, Dread's messy approach to teaching the player got me thinking the wrong way about the game. When I ran into the same issue with a destructible rock in Burenia, it was because I had started relying on the Pulse Radar to reveal any and all "hidden blocks," which apparently didn't include the one right in front of me. Dread encouraged me to shut off my Metroid instincts and rely on guidance systems that weren't as helpful as they let on.

Perhaps because I had the brightness turned up, or perhaps because of the distracting amount of detail and animation in the backgrounds, I didn't immediately notice that interactive floor panels have a glow around them. Every other Metroid has raised circular platforms that are architecturally distinctive, even before you factor in any special effects; the ones in Dread are square and basically flush with the floor.

It's easy enough to notice a white glow in a dark, empty Network Station; not so much when frantically trying to escape from an E.M.M.I. in a brand-new area I haven't had time to properly explore—one with foggy monochrome backgrounds, a softly pulsating glow that affects the whole screen, glowy white fog rolling off the floor, a white ceiling light faintly illuminating an unassuming machine in the background, and a type of environmental puzzle I haven't been trained to expect. I didn't even spot the suspicious rectangle in the floor below the button—again, too busy looking for an escape route to soak in the scenery.

I also didn't realize until fairly late in the game that a flash of light is the universal signal to use a Melee Counter. The E.M.M.I. survival tutorial says to counter "at the exact moment of the flash," but the regular tutorial only says to counter "at the right moment." Word choice matters. If you're going to bombard me with tutorial popups, don't expect me to look for visual cues that you don't tell me about, especially in a game where basically every special effect is a flash of some sort. I got hurt way too many times trying to counter attacks that, in retrospect, couldn't be countered because they didn't have a flash.

To that end, Melee Counter would really benefit from being presented as an upgrade, not as a basic ability to be taken for granted. Collect it from a Chozo statue early in the game, solve a few puzzles requiring Melee Counter in order to leave the room, make sure the player really understands the mechanic. This would be a perfect place to teach the player that you can shoot and use Melee Counter in cutscenes, too. I, for one, am not accustomed to boss battles with interactive cinematic elements; getting punished for watching instead of playing the cutscenes in the fight with Corpius just made me feel stupid.

DIFFICULTY

Metroid is not a game series I associate with high difficulty. Individual challenges might be tough—Prime 2's infuriating Boost Guardian immediately comes to mind, as do a couple ludicrous item puzzles in Zero Mission—but by and large, the real difficulty is self-inflicted: speedrunning, Hard Mode, 100% completion, even minimalist runs (someday I might resume my 1% run of Fusion that's been stalled for years at the Yakuza boss, a solid two-thirds of the way through the game). As long as I'm simply trying to finish a Metroid game and not being reckless about it, I can usually count on having few or no Game Overs.

I died more times in Dread than I have ever died across every playthrough of every other Metroid game combined.

To be clear, I didn't even finish the game. I gave up on the second form of the final boss, put the Game Card back in the box, and made arrangements to sell it to a friend so I never had to look at it again.

Let's forget for a moment about the accessibility and conveyance issues that made Dread harder for me than it should have been. The gameplay isn't a logical evolution from Fusion; it's a leap toward the likes of Resident Evil, Dark Souls, and other games I have no desire to play. Dread falls outside my gaming comfort zone, and it breaks tradition in unwelcome ways.

Samus starts with three new abilities that weren't in Fusion: Free Aim, Slide, and Melee Counter. The first two are fine—Free Aim offers precision control of an ability that has been expanding since the first game; and Slide is functionally similar to the Morph Ball, almost like an on-demand Boost Ball from the Prime games. Melee Counter, however, is a serious problem for me. I don't play games with quick-time events, and my experience with counter mechanics extends only as far as Timed Hits in Super Mario RPG; our boy Roy in Super Smash Bros. Melee; and the SenseMove, Lethal Strike, and Overblast mechanics in Other M, which I struggled with tremendously and feel are inappropriate for Metroid anyhow.

Melee Counter reduces combat to a series of pass/fail tests: pass, and you do massive damage, earn power-ups, and feel awesome; fail, and you take significant damage, waste a vital opportunity to succeed, and feel like a dunce. Far more often than not, I failed. I wanted to ignore Melee Counter altogether, but that's not really an option; enemies routinely prompt you to use it, boss fights drag on without it, and some bosses require a Melee Counter before they'll die or move on to their next phase. I constantly had to choose between playing how I wanted to play, which usually got me killed, and playing how the game wanted me to play, which usually got me killed.

I cannot tell you how many times I died to random minions—all the self-preservation techniques I've learned over two decades of playing Metroid barely apply when Melee Counter is involved. However, I can tell you that I died to every single boss, repeatedly, often in a matter of seconds. The only exceptions were in two rematches with bosses whose patterns I'd already learned. I could never stay alive long enough to learn a pattern on the first (or second, or third) try; and even once I understood the pattern, the less-than-ideal controls and my ineptitude with Melee Counter usually got the better of me.

Furthermore, I could never tell how close I was to defeating a boss. All the 3D Metroid games give the bosses a health bar, and all the 2D ones since Super have the bosses change color and/or incur visible battle damage as they lose health. Dread does neither. I can't work out a good strategy if I can't gauge the impact of my attacks.

Every time I collected a major upgrade, I backtracked through the whole game in search of any place to use it, in the hopes of finding any advantage to keep me alive longer. This wrecked the pacing, and it also led to frequent disappointment: I kept discovering shortcuts I didn't care about, Missile Expansions I didn't need, Power Bombs I wasn't yet authorized to use, and rooms that suddenly dead-ended in a puzzle immune to sequence-breaking. On the off chance that I might find something useful, I willingly threw myself into lava pits and cold storage rooms without the Gravity Suit. Losing health in awkward increments, rather than continuously like in every other Metroid, usually made these excursions too unpredictable to survive.

It's an unspoken rule that you can only die in Metroid if you run out of energy or, in the case of an escape sequence, time. Nothing short of a planet or space station blowing up around Samus is inherently fatal (except in Hunters, where she can die for something as trivial as falling into an infinite abyss). If Dread were true to its roots, an E.M.M.I. would keep trying to impale Samus at regular intervals, dealing massive damage until the player got the timing right to escape. But no, you have one chance to survive—and the game flat-out tells you that success is virtually impossible (ie, don't even bother; just die).

Needless to say, I died every time I got caught by an E.M.M.I., which was at least once or twice (if not seven or eight times) for every foray into an E.M.M.I. Zone. In contrast with the SA-X encounters in Fusion and the stealth sections in Zero Mission, which are actual puzzles requiring a mix of clever thinking and quick reflexes, the E.M.M.I. Zones in Dread are sandboxes of death, allowing for a wide range of scenarios that aren't necessarily fair or fun. This lack of a curated experience gave the Zones a reverse difficulty curve—the more abilities I unlocked, the less I needed to bother with stealth tactics, so it became progressively easier to bumble through the Zones without demonstrating any real understanding of E.M.M.I. mechanics.

Metroid is all about starting virtually powerless and growing into a nigh-unstoppable juggernaut, with increasingly formidable foes and puzzles challenging your supremacy. The E.M.M.I. don't challenge your supremacy; they make you repeat what is fundamentally the same challenge at various points in the game, but each time, you're a bit less pathetic. You still need the Omega Cannon to win, and all it takes is merely touching an E.M.M.I. to lose, but at least it's gradually easier to keep your distance. And keeping your distance is basically the same challenge in the five E.M.M.I. Zones where it matters, which are all comparable in size and complexity—whatever strategy you use to survive the first one will probably work for the others, and for me, it was mostly trial and error. That's not satisfying, and it's not empowering.

After a while, I became numb to the game's attempts to instill a sense of dread in me. It's hard to feel tense and afraid when I know that whatever's around the next corner will kill me, and that I won't lose any progress because there's a checkpoint at the entrance. The "low health" alarm, which normally inspires panic and lights a fire under me to play better, loses its impact when I hear it all the time (or not at all, because the bosses killed me that quickly). Dread's difficulty interferes with its ability to create the atmosphere I look for in a Metroid game, including a feeling of triumph over adversity. All the power-ups in the galaxy can't save me when practically every boss fight hinges on the pass/fail Melee Counter system I haven't mastered.

For me, Dread was soul-crushing. I can only fail so many Melee Counters before I feel like a failure myself. I can only die so many times before I start dying inside, crushed by my beloved franchise painfully drilling it into me that I'm not good enough to play it anymore. I almost broke down in tears after my fourth or fifth attempt to defeat Experiment No. Z-57, who just wouldn't die. I left each and every play session feeling inadequate, defeated, depressed, and resentful. Dread singlehandedly ruined every day that I played it, and I've continued to live in that negative headspace over the weeks that it's taken me to write this colossal post.

STORYTELLING

Storytelling is more than just dialogue and cutscenes. Everything from music to graphics to level design can help tell a story, evoking an emotional response from the player that makes the game world feel more engaging and believable. Just imagine what the final escape sequence in Super would feel like without the blaring alarm, flashing lights, shaking screen, rampant explosions, and hectic music. Storytelling in Metroid is all about getting the player immersed in the atmosphere. For me, the absolute easiest way to break that immersion is to play fast and loose with story continuity.

Consider the ending of Fusion. Samus knows that the X Parasites are a threat to the entire galaxy and must be destroyed. The Galactic Federation knows that Samus is a threat to their secret plans to control and exploit the X Parasites. Adam, whose duty was to keep Samus locked in a room to prevent her from blowing up the station, is persuaded by Samus to unlock the doors and help her blow up the station, along with a whole planet for good measure. As these two newly minted fugitives escape the destruction, Samus ruminates on what lies ahead: she and Adam will be held responsible; there will be "tribunals and investigations"; and the "beings of the universe" likely won't understand what happened here, despite Adam's optimism that someone will understand.

Consider the beginning of Dread. An indeterminate amount of time after Fusion, but seemingly not long enough for those "tribunals and investigations" to have concluded or for any trust to have been rebuilt among any of the parties involved, Samus is off to find more X Parasites, apparently at the behest of the Federation. By all appearances, it's a perfectly normal mission. Samus is traveling with Adam (and some other AI who seems to be the ship's computer, despite Adam already being the ship's computer) in the same ship that the Federation gave her in Fusion (whose subtle redesign is on the border between "artistic license" and "disregard for visual continuity"). She's getting paid a bounty (which Adam complains is too low, despite knowing full well that Samus would sacrifice her career and herself for any chance to destroy the X Parasites). There are no suspicions, misgivings, or caveats of any kind. Anything about Fusion that might've upset the status quo is never mentioned.

Oh, and this is a small thing, but it says a lot: breaking from the tradition of the previous mainline games, the intro never tells us this is "METROID 5."

To top it off, Samus inexplicably has a brand-new suit that looks radically different from the one she wore in Fusion. I could accept that she acquired a new suit on another adventure between Fusion and Dread. I could also accept that her old suit, which had large pieces surgically removed at the start of Fusion, started to regrow into something new. But I find it hard to accept that enough time has passed for either option to be plausible.

Immediately, the game felt wrong. If you're going to selectively ignore continuity in order to return to business as usual, at least give me a larger time skip than "Just when it all seemed over." I didn't buy it. I couldn't suspend my disbelief.

Then things got worse. Samus is approaching planet ZDR, now she's unconscious, now she's riding an elevator, now she's landing the ship, now the elevator, now the ship, now the elevator, now she's fighting someone, now she's being choked, now she's fine, now let's go shoot stuff. Everything happened so quickly and jarringly that I had to rewatch the intro on YouTube to understand what was going on.

There's no reason to put those events out of order. Showing the outcome of the battle before the battle diminishes the drama. It's extremely confusing to have a series of flashbacks mere seconds into developing what the present looks like, especially when there are flashbacks within flashbacks. All the quick cuts and closeups make things even harder to parse. At one point, a massive blast is fired toward the elevator, but the camera doesn't zoom in or linger long enough to confirm whether our best escape route has been rendered completely unusable—because if it hasn't, then all Samus needs to do is grab the Flash Shift or Speed Booster or Space Jump, cross the broken bridge, and leave.

What's more, Samus's mission is never fully explained. What happens if she encounters the E.M.M.I. or the X? Should she destroy them? Bring them back to the Federation? Report her findings and wait for orders? Obviously it's not important, because once she arrives, her objective quickly changes to, "OK, go home now; this was a mistake." But there's no clear path to the surface—no central tunnel like in Metroid II, no conspicuous statue blocking her path like in Super; nothing that says, "this is the way to victory, but you've gotta do some work before you can pass." The split-second glimpse of Samus landing the ship isn't nearly enough to create a mental picture of where you need to go. All this makes the game feel aimless.

Ostensibly, checking in with Adam at the Network Stations should give the game direction. Except Adam mostly exists to explain game mechanics, reiterate plot details you already know, and tell you what the developers want you to do next. His dialogue is generic, devoid of the bluntness, efficiency, and wisdom that we see in Fusion and (I can't believe I'm acknowledging Other M) Other M. Because Adam never sounds like himself, not even in the intro cutscene, I honestly can't tell where he stopped being Adam and started being Raven Beak—so either their two voices are indistinguishable in the absence of obvious phrases such as "any objections, lady" or "fulfill your destiny," or it was Raven Beak the whole time and he's just the most generic-sounding villain ever, neither of which is indicative of good writing.

What's missing here is any input from Samus. Being attacked by a Chozo is the kind of thing Samus would absolutely have thoughts about. Considering Adam told her to "treat our lost assets with care," Samus should be pressing Adam for a way to disable the E.M.M.I., destroying them only as a last resort. She should definitely be arguing against trying to leave ZDR before determining the truth about the X. For a game that draws so much narrative influence from Fusion, it's striking that there are no exchanges between Samus and Adam or elevator monologues to help develop the characters and conflicts.

Samus's apparent indifference to her mission and circumstances takes away any sense of urgency or character agency. You're fighting bosses and searching for secrets because that's how the game works, not because it seems to matter to Samus. She's not a silent protagonist; she's an absentee protagonist. Compare her elevator rides in Prime, where she's alert and emotive, with her tram rides in Dread, where she's a faceless statue; it never quite feels like Samus is really there.

If Samus isn't there, then I'm not there. Dread kept finding ways to disengage me from the story, disrupt my immersion, and elicit the wrong emotional response from me. Sometimes it didn't even require dialogue and cutscenes to do so.

One of my favorite moments in Metroid II is at the very end of the game, when you finally escape the cramped, deadly labyrinth and return to the peaceful, spacious surface. There's a rush of freedom and relief that comes with seeing the open sky again, Space Jumping into the stratosphere, and knowing you made it out alive. When I reached the surface in Dread (after spending most of the game zig-zagging horizontally instead of really navigating upward like Adam said), I felt...nothing. The surface is just another enclosed area with a ceiling, no different from any other area in the game, and you're there for all of five minutes before being routed back down to Ferenia again.

There is a similar anticlimax before almost every boss fight. I think about my experience with the leadup to Kraid. Gnarly statue at the entrance. Spooky. Ammo refill. Secret path. Save point. Must be something big through this teleporter. Huge excursion that leads to the Varia Suit. Nice! Time for another huge excursion to a bunch of areas I couldn't access before. Is there anywhere I forgot? Lemme try this door. A couple lava pits, destructible walls, and a mix of large and small enemies. Typical stuff. A casual drop down to a door with a worm enemy attached to it. Behind it is...the room I just came from. Well, that was pointless. Oh, wait, there's a tiny shaft I can Morph Ball into. CUTSCENE! TENSION! OH BOY IT'S KRAID!

Compare this with the leadup to Kraid in Super. Gnarly statue at the entrance. Spooky. Weak enemies. A dead end? No, there's a secret path. Strong enemies. Another dead end? No, there's a save point. There must be a secret. Aha! Long hallway with strong enemies, foreboding architecture, a barrage of needles from offscreen, and then it's Kraid, just like in the original game! That wasn't too bad for a first boss. Now there's...another...foreboding room. With an insect-ridden corpse that looks eerily like Samus. And a creepy door guardian who seems to have infested the entire wall. Gulp. On the other side of the door is a dead-end with a pit of thorny spikes. The door locks. I'm trapped. And then...OH NO. BIG Kraid appears.

Dread, I don't care how fancy your graphics are; if you can't build and release tension well, you're not doing Metroid right.

I have several other complaints, but I'll keep them brief. The game starts with an infodump about Metroids and X Parasites, which easily could've been worked into the ensuing cutscene or dialogue elsewhere. I feel weird about the Chozo in this game, who seem less like sci-fi aliens vaguely influenced by the ancient Egyptians and more like stereotypes of Indigenous peoples. After several rewatches, I still don't understand what happened in the last E.M.M.I. cutscene, where Samus's hand starts glowing and the Central Unit just...gives up its power remotely, without a fight? Lastly, I was hoping for a nod to the Metroid project "Dread" referenced in Prime 3, which itself was a reference to an earlier, cancelled iteration of Dread.

Oh, and let's not forget the gigantic plot hole: Raven Beak lures Samus to ZDR to steal her Metroid DNA, right? He defeats her in combat, rendering her unconscious, and then...leaves her to die in any number of ways that might prevent him from extracting her DNA? Like, dude. Carry her to an E.M.M.I. Zone and claim your victory. You are just the worst.

Even the art book that comes with the Special Edition of Dread is deficient in its storytelling. Advertised as "spanning all 5 entries in the 2D Metroid saga" and styling itself as "Mission Logs" on the cover, the art book had me expecting a love letter to the whole series. Except there's no foreword or overarching narrative tying everything together as "Mission Logs." In fact, nothing is even labeled; it's just a collection of images with no context. Dread has a luxurious 128 pages to showcase novel and highly varied art of all kinds; the other four games (plus the two remakes) are crammed into 62 pages and represent a sampling of promotional art only. If you own the North American instruction manuals, you've seen most of this art already. Decent for a casual fan, but disappointing for a diehard. Call it a Dread art book with bonus content; don't get my hopes up.

NOT HAVING PLAYED SAMUS RETURNS FIRST

Normally, when a new Metroid is released, I play it as soon as I can get my hands on it. Samus Returns was the exception. I've been playing fewer platformers in recent years; and I wasn't ready to play another Metroid II remake so soon after playing AM2R (Another Metroid 2 Remake), which reassured me that at least the fans hadn't forgotten what makes Metroid good. By the time I was finally ready to start a new Metroid, preorders had opened for Dread. I opted to keep Samus Returns on the shelf a little while longer, figuring it would be a good palate cleanser if Dread ended up being terrible.

Biggest mistake of my Metroid career.

Given my fondness for the source material, and the fact that there was source material, I assumed Samus Returns would be a return to form—probably not as good as AM2R, but undoubtedly more engaging and Metroid-y than anything since 2006. I still believed that the last several installments were anomalies, despite the same issues cropping up: problematic storytelling (Prime 3, Other M), core elements that don't feel appropriate for Metroid (Hunters, Prime 3, Other M, Federation Force), and uncomfortable control schemes (Hunters, Prime 3, Prime Trilogy, Other M). I held out hope that the next traditional 2D installment would bring balance to the franchise.

What was that line from the Star Wars prequels? "You were supposed to destroy the Sith, not join them"?

Samus Returns isn't a return to form; it's an assertion that Metroid has been evolving this whole time into something I no longer recognize. Prime 3 was the Alpha, Other M was the Gamma, Federation Force was Arachnus, Samus Returns was the Zeta, and Dread was the Omega. I skipped a critical link in the evolutionary chain, one that would've dispelled the notion that Dread should have more in common with Fusion and Super than with the last 15 years of the franchise. When I learned that Samus Returns was made by MercurySteam, the same developer responsible for Dread, I found myself playing it not as a palate cleanser, but as an investigation of how many warning signs I missed.

I missed all of them. Accessibility, conveyance, difficulty, storytelling—every problem I had with Dread and with the last 15 years of the franchise were present in some form or another. If I had realized this sooner, I would've been wary of another Metroid by the same developer. Maybe I wouldn't have played Dread at all, choosing to drift away from the franchise instead of needing to forcibly and painfully cut ties with it. Or, I would've gone in with more accurate expectations, a better handle on Melee Counter, and an understanding that glowy floor panels operate everything. I would've waited to play Dread until tracking down the amiibo—the Reserve Tanks I unlocked in Samus Returns are the only reason I didn't give up on that game, too.

Either way, I'd still be walking away from the franchise. But at least some of the disappointment, confusion, frustration, and outrage that overwhelmed me in Dread would've been shifted to the game that laid the groundwork for it.

MISSION FINAL

In the weeks that it's taken me to write and organize these thoughts, I've been listening to Metroid music that makes me remember why I was ever a fan to begin with. Right now it's the title theme for Prime on 30-minute loop, which I've restarted multiple times now. I've needed to be reminded that Metroid—true Metroid—is a fabulously immersive experience that puts me in the Hi-Jump Boots of an awesome bounty hunter and lets me forget about my world for a while.

Dread, on the other hand, is merely a video game.

Whatever I might like about it—and there are things I like about it—is completely irrelevant in light of its flaws. It's poorly written; sloppily designed; dismissive of tradition; impossible to accept as canon; and inconsiderate, if not downright hostile, toward players like me. I am not the target audience. In fact, I haven't been the target audience for about 11 years, but that's never stopped me from taking a chance on the latest installment. Now I know better. There's only one link left in this evolutionary chain, and that's the Queen Metroid. I don't want to be anywhere near her when she takes the throne.

I'm weary of trying to keep up with a franchise that doesn't want me to be a part of it. I'm content to stick with the dozen Metroid games I still care about, especially the half-dozen of those that inspired me to stay with the franchise for as long as I did. Am I bitter about Dread? Absolutely. But I'm not going to let it ruin my mood or monopolize my time anymore. I've said what I needed to say in order to get the negativity out of my system. I've made peace with the last Metroid I'll ever play.

I am done with Dread, and I am done with this franchise. I won't see you next mission.

[Controls screenshot from the Metroid Dread controls guide by All Gamers. Game Over screenshot from a thread by martian717 on reddit. Metroid Mission Logs photo, Metroid screenshot, and Metroid II screenshot taken by me. All other screenshots taken by me from longplays of Metroid Dread, Metroid Fusion, Metroid: Samus Returns, and Super Metroid by LongplayArchive on YouTube. No Etecoons were harmed in the writing of this post.]