
Metroid Dread hasn't even been out for a week yet, but some of the skills we're seeing even at this early stage are mightly impressive.
If you've been playing the game yourself, you'll know that one of things that becomes immediately apparent is just how smooth and slick Samus feels to control. Running and sliding around and pulling off quickly aimed missile shots is incredibly satisfying, and some of the game's late-stage mechanics are introducing some seriously cool possibilities.
With a minor spoiler warning for those who don't want to see abilities you'll unlock throughout the game, we'd urge you to check out this video from YouTube user remelrelyk. The player combines Samus' Morph Ball and Bombs, wall jumps, Speed Boost, Shinespark, and Grapple Beam to pull off a sequence of moves that are almost too quick to even describe:

The speed...
Incidentally, we're also already seeing speedruns appear online, such as this 1:43:20 effort from YouTuber user, Ihaveastupidename. How people are beating the game this quickly already is beyond us, but bravo:
Players have been coming up with different strategies to beat the game from the word go, including this attempt which saw a player defeat a boss in a rather unconventional way after taking an alternative route early on (again, with a spoiler warning).
Have you been playing the game? How have you been getting on? Let us know in the comments.
Comments 71
Hell yes. Speedruns are going to be (or really, already are!) so entertaining for this game.
This game is [expletive] amazing! Best Metroid game ever!
@GamingFan4Lyf It is great but I still would put Prime at the top.
This game is already classic for speed runs. People are clearing it in like 2 hours. It hasn’t even been exploited to its full potential yet
I already beat the game in 7 odd hours and I felt that was just a bit too quick. Don’t get me wrong, not every game needs to be gargantuan with a million side quests, online multiplayer, DLC, micro transactions, daily challenges, etc. But after such a lonnnnngg wait, it was just over too quickly
I suppose that itself speaks to the quality of the game. Because I adored every minute.
Nintendo in particular is very good at creating games that give the player the freedom to play how they want, and exploit the mechanics of the game. They have been since their inception, so this is pretty cool to see.
I beat the game over the release weekend, and had a blast doing it. Completed in just under seven hours.
Next weekend, I plan on going through it a second time; aiming for completion in under four hours, and working on doing it faster and faster each time. I'll never achieve world record times, but it's just such an absolute blast to play once you've adapted to the controls. The game might even top Fusion for me as my favorite.
@hypnotoad They’re so different it’s hard to compare apples to apples... I’m happy to say (at this point). Top 3 Metroid games are Super, Prime, and Dread, and hit shuffle on what is the best for what you want to play or talk about at the time.
This is magic. How do they do this?
IS IT POSSIBLE TO LEARN THIS POWER?
And there's me, almost 20 years into Metroid, but with little time to play, only some short bursts, but having a blast and struggling to kill the EMMI after getting the plasma beam. There's so little room, for God's sake
@Spiders I'm that old that I had Super Metroid when it came out on Snes - what a game !
I'd have to say though that Dread is far better control wise (well it is 20 odd years newer) but for me, Prime was a massive departure.
Either way, they're all great.
That reminds me that I do kinda miss the hold down button for a 45 degree upwards aim. I’m sure glad they’re weren’t many sequential grapple beam swinging moments.
@anoyonmus Not from a Jedi.
The dark side of the force is a pathway to powers some would consider unnatural
@hypnotoad I love Metroid Prime... one of the GOATs in all gaming, but I love the faster gameplay of the 2D games and even M:OM also. Different, complementary vibes.
And yeah I went back to Super immediately after beating Dread and it was so sluggish and awkward to control. Nostalgia is a powerful thing haha.
I hope that Prime 4 can reach the heights of Dread and we can look forward to both branches being developed in tandem in the future: Prime/Fusion, Dread/Prime 4, then Metroid 6/Prime 5 on Switch 2!?
Samus is as fast as the Blue Falcon
I'd love to see a boss rush mode with a fully upgraded Samus. I think the game is amazing but lacking a little on content.
@Spiders
It's not nostalgia, just a different game.
@Jimmy_G_Buckets I think Hollow Knight spoiled people for content, but I think if you look at expectations for the series and not the genre, the content is in depth and replay.
Every Metroid game has different ending based on clear time. That really signals what the series is about, especially as the Metroidvania genre has sprouted and blossomed around it. “Content” is really favored on the “-Vania” side of the genre which is sometimes really good like Hollow Knight or Bloodstained, but more often it’s just padding, extended backtracks, and lame RPG-lite grinds.
I thought that's how you are meant to play it! oops!
@anoyonmus Oh it's totally possible. Join a speedrunning community and folks will help you learn!
@John_Deacon psssst go to the top left of the room. I bashed my head against this one forever
@Beaucine I’m not knocking Super Metroid, but when I’ playing Dread and thinking “this is how good it felt to play Super Metroid back in the day”, and the I play Super Metroid after finishing Dread... it just evaporated my rose-tinted glasses is all.
Does this game have difficulty settings? Been watching some boss fights and put me off getting it
@Spiders
I guess the difference is that I played and fell in love with Super as an adult, so I don't have memories of it feeling any different than what it's always felt like: methodical and technical. I haven't started Dread yet, but from the looks of it, the level design is tailored for more fluid, parkour-style movement, whereas Super, to me, is more about patiently timing my wall jumps or bomb jumps to sequence-break.
@UltimateOtaku91
The game has one default difficulty and you unlock Hard mode once you beat the game. Bosses on the default difficulty are tough at first, but become pretty easy once you "get it".
Attempts 1 & 2 = This is impossible
Attempts 3 & 4 = Wait...I think I see what's happening here
Attempt 5 = You only get hit once or twice and the boss is dead.
I'm a slow, old fart. Stuck with the first real boss for a while now (that tail-whipping-thing), only improving slowly. My pattern recognition is about as fast as that of a mountain.
Also worth noting that this over-priced, $60 game is already pushing the 90 minute mark in speed runs...
@BloodNinja Overpriced? What?
@BloodNinja Asinine comment. Lots of full-priced 3D games have speed times under that. Look at Mario Odyssey (57 minutes) and Breath of the Wild (25 minutes). NINJA REJECTED.
@Scollurio For whatever silly reason, people seem to think Dread is overpriced simply because it's mostly in 2D.
@UltimateOtaku91 only a more difficult setting once you beat it.
All the bosses become easier if you spend the time working out how to spot and avoid their attacks before trying to hit them. Focus on surviving, then work out your attack opportunities.
Beast level players.
Lol and I keep dying to bosses because my fingers get confused trying string action sequences together...
@Jimmy_G_Buckets "I'd love to see a boss rush mode with a fully upgraded Samus."
Exactly what i said to my friend an hour or so ago. Its a shame we cant replay the boss battles to hone our skills etc. Ive already loaded up my save and beat the last boss 4 times today.
I thought my 15 hours with 100% completion on normal was pretty good. Then i heard to unlock the art gallery i needed to do a sub 4 hour on hard 😬😬
@Bret I too think Dread is overpriced, but then again I think ALL Nintendo 1st party switch games are overpriced. The game prices for the switch should start at $49 for 1st party titles. Only reason they cost as much as they do is because people continue to shell out because its Nintendo. Unfortunately that means I'll probably never play Dread since there are rarely sales on these things.
@MrMichaelJames So, let me get this straight. The only reason games are priced at $60 is because the market has shown a willingness (for decades, may I point out) to pay that price for games? Sounds like they're priced correctly to me. I totally understand arguments that "enhanced ports" like Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Skyward Sword HD, Mario 3D World Deluxe, etc. should be $50, but not full priced first party games, which by the way, are now $10 cheaper than the asking price for large titles on PS5/XBS which are $70.
It's sick! I'm finishing my First playthrough today (around 18hrs, 100%, finding everything by myself). And I probably go for a second playthrough on hard, aiming for under 4 hours. If I do so, will I unlock the other endings (normal between 8 and 4, normal under 4, hard between 8 and 4 and hard 8+) or I need to do one by one?
Thanks!
@MrMichaelJames I paid $47(USD) for my copy of Dread at retail.
@Bret The $70 PS5 and XB prices are robbery, flat out robbery so I'm against those as well and refuse to participate. And yes, the prices are what they are because the market dictates it. If people weren't willing to pay that much the prices wouldn't be that high. Thats fine prices can be whatever the market dictates but I won't play "that" game. I stopped buying games on release day, stopped paying full price awhile ago. There is no point. I started looking at what I was buying, how much I get out of it and I figured out I would spend $60 of so, get a new release, play the hell out of it over the first week, finish it. And then what? Nothing, don't go back to it and move on to something else. Seems a huge waste of money to me so I stopped paying full price. I also refuse to buy physical. They do nothing but take up space, again a waste of money. It also is criminal that digital copies cost as much as physical copies.
@Zag_Man if someone thinks $60 is too much, they are entitled to that view. You may think these games are worth $60, but that's just your opinion and opinions differ.
@MrMichaelJames Well, you certainly have your mind made up. I'm going to keep playing my full-priced game and have fun talking about it with others who are doing the same, or how you put it, with "no point".
I'm enjoying the game, but I really wish this had Wii pointer style aiming, via the Joycon, or at least right analog stick aiming. I think that would have made the game feel much smoother and more next gen.
@Bret And the really FUN thing about it all is, it's NOT in 2D. It's 3D, just with the camera angled a certain way. This doesn't mean AT ALL it was less effort to create this game.
I don't get the world. No matter what subject. If you don't like it, ignore it and move on.
I 100%’d it and I had to get reeeaaaallllll crafty with my powerups/abilities to get some of those energy tanks and missile upgrades. Yowza
In fact, I had to google some videos for a few. There’s things I didn’t even know you could do and would’ve never thought it’d be possible otherwise. Kinda cool; I felt like I was playing breath of the wild’s temples for how you had to use some tactics together to reach areas.
@UltimateOtaku91 Normal, and then after beating it, Hard.
The bosses are really, really fun and lean heavily to the “pattern recognition” side of things over reflexes and reaction times. It’s a really good feeling challenge ramp. Plus the checkpoints are right at the boss doors, so this is hardly Souls.
“Hard” meant I it took maybe 5, maybe ten attempts, but I never got overly frustrated and really... like the final boss seemed impossible the first time I encountered it, than by the third try I could beat their first phase without taking a hit.
@Scollurio I’m embarrassed to say how impressed I am by that. It was like a little tingle of that “next-gen” awe when we feel a game can’t be doing that. Though I know most 2D game are actually 3D, they usually take a lot of shortcuts thanks to the fixed perspective. The seamless of the camera from the fixed perspective to dramatic angles was masterfully done and never got old, and if you use the Pulse Scan you can see the 360 degree nature of it, all the geometry in the background is to scale... it’s really a more amazing effect than it ought to be.
@Bret Whoa, man. Thanks a lot!
I never thought the EMMI would come crawling so slowly along the horizontal elevator "path". You made my day. Thanks once again!
@Spiders Forgiving checkpoints make this game so much more fun than it would be if it sent you back to the last save room every time. Although that's probably also partially to prevent death warps that could lead to huge sequence breaks.
@BloodNinja I was looking for you in these comments! Not chiming in on the price — to each their own — but remember our conversation around the announcement — we both are dyed in the wool Metroid fans who didn’t like Samus Returns much at all — but I think Dread is the real deal. It’s hard for me to believe it’s the same team who made both games. I’m not saying pay $60 bucks if you don’t want to, but don’t sleep on it if you get the chance... I think you’ll dig it.
@John_Deacon Hahaha no problem, so far that's the one and only thing in this game that I've gotten frustrated to the point of looking up. I was like "this room is SO SMALL where the hell do I even GO"
@Spiders Hi! I borrowed it from a friend the other day, played for 2 hours before I gave it back and I'm glad I didn't actually buy it. My initial impressions were somewhat positive, but I was getting tired of how much the game wrestled itself out of the player's control with all the pointless cut scenes interrupting things. Did we really need a cut scene of her staring at a door? Wow. :/ Then I learned that in order to skip cut scenes you have to either beat the game or have viewed the cut scene before, so that was turning me off.
I disliked the control scheme, and wish there was an option to switch to using the D-Pad. Using the stick feels very mushy for precision platformers.
The first few bosses I encountered were boring and formulaic. Not a fan. And don't get me started on the emmi encounters. Those just feel like padding to waste player time with somewhat unavoidable deaths.
Overall, I would have liked it with less cut scenes, no emmis, and customizable controls. If I had paid $60 I would have been royally pissed! Grateful to have been loaned a copy to test it.
@Bret
Did you face the purple emmi? I hated that one.
I love every minute if it, it was great! A little short for the price, but a good time nonetheless!
@Beaucine Nah, that's how normal people play all the Metroid games, including dread. On my playthrough it was a lot of getting lost and trying to find out how to get items. This was the most easy Metroid to get lost in. The maps are surprisingly labyrinthine.
@Spiders It's actually pretty cool to see a shift back from a cutscene and you see what the other sides of a missile block or what a blocked door looks like from a different angle.
@BloodNinja I could see that, and I was worried at first, but from my first playthrough, after the 3 hour mark the game was wide open and nothing felt like an unwelcome interruption... it's really a "soft" tutorial up until that point, and — like me — you were probably thinking this is Samus Returns on Switch. The first time you get "lost" and "found" is what really harkened back to Super and the best games of the genre. The bosses get better and better and as much as things feel forced, they're not... on my second playthrough on Hard and blow through EMMI zones just from having a better handle on the encounters and the flow of those sections — the instinct is to plod through like a Metal Gear or survival horror game and find all the nooks and crannies under this tense stalking, but it also works more like Dead Cells where you're just making snap decisions in a branching map at the speed of your traversal. It's more Pac-Man than Mr. X if you get my drift.
Give it until the 5-6 hour mark if you ever feel so inclined... once it opens up, you've got the controls relatively nailed in muscle memory and you've integrate the flow/anti-flow feel of the map design, the game's got a real ass on it;)
@Spiders Eh, I don’t have time for that. Between work, training, daily life and such, game time is sparse. If it’s gonna take 5-6 hours to be fun then that’s a big nope for me!
@Xansies
That's (brooding, atmospheric) music to my ears!
@Zag_Man it is clear that (the 19 years development story aside) even low effort games like assassins creed contain more time coding, modelling, recording and writing dialogue than Dread (those creed games often drop in price to $20 in the first year btw). Horizon Zero Dawn, GTA 5, BOTW, these AAA $60 games take years to make, with massive teams. I love Metroid Dread and personally, if I couldn't find it cheaper (which I did, quite easily), would end up paying any silly price for it but this is a real exception and I acknowledge that the game was cheaper to make than a lot of other similarly priced games. The 2D animated gif loading screens and lack of secret bosses or expansive optional secret areas (like Other M had), some barren landscapes that have even made people wonder whether this started out as a 3DS game are not comparable to $60 offerings on other platforms. The minimum wage in the UK for an 18yr old is £6.56, they are then charged 20% tax (£5.24) so they must work eleven and a half hours to get the money to buy Metroid Dread. That is more than a whole working day, and they may need to pay for food and shelter, electricity etc. If someone has the opinion that $60 is too much, they are entitled to that view. Money has different value for different people. Nobody needs to justify what they are willing to pay for a videogame and it is discourteous to ask them to. It is just an opinion, quite a reasonable one that a lot of Nintendo games are not worth $60. What other people can afford, is not something for you to condemn or ask people to justify.
@Spiders True! I'm perfectly happy with that and I also think that 3D graphics on a 2D plane works perfectly well for some genres. Think about fighting games. All that background-hopping and crazy stuff in the 3D Mortal Kombat games before the 2011 Mortal Kombat? Awful. If "free movement" doesn't benefit the gameplay, then it shouldn't be done.
Metroid is a masterclass in this. Like you say. Love the transitions and the "sense of scale" they achieve.
@UltimateOtaku91 Not that I'm aware of though the boss fights just take some practice and are kind of easy once you learn how they fight.
@Classic603 Purple gave me less trouble than blue. I think the purple one was like 5 or 6 tries.
@Bret
Really? The back and forth and prep work for purple took me like 20 tries to nail down
@Classic603 Hmm, prep work? I must be thinking of something else. Last night I just reached what I believe to be the final area (the ship is on the map) for the first time.
@Bret
Ah okay you may not have gotten to the purple emmi showdown then. It's a very tight quartered fight
I totally agree with your point from a consumer perspective... nobody has the perspective to say what $60 is worth to someone else. Sure, electricity and food, but also for drugs or gambling. It’s not our place to say what value is in that sense.
But! A big part of the sentiment is that Metroid Dread is not worth $60 because of what it is. Be that it’s an AAA title in an indie dominated genre, it’s single playthrough clock, it’s 2D perspective, it’s graphics or art direction, or whatever the complaint is...
It gets personal when people are going after the content.. Metroid Dread is more than likely my game of the year, I got more than my money’s worth, and I’m very happy with my purchase. It’s the first full price game I’ve bought since 2019. I’m so, so glad I did.
I’m not saying that it will be that way for everyone, but I’m testifying that it has that quality and that capacity to be great for and valuable to someone. If you want to argue it should be cheaper, I will argue it should be more expensive, and we’d both have valid, but utterly useless and misguided points.
If you frame it as: would you pay $60 — if you could afford it — for your favorite game of the year? Who is going to say no?
If you frame it as: if you can only afford 1 $60 game, would you want/need it to last longer than 15 hours? Who’s going to say no?
My point is, these are not the right questions to ask when criticizing content. They are the right questions to ask when we are criticizing purchases... and I don’t think we should be criticizing each other’s purchases. I think you agree.
People are trying to justify their decisions with some kind of objective analysis which is being laundered as subjective opinion. I agree with @Zag_Man that when these personal reasons become criticisms, they no longer should have the “protected class” status of an opinion. Good reasons for me may be bad reasons for you, and bad reasons should be called out.
@Classic603 Purple EMMI went down in one attempt. I just circled around the room once blasting stuff out of the way and found my spot and took it down no problem. If the EMMI had been fast, different story, but I actually found it to be the easiest EMMI since green. Hardest were definitely the fast ones.
It always takes me a while to get warmed up in Metroid games.
@Bret
Wow goes to show different playstyles! I took many, many attempts at purple. Blasting the lower blocks, bombing the one block, charge shooting the large block, then lining up shots as it approaches. Every time I repositioned he healed, and I felt too cramped to do anything. For me it was a brutal fight
@Classic603 Once I got all the blocks out of the way, I circled back around to the bottom left as that seemed like the best spot to take him out. It was!
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