Good point here.
What makes a good metroid ?
M1 and super defined the genra.
For me, the most linear one was FUSION. I loved it back in 2004, but when I killed the final boss, I seriously asked to myself, "is the prologue finally over so we can have the main dish ?" And...nope, obviously.
DREAD is something bizarre at first glance:
- Music is bad, really really bad for this kind of game. THIS IS HERESY, pure and simple.
- 2.5D environments are lacking, which is a shame when we know the Lord of Shadows serie by MercurySteam, but hard to have a good art direction if you play a 100% subterranean game.
- Adam is still there, giving you directions, which I HATE.
But then...
- Controls are top notch
- Combat can be really dynamic due to counters at the expense of the armed canon purpose
- Upgrades have a lot of novelty to them, which is quite a feat
- Map is insanely complicated but quick to go through
- Boss fights are FUN
- Thrilling 'ALIEN' chase scenes are both hard and rewarding
- Chara design is really cool overall
- Macho sidenote: Samus talks only ONE time, which is perfect, but she lacks this hips balancing from 3DS remake
You can't tell me you didn't enjoyed the final boss fight.
Can you ?
RB was a bitch, but the fight had its moments for sure.
hard to have a good art direction if you play a 100% subterranean game
I mean the existence of several other metroid games disagree.
Never liked the 360 aim, or moving with analog controls. These things weren't necessary with how the past games were designed anyways.
Combat can be really dynamic due to counters at the expense of the armed canon purpose
I wouldn't really call giving samus a 1-hit kill move very dynamic
Map is insanely complicated but quick to go through
That's actually my issue. My favorite part of a metroid is getting lost. I mentioned the railroading, which I honestly think is worse here than in Fusion. Yeah Adam tells you what your objective is, but there's still plenty opportunity to get lost on the way. If you've ever had the chance to look at miiverse when Fusion came out on Wii U VC, there was plenty evidence of that. Dread has sequence breaks, but they're all super specific out of the way things. I never actually got lost, afaik David Jaffe is the only person to ever get stuck in Dread. Zero Mission had the perfect balance imo where the map has really intuitive & natural sequence breaks built in, where even on my first playthrough, with just some plain curiosity I discovered some sequence breaks. I don't find any of them in Dread to be remotely natural.
I know I'm the minority on this one, but I hate Dread's (& SR's non-metroid) boss fights. Metroid boss fights to me were never about super strict trial and error. I just never found these types of bosses to be fun. Kraid was alright though. Even then, the bosses in this game make E-Tanks feel worthless because even if you pick up all that you possibly can prior to an encounter each boss seems to scale, in that they all kill you in like 5-7 hits each. Its more frustrating to me than anything and is a huge pace breaker for me.
Thrilling 'ALIEN' chase scenes are both hard and rewarding
By virtue of being killed in 1-shot, I suppose I can't argue that they do elicit a sense of thrill, but again, more of a nuisance and pace breaker than anything to me.
Macho sidenote: Samus talks only ONE time, which is perfect, but she lacks this hips balancing from 3DS remake
Agreed, though I'm not sure what you mean about the hips. The pencil neck they gave her does make some of the cool/tough action poses she does look goofy though. I don't really like any of the suits in the game, they all look like FF13's boss designer made them.