And suddenly, you are dead.
Dead, because Samus Aran is a woman, perhaps the first great protagonist in the videogame industry.
The hunter that she has saved in a multitude of occasions, from Metroides, from Virus X, of the Phonzon … it is nothing before an implacable machine that catches her without powers and misconception.
Something has happened at the beginning of Metroid Dread that you do not know what has been.
You come up with what looks like a warrior of the extinct race of the Chozo, who raised Samus and turned it to him who is him;
And then, nothing: you do not have powers, you are in the depths of a planet and you have almost immortal rivals.
The EMMI, which are the murderous robots that give it a touch of terror, rather of overwhelming, Metroid Dread are the direct heirs of the SA-X, the great Viral Antagonist of Metroid Fusion.
As a direct continuation of the last game, chronologically speaking, from the saga, Dread seems that he does not want to abandon this idea at the moment.
The sensations when you face the emmi are something totally new in the saga, because you die of blow when they caught you … unless you are very good and you know how to anticipate your attack to make a ‘parry’.
In my departure, I was just able to do it once.
This does not mean that Mercury Steam has abandoned the idea of the riposte that he introduced in Metroid: Samus Returns, his previous game.
Quite the opposite: now it is easier to stop enemies to hurt them.
You can move while you do it and it is essential to defeat heads, so much that if you run one at dice times, the camera acquires a more cinematographic position and you can grab the queue or climb on the enemy to do extra damage.
Riposte is a fundamental part of Samus’s handling, which is now more agile and quick than ever.
You can shoot in almost any situation, either by climbing through the walls with one of your new skills or sliding on the floor as you avoid the attack of a final boss.
You can point freely and you can also dispense with the morphosphere in certain scenarios.
It is curious that it has not been the first improvement you get in the game.
I have not been able to see what skills he will have Samus in the game, but those that I have seen seemed different from those we knew about the saga.
Do you invisible to avoid enemies?
Climb walls freely?
Already with being able to get these two before the mythical ball has caught my attention.
Metroid Dread plays a lot with the things that we already have learned from the saga and gives them a little round to make her punch.
The most important thing would be the inclusion of the EMMIs and their movement rooms.
As surveillance robots, they have a territory that they do not come out, but in which they act as an implacable guardian.
They detect you quickly and pursue you until you finish with you, so you will have to use the scenario in your favor to flee when you have lost your track.
But it is not easy.
To begin with, because you get nervous when they chase you, but also because each Emmi has some own skills: maybe one can not climb walls, but maybe the next yes and, above, can get into narrow holes to make you an ambush.
To die of an EMMI is going to be something constant in the departure of any player.
It is possible to destroy them using a special charged beam, but each of them has a very particular way and you will have to adapt your attack.
And you do not believe that you can kill them quickly and instantly: you can already measure distances and write well, because they will reach and kill you even though you are armed to the teeth.
I could not see much of the game map, but I really like the concept change: for the first time, Samus does not have to explore the caverns from a planet from outside, but from the inside out.
Our virtual assistant, Adam Malkovich with whom we already met at Metroid Fusion, will guide us, but it makes us very clear that we are not in a situation of doing nonsense: we do not know how we have come where we are or how we are going to get to our ship
space.
Lava or ice environments seem to be present, but I have not been able to explore them because the Samus costume does not have adequate protection.
It also seems that there will be an aquatic area throughout the water and the small puzzles that depend on her I’ve seen.
What I have been able to prove is that, although well guided by loose tracks in the design, it is possible to get lost in the scenarios.
This is a Metroid and it is clear that this is an important part of it.
Unlike Fusion, Zero Mission and Samus Returns, Dread does not seem to be as guided by the story.
Of course, the usability improvements of the map are fantastic: you can take notes, but it is not very needed because the doors, objects that you have not caught and stays with extreme temperatures are clearly indicated in the plane and will help you a lot to guide you.
I really want to see where Metroid Dread is directed, because the tracks I have been able to see in this short game session I liked it a lot.
Mercury Steam has already much experience doing exploration adventures, or Metroitvania as they are called in the guild, so I hope they have been experiencing and growing in a dominate genre.
Samus remains a very beloved and iconic protagonist, and that his suit has changed drastically to the point of almost letting a female figure under the protection layers.
Since Nintendo has not dared to make many games with them by the low sales of previous chapters, it seems critical that Dread triumphs widely for her survival.
Be a great game or not, at the moment I remain with the value demonstrated by the study and the company so as not to invent an intermediate chapter in the Saga de la Cazazpes.
After many years, finally the plot advances and Samus keeps going after fighting against the X virus. We will see where this is.
Metroid Dread is launched for Nintendo Switch on October 8, just at the same time as the new OLED model of the console.