nearly all of the boss fights were just gimmicks; figure out the trick(s) and you win, otherwise you die.
QTE-heavy boss fights and, again having to wait for QTE gimmicks to 'quickly' dispatch normal enemies
mini-bosses (defeated with QTE gimmicks) used over and over again
constantly locking you in new areas preventing backtracking
stupid one-way doors/paths all over the place that again force huge amounts of backtracking
the EMMI sequences were not difficult or tense; they were just tedious to figure out where you needed to go to not be detected. Instant death DOES NOT BELONG IN A METROID GAME. It was the worst part of the otherwise great Zero Mission, too.
too many shinespark 'puzzles'
completely forgettable soundtrack
story was almost as dumb as Other M; I'm glad I've forgotten most of it. Oh hey, we finally meet a Chozo and he's evil. And sort of Samus' dad. Hooray.
It's the only Metroid game that I never bothered to replay. I'd rank it right ahead of Other M.
But at this point I'm prepared to say that 2d Metroid is no longer the series that I grew up with, and if people like all of the handholding and railroading, I guess I'll stick with Super Metroid and the Prime trilogy. I should have gatekept harder.
While I enjoyed Dread, I agree with you on pretty much every point and have also never felt the desire to replay it. I think it was inevitable for the series to go the railroading route given how Nintendo tries to add things to games to make them easier for bad gamers. Veteran players are supposed to sequence break by going through those heated rooms and such, but those all feel very clearly intended as sequence breaks by the devs rather than feeling like natural exploration.
For big companies like Nintendo you are going to have dev teams and processes that are really thorough and so you probably won't get any cool emergent gameplay like you might when they were smaller
This is a very good point. Gaming is too much about the numbers now rather than just making some cool shit. The future of metroidvanias is probably in indie games where they can still capture the magic of games without being completely sanitized by corporate.
Dread was awesome. So this is good news if true.
Hard disagree.
It's the only Metroid game that I never bothered to replay. I'd rank it right ahead of Other M.
But at this point I'm prepared to say that 2d Metroid is no longer the series that I grew up with, and if people like all of the handholding and railroading, I guess I'll stick with Super Metroid and the Prime trilogy. I should have gatekept harder.
While I enjoyed Dread, I agree with you on pretty much every point and have also never felt the desire to replay it. I think it was inevitable for the series to go the railroading route given how Nintendo tries to add things to games to make them easier for bad gamers. Veteran players are supposed to sequence break by going through those heated rooms and such, but those all feel very clearly intended as sequence breaks by the devs rather than feeling like natural exploration.
For big companies like Nintendo you are going to have dev teams and processes that are really thorough and so you probably won't get any cool emergent gameplay like you might when they were smaller
This is a very good point. Gaming is too much about the numbers now rather than just making some cool shit. The future of metroidvanias is probably in indie games where they can still capture the magic of games without being completely sanitized by corporate.