Metroid Dread
I have been very out of touch with modern gaming lately, but holy crap am I hype about Metroid Dread.
I love Metroid. I love the gameplay, the mythos, the characters. It’s easily one of the coolest intellectual properties that Nintendo has, and I really hate how it feels so neglected most of the time. Metroidvania games are probably my favorite genre. I just can’t get enough of that search-battle-upgrade cycle that allows you to delve ever deeper into curious alien environments.
The Prime series is fun, but I have always preferred 2D side scroller Metroid games. I get the logic for why 3D games have been the more popular choice for developers lately. Originally, it was a technology limitation. 2D games are easier to make, and that was the only thing that consoles and handhelds could actually manage for a long time. Now that technology has evolved to easily handle 3D environments and navigation, why shouldn’t everything be 3D?
But there’s a different style to 2D games. The way that you experience these worlds is just fundamentally unlike first-person 3D games. Your developers were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should exclusively create games in 3D. I truly believe there is merit in making modern games in 2D, and I don’t think I’m alone in that mindset. Clearly, at least a few others agree with me.
I haven’t bothered watching gaming news announcements for a while. Rarely do I buy new games, when my backlog is already so long, and I can check out games for free from the library. Anything of interest, I’ll get around to in a year or two. Gaming tradeshows like E3 are typically so bleeding edge, the news is almost irrelevant to me. I’ll catch the highlights from an article days or weeks later, or wait for some of my friends to bring up some new announcement in conversation.
When a friend asked if I saw the new Metroid news, I confessed that I hadn’t. At first, I assumed that he was talking about some new information about Metroid Prime 4. Again, I like Prime, but I’m not falling all over myself to pre-order it. I’ll play it eventually. But no, he explained that they had announced a new 2D Metroid. You had my curiosity, but now you have my attention.
He brought up the release trailer on his living room projector screen, and I was enthralled. The graphics looked so good, and it was the same 2D exploration that I craved. And this wasn’t some “eventually” release date that may come in 3 or 4 years, if ever. No, it had a concrete release date of October 8, 2021.
I almost never buy games brand new, and even more seldom do I pre-order, but I might just have to make an exception for Metroid Dread. While I’m waiting, I’ll probably even pick up the game guide for the original Metroid, that I recently claimed was a dead industry.
I love Metroid. I love the gameplay, the mythos, the characters. It’s easily one of the coolest intellectual properties that Nintendo has, and I really hate how it feels so neglected most of the time. Metroidvania games are probably my favorite genre. I just can’t get enough of that search-battle-upgrade cycle that allows you to delve ever deeper into curious alien environments.
The Prime series is fun, but I have always preferred 2D side scroller Metroid games. I get the logic for why 3D games have been the more popular choice for developers lately. Originally, it was a technology limitation. 2D games are easier to make, and that was the only thing that consoles and handhelds could actually manage for a long time. Now that technology has evolved to easily handle 3D environments and navigation, why shouldn’t everything be 3D?
But there’s a different style to 2D games. The way that you experience these worlds is just fundamentally unlike first-person 3D games. Your developers were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should exclusively create games in 3D. I truly believe there is merit in making modern games in 2D, and I don’t think I’m alone in that mindset. Clearly, at least a few others agree with me.
I haven’t bothered watching gaming news announcements for a while. Rarely do I buy new games, when my backlog is already so long, and I can check out games for free from the library. Anything of interest, I’ll get around to in a year or two. Gaming tradeshows like E3 are typically so bleeding edge, the news is almost irrelevant to me. I’ll catch the highlights from an article days or weeks later, or wait for some of my friends to bring up some new announcement in conversation.
When a friend asked if I saw the new Metroid news, I confessed that I hadn’t. At first, I assumed that he was talking about some new information about Metroid Prime 4. Again, I like Prime, but I’m not falling all over myself to pre-order it. I’ll play it eventually. But no, he explained that they had announced a new 2D Metroid. You had my curiosity, but now you have my attention.
He brought up the release trailer on his living room projector screen, and I was enthralled. The graphics looked so good, and it was the same 2D exploration that I craved. And this wasn’t some “eventually” release date that may come in 3 or 4 years, if ever. No, it had a concrete release date of October 8, 2021.
I almost never buy games brand new, and even more seldom do I pre-order, but I might just have to make an exception for Metroid Dread. While I’m waiting, I’ll probably even pick up the game guide for the original Metroid, that I recently claimed was a dead industry.
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