Meteos (2005)
This game consumed my heart and mind and soul for a week... Cleared all modes, got all the unlocks and endings, including the True Meteos ending. Took about twenty hours, which is by far the most time I've ever sunk into a game like this.
It's just a perfect little jewel of an arcade falling block puzzler. Launching full screens of blocks feels amazing. Holding L to fast drop blocks constantly while using the generous lock delay to extend your combos feels amazing. The Mission mode tactfully teaches you advanced play through a series of seemingly impossible demands and subsequent epiphanies. It uses the touch screen to better effect than any other DS game I can think of.
Sakurai's a genius; I'm adding him to my list of 00s J-studio auteurs I'm legit a fan of alongside forces of nature like Kamiya and Mikami. I've never been THAT into Smash, but this and Kirby Air Ride have made so happy in the last year. (And of course, his 90s Kirby entries are all-time classics.)
My Multi Mode high score is 851,080. Do you have what it takes to beat me...?
Metroid Dread (2021)
This is my first replay since the game came out — I'm ready to get some thoughts down, finally.
The discourse on Dread has me pulled in a lot of directions. The story has a considered and exciting arc to it. I appreciate how the game pushes the fiction forward from the events of Fusion. You don't fight Ridley, you don't fight any metroids. The game makes a lot of choices that help it feel like a real world and story.
There are some choices I don't agree with. The last EMMI encounter is anti-climactic. I don't like how the resolution there is telegraphed like two rooms before the scene instead of way earlier in the game. But the actual climax is thrilling and well-done. I like Samus's Dante-isms in the cutscenes. They're obviously having some fun refuting Other M's characterization, but it wasn't so over-the-top that it felt cloying to me.
The action design is pretty good. The bosses in the back half especially have a lot of exciting and kinetic design. I like the twin soldiers, Z-57, and the final boss the most. I had a good time learning the new boss rush, although it did make me conscious of how the earlier bosses are a little more Zelda-y and uninteresting. Hollow Knight obviously goes much further in terms of "Mega Man Zero bosses in a metroidvania," but I was happy with Dread's bosses.
The art design and music made next to no impression on me. It's a very plain and functional game aesthetically. ZDR doesn't feel as defined in my head as Zebes or even the BSL, despite (or because of) its much larger size.
I despise the overabundance of power-up gate types. It feels unbelievably artificial to run around bumping my head against charge beam doors, wide beam doors, grapple beam doors, missile doors, super missile doors, etc. It's a lazy shortcut around doing actual level design, a grating distraction that intrudes on the naturally pleasant frisson of being tactfully guided around a game world.
I don't know. I love Metroid Fusion, so the criticisms of Dread I've seen that amount to "I hate Fusion and this is a lot like Fusion" irk me. The story is cool, but not so strong that it distracts me from the genre-isms getting on my nerves. It's the best Metroid game since 2004, but is that really saying much?
The worst parts of Dread are when it feels like a "metroidvania" in the most formulaic and tedious ways possible. The best parts are the original and exciting set-pieces that played-out structure exists in service of. The end result is a decently fun time. That's as much and as little as I can say for it.
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