Metroid Dread: My game-playing rate continues to slow and slow. Anyway, finally finished this up. It's good! I have a few minor qualms - load times on teleporters / transitioning between zones, some occasional erratic difficulty - but for the most part very solid. It does have the issue that it can be easy to "forget" old mechanics or not realize they're applicable at times... it's tricky because the a-ha moment of "I am a genius, I figured out this boss's weakness / what to do" only happens if you don't stick a big flashing sign telling you what to do, but that can mean that some bosses feel impenetrable if you don't "get" them. I definitely had this on a few. I was utterly baffled for the underwater evil clam where I knew I could lower the water to ride back and forth on the ceiling, but so what?? I definitely did not realize the extent of the unwise design of this room for its guardian. Also, the green-zone three part miniboss isn't obvious it's using a gimmick from the very start of the game, the slide, and just seemed to have BS unavoidable attacks if you weren't very diligent about jumping over it before you get cornered. Once I succumbed to curiosity and checked the Internet to see the slide trick, it completely upends the entire fight and makes it doable and go way faster. Also, while I'm sure there are sneaky faster ways, the first form of the final boss really walled me thanks to BS invincibility for days. I'm sure there are ways to break it faster but I only found one reliable one to wait for, so yeah.
The plot was for the most part fine. It's a little tricky trying to make Samus the hunted not the hunter given how canonically insanely powerful Samus "should" be by the end of Fusion, but the game has the good sense to let Samus be the hunter again in spurts and eventually just say fine she's gonna wreck some shit. I will say that I would still be down for some future Metroid where "Samus" has amnesia and no powers at the start and the plot-twist is that you're some surviving SA-X somehow, along with some BS for why you can't do the whole X-parasite infecting everything thing. I will say one plot point was too bad... I really liked the initial plot setup where Samus is deployed there's some claim of an X infection because she's immune to the X, but surprise, the enemy that shows up has nothing to do with the X and it was just a ruse. You didn't think we were gonna reuse the same enemy two games in a row, did you? Plus, it fits with Samus & the X seeming to come to a bit of an understanding by the end of Fusion. That was cool... except... uh... they show up again anyway kind of randomly. I guess it helps explain how local wildlife can possibly stand up to a heavily armed superweapon like Samus and keep respawning, but meh, I'm fine with hand-waving that kind of stuff. I do hope that future Metroid games consider having the Federation be the antagonist - the way Fusion went, it feels like Samus should be on bad terms with the Federation, and it's not the NES-era of games having to be 10-year old approved of no killing nice humans.
To reply to a comment Elf made last year, though, I will say I disagree that Samus being silent was a problem in this game. Her being silent was very good and definitely what writer SnowFire would have done as well. In any game with a big plot twist that either the character already knows, or already *should* know, just have them play it close to the vest and not talking out loud. Otherwise you end up with either the character telling the player too much before the player can figure it out for themselves, or else the character coming across as a bit of an idiot. I think I complained about this a bit when playing Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth where Deedlit comes across as either brainwashed or an idiot for not noticing an obvious plot point. Granted, a player who really remembers Metroid Fusion's script probably isn't that common for the biggest tell that something might be up - and that's easily explainable by a new scriptwriter just deciding to drop Adam being a white knight in calling her "Lady" - but there were other oddities too like how much Adam hypes up Raven Beak as the ultimate badass, and by all rights, Samus herself should have caught on very very quickly. Having her be silent lets us assume that she was in on the joke much earlier but didn't have much choice but to play along.
