Deadpool and Wolverine has finally arrived in theaters, and if you can’t get enough of watching the merc with the mouth violently interact with the X-Man, you can check out some great action figures of the destructive duo. Heck, you can even make your own Deadpool and Wolverine sequel with them, because they’re going to be doing this until they’re 90 thanks to all of that Disney cash.
Right now, there are three figures available to purchase of each character–Deadpool, Logan and Headpool, and Wolverine–or if you want all of them in one convenient package, you can pick up the entire wave from Entertainment Earth. These figures will be released later this year, so they could make for some excellent Christmas geeks for the Marvel fan in the house. Preorders are selling out, so grab these Marvel Legends action figures before they’re gone Come from Sports betting site VPbet !
PC version update: The vast, beautiful, desolate world of Death Stranding lives on PC in top-notch form. After about 15 hours with the game, I’m drawn back into its melodramatic story and unique gameplay loop of cargo delivery simulation and harrowing stealth-action. To reconnect the country in Death Stranding is to also connect with the many players who are doing the same, and through asynchronous multiplayer design, you both engage in rebuilding the world together while helping one another do your in-game jobs.
Given the right specs, the PC version of Death Stranding can look and run much better than it did on the PS4 Pro (I played using a Core i7-7700K CPU and RTX 2080 video card). I ran 2560×1080 resolution, as the game supports native 21:9 ultrawide aspect ratio, and every setting maxed out while using Nvidia’s DLSS antialiasing option. And through action sequences and heavy weather hikes, the frame rate is consistently in the high 90 FPS to 110 FPS. This is a proper PC port that looks stunning and runs smooth.
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Now Playing: Death Stranding Video Review
If you’re in the mood for a different style of gaming experience, one that’s often relaxing and sometimes incredibly tense, Death Stranding is worth playing. — Michael Higham, July 13, 2020
You can read our original review for the PS4 version, first published November 1, 2019, below.
America is broken, and it’s up to you to put it back together again. It’s a tall order. A lot of people believe in it, but you’re not sure you do. It’ll take a lot of lonely, dangerous walks and exceptionally heavy lifting, and it’s not really clear what America means in the first place. For some reason, you set out anyway, trudging through wetlands and rocky hills on foot, not fully knowing or understanding where you’re going. Other than the monsters you can’t quite see, there’s not really anyone else around most of the time–just you and your thoughts, one foot in front of the other.
On one level, Death Stranding is about America. But your actual goal in setting out across the country is to help people, bring them together, and forge connections, not for the vague concept of America but for the sake of helping the people within it. Death Stranding is unrelenting in its earnestness and optimism–certainly not without its critiques of America, nor without its challenges and setbacks, but inherently hopeful nonetheless. It is a dense, complex, slow game with a plot that really goes places, but at its core, it never stops being about the sheer power and purpose we can find in human connection, and that is its most remarkable achievement.
Hands Across America
Rebuilding the country is as simple as getting every far-flung city, outpost, and individual onto one network, the bones of which were laid down by a pseudo-government organization called Bridges. As Sam Porter Bridges (played by Norman Reedus), all you have to do to win people over is bring them packages; most people never go outside due to mysterious monsters called BTs, but unlike most people, Sam can sense them enough to sneak past them and get important cargo to its destination.
Deliveries can be arduous. You’re evaluated on your deliveries across a few categories, but the condition of the cargo can make or break a run, and there are a lot of factors working against you. The landscape can be extremely punishing, from expanses of exhaustingly rocky hills to rivers that are too deep and wide to cross unaided. On top of BTs, you also have to contend with Timefall, a kind of rain that rapidly accelerates aging and deterioration for most of the things it touches. Extended exposure to Timefall can damage or completely ruin your cargo, as can slipping and falling, getting hit by an enemy, or, in some cases, just being a little too rough with it. Even the smallest rocks can trip you up, too. In order to keep your footing, you need to pay close attention to where you’re stepping, keeping your balance with the triggers while on rough terrain or when carrying a lot of stuff.
Once you reach your destination, though, you’re showered with praise. The recipient will likely thank you to your face (albeit as a hologram), and then they’ll give you a series of social media-style likes. You’re inundated with a multi-page results screen itemizing all the likes you received for the delivery and in which categories, plus an overall rating for the delivery itself, no matter how small–it’s positive reinforcement turned up to 11. These likes then funnel into each of the delivery categories like experience points, and as you level up, you can carry more weight or better maintain your balance, among other benefits. Deliveries also feed into a connection rating with each city, outpost, or person, and as that increases, you acquire better gear and sometimes gifts to reward your efforts further.
In short, you give a lot and get a lot in return. There is a relatively small number of mandatory deliveries to advance the story, but there’s a seemingly unlimited number of optional deliveries, and I often found myself picking up orders destined for any place that was on my way. It’s a cycle that’s easy to get swept up in; no matter how difficult a delivery or how far the distance, you will at least be met with gratitude, likely feel fulfilled from having completed a tough delivery, and often given a tool to make future deliveries a bit easier. Most importantly, though, increasing your bonds with people is how you get them on the network, and the network is what elevates this core loop beyond the simple satisfaction of completing tasks and getting rewards.
The chiral network is a kind of souped-up internet that allows you to 3D print objects, which is incredibly useful and a strong incentive in itself. When at a terminal connected to the chiral network, you can print ladders and ropes for traversal, new boots as yours wear out, repair spray for damaged containers, and basically anything else you need to safely deliver cargo so long as you have a blueprint for it. You can also print a portable printer that builds structures for you out in open areas covered by the network–things like bridges, watchtowers, and generators, the latter of which are critical as you start to use battery-powered exoskeletons and vehicles.
The chiral network also grants you access to the online component of the game, which is absolutely essential. You never see other players in the flesh, but their impact is all around you; once an area is on the network, you can see structures and objects left behind by other players in the course of their own journeys, plus helpful signs they’ve put down just for those who come after them. You can pick up someone else’s lost cargo and deliver it for them, too, knowing that someone else may find yours at some point and do you the same kindness.
In Death Stranding’s best moments, the relief and gratitude you can feel toward someone you don’t even know is an unrivaled multiplayer experience. At one point in my playthrough, I was being chased by MULEs, human enemies who love to steal cargo. I was on a bike, tasked with a time-sensitive delivery, almost out of battery and totally unequipped to deal with external threats. In my panic, I drove my bike into a ravine. As I slowly made my way up and out of it, I watched as my bike’s battery dipped into the red, and I dreaded getting stuck with all my cargo and no vehicle, still quite a ways away from my destination. I rounded a corner and found myself in the charging area of a generator placed by another player, as if they’d known I’d need it in that exact spot at that exact moment. They probably just put it there because they needed a quick charge, but to me, it was a lifeline.
You can give and receive likes for these player-to-player structures, and just like with standard deliveries, it’s a strong incentive to do something helpful for someone else. In the earlier sections of the game, I was using other people’s structures far more than I was leaving behind help for others. But I wanted to pay it forward and know that my help was appreciated, so I started going out of my way to build structures I myself didn’t really need; the map shows the online structures in your instance, making it easier to spot areas you could fill in for others. At first, the likes system seems like a pretty obvious commentary on social media and our dependence on external validation. But it’s not so much a critique as it is a positive spin on a very human need for acceptance, and the system does a remarkable job of urging you to do your best for those around you, NPCs and real people alike. Feeling truly appreciated can be a rare occurrence in life, and it’s powerful in its simplicity here.
The Super BB Method
The first few hours of the game are the slowest, and a large part of that is because you don’t have access to the online component right away. It’s an incredibly lonely stretch of time during which you mostly just walk; the work you do early on is especially laborious in the absence of advanced gear, and it serves to give you an appreciation for other players and better gear as you move forward.
Even as the gameplay opens up, you continue to get a lot of story exposition with almost no explanation. It can all seem kind of goofy at first, and you can get lost in the metaphors; every city you need to add to the chiral network has “knot” in its name, for example, and they are all referred to as “knots” on a strand that connects the country. There’s bizarre and unwarranted product placement in the form of Monster Energy drinks and the show Ride with Norman Reedus. Guillermo del Toro’s likeness is used for a kind of dorky character called Deadman, and there’s a woman named Fragile in a game about delivering packages.
But the story really does go deeper than that. In keeping with the theme of human connection, each of the core characters you meet and work with has their own story to tell. They all have a unique perspective on death that lends them an equally unique perspective on life, and unravelling their characters, down to the true origins of their often literal names, contributes to the overall tapestry of Death Stranding’s take on the human experience. As they open up to Sam, Sam opens up to them in turn, developing into a distinct character in his own right out of the reserved, emotionless man he appears to be at the start. I grew to love Sam, Fragile, and Heartman especially, and even the characters I didn’t like as much add to the game’s overall message about hope and love in the face of adversity.
By far my favorite character–and the most important one–is BB. BBs are infants in pods that can detect the presence of BTs, and they’re issued to porters like Sam to help them navigate dangerous territory. You’re told to treat BBs like equipment, not real babies, but it’s impossible to think of your BB that way. It’s full of personality, giggling when happy and crying when stressed out; it even gives you likes from time to time. There aren’t many children left in Death Stranding’s isolated, fearful world, but BB is your reminder that the future is counting on you, regardless of how you feel about America itself. The love that grows between Sam and BB is nothing short of heartwarming.
Connecting with this story, just as with connecting with NPCs and other players, can take work. It’s not a story that immediately clicks on a surface level, and the dramatic mystery and off-the-wall science don’t make too much sense at first blush. But it’s an emotional story first and foremost, and making sense of things–while entirely possible, particularly if you read the letters and interviews that detail small bits of lore as you go–is not as important as reflecting on how it makes you feel.
You have plenty of opportunities to do that, too. In the quiet moments of travel, usually as you near your destination, music might start to play. The soundtrack, which is largely composed of one band–Low Roar–is phenomenal, the kind of contemplative folk-ish music that suits a trip alone through a meadow or down a mountain. Because the act of walking is so involved, it’s not a time to detach completely and zone out; it’s a time to feel your feelings or at least consider what’s next in your travels.
Fight, But Not To The Death
You can just as soon be ripped out of that headspace, though, by a shift to the haunting music that signals BT territory. The otherworldly growls of BTs as they close in on you can be terrifying, and early on, your best bet is to freeze in your tracks and hold your breath for as long as you can so you can quietly sneak by them. But there are times when you have to fight a BT in its true form, and for that, you have specialized weapons to take them down. These BTs aren’t the ethereal humanoid shapes that float above the ground but huge eldritch horrors that screech under clouds of blood. The combat is mechanically simple–you mostly have to move around a bit and hit them before they hit you–but the sequences are visually and aurally arresting.
You don’t get a gun that works on live enemies until 25 or so hours in, but even then, it’s non-lethal. You are actively guided away from killing in Death Stranding, because when people die, their bodies basically go nuclear and level cities, leaving nothing but craters and BTs in their wake. On top of that, the main human enemies are MULEs, former porters just like Sam that have been corrupted by an automated world–they’ve essentially become addicted to snatching cargo in their desperation to have a job and a purpose as more and more people become replaced by machines. They’re not evil, and killing them seems like, well, overkill; it’s easy enough to knock them out with the nonlethal methods you continue to unlock as the game progresses. I didn’t kill a single one in my playthrough, though punching them is satisfying.
While BTs and MULEs are a concern when delivering cargo, there’s also Mads Mikkelsen’s character, a man who’s introduced through memories Sam sees when he connects to BB’s pod. He gets his own dedicated segments that punctuate hours of simple deliveries, and these highly contained, much shorter sections are striking in their art direction and juxtaposition to the rest of the game. It’s not immediately clear what he is, whether it’s an enemy, potential friend, or something else entirely, but he’s captivating in his ambiguity.
The most cartoonish enemy is Troy Baker’s Higgs, a terrorist whose depravity seems to know no bounds. Of all the characters, Higgs is the weakest, with far less nuance to him than anyone else in the cast. He’s really just there as a Big Bad to motivate you in a more traditional video game sense than delivering packages and helping people, but he and his band of faceless terrorists are more a means to an end than full-fledged villains. He’s the catalyst for some of the major BT fights, and in the end, perhaps an extreme reminder that it’s possible to stay hopeful even when things are darkest. Come from Sports betting site VPbet
Death Stranding argues in both its story and its gameplay that adversity itself is what makes things worth doing and life worth living.
Death Stranding is a hard game to absorb. There are many intertwining threads to its plot, and silly names, corny moments, and heavy exposition belie an otherwise very simple message. That comes through much more clearly in the game’s more mundane moments, when you find a desperately-needed ladder left behind by another player or receive a letter from an NPC thanking you for your efforts. It’s positive without ignoring pain; in fact, it argues in both its story and its gameplay that adversity itself is what makes things worth doing and life worth living. It’s a game that requires patience, compassion, and love, and it’s also one we really need right now.
Each new season of Fortnite generally adds a boss on the map for you to find and take down for some sweet loot, and Chapter 4 Season 2 is continuing that trend as expected. This season’s big baddie is Highcard, and we’ll tell you how to take him down and what you’ll get for doing so.
How to beat Highcard and what you get
Highcard spawns near vaults around the map, such as MEGA City and Brutal Bastion, and he’s accompanied by two henchmen in white suits. His location may be randomized each round–we’re actively investigating this. Compared to boss battles from previous seasons, Highcard is a relatively easy and straightforward boss–though you’ll still want to approach him with full health and shields, as well as plenty of ammo. Take down his henchmen first, then turn your sights on the main man himself to drop him and get some sweet loot. He won’t have any fancy attack patterns, so this is just about taking cover and hitting your shots.
When Highcard is defeated, you’ll get the chance to pick up Highcard’sHavoc Suppressed Assault Rifle he leaves behind. This deadly Mythic weapon is fully automatic and silenced, making it an exceptionally powerful option to add to your arsenal. In addition to dropping his gun, he’ll also leave behind a Vault Keycard you can use to open the vault in MEGA City. Come from Sports betting site VPbet
Halo Infinite is back with another free multiplayer narrative event, Alpha Pack. This is the second narrative event to come to Halo Infinite since Interference, which took place back in May. With the new event, you’ll be able to unlock 10 cosmetics for free, as long as you participate in the limited-time challenges. Here’s all you need to know about the Halo infinite Alpha Pack Event.
Alpha Pack challenges
The Alpha Pack Event is live in-game and will only be here until August 1 Come from Sports betting site VPbet . During the week and a half of this event, you’ll have 10 challenges to complete. To complete the challenges, you’ll need to play Last Spartan Standing. In this mode, you’re thrown into a Big Team Battle Map against 12 other players, and you have to be the last one alive to win.
Here are the 10 challenges you’ll need to complete to finish your event pass.
Vengeance For Vihar – Kill Enemy Spartans with a Headshot in Last Spartan Standing (3): 300 XP
Cutting Their Teeth – Earn Cumulative Player Score in Last Last Spartan Standing matches (2,500): 300 XP
Hunt From The Back – Kill Enemy Spartans from behind with a Melee Attack in Last Spartan Standing (1): 300 XP
To Irritate Iratus – Kill Enemy Spartans in Last Spartan Standing (10): 300 XP
Opportunity To Improvise – Kill Enemy Spartans with a Melee Attack in Last Spartan Standing (3): 300 XP
Cutting Their Teeth – Earn Cumulative Player Score in Last Last Spartan Standing matches (10,000): 300 XP
Camber Recon – Complete Last Last Spartan Standing matches (2): 300 XP
Cutting Their Teeth – Earn Cumulative Player Score in Last Last Spartan Standing matches (5,000): 300 XP
Vengeance For Vihar – Kill Enemy Spartans with a Headshot in Last Spartan Standing (5): 300 XP
Opportunity To Improvise – Kill Enemy Spartans with a Melee Attack in Last Spartan Standing (10): 300 XP
Note that these appear to be displayed out of proper order in-game. So long as you complete them when they’re each active in your challenge log, you should have no issues collecting all of your free cosmetics.
Alpha Pack cosmetics
After finishing all those challenges, you’ll be rewarded with various cosmetics in Halo Infinite. Here’s what you can unlock for completing the challenges in Halo Infinite latest live event:
Inkay, the small squid Pokemon, has returned in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet as part of the Indigo Disk DLC, along with its confusing evolution method. This dark/psychic originally appeared on the Nintendo 3DS in Pokemon X and Y with a special method of evolution. In the 3DS version, you had to physically turn your handheld upside in order to get the Pokemon to evolve. This method is similar to how it’s done on Nintendo Switch in the Pokemon Scarlet and Violet Indigo Disk DLC, although there are a few additional caveats.
Where to catch Inkay
Inkay is found in the Coastal Biome section of the Terarium, which is the northeastern section of the new area in the Indigo Disk DLC. While they do appear pretty much anywhere in this area, the best places to look are the beaches or in the water itself.
How to evolve Inkay into Malamar
To evolve Inkay into Malamar, Inkay will need to be at least level 30, but all of the ones found in the wild should be over level 50. From there, you will need to level up Inkay to get them to evolve but there are a few special parameters. Inkay will need to level up from battle, not EXP candy. You can use candy to get Inkay close to leveling up, but the final bit of EXP needs to come from a battle against either a trainer or a wild Pokemon. Inkay does not need to do the battling though.
Most importantly, your Nintendo Switch needs to be in handheld form and held upside down when Inkay levels up. No external controllers can be powered on, only the Joy-Cons attached to the Nintendo Switch. EXP is given out rather quickly in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, so the best thing to do is turn your Switch upside down as soon as you see the enemy Pokemon’s HP hit zero and keep it that way until Inkay starts to evolve into Malamar. If you miss your shot, you will need to level Inkay up again while repeating the method.
In the nearly two decades since the release of the last original side-scrolling entry in the Metroid franchise, the genre that the series pioneered has evolved exponentially. The metroidvania genre moniker alone is proof that Metroid’s DNA has lived on throughout the lengthy hiatus. As Samus returns in Metroid Dread, it’s undeniable that the series is entering a landscape that is littered with games that are indebted to it and in some cases improved on it. Nevertheless, Metroid Dread is a triumphant return for the bounty hunter—in large part because it remains true to its lineage. Like seeing an old friend for the first time in many years, Metroid Dread is charmingly familiar, an old-school side-scroller with a modern look and feel.
Metroid Dread, unsurprisingly, plays similarly to its developer’s remake of Metroid II for Nintendo 3DS. Mercury Steam brought over the excellent counterattack mechanic from Metroid: Samus Returns to Dread as well as the manual sighted aiming system that gives you pinpoint control over beam shots and missiles. While Dread is pleasantly familiar mechanically, Samus has never felt this good to control. With a pep in her step and tight controls, Metroid Dread is silky smooth in motion and an absolute joy to play from a combat and platforming perspective.
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Now Playing: Metroid Dread Video Review
Utilizing the same 2.5D art style from Samus Returns, Metroid Dread offers crisper, more detailed visuals that help make each of the locales and their enemies stand out. Rocky tunnels, molten caverns, industrial compounds, underwater depths–Metroid Dread is filled with the distinct level designs that have marked the series’ storied history. Improved animations, especially from Samus herself and bosses, enhance the overall presentation while still adhering to the signature art direction and style the series is known for. It probably doesn’t take full advantage of the Switch’s processing power, but as a side-scrolling Metroid game it falls right in line with the series as a whole.
Literally rising from the ashes of a canceled Nintendo DS title of the same name, Metroid Dread has been billed as the swan song of this current Samus saga. Bringing a story arc that began 35 years ago to a satisfying close was always going to be a tall task, but Dread deftly untangles the series’ web of narrative mysteries to deliver an affecting tale that features some of the best writing and atmospheric storytelling in series history.
To get there, Dread kicks off in the only way a Metroid game could: with Samus arriving at a destination to investigate a mission gone awry only to soon find herself devoid of her decked-out suite of abilities. This time, it’s Planet ZDR, where the Federation had sent a robotic task force called EMMI to search for evidence that the X parasite lived on after the events of Metroid Fusion. Samus quickly encounters a powerful Chozo warrior who knocks her unconscious. She awakens deep beneaththe planet’s surface, far away from her ship. Left with only her power beam and a batch of missiles, Samus’ trek upwards to the surface to find answers and a resolution begins in earnest.
Though Metroid Dread flips the script by forcing Samus to travel up and back to her ship, rather than down to the heart of the planet, in practice this change isn’t a meaningful shakeup. As you’d come to expect, Dread requires frequent backtracking, so you’re moving in all different directions throughout the adventure. One notable new feature that makes both exploration and combat different than usual from the start is Samus’ ability to slide. This allows her to access areas previously only accessible via Morph Ball as well as provide a nimble way to dodge attacks–the Morph Ball is still needed in many instances.
The biggest addition in Dread has been plastered all over pre-release videos and marketing materials: the EMMI. Dread’s winding tunnel system in each of the themed locales inevitably leads Samus into trippy portals signifying the start of an EMMI Zone. Surprising absolutely no one, the robots sent to the planet to investigate have been reprogrammed to do what all well-intentioned robots secretly want to do: kill. Each of the patrolled zones has an ominous gray visual filter and foreboding music.
EMMI Zones introduce stealth to the Metroid formula, and it’s a mostly positive addition. The EMMI–which crawl on all fours along walls, reconfiguring physically to chase you through spaces you’d think they can’t navigate, and clicking and clanking as they go–are positively creepy, inspiring the dread the title alludes to. If an EMMI spots you, a chase sequence commences, and if you aren’t able to outrun it, it can be an instant game over. And you can’t exit the zone if the EMMI has you in its sights. You have a very brief window to execute a perfect counter, which stuns the EMMI and gives you an opportunity to slide under it and escape, but the timing is extremely tight and the window seems to vary to ensure escape after capture feels like a stroke of fortune. Pretty early on you unlock a useful cloaking ability that makes you invisible, which can be used to evade EMMI and pass through motion-locked doors, but like the counter it isn’t enough to trivialise the EMMI—they are and always remain a serious threat to Samus.
Nevertheless, exploring an EMMI-patrolled zone can be nerve-wracking, but it’s never nearly as terrifying as it could have been, mostly because the stakes are low Come from Sports betting site VPbet . If you get caught, you simply get sent back to the entrance, effectively losing at most a minute or two of progress. Rather than feeling like a real foe, EMMIs wind up as more of a cumbersome obstacle at times, mainly because the map layout often forces you to zig-zag through EMMI zones to make progress and backtrack. Coming across an EMMI guarding the exact exit you’re searching for can be tiresome, especially since the encounters are mostly the same throughout. In isolation, EMMIs bring a well-designed new element of gameplay into the Metroid fold, but in the grand scheme of things they can get in the way of what Metroid is all about: careful and thorough exploration.
EMMIs also cannot be damaged by Samus’ traditional weapons. Inside each zone is a floating Orwellian eyeball mini-boss that, once you’re able to find, can be destroyed to receive a one-use Omega Cannon. The process for killing an EMMI has two steps: exposing its head by shooting away the shield with a machine gun and then charging up the cannon to deliver the kill shot. The kill sequence is a clever puzzle of sorts, which is presented from an over-the-shoulder camera perspective. You have to find a clear enough space in the zone to shoot the EMMI at a distance and make it vulnerable; otherwise, you have to start the process over from a different spot. Once an EMMI is taken out, the zone becomes a regular area filled with enemies that you can freely explore without worrying about killer robots. With each successive EMMI encounter, the process for killing them becomes slightly trickier thanks to environmental obstacles that force you to think and act quickly.
Despite the intermittent annoyances, the moment-to-moment gameplay involving EMMIs is still enjoyable, even if it sometimes feels at odds with Metroid’s core DNA. Thankfully EMMIs aren’t an overbearing presence; they are more of an aside. The vital framework of Metroid is still intact here and Dread handles exploration and backtracking better than any game in the series thus far.
As someone who recently replayed all of the side-scrolling entries in the franchise, I was struck by how linear most of them felt, especially Metroid Fusion. Dread feels like a more adventurous take on Fusion’s cadence. You still get mission updates from the AI Adam in network centers, but very rarely does it tell you exactly where to go. Instead, there’s a clever nudge in the right direction while still giving you the freedom to explore. Though I did get lost for a brief bit twice throughout the adventure, once I figured out where to go, I started recognizing the subtle suggestions in both the writing and environment that point you in the right direction. Dread doesn’t hold your hand; it feeds you drips of info and new abilities to allow you to gradually explore previously unreachable areas.
And exploring is the name of the game here. Dread has more secrets to uncover than its predecessors. There are missile packs all over the place, including upgrades that add a whopping 10 missiles to your ammunition capacity. Dread might actually have too many missile packs, as I eventually had so many that I didn’t even need to be concerned with being accurate with my shots during late-game boss battles. Energy Tanks, on the other hand, remain critical finds. In addition to full Energy Tanks, Mercury Steam added Energy Tank pieces. Four make a full Energy Tank–The Legend of Zelda Heart Pieces, anyone? Quadrants of the map with hidden collectibles flash after you’ve visited them to tell you there is something to be found, but not in a way that makes finding upgrades any less rewarding.
Speaking of the in-game map, it’s deliciously detailed, marking every single location where you picked up or saw an upgrade as well as points of interest and doors that require specific weapons to open. You can highlight specific icons as well as drop pins at spots you want to circle back to. While the map can get a tad busy as you make significant progress, it does help make backtracking–even after you’ve finished the story–a worthwhile and engaging endeavor.
Of course, exploration is tied to Samus’ abilities, and Dread features a plethora of upgrades old and new. There are more than 20 suit, weapon, and ability upgrades in Dread, and almost all of them are required to fully explore the map. For instance, the Varia suit allows Samus to withstand heat in fiery areas, while the Wide Beam opens certain hatches and moves large boxes. It’s not uncommon to find multiple upgrades in an hour. Your means of exploring evolve quickly, consistently giving you more reasons to retrace your steps and voyage to new sections. That said, because of this constant barrage of new upgrades, it sometimes feels like you barely make use of your newly acquired gadgets. This is especially the case for beam upgrades, which replace your existing beam. One of the new Morph Ball gizmos is only really required once, immediately after finding it. Sometimes it can freely like Dread suffers from gluttony due to uneven pacing of unlocks that clutters late-game sections.
Dread’s handful or so of locales are wonderfully designed to test both your platform and combat skills, and each has its own stable of enemies that pack a hearty punch. Samus Returns really elevated Metroid’s combat system with counters, and Dread continues that. Many enemies, from flying monsters to hulking land beasts, have an attack that can be countered. And successfully slaying a monster following a countered attack drops more health/missile resources, rewarding you for making use of this vital mechanic.
I say vital because it’s central to many of Dread’s major boss fights. The Metroid series has had a good number of memorable showdowns, and Dread adds to that history with some of the most daunting duels of Samus’ bounty hunting career. From a larger-than-life battle with a chained-up Kraid to a tricky back and forth with a brilliantly disgusting experiment gone very wrong (or very right, depending how you look at it), Dread’s best boss battles make you feel small and powerless at first, tasking you with figuring out how to evade an onslaught of attacks, timing counters, and laying into the beasts with a flurry of missiles. While around half of the boss battles are exciting spectacles, Dread does fall into the same rut as Samus Returns with repetition of mini-bosses, albeit not to such an extreme degree. Half of the bosses are essentially the same enemy with identical moves, and a particular upgrade eventually eliminates much of the strategy from the showdowns.
My first playthrough of Metroid Dread took nine hours, and I still had plenty of secrets remaining to uncover. My second playthrough clocked in around four hours, largely due to the fact I knew exactly where to go and had a solid grasp of each of the boss battles. While Dread definitely does have a few demanding fights, overall it’s not as trying as Samus Returns. That said, you can go back through and play on hard mode after finishing the game, and this difficulty level significantly ups the challenge.
More than anything else, Metroid Dread feels like going back to a place of comfort after a long time away. Though the gameplay is refined and new features have been added to the mix, Dread sticks closely to the formula of its predecessors. In the end, for longtime fans like myself, that’s probably for the best. There’s nothing to dread here. We’re home again.