Post Script
For the purposes of review, we’ve taken Metroid in isolation (and, indeed, in Isolation). And in those terms, Dread is a great success, a series update with just enough ideas and polish of its own. But that means ignoring the wider context in which these games exist, and what happened to it while Samus was enjoying a 17-year cryosleep between 2D adventures. Consider it this way: when Zero Mission came out in 2004, it was on the eve of Cave Story’s release. This was five years before Shadow Complex brought the genre to the nascent Xbox Live Arcade, more than a decade before Axiom Verge, and the indie Metroidvania explosion that followed.
Today, then, Samus competes not just with the Belmont bloodline but with Ori and Shantae, luchadors and steambots, The Penitent One and The Knight. Many of these newer Metroidvania games are not just slavish recreations of the genre’s principles but significant expansions. And Dread seems uninterested in the lot.