Developer MercurySteam, Nintendo EPD

Publisher Nintendo

Format Switch

Release Out now

The Metroid games have never been ashamed of the influence of Alien. There’s the hat-tip of Ridley’s name, of course, while Yoshio Sakamoto has happily acknowledged the pop-cultural debt in interviews. But Metroid Dread might be the closest it has ever come to that inspiration, in the form of the game’s biggest addition to this 35-year-old series: the EMMI.

As names go, it might not inspire quite the same fear as Xenomorph or Necronom. In pursuit, though, we find ourselves thinking of that line spoken by Ian Holm’s Ash in the original film: “The perfect organism. Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility.” They might not look much alike – in place of the dark chitin and troubling fluids, these are colourful robots with faces that open up like the petals of a flower – but there’s something in the uncanny way they move. Without the mundane realities of a man in a rubber suit to worry about, the EMMI are able to deliver on the terrifying promise of Giger’s design. The shape might be roughly humanoid, but in motion – the limbs bending freely in both directions, the segmented body stacking in new formations to navigate each ledge – they’re anything but.

Your meetings with the EMMI vary, drawing on different aspects of this cinematic inspiration. Occasionally, when Samus is blessed with the (extremely time-limited) Omega Cannon, you get to play out the space-marine fantasies of Aliens, emptying round after glowing round into the creature as it treads towards you. But more often encounters resemble that iconic shot from Alien 3, with the xenomorph’s face right up against Ripley’s. Samus, disguised by a new cloaking ability, stands perfectly still, the EMMI’s beam of vision scanning her up and down at point-blank range – until, finally, your prayers are answered and the EMMI turns to scuttle off in the other direction. Or perhaps it doesn’t, and instead pounces, and you find yourself skewered on the spike that emerges from its maw. But the incarnation that Dread resembles most, we’d suggest, comes from outside cinema: the survival horror of Creative Assembly’s Alien: Isolation. As in that game, you’re pursued by an unpredictable, unstoppable enemy, able to take shortcuts through the levels that, contrary to the usual rules of Metroid, never become accessible to Samus. And if it catches up to you, well – game over, man. Game over.