Then why exactly isn’t it metroidvania? That question is both very easy and very difficult to answer. The easy answer is that in Metroid Dread you hardly get the freedom to explore, while that is the core of the genre. Although you keep unlocking new skills that make you faster, stronger or more agile, there is almost always only one main road. The rest is just a huge amount of side paths to collect extra rockets, energy bars and bombs.
Amalgamation of the words
The term is ultimately nothing more than a way of denoting a certain type of game, so that everyone roughly knows what it is. An action game where the focus is not necessarily on platforming and defeating enemies, but on exploring the environment. The way forward is probably behind you, in a place you couldn’t reach before. Now that you can magically jump an extra time, a new part of the game world literally opens up for you.
Metroid Dread will get away with it for the first few hours, but the more areas and abilities you unlock, the more visible the red thread stretched around Samus’ neck becomes is. With each new upgrade, it’s no coincidence that you face a different kind of roadblock that you just didn’t have an answer to. Now that that blockade has been lifted, it clears the way to an elevator, tram or teleport machine that forces you towards a next or previous area.
You have little or nothing to say about the order or way in which you do this, because you simply cannot get there via a detour. If you take the plunge and go on an adventure yourself, you will only encounter roadblocks. Metroid Dread is a one-way street in that sense, albeit with a lot of twists and turns. You’ll find a lot of upgrades, but there’s hardly any search.
Metroid Dread is therefore more suffocating than oppressive. Unfortunately, it also ensures that you never really get an affinity with all those new skills. One is even flashier than the other, but before you get used to them, they’re already obsolete or useless, because the next skill has presented itself. Such a setup dictates that all the holes and cracks in the environment are suddenly all blocked by the very one thing for which you have found or have yet to find that new strength.
