https://www.theguardian.com/games/2021/oct/19/metroid-dread-review-nintendos-horror-tinged-sci-fi-feels-oddly-hollow

Nintendo Switch; Mercury Steam/NintendoSamus Aran’s return after 20 years is welcome – but other games have taken up her mantle in the meantime

The recipe for a Metroid game is clear and concise: there’s a labyrinthine system of rooms and corridors, an oppressive science-fiction environment, an escalating series of power-ups. A good-feeling gun. A great-feeling jump. A limited map you unlock gradually and rewardingly. Metroid Dread is proficient at all of this: it feels good to play, for a while. But I found that it got tiresome. There is little to hold the player in the world beyond the feeling of a perfectly executed attack or dodge. In the 20 years since we last saw bounty hunter Samus Aran run around in one of these 2D space stations, there have been several indie games modelled on the Metroid format – such as Iconoclasts, and Hollow Knight – that offer far more atmosphere, depth and life than Dread’s slickly predictable tunnels.