In short, frustrated and disappointed.

First of all, I'm not a hard-core gamer but Super Metroid left what feels like a permanent impression on the wiring of my brain.

I actually worked for Nintendo way back in the mid-nineties (in IT not game support or Marketing) and with unlimited access to any game or console, In the 3 years, that I worked for the company, the only one that grabbed me was Super Metroid. I have very fond memories of playing it in the boardroom on what was one of the biggest TV's anywhere in the world (at the time) and for hours at home on my own SNES. I collected 100% items and also did 2-hour speed runs competing against fellow colleagues - good memories.

After I left the company in '96. I pretty much stopped playing anything, I've never even seen any other Metroid game. A year ago a got my kid a Switch (sadly no discounts for ex-employees) and had fun with Mario Kart etc. Then I found I could get the virtual console and download Super. That was awesome, feeling 25 years younger and still able to race through it or re-explore to my heart's content. So when I heard Dread was coming out in 2D and aligned to Super Metroid game style I jumped on the pre-order, brought a pro-controller and was itching for it to arrive.

Well, it arrived this morning so I jumped straight on it. Amazing graphics style and atmosphere. Then I tried playing. My decades-long hardwired brain simply could not adjust to B instead of A to jump, Y instead of X to shoot and worst of all the stupid analog stick instead of the D-Pad for movement. I found that I could re-map the buttons to an extent but not the D-Pad. What might work for me was if there was a way to enable both so that I could move with the D-Pad and still use the stick for the fine aiming control, but there seems no way to do this even with the programmable 8bitDo Pro 2 I purchased. This leaves the game beyond frustrating and I feel like an idiot playing it. In Super I was able to wall-jump anywhere I liked and even mastered the infinite bomb jump, but in this game as soon as I try wall jump with the stick any slight direction change breaks the sequence and it fails.

So sorry for the whinge, but if you are an old X'er like myself who was addicted to (and a master of) Super Metroid I think Dread will leave you feeling very frustrated. I'll give a more of a go over the weekend, but have the feeling I might have wasted a lot of money trying to recapture my youth. I think this game (and all the other modern ones) might be best left to the Gen-Zeds, with their youth, still-flexible muscle memory and a huge amount of spare time to practice