Metroid Dread: Boss Rush Released

Version 2.1.0 of Metroid Dread got released today, which comes with the new Boss Rush mode. This is an entirely separate mode from the main game, where you can switch between the "Samus Files" and "Boss Rush" on the main menu by pressing the L and R buttons respectively. You need to have beaten the game first to unlock it, which makes sense because of spoilers.

The Boss Rush itself comes in three different variants:

• Boss Rush: You fight 12 bosses in a row in a given order and your goal is to beat them all as quickly as possible. Any taken damage gets carried over between bosses, but you can retry any boss for a time penalty, should you get defeated.
  
  
• Survival Rush: The goal is to beat as many bosses within a five minute time limit. Beating bosses adds more time to your clock, more so when you don't take damage, but you can't retry on failed attempts. You need to have beaten Boss Rush or Dread Rush to unlock this mode.
  
  
• Dread Rush: It's the same as Boss Rush, but with the one-hit-kill rule of Dread Mode. You need to have beaten Dread Mode to unlock this.
  

In addition, both Boss Rush and Dread Rush offer you Practice battles, where you can fight the bosses individually and go for highscores as well.

For each boss in the Boss Rush mode it gives you a set number of Energy Tanks, Missiles, and Power Bombs, where these numbers increase to appropriate amounts between battles. At the end of a boss fight it looks at how much of your total health is missing and then subtracts that amount from the new total for the next boss. So, even if you're nearly dead, you will be getting some health thanks to the new Energy Tanks.

In Survival Rush, however, you get eight Energy Tanks (899 health) and 120 Missiles at the beginning, where this will have to do for the remainder of the mode. It doesn't stop after the final boss, so you can keep going, but the time bonus you get from victories decreases with each cycle (at first from 30 to 20 seconds), where the time will run out eventually.

You also only get the abilities that you normally would have during the boss encounters in the main game. So, there are none of sequence breaking advantages that you could have with certain bosses, like Kraid or Escue.

It also doesn't go through all the variants of the different mini-boss fights, only two of them: there are two different Central Unit fights, Artaria and Ferenia, and there is the Twin Robot Chozo Soldier battle in addition to the single one. It also doesn't bother with the different tiers of the Chozo Soldiers and goes straight to the Elite one.

Overall, there is a lot to unlock here with the modes themselves. You have to beat the Boss Rush at least once, so it unlocks the Survival Rush, as well as all the practice battles (though, you technically don't have to beat the last boss in Boss Rush for the latter, only get there). And you'll also have to beat Dread Mode and get to the final boss in Dread Rush for all other options.

Plus, if you want to have set a record for everything, essentially to mark them as "beaten", there are all the practice battles to go through, and you will have to fully beat Dread Rush as well... But there is nothing outside the Boss Rush to unlock, so no new gallery pictures or anything like that.

 

My Opinion:

On first glance this seems pretty thought-out and fair. Well, the completionist inside me wants to go through everything this mode has to offer, where MercurySteam made a good call by giving you a retry function. While there is a hefty time penalty for losing, where it adds both the time spent on the failed attempt and some extra seconds, the records themselves don't really concern me as much.

It's like the Boss Challenge in Ocarina of Time 3D, where I want to have beaten all the bosses, but it doesn't necessarily have to be a good time. And unlike the Boss Gauntlet in that game, there is no potential frustration from having to start all over. So, that's a good thing.

Still, my first attempt failed miserably at Escue. "Who?", you might ask, and this was my reaction as well when the name popped up on the screen. It's the electrical charged bug boss in Ferenia and I haven't fought this boss normally since my very first playthrough, because in all my subsequent runs I have been sequence breaking, which let me easily beat this boss via the Screw Attack. And now this comes home to roost, because I had no idea what I was doing with this boss. I beat him in the Practice Mode eventually, but I still couldn't figure out a reliable way of dodging all those little homing projectiles.

This fight will be a nightmare in Dread Rush, where I still have yet to beat Dread Mode. This is all way too perfectionistic for my taste, but thanks to all the checkpoints in both modes this shouldn't get terribly frustrating. Imagine if you had to start Dread Rush all over with each failed attempt. This would have been the most ridiculous thing since the Endless Cucco Rush in A Link Between Worlds. But luckily you can keep trying at every step...

The real star of all this are the practice battles. These let you re-battle any boss at any time just for the fun of it, just like the Boss Challenge in Ocarina of Time 3D. And that's very nice to have.

Well, if it wasn't for all the dreaded "Don't get hit!" nonsense, I would applaud MercurySteam and Nintendo for delivering a fantastic free update to the game. But I will give all of it a try later this month and then may share my experiences with the game one final time.