Axiom Verge is a title I had been curious about for quite some time, in fact I've owned the game for several years at this point but for some reason never decided to pick it up and play it.
There was something intriguing about the grim artstyle the game was going for, as well as its blatant homage to the Metroid franchise. Then there was the fact that it was developed by a single person, one Thomas Happ, which maximized my interest because games developed by a single person tend to show a lot of their vision and personality through the work.
To summarize Axiom Verge though, I can only say this:
It is aggressively ok.
What I mean by this is that the game never truly gets to be genuinely interesting especially considering its genre.
Your movement options are extremely limited, with not many upgrades that change that.
Level design is very inspired by Metroid, and by Metroid I mean the 1986 NES game, which if you don't remember, had a lot of samey looking locations with copy/paste level design. A lot of areas can feel very familiar, especially the vertical shafts, and this game loves its shafts.
It very much feels more like a derivative of Metroid rather than its own experience at points, and these things kind of kill what could be a stellar game because there are ideas I genuinely enjoy about it.
The glitching mechanics are a unique way of traversing the environment and dealing with enemies. You can glitch through walls to progress into hidden areas, or use your gun to glitch enemies causing different effects depending on the enemy themselves.
You can have an enemy glitch and they'll constantly shoot health at you, or you can have them glitch and fly away. Of course, the variety eventually gets limited as some enemies just do the same thing as others, but the idea is fun in practice.
Then there's the sheer number of weapons you can acquire from a typical blaster to a shotgun like electric shock to a bomb to a flamethrower, the variety is impressive. However, I didn't feel much of a need to experiment because a lot of the guns also feel situational and on top of that... they're not really used for puzzles and the like.
For most of the game I stuck with the Electric Shotgun because it does a fuck ton of damage to pretty much all regular enemies, and until I got the other Electric Gun that tracks enemies down it was my go to weapon.
Not to say all the weapons are bad and I'm sure you can do all sorts of things with them, but for me I will pick what works best.
I also dig how the password system is used to solve puzzles though some puzzles and shit are hidden behind notes you have to collect and its a bit tedious.
I don't think the game should be as disliked as it is but in the same vein, it's just not a very interesting time. This is a game you play once and then never again because why play this over AM2R, Super Metroid, Symphony of the Night, etc.
I will forever remained impressed by Thomas Happ singlehandedly developing everything for this game, but yeah, it's a pump and dump Metroidvania.
Also the story is ok, I don't think there's really much to talk about other than I liked some of the twists.
There was something intriguing about the grim artstyle the game was going for, as well as its blatant homage to the Metroid franchise. Then there was the fact that it was developed by a single person, one Thomas Happ, which maximized my interest because games developed by a single person tend to show a lot of their vision and personality through the work.
To summarize Axiom Verge though, I can only say this:
It is aggressively ok.
What I mean by this is that the game never truly gets to be genuinely interesting especially considering its genre.
Your movement options are extremely limited, with not many upgrades that change that.
Level design is very inspired by Metroid, and by Metroid I mean the 1986 NES game, which if you don't remember, had a lot of samey looking locations with copy/paste level design. A lot of areas can feel very familiar, especially the vertical shafts, and this game loves its shafts.
It very much feels more like a derivative of Metroid rather than its own experience at points, and these things kind of kill what could be a stellar game because there are ideas I genuinely enjoy about it.
The glitching mechanics are a unique way of traversing the environment and dealing with enemies. You can glitch through walls to progress into hidden areas, or use your gun to glitch enemies causing different effects depending on the enemy themselves.
You can have an enemy glitch and they'll constantly shoot health at you, or you can have them glitch and fly away. Of course, the variety eventually gets limited as some enemies just do the same thing as others, but the idea is fun in practice.
Then there's the sheer number of weapons you can acquire from a typical blaster to a shotgun like electric shock to a bomb to a flamethrower, the variety is impressive. However, I didn't feel much of a need to experiment because a lot of the guns also feel situational and on top of that... they're not really used for puzzles and the like.
For most of the game I stuck with the Electric Shotgun because it does a fuck ton of damage to pretty much all regular enemies, and until I got the other Electric Gun that tracks enemies down it was my go to weapon.
Not to say all the weapons are bad and I'm sure you can do all sorts of things with them, but for me I will pick what works best.
I also dig how the password system is used to solve puzzles though some puzzles and shit are hidden behind notes you have to collect and its a bit tedious.
I don't think the game should be as disliked as it is but in the same vein, it's just not a very interesting time. This is a game you play once and then never again because why play this over AM2R, Super Metroid, Symphony of the Night, etc.
I will forever remained impressed by Thomas Happ singlehandedly developing everything for this game, but yeah, it's a pump and dump Metroidvania.
Also the story is ok, I don't think there's really much to talk about other than I liked some of the twists.