Axiom Verge

Axiom Verge has all the bones of a well-designed Metroid game: an alien soundtrack with a couple of motifs that are throwbacks to the music of the original, distinct environments and enemies with interesting and varied threats, slick and precise movement with satisfying animations and traversal upgrades, mostly imposing bosses and central figures, it's ominous and otherworldly, and it makes you feel small and isolated from all familiar life. That's more than enough to say that, yes, it's very much worth playing.
A few things keep it from being magnificent:
While there is a great assortment of weapons to find, the majority of them were not designed to be particularly useful over the few that are, so gathering up a couple dozen weapons is more of a novelty than anything. Still, there are several great offensive options which is just as many as most games in the genre have, and the game's glitch mechanic that reprograms enemy behavior makes up for any shortfalls.
Early on, you'll casually step off a standard ledge not knowing you'll be unable to go back to the early zones for quite some time. The game strands you in what is arguably the worst zone for a good chunk of the early-mid game, and you'll find half a dozen upgrades and be sick of hearing Hindi chant over a techno beat by the time you can finally go back.
Order of upgrades required to gain other upgrades required to pass a couple of narrow, out-of-the-way progression points with no direction from the game whatsoever is less than ideal, leading to unnecessary backtracking later in the game, over and above the usual in the genre—too many dead ends too many times, which the central elevator doesn't remotely alleviate.
Bosses as a whole are relatively few but the oh-shit bosses who actually feel threatening are even fewer; you can walk right through the second boss and cheese him from behind, and the ultimate battle is a joke—more for the purpose of neatly wrapping up the story than anything—especially after being warned about the big bad final boss throughout the entire game.
While every game in the genre does it to a degree, the tells for quite a few of the mundane hidden areas aren't sufficient, meaning to 100% the map without looking up anything you would have to spend a great deal of time knocking on every wall after gaining certain upgrades. While there are some well-designed secret areas involving passwords, some of the lesser hidden rooms should either have better graphical tells or be revealed or alluded to by a late-game item that helps round up the stragglers you've missed after 80-90% map completion, like the grubfinder in Hollow Knight.
These are relatively minor flaws in one of the better games in the genre so, once again, if you're a fan of Metroid, Axiom Verge is a no-brainer.

Well, I give it a modest recommendation. I found the gameplay a bit dull, but A.V. is trying to capture the feeling of the nintendo classics. I did not find the challenge too hard or too easy, and there were a lot of findable upgrades to keep me interested. One super nice feature was how each boss had multiple strategies, including a cheese-move that let guys like me advance.
The game worked great on an old ubuntu desktop with radeon mesa drivers and two xbox-type gamepads. The game takes 160MBs of diskspace, and it uses a Mono-type game engine. I would recommend anyone still on the fence to wait on a big sale, since I feel the full price is a lot for a game that is not real accessible. (86% of owners got the achievement for the first boss, but only 56% got the one for the third boss.)

I adore this game! Some people play it for five minutes and dismiss it as a Metroid clone, but I promise it really isn't. Obviously it's Metroid inspired, as all metroidvania games are (and also the retro pixel art yada yada), but dismissing it as a clone ignores all of the good things this game has to offer. There are certain obstacles that lead you to think you'll be getting a roll or a double jump later on to clear them, but instead you get a completely unexpected ability. Every time I unlocked something or found a secret it felt super rewarding and got me really excited to find more! The environments are super atmospheric and look amazing. The soundtrack for the game is equally amazing, and helps support the atmosphere even more. It was super hard to stop playing for the night, and I honestly wish there was more. Idk I'm not very good at forming cohesive thoughts, so here's a quick list of good things about this game:
- the map is HUGE
- the robot ladies look so cool
- holy moly so many weapons
- holy moly so many mobility options
- holy moly so many upgrades
- tons of secrets and hidden abilities
- secret worlds are so cool
- the map helps completionists know when they've collected everything

It wouldn't be a fair review without criticizing the game a lil, so here's a list of cons:
- lore is a bit confusing but is good once you figure everything out
- I wish there was more environmental storytelling instead of just reading stuff out of tablets (there is some environmental stuff tho)
- there is no quick way of crossing the map unless you're very experienced and know what you're doing.
- the grapple is CLUNKY and I hate the first area where it is introduced. It does gets easier as you figure it out though.
- I wish my character moved faster but whatever
- bosses could be a tad bit harder- especially towards the end
In conclusion, game is fun please give it a try

By now everyone's heard the story behind Legend of Zelda. Miyamoto supposedly wanted to recreate the feeling of exploring the woods near his childhood home. James Cameron (or so I heard) got the idea for The Terminator from a dream where he saw that image of the metal skeleton slowly rising up from the flames.
Is it completely true? Who knows.

Authors love to say that kind of stuff in hindsight to make their creations sound more profound and universal. One thing's for sure, though: really enduring works do tend to come from someplace deeper than just "I wanna sell you a game." There's usually a reason behind them, something more substantial that the creator is seeing and feeling.
I don't know who came up with Metroid, but I'd be willing to bet there's a story behind that, too.
Back in the day it stood out not only for its mechanics, which were innovative enough that they still bear its name, but because it created a distinct and surprising atmosphere. You can tell something's up from the first few bars of the theme that plays on the title screen. Hey, that doesn't sound like a run-of-the-mill space-bounty-hunter-chasing-aliens shoot-em-up, which would have been the natural choice. It almost sounds like a horror game; and in some ways it is.
Just look at the background. It ought to be a heroic action scene with Samus firing a laser or something like that, but instead it's a barren landscape under a black expanse of space. Of course you can read too much into anything, but it's hard not to think that, consciously or unconsciously, there was a method to design choices like this.
All of these elements lend it an unexpected feeling of isolation. Maybe today it's harder to appreciate the sense of vastness that Metroid communicated in the 8-bit era.

There you were, dropped onto a desolate planet, totally alone. Nobody to help you; no home base to back you up or brief you on the situation. Just you, hostile unknown enemies, eerie alien statues, and miles and miles of dark, twisting caverns. Nothing between you and oblivion but a suit of cold metal armor. It was all on you to complete your mission and find your way out. That was all you really needed to know.
Super Metroid may have been a better game in pretty much every way, but it never had quite the same edge. Then the later games did what sequels always seem to do: over-explain everything and spoil the mystery.

So when I play a tribute-type game like this, it makes me wonder what its author was seeing. Was he seeing Metroid, or his own creation, unique enough that it can stand on its own?

Well, it's different, that's for sure.
If Metroid took a visceral, horror-type angle, this one's much more cerebral. It's sort of trippy concept sci-fi; 2001 to Metroid's Alien. That ends up being both a blessing and a curse.

You start off in pretty much the same place: stuck on a strange planet all by yourself. Since they're not going for a dark and oppressive atmosphere they have more freedom to go wild with the environments, and they put it to good use. There's a tremendous amount of variety here for an 8-bit-style game. You'll explore everything from deep caverns to bizarre outdoor alien vistas. Vivid colors and crazy visuals are everywhere and really make each section stand out. It could have degenerated into total chaos, yet there's also a thread of coherence that ties it all together.
The ghost of H.R. Giger does a lot of the heavy lifting on that end. Despite what I just said up above, on the surface this game actually has more similarities to Alien than Metroid does. I mean, if you've seen any promotional images, you probably noticed that creepy face which could have been shipped here directly from LV-426.

In general a biomechanical theme runs throughout. Every zone is filled with weird bubbles and pustules, interwoven with machinery of uncertain origin, glitches in the fabric of reality and pulsating blobs that might be organs but you probably shouldn't touch them to find out. Not to mention the bosses, which manage to convey menace in their malformed immensity but also a sort of pathos, like each one is lost in a haze of confusion and sadness. You feel repulsion and pity at the same time.
You might be wondering if there's a point to all this bizarre stuff, and I'm almost certain there is. See, it has to do with dying, or maybe not; and then being transported to another dimension. Or was it another timeline? And then there are these creatures that, uh,
Ok look, I'll level with you: I didn't really understand what it was about.
This guy seems like he had tons of ideas, though, and I'm sure it makes more sense if you play it a few times, or at least if you're better about reading though scattered notes than I am.

This is one of those stories that takes a lot of explaining, and a good chunk of it is done via computer logs hidden all over the place; and even when you do find them, half the time they're written in some kind of alien glyphs. I assume there's some way to decipher all of these things, but I wasn't going to screw around all day trying to find it so it'll have to remain a mystery. The part I did catch seemed pretty intriguing, for what it's worth.

As a "Metroidvania," (that's what they call things like this now) the game itself is much more Metroid, in the classic sense, than -vania in the Symphony of the Night sense: non-linear exploration but mostly linear progression for the unlocks, with no real character customization outside of limited weapon choice. Like I said, there's plenty of variety to explore, but sometimes they're not very clear about where you ought to go next.

Obviously backtracking comes with the territory in these games, but there's a little more here than you bargain for. Every time you find a new key item it's like you have to scour every corner of the world all over again just to find that one little door you saw yesterday and forgot about.

The weapons arrive with a similar lack of guidance. They're not always very well differentiated in terms of their roles, and you're sort of left to find your own way there, too; although I feel like a bit of a jerk complaining about details like this considering that one guy built all of this from scratch. I guess you've got to put it in perspective.
So to answer my own question from way back when, overall this game really does manage to set itself apart in a lot of meaningful ways--the setting, tone, visual theme and nature of the story--while remaining familiar enough to evoke the original. Above all it's clearly a labor of love and in the end all of the confusing stuff, which might have annoyed me in something less visionary and genuine, ends up being part of the unique charm. It was a just little surprising that a game that was so well-received actually turned out to be fairly inaccessible on a number of fronts. So be prepared for that.
There's a awful lot here, but it'll take some patience to get the most out of it.
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-Personal Opinion, take with a grain of salt-
Overall love this game. It's a bit short, you can expect about 10-12 hrs if you're not speedrunning it and trying to explore as much as possible, but it's a ton of fun. It's a Metroidvania that leans much more on the Metroid side.
Pros:
-Good story and storytelling, with parts of the plot hidden as collectables
-Excellent sense of progression and the necessary backtracking does not feel tedious (YMVM, I actually enjoy backtracking to find things I couldn't get before)
-Fun combat if you like the Contra style controls, with lots of different weapons
-Great soundtrack
-Creative upgrades, doesn't feel like it borrows too much from the games that inspired it
-The art is fantastic, I really liked most of the character designs and environments
Cons:
-As with the old Metroid games, there are hidden passages and collectables that will sometimes just look like an ordinary block. If you don't like smashing your face against every wall, then you might not enjoy that aspect.
-While the variety of weapons is fantastic, you do get a lot of them and sometimes in quick succession. Doesn't necessarily leave much room for each weapon to shine. You'll probably end up taking a liking to a select few of them and ignoring the rest. On the plus side, this does leave room for many different styles and preferences.
-The controls are usually pretty tight, but there's one movement upgrade (won't spoil it) that relies on double tapping a direction. It can feel a bit clunky and non-responsive when you're trying to combine it with just moving regularly.

Axiom Verge was released in 2015 at a time when the metroidvania genre already had a good number of great games. This could make Axiom Verge "just another metroidvania" or not get enough attention. But the work here is so absurdly well done that it would be very difficult for this game to go unnoticed. A fluid gameplay, with good pace, beautiful pixel-art graphics, interesting mechanics, metroidvania elements very well explored, a rich universe, with a good lore, a lot of mystery and a really interesting plot. Axiom Verge is one of the most addictive games that I have played in the last time you just can't stop playing. If you're a fan of metroidvania, you MUST play Axiom Verge.

10/10 play it if you like pixel metroidvania stuff.
12/10 soundtrack