Over the verge; Axiom Verge

Axiom Verge is the product of a single dude, which has long since lost real meaning to me. Thomas Happ be his name, and he made a game about ... Whatever this game is actually about is somewhat hard to describe. I'm going to try to describe the game without spoiling the game, which is actually much more difficult than you'd think, because certain explicit and implicit elements of the gameworld are tampered with as a matter of due course for the story to unveil and then unfold.

At its core, before anything else is layered on, Axiom Verge is a Metroid leaning Metroidvania. There are a lot of reviews and a lot of commentary built from that central point, and a lot of it goes from there to become very hostile and negative. Oh how dare a single gentlemen lovingly craft a passion project in his side hours that builds from his experiences in retro-gaming of the Nintendo-kind! How dare he infringe on that holy space!

Thing is, as I said back in the Super cyborg review, I honestly don't care anymore. We're not in the early generations of gaming here, and the fact that someone who was raised on video games made a video game that feels like video games is like complaining that a major book series feels like a book within its genre. Yeah, it is a Metroidvania that feels like a Metroidvania.

Get over it. The genre is actually pretty narrow, if you actually want it to feel like Metroid, and not something like Strider where the Metroidvania elements feel like a contagion that infected an action game's genome and dragged the entire production down.

To me the real question is whether or not Axiom Verge, in and of itself, by itself, feels like a quality and polished product that I enjoyed playing, and/or, think others should play.

First things first: Axiom Verge is generally built around the same visual conduit, or what you might think of as re-iterative style, as Shovel Knight is. If I were to look for a game released recently that summarizes the level of visual quality, I would put Shovel Knight up front, but also quality in the sense of where I felt the artist was coming from. Axiom Verge feels like a late generation NES game - which, interestingly, the original Metroid is not - with some leanings toward stronger visual titles of that era. The original Metroid, in case you've forgotten, is fucking ugly and sort of unpleasant to look at. That actually works extremely well with the game and setting its tone, but Axiom Verge is quite nice looking, while still making good use of its visuals to enforce an atmosphere.


The visuals are somewhat abstracted in more ways than just pixelation, but it does use a range of visual effects to convey those other elements, which the NES and probably anything earlier than like... Maybe the Playstation? were even capable of doing innately. In that sense it is a little less lashed to the past than Shovel Knight, but it feels fair to put it around the same spot.

I like the visuals a lot, but I would understand if someone said looking at updated and more animated Retro didn't feel very good to them. There are a couple areas that don't quite come across, and there are some enemies who look ... Odd to say the least. But on the most part, I found the game quite visually attractive with a lot of care going into the visual elements and how they intermingle. There's some really weird, freaky looking stuff in Axiom Verge and the whole screen can just end up feeling consumed.

The game does have a Metroid influence, but I think it sort of goes further back to some really hardcore Giger influence. The imagery isn't sexual (which Giger generally was, if you haven't looked at his art) so maybe hardcore is sort of the wrong word but it does have a lot of the delicate bio // harsh metallic feel to it, in spite of being simply done pixel work.

The audio work is absolutely excellent. I am thankful after Strider there is no voice-acting, but the music is really solid stuff and reminds me of Super Metroid in giving each area a strong, easily differentiated track to build a core sentiment around. The game also knows how to use silence, and enemies have a couple noises they make when they do a thing that is generally good.

Basically, the music is very good, and builds atmosphere in much the same way good examples of the genre do, which helps to mentally tie together the world as you explore it. You feel like you're in Kur when the themesong of its lower regions kicks in, and you feel like you're about to fight a boss when the boss preamble music kicks in. It works.

Gameplay is an interesting element to discuss, because on the most part it does 75% of Metroidvania perfectly, letting the ball drop on two things that hampered the game a bit in the late game. For one thing, and this is really important, individual enemies can kick the crud out of you very quickly. The game details your characters as chiefly not a fighter, and you are not! But you can be cunning. As long as you learn their patterns and react to them accordingly, they are pretty easy to handle. That creates a fair bit of tension in encountering new enemies, which makes exploring exciting, but also in encountering the same enemies in rooms that don't favor fighting them. An enemy that can feel like a total joke going up the room can feel dramatically different going down the room.

This is something I think Metroidvanias need to do. You're going to re-visit rooms, over and over, and having enemies feel different from different angles changes the experience.

For another thing, the game is initially pretty hard to move around in. You get blocked off a lot, and Trace isn't exactly an agile acrobat. This makes the game feels increasingly liberating as you receive movement power ups, which also shifts how you fight certain enemies. This, again, also changes how you move through the game. It's good. That gradual sensation is a big part of the natural incline.

Enemy combat is pretty good, but I did find several of the boss fights a little lacking. I mean, let's be honest here: Most of the boss fights in Metroid were dreadful, and most of the boss fights in Super Metroid were pretty iffy as well. Visually they work really well, and there's a super creepy element you don't initially pick up on, but man when you do ugh creepy.

There is a problem I want to note about the bosses, and that is, some of them can position themselves ... Well let's just say they can basically sit right on top of you, and become essentially impossible to defeat, giving you no room to react or dodge. I'm not sure if this is intended behavior, but given the inclusion of touch damage, it makes the game feel very silly and breaks your immersion. I had it happen on two of the bosses, and it's just a little odd.

On the most part though, you just figure out the patterns to the boss then kill them. It's not rocket surgery. Oh well. There are no ridiculous multi-stage drag it out forever bosses. Only one of the boss fights in the game, for me anyway, got out of the tension phase and into the oh good lord I'm bored phase. That one took about four minutes to defeat and I don't think damaged me til the last 15 seconds or something.

On the other hand, the bosses do look cool, do serve a weird purpose in the narrative and there are a couple interesting twists.

The game has power ups aplenty, including a myriad of guns that unlike Metroid aren't usually connected to traversing the world as well as very health, range, weapon projectile size and so forth nodes. I suppose it might be a bit of a spoiler, but the "ball" upgrade from Metroid isn't in this game - instead, there's a remote control drone that can get through tight spaces and then a couple upgrades to that. The drone is sort of a mixed bag, because it does feel very vulnerable, but not in the rather irritating and clunky way the ball does in Metroid games since you can just exit the drone.

Basically, in terms of the main important element of Metroidvanias, in terms of exploration and feeling like you're cracking down the walls of a vast world, Axiom Verge gets it right. It works, it has that charm, it tickles the right parts of your brain. Each of the different sections looks very different, and the game's map feels very natural on the most part.

Axiom Verge does not, as many people suggest, clone Metroid. Not quite. Not just. It goes far further than most reviewers have mentioned, and I'm not sure if this is fear of spoilers or if most people reviewing it aren't legitimately in a position to actually discuss Metroid as a source of nostalgia. Axiom Verge does something... Different, something that permeates the game but takes it to the next level, referencing not just Metroid or its design, but elements of the experience that were almost outside the game - or in a sense, lay within the game but outside the game world - that shows a love for Metroid so far beyond what a mere homage does.

Axiom Verge does not copy Metroid. Axiom Verge loves Metroid. As I said, I don't want to spoil it, because the game's story relies almost entirely on its sense of mystery.

The game does remind me of other games, past Metroid. Part of it rings a little Shadow of the Beast with me, and there's this odd little sentiment of Master Blaster at points. (which the game does claim it is influenced by) I mean yes, it is at its core inspired by the original Metroid trilogy, and reading up it claims other influences as well. It feels a little like Happ is hedging his bets, just confessing he played a lot of games and not trying to snub anyone in the process.

The game's story is ... Strange. It is worth noting that Axiom Verge essentially takes place in what it looks like it takes place in - a land where cybernetics and bio-machinery have made everything look, well, a bit insane, and that is very definitely the core of the game both in theme and stride. You're not even sure what you're fighting, exactly, and how much of the little room to room enemies are meant to be related to that background "force" or just the fact you're in a world that has gone mad. And when you have the ability to influence the physical world en masse with that insanity, well, let's just say the paradigm has shifted.
 
As with a lot of media, it is difficult to build such an interesting world and setting, then stick the landing through the second and third acts. The setting is fantastic, but it has that certain element where it feels like some of the principal actors are capable of doing far too much with what they're given. Once you have the full explanation of "the plot" you do look over the cast and think ... Well wait, how did that happen? He did what? She did what? There is also the fact that, of course, the game isn't entirely honest with you the entire time, but it feels a little like maybe the writing didn't differentiate between the lies and honesty as well as it could. I liked the characters, though some of them didn't appear or talk as much as you'd expect.

In fact, the strangest element of the game is the references made to a sort of leader character among your "allies", but they never show up. I couldn't quite figure that out, or if it was a title or just something the game intentionally held back. I really don't know what to make of that, since the name was only really contained in various notes and never mentioned within in game dialogue.
 
Still, I don't want to spoil it, and I did quite enjoy it - In fact my biggest complaint with the fractional health/damage upgrades is that the game could have just had more writing and notes, and less partial upgrades to waste time with. I really wanted to know more about the game world, and wish the third act had more expository dialogue and less just ... Lonely weirdness.

I do feel like the game informed the story, and an attempt was made to construct a story that essentially worked to explain all the oddities of the setting. That's good. The downside is that some elements needed a little more effort to really come together. But to be fair ... I mean, it's the work of one guy and he did all this fantastic art and music. The atmosphere and theme are hard to live up to. The story is based around technological elements and a timeline of events so far removed from the usual baseline soft sci-fi it can be a bit treacherous to try to sort out. But regardless of excuses, it could simply be better.

On the other hand, it is entirely possible that Thomas Happ realized halfway through the development of the game that maybe explicitly explaining each and every element of the game would cut off his ability to make a sequel, as well as make the game feel a bit boxed in. So it's possible he started to lean away from explanation and exposition to that end, shifting it toward being more open-ended to allow for more interpretation and maybe a sequel or two. I found it a little less satisfying than I imagined at the start, but there is definitely more to the story.

The game does have flaws and various balancing issues that take away from the experience. For one thing, the Metroid beep is back, which is ... I'm baffled at its inclusion in the game. It was remarked upon as irritating twenty years ago and annoying thirty years ago. It doesn't seem like something anyone looks back on fondly, but maybe that's just me. In case you're wondering, that's an insistent health warning that beeps in your ear.

Enemies take too much damage in this game, and several encounter designs seem to treat the player's enjoyment nonchalantly. There's one type of enemy that is immune to weapons fire and upon your arrival, farts at you. You can hack it, or kill it with the drill, but it's indicative of a long line of enemies that just take too long to clear out. Enemy density and angle of attack can be frustrating as well, often to the point of tedium. As I said before, enemies can and will murder you with all haste, so having to clear 6 or more per screen you move through can take quite a while. There aren't harsh death penalties, and the game bounces you to a save point when you log in and out, but it can still be annoying if you're trying to figure something out. Respawning happens after the second door, so you won't immediately get buried in enemies, but I think this threshold could have been raised a little.

As an aside, the game... I guess, honestly... Just has way too many weapons. Item drops in general feel a little forced in, and it becomes difficult to mentally sort when and where you should use a given weapon. The usage of partial upgrades - that is, health bonus that unlock once you finish fractional collection - is something I am immensely not fond of. I can't imagine trying to sort out what I missed in my run, the closer I get to the 100% mark the more I wonder

The game also has that weird moment - Super Metroid has it too - where the game world has opened up enough that winnowing down what lies next can be a bit hard to judge. Unlike Super Metroid, it doesn't really explain what you're ultimately clearing out to fight the end boss, but Axiom Verge has a far stronger and stranger back story than Super Metroid, so I guess that complaint comes as a means to an end.

I think Axiom Verge is, for me, probably the best game I've played this year. There is a lot of Metroid in its DNA, which I appreciate, but there is something more to it that creates its own unique experience as well. It does stroke those Metroid nostalgia bones lying in the back pretty lovingly of course. But it adds something, and takes the idea of being a homage much further.

If you've ever wondered to yourself as to the value of nostalgia and where the path branches into the meta-narrative of not just the "gaming" experience but its overarching whole sum experience, Axiom Verge is for me the first legitimate attempt at answering that question. That statement may have little real meaning, but I'm trying to address the cognitive experience outside simply reacting to the game-world in front of you. A missing element of nostalgia is that it generally exists as a callback to your earlier life experiences; to the you that was, and that was happier since you were younger. This is an attempt to reach out from there and remind you, maybe just a tiny bit, of some other thoughts and feelings you had back then. As a means to a wholly subjective end the results here are something that successfully crystallizes that sentiment without feeling entirely shackled to it. For me, Axiom Verge manages to capture that joy and wonder, to the point that not only does it work from the foundation of nostalgia, but also creates something that years from now I will feel nostalgic toward. However, that sentiment isn't going to work for everyone, and even if you're aware, you may not feel much toward it.

That, in turn, makes this game one of the most subjective reviews possible. While Axiom Verge is the game I've enjoyed the most this year, for a lot of other people it is just going to be a great Metroidvania, but little beyond that, and a great Metroidvania may not mean that much to you at all. In basic conclusion, it is a polished, enjoyable game with excellent music that isn't quite perfect but is close enough that like I said - I'm going to feel nostalgic about this game, not just because I played the game and I'm nostalgic for other things the game reminds me of.

(In case it isn't clear, I played this game in 2015 so I'm classifying it as a 2015 title for me. But this review published on the 1st, albeit in the wee hours of the early morning)