/v/ - Video Games

Video games are in general boring anon, when you realize you waste your time on nothingness.

Much like how a hipster impotently pretends to be a human being by covering the holes in his identity with disposable popculture, their creations merely replicate the good games of old on a superficial level at best.

>>13725624

Why are you even here?

>>13725662

T-that's actually really insightful anon.

Yeah, I had a pretty heh time with it. For a one-man-show game this is at least a respectable effort, and I do like the glitch aspect, but I think it's bogged down by two major problems.

>Level design is too spread-out, with long strings of rooms that don't interconnect except for one central highway that effectively functions as an elevator, and power-ups are too few and far between, making the usual exploring and backtracking of the genre a chore

>It tries way too hard to subvert the expectations of Metroid, like instead of a crawl/morphball you get a drone, and instead of a double jump you get a dash and the ability to swap positions with said drone. The effect of this is that while it's fresh on paper, it also shirks on pretty essential shit and makes it kind of a chore to play since everything wants to be new

>>13725713

You forgot to mention that the movement model is extremely barebones and not satisfying to use at all, which only makes the spread out nature of the powerups more of a problem since getting between areas isn't even enjoyable. The reason people like Super so much is because the movement model is one of the best ever made.

>boring

sure, I'll grant that the level design was not that interesting until the very end

>bland as fuck

I disagree here. I really liked the art style and feel of the world. I felt like there were really only 3-4 useful guns, with the rest being bloat. I felt like the final boss fight was all right, too. but you have to be interested enough to get there.

I felt the same way when I played it on launch, I replayed it a couple years later and found I enjoyed myself a little more.

>It doesn't even try to be something other than a Metroid knock off.

I think that's sort of the appeal, man, most other Metroid-styled games don't try to directly rip off Metroid as shamelessly as Axiom Verge did.

I thought the art was quite good, actually, but it does suffer from overly-spread out levels as mentioned before. Feels like he wanted to make his game seem bigger than it actually was. If he simply made a game with more compact levels, it probably would have been better, but I get the feeling he tried too hard to ape the exploration aspects of Metroid without fully considering the consequences.

>>13725989

Also, compare to Cave Story, which is another game that tries to ape a lot of Metroid aspects. That game doesn't feel nearly as spread out because there are very few totally fucking empty rooms and corridors with seemingly no purpose other than to woo you with the art, which is good, but that sort of thing should only be done once and not in an area you have to traverse multiple times. Imagine if you had to backtrack in MGS3 and go through the ladder sequence multiple times. That would get old instantly. Oddly enough, both Cave Story and this game were made in 5 years by a lone dude. Step it up, I guess.

>>13725605

I thought it was one of the weakest metroidvanias I had played in a while and I don't understand the high praise. As far as I could tell it was mostly nostalgia fags overrating it due to the aesthetics.

axiom verge was absolutely one of the weakest modern metroidvania games.

try ori and the blind forest with no upgrades.

It's decent, but shows the lack of skill the dev has in level design. With the weapon choices, this could've been a more interesting game as a Contra/Shatterhand type linear level game.

>>13726025

>which is another game that tries to ape a lot of Metroid aspects

The only thing Cave Story has to do with Metroid is the little missile capacity upgrade homages. The game literally plays nothing like Metroid otherwise, stop lumping it with actual Metroid-likes.

>>13725605

Shame it's also a DRM-crippled piece of shit. I was genuinely curious about it for a bit before they decided to fuck it in the ass with Steam. Oh well, looks like I didn't miss much.

>>13726399

Pixel explicitly said it was inspired by Metroid.

>>13726399

>I can't judge a game on its objective mechanical merits, and I project my stupid categories on what you say

All right.

>>13725605

Nah, Shadow Complex is a boring piece of shit in comparison. Over hyped garbage just because it was one of the few early Metroidvania games before all the indie devs starting churning them out nonstop.

I thought the main character was annoying

>>13725605

This game wasn't very enjoyable, yeah.

None of the weapons were satisfying, the level design felt like I was following paths rather than wandering and exploring.

When I play something labeled as a "Metroidvania", I expect to get something very close to Super Metroid. Axiom Verge was more in line with Fusion.

Not terrible, just lame and bland.

>>13725605

Played through this game three times. Love it. I have been having a hard time finding games that can actually compete with Axiom Verge as well as others like Ori, Shantae, Hollow Knight, etc

>>13731967

Yeah, but how big was each team?

Crawl looks decent in motion

Not just you, anon

It's a poor man's Hollow Knight

IDK why anyone likes this piece of shit with shitty visuals and shitty power ups

I've heard it's lackluster but it was all done by one guy, so I can give props for that.

>>13725605

I thought it had potential, and the corruption gun was really interesting and innovative. Every single monster in the game could be corrupted and they all did something unique when you did. The drone was also an incredibly cool mechanic that was interesting to use and had tons of utility But it squandered that potential with numerous fuckups.

Fuckup #1: it's trying waaaaaay too hard to be Super Metroid. This should go without saying. It needed to carve out an identity of its own instead of aping on that.

Fuckup #2: not giving you the fun warp move until wayyyy too late in the game, and making you awkwardly double-tap to activate it. Just let us assign it to a button and make it much easier to use, and more useful as a fun dodging mechanic.

Fuckup #3: the weapons should have been more streamlined. There were too many of them and at a certain point you realize that lots of them are interchangeable. You don't even need most of them to beat the game!

Fuckup #4: the final boss was absolutely terrible. It flooded too much of the screen and respawned its minions way too fast to make dodging even remotely viable, so it basically turned into a boring DPS race.

Fuckup #5 and worst: the story is absolute tripe. It starts out intriguing, but slowly starts going more and more up its own ass, asking more questions and providing no answers. There were so many interesting ways they could have taken the story, and every single prediction I had about where they might have taken it was better than the way they actually took it (and the way they actually took it was "fuck you, it's a mystery, no conclusions, no answers")

Oh wow, I didn't know Shadow Complex had a PC release. I'm torrenting that shit right now.

Axiom Sperg was also made by only 1 faggot

pretty good in that respect, you try to make a metroid game by urself niglet

>>13725868

>the movement model is extremely barebones and not satisfying to use at all

That's a big problem with most indie games. I don't know why they wouldn't spend the time to get that right before anything else. I could even put up with some clueless pixelshit art if it was entertaining to interact with.

>>13731967

The UI is what gets me

>the energy and life bars are literally unreadable

TOPKEK

>>13742849

That actually is incredible if its true. Gotta give props there.

>>13732873

the game is shit in general

youre better off playing half genie hero

>>13726353

the society of the spectacle owo

>>13732835

>Crawl looks decent in motion

>30 fps video

I aint seeing no motion captn.

>>13725605

>"remember the metroidvanias fellow redditors?" the game

>>13732873

It's an average game, but I have to disagree with you on certain points here

>Fuckup #3: the weapons should have been more streamlined. There were too many of them and at a certain point you realize that lots of them are interchangeable. You don't even need most of them to beat the game!

Weapons are this game's colectathon. I see no proble with having too many wepons too collect

>Fuckup #5 and worst: the story is absolute tripe.

The story is probably one of the redeeming factors of the game for me! It ends on a cliffhanger and leaves a few mysteries for the next game that the dev said was gonna make, but he is a turbo nu-male which means he will take a couple kickscammers and 5 years of development to finish, sadly but the plot surrounding this game's arc is barelly revealed in the main campaign, but greatly expanded through the hidden files that you can collect, along some backstory. It leaves enough open that there are a couple fan theories around.

>>13742849

>You can't criticize this game because it was made by one guy

And so was Cave Story which is actually y'know, good.

>>13725605

>Is it just me or is this game boring and bland as fuck?

Is not just you, the game gets repetitive and it lacks the whole end game feeling from Metroid games where you are fully upgraded and backtracking is a breeze, in Axiom Verge you can still have a hard time dealing with enemies in early areas just because 80% of all weapons are worthless.