Axiom Verge

Axiom Verge is a strange little metroidvania you can get on Steam. It tries a lot of neat things, but failed in most of them in my opinion. The mechanics don't work that well, the exploration breaks down, and the story is incomprehensible. There's only a couple bosses in the game, and I like bosses.

One of the interesting things in Axiom Verge is that it gives you a massive array of different weapons. They all have slightly different properties. In theory, this is really cool. But in practice, only a few of the weapons are at all useful. For instance, long-range weapons don't work at all because every screen is designed to force you into medium-short range battles anyway. What this design means is that there are many, many powerups throughout the world which give you a useless weapon which provides no value. As opposed to, say, a health powerup which always has value.

Another interesting idea is the glitching weapon, which instead of killing enemies makes them glitch out. This is fun, but it's an idea that really isn't explored much in the game. Glitching an enemy is mostly just an alternate way of killing it and rarely has that interesting an effect. Could have made for some fun puzzles, but nope.

This is probably one of the more confusing metroidvanias I've played. I didn't get lost that often, but I did and it definitely does not help you out much. Apparently there was some password system which I did not even realize until the end of the game. Over and over, the design of things frustrated and confused me. Some of the 100%ing is absolutely impossible without a guide.

The aesthetics of the game are pixel art, which usually I like but it's pretty ugly here. Everything is just bizarre surreal alien stuff. I guess that's what they're going for, but the result is pretty bad. They definitely took care to make each place have it's own palette, but none of them look particularly good. One of the major areas is almost completely desolate. You just have to walk this giant hallway to another area. Why. It's strange and I don't like it.

The story is one of the most bizarre stories I have ever seen in a video game. It was so bizarre that I was genuinely surprised that it didn't end with it being a dream at the end. I think that would have been better, because the idea that I'm actually killing my evil post-apocalyptic clone in alien robot world that is connected to the real world through some sort of consciousness filter is a bit too out there for me.

I don't recommend this game. There are better ones to scratch your action-adventure itch.