Axiom Verge
Score: 90% ESRB: Teen Publisher: Sony Interactive Entertainment America Developer: Tom Happ Media: Download/1 Players: 1 Genre: Action/ Adventure/ Platformer (2D)
Graphics & Sound: Axiom Verge is one of those games that comes around once in a blue moon and reminds me why I love video games. It’s easy to admire for the sole reason that the development team behind it is made up of one person. But you can even look beyond that; Axiom Verge would be an outstanding game even if it was made by a huge team. This is a wonderfully bizarre action adventure that simultaneously respects its influences while treading new, unfamiliar ground. Axiom Verge is both a callback and its own beast entirely, making it one of the finest examples of the iterative process in video games to date. Visually, Axiom Verge looks like an NES game, and it rarely distances itself from that aesthetic. Texture patterns that are unashamedly 8-bit are copy/pasted in every self-contained region. Enemy designs are also wonderfully weird. It’s almost as if they’re two-dimensional Spore creatures. Each environment has its own aesthetic (wooded, gooey, crystalline, etc.), and the enemies often reflect those design sensibilities. It’s an impressively cohesive vision for one of the strangest game worlds I’ve seen in a good while. I love Axiom Verge’s soundtrack. At first, it comes across as yet another 8-bit soundtrack, replete with chiptune cues and lots of staccato melodies. But then it starts to deepen, and soon progresses into synthesizers and vocalizations. Sound effects, however, remain comfortably in the past: enemies shriek with electronic fervor, weapons report with their own unique onomatopoeia, and even the simple act of running through a door comes with its own sound.
Gameplay: You are Trace, a scientist working on a mysterious energy-related project. Something goes awry, and Trace suddenly wakes up in what appears to be an alien environment. Things just don’t look right; the walls pulse with an almost organic quality, he finds himself stumbling out of an egg-like machine, and a strange voice begins calling his name. He’s soon drawn into a bizarre conflict that he will have to help resolve if he ever hopes to return to anything even remotely resembling normalcy. At first glance, Axiom Verge is a Metroid clone. It’s all about exploration, discovery, and survival. As you explore parts of the map, you find areas that are inaccessible. But with the right upgrade, you can return to these spots and continue your journey. This design philosophy fosters one of the most powerful positive feedback loops a game can establish. So you go from point to point, exterminating hostiles and acquiring power-ups, and occasionally pausing so the story can progress via text boxes. It’s a well-paced adventure that never focuses on one thing for too long. If there’s one thing I can gripe about, it’s that the sense of direction isn’t as pronounced as it often is in other games of this type. By that, I really just mean that there’s only the vaguest sense of direction. In several "Metroidvania" games, you reveal portions of the grid map, which often reveals when something is hidden in an area. Axiom Verge uses the most basic of grid maps and leaves the rest to you. You may find yourself worrying as you progress, particularly if you’re the kind of gamer who likes to leave absolutely no stone unturned (presumably most of this game’s target audience). You’ll find yourself progressing forward, not knowing if the direction you’re headed in is off the beaten path or if it is, in fact, the beaten path itself. So you run the risk of missing things for a while, which may prove frustrating to some.
Difficulty: Axiom Verge is more difficult than most of the games that inspired it (Metroid), as well as most of its contemporaries. In fact, the only game of this type that I would argue is more difficult is Ori and the Blind Forest. Part of the Axiom Verge’s challenge comes from good old demands of your reflexes and powers of observation. These are most readily apparent during the game’s many impressive boss encounters. Between the visual design and the animation work, telegraphs and subtly-revealed weak points, these fights are very well-designed and always culminate in a flashy explosion of pixelated flesh and metal.
Game Mechanics: Start with nothing, end with everything. Countless games (particularly role-playing games) base their design philosophies on this simple concept. When Trace wakes up, he literally has nothing other than his wits and the clothes on his back. And in an environment as alien and hostile as the one he’s in, he can’t progress without an implement of personal defense. A few rooms to the left, and there’s a weapon. You find an area you want to access, but you can’t jump high enough to reach it. Too bad? No, the solution is somewhere. That’s part of the addictive hook that makes games like these so amazingly addictive. Axiom Verge continues the genre’s tradition of marrying simple, stick-driven platforming and simple one-button shooting. Movement is a surprisingly painless affair, when you consider the width of some of your platforming targets. Trace responds quickly and accurately to your input. The same is true of the shooting, which, save for certain weapon functions, is identical to that in Super Metroid. Over the course of Trace’s adventure, he will acquire items that increase his capabilities in some tangible way. Whether it is a new weapon modification or a device that alters the way he moves about the world, all of them come in handy at several points. The weapons are excellent and diverse, each one of them providing a certain offensive feature that the others don't. You'll have plenty of opportunities to learn which weapons work best in each situation, and though there aren't many visual cues that show you how to progress, it's never too difficult to figure it out. Yes, it's safe to say that I'm pretty high on Axiom Verge, and it's easily one of the best games of 2015 so far. It deftly mixes old school and modern sensibilities and manages to surprise and impress at nearly every turn. Axiom Verge has one foot in the past and another in the future, and the result is an experience that should not be missed.
-FenixDown, GameVortex Communications AKA Jon Carlos
Related Links: Official Website of Axiom Verge
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