![]() ![]() If I wasn’t, my icon here on Tap-Repeatedly wouldn’t be Alia from MegaMan X5, who is not even the best incarnation of this sort of character. I’m actually fond of the “computer lady in your ear” trope. The marker system is inadequate to reveal where Trace has to go next, and the game doesn’t do a good job of leading you there. It’s not necessarily backtrack-heavy, but it ends up being backtrack-heavy. I feel the same way about the exploration component in the game. But boy, do I wish I had something like Super Missiles. I know that these things can be done faster, and the fact that I found each boss fight so tedious is because this is my first time through the game and I haven’t uncovered the secrets for quicker kills. Then came its long, slow, slog of a death after I had this down: jump jump shoot shoot, jump jump shoot shoot, jump jump jump duuuuuuuck repeat. Often pure trial-and-error was required at least on my part before I even figured out exactly how to do damage to a boss, then six tries more before I figured out how to evade the boss’s attack pattern. The bosses are both my favorite and and least favorite parts of the game: beautiful as spectacles, but tedious to fight. That big pile of corpses under a door and the way the music just cut out must mean a boss fight is incoming. Here is a stream tunnel and here are outdoor ruins. Here, the level graphics have to speak for themselves, and they do this incredibly well. The Speedrun feature is a mode that removes all random elements and dialog drops from the game, turning Axiom Verge into an exercise in environment-only storytelling. ![]() You can turn the story off, playing the game in Speedrun mode, and that may just be the best way to do it. Though the story itself does the job, I’m not sold on the way it’s presented. The game’s story is told in exposition and flashback. Trace’s dialog, however, is purely utilitarian: “Where am I? Who are you? Why am I here? Why are there monsters here?” etc. Trace has a computer-voice-in-his-ear to talk to (because, it’s a video game), and she has a unique manner of speaking, sounding a bit broken. ![]() I don’t know why protagonist matters to me so much in Metroidvanias, but it really does. That goes a long way toward making me like him, because he’s otherwise pretty bland. When shown in portrait form during dialog, he has an interesting face. The game resembles Super Metroid (or, more precisely, Metroid Fusion, because it has a lot of interstitial dialog that is missing from the earlier Metroid titles), but also has some shades of Contra particularly in the boss and weapon designs.Īxiom Verge stars Trace, a scientist. Axiom Verge is also a one-man-show of a game, of the kind that sometimes appears in indies: the vision of Tom Happ, who did the graphics, design, coding, music, and art. I triumph or I perish.Īxiom Verge is a “Metroidvania” game, a genre that’s coming back in vogue in a big way from nostalgia-fueled Kickstarters. Axiom Verge is not going to throw me a Pity Leaf or a Skip Fight Token. The evil bug is what it is and has exactly as many hit points as it has. Last week, I spent at least two hours of my precious Earth-time slamming my fingers against a controller while a little man on a screen tried to shoot little red laser bullets at the pixel-perfect weak spot on a giant evil bug. Someday, I will die.Īxiom Verge does not care about my age. It makes me feel old. As I play Axiom Verge, I can feel my reflexes slowing down, my patience for platforming wearing thinner with every slipped jump. It does not make me feel like a child again. Axiom Verge, available this week for PC on Steam, is a retro-styled game. The Penny Arcade webcomic spoke once of the “ MegaMan 9 Effect” – that moment where the nostalgia of playing a new, but retro-styled game makes them feel as if they were a child again, experiencing such games for the first time. ![]()
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