The thing I always complain about with the modern indie metroidvania is that they're largely scared to death of backtracking. I'll grant Axiom Verge that it doesn't exactly fall into that mold. The first half of the game is pretty dang linear and takes you through maybe 60% of the world, but the second half turns into a more traditional peck and hunt through the world trying to find the next major upgrade.
And yet it still failed to hit that sense of a world. Part of it is that the backtracking tended to fall into a simple pattern of finding small branching areas that were locked off by abilities, clearing them out, then moving back on to the "main track" of the area. Eventually you'd find the main path of the game which would be longer and slightly more branching, but still ultimately felt more like a level than anything. It just never feels like a place due to how shallow the branching is, rarely looping in on itself.
It makes me feel sort of crazy since I haven't played Super Metroid in over a decade, so I'm uncertain if it actually nailed this aspect, or I just didn't pay as much attention back then. Am I being unfair to all these games by comparing them to a game that maybe doesn't actually exist?
That's compounded by how much I like everything else about Axiom Verge. I am a total sucker for the organic/mechanical aesthetic of the world. Despite visually being Metroid as heck, the actual upgrades you get deviate from it in a pleasing way instead of just repainting the classics. I got way into the story that starts off by making you think the nature of the world is one thing, then shifts to something else, and by the end I'm not even sure anymore- but in a way that I found to be satisfying ambiguity that answers just enough questions to not feel like a rip off (truth be told the narrative ended up being the main thing that kept me going through it). I wouldn't necessarily recommend the game to everyone on it, it just hits a lot of types of scifi that I personally love.
When looking at basic design decisions I also found myself nodding in agreement that smart choices were made. Instead of resorting to immersion-breaking teleporters for convenience, it uses part of the world as a shortcut (although frankly considering the plot, an actual teleporter would have made sense anyway). It condenses all the "key" abilities into various mobility options and secondary attacks, allowing you to instead find dozens of possible weapons for your primary fire. The end result, in theory, makes finding stuff in the world far more rewarding since there are tons of unique optional mechanics to find. Not all of them end up being useful, but plenty of them made various boss fights in my play through much easier.
In theory. In reality, even though the rewards were great, I didn't find exploring that satisfying. Because, again, it doesn't feel like exploring a world so much as cleaning the gutters. On a more fundamental level I didn't find the basics of fighting enemies that engaging either. There's plenty of variety, I had to come up with strategies over time for several enemies, and the rooms rarely devolve into Symphony of the Night's copy/paste hallways, but it just never.. felt good?
It's an alright game. It mostly leaves me questioning my own sense of taste, that I'm comparing an entire genre to a game that might only exist in my head. I could just replay Super Metroid and find out, but psh.
