The world- a dangerous place where everything
sucks all the time- but Metroid games are
fun!
And while Nintendo hasn't exactly been cranking
them out, indie developers have the genre
more than covered.
In fact, they've made too many Metroidvanias
to keep up with.
Just to hammer the point in, by the time I
finish this review at least seventeen of these
games will have sequels out.
I wanted to not only review the biggest games
in the genre but also compare how they interpret
the Metroid formula, which I like to break
down to three parts:
The first is an intricately designed world
that rewards players for exploring and backtracking.
The player should be expected to notice and
remember any obstructions and to find the
powerups they need to overcome them, treating
the world like a puzzle that they unravel
room by room.
If the game is extremely linear and directly
tells the player where to go, it's doing this
wrong.
The powerups should be rewarding enough that
the player is continuously motivated to keep
seeking them out, which means there should
be a palpable increase in strength with each
one collected.
New abilities should be the main drivers of
progress and the keys that open up new areas
to explore.
If you were to cheat and start the game with
every powerup, you should be able to go anywhere.
If you're constantly faced with locked doors
that you can’t do anything about until a
cutscene or some arbitrary event happens,
the game is doing this wrong.
And finally the game needs to have a strong
and varied atmosphere.
Having diverse areas with distinct moods keeps
the exploration interesting, and having a
wealth of memorable rooms makes it much easier
to navigate and backtrack.
If the entire game looks and sounds the same
it'll be boring and everything will run together.
I'll be grading the games in these categories
and will pretend that this is an authoritative
system that makes sense.
The first game in the list is one of the most
acclaimed indie games ever made- I've even
seen praise placing it above Super Metroid
as the best game in the genre.
Can Hollow Knight live up to that hype?
NO.
But the quality of the game smacks you in
the face right away.
It has gorgeous sprite work with a dark, ominous
style that resembles the H.R. Giger artwork
that inspired Alien crossed with an old Disney
cartoon.
The characters have great animation that lends
them a lot of personality, like the mapmaker
that hums when nearby.
Audible hints like this are given throughout
the game for secrets that might not be visible
on screen.
The audio in general is great, with enemies
exploding into sickening splats and drips
and tighter corridors producing muffled sounds.
The soundtrack is mostly dramatic piano and
string pieces that suit the somber tone of
the game extremely well, and it's good that
the tone is so subdued because the actual
gameplay is unrelentingly intense.
Team Cherry wants every inch of the map to
kill you with spike traps, dive bombing shriekbats
and a nearly endless stream of bosses.
It's definitely one of the tougher games in
the genre but the controls are tight enough
that it's probably going to be your fault
when you die.
Your character's movements are sharp and precise
and the bright white mask is easy to track
no matter how quickly the fights move.
The core moveset in the game is fairly simple;
you can jump, slash, and do a quick dash during
combat, and while there are expansions to
get as you go through the game, many of them
just enhance the combat abilities you already
have with the rest introducing new ways to
travel, like the ripoff of Metroid's shinespark.
Your progress depends almost entirely on these
powerups, just as a Metroidvania should.
In fact, I had to cheat using a save editor
to recreate some footage and was able to go
pretty much wherever I wanted with just a
few abilities enabled.
And even with every ability it can take a
while to get where you need to because the
map is absolutely massive… massive and BORING.
The dark blue gray mood in the first area
is the same blue gray mood as the middle and
end areas.
It rarely evolves or shows you anything different;
what you're seeing here is about as much as
the tone shifts and it's basically the same
thing, but purple now.
It’s purple now?
It’s purple now!
If the developers had only used the first
area's tileset and song for the whole thing
and it wouldn't have made that much difference
in most areas.
And being one of the longest and most expansive
examples of the genre, Hollow Knight desperately
needs more variety than this.
The game also blows it when it comes to powerups,
because the majority of secrets in the world
don't power you up.
One of the key drivers of a Metroid game's
momentum is the steady gain in strength you
get from every little missile tank or beam
upgrade; most of the secret passages in Hollow
Knight lead to a power refill, an egg, an
emblem, or a journal entry.
Even up to the last moments of the game I
still didn't know what half of these items
even did and had to search it to find out
that you just hock them for money.
The only secret I consistently enjoyed was
finding members of the grub family, and even
that just mostly leads to money.
Super Metroid delivered upgrades with just
the right pacing to keep you satisfied without
overpowering you; you really have to enjoy
the precious few powerups in Hollow Knight
that actually do something, because it could
be hours before you see the next one.
Perk-style enhancements are the most common
upgrades and you're severely limited to equipping
a few at a time, meaning you can't really
enjoy the powerful ones without getting rid
of everything else.
This would almost be like Super Metroid only
letting you use 3 powerups at once.
Buying more slots requires that you've found
one specific shop that's easily missable,
which is pretty much the story for many other
critical systems in the game.
The developers don't really care what you
find and what you don't, so obliviously passing
one room in this massive map can put you at
a major disadvantage the entire game.
The general lack of a reward is odd, as if
the developers are daring you to stop playing;
this is a game where you can finally beat
a boss and die at the same time and never
see the outcome you've been working for.
Where you can finish off half a dozen collectathons
only to get rewarded with trees spewing sentence
fragments before once again having to google
what the point is supposed to be.
The world is challenging enough that just
getting around requires the kind of dexterity
that Metroid games usually reserve for getting
the toughest secret items, only for so many
of the destinations to end up barren or pointless
with your current status.
Or just always pointless.
And when you have to work hard to get somewhere
only to be turned back to navigate that same
spike riddled terrain again empty handed,
it becomes a chore to play.
I assume the color scheme of the game was
inspired by the blue balls playing it gives
you....
Apologies to my female viewer.
I'm expecting a lot of "git gud" in the comments,
but the problem isn't that the game is challenging.
The problem is that the more demanding and
exhausting the game is to play the greater
the rewards should be, and Hollow Knight gives
less than any Metroidvania I’ve ever played.
There are tons of optional bosses in the game
that are tough as nails, some taking dozens
of attempts to defeat, and in most cases I
wouldn't have bothered had I known they were
optional and how inconsequential it would
be.
And that's another issue I have with the game;
it's too open for its own good.
Everyone hates extreme linearity, but, as
anyone who has played a Metroid ROM hack can
tell you, going in the polar opposite direction
doesn't work either.
Developers have to balance the map between
being linear enough to keep a sense of purpose
and momentum while being open enough that
the player feels as if they're able to make
choices.
Hollow Knight allows you to aimlessly wander
into fights or areas you aren't equipped for
and rarely ever gives you any indication whether
this is the thing you're supposed to be doing
or not.
At one point I took on this side boss, apparently
much earlier than I should have been, but
still managed to beat it.
I explored the new area that opened up expecting
that I might find some kind of powerup for
the effort only to be dropped into deepnest,
one of the most dangerous areas of the game-
which also happens to be hard to see in if
you don't have the lantern yet, which I did
not.
After dying in a few difficult to reach spots
and losing all my money I gave up on exploring
it and just tried to find the way back out,
which wasted at least half an hour.
Allowing players to enter areas they aren't
prepared for is one thing; trapping them in
areas they aren't ready for is basically punishing
the player for exploring and being curious,
which is one of the worst things a Metroidvania
can do.
The only thing like this I can think of in
a game that's actually good - are these two
floor traps from Super Metroid.
But here, there's no risk of losing anything,
they're very brief, and you learn valuable
skills from them- there's a point.
The pit in Hollow Knight was just a total
loss to explore at that moment, and things
like this- combined with the lack of powerups
and barely changing tone- sap all of the momentum
out of the game.
I’d estimate that as much as 30% of my play
time was spent traveling between benches and
boss fights over and over.
It’s typical for Metroidvanias not to have
checkpoints, but it's also typical to put
a save point before a boss room.
Somehow in my time with this game I had forgotten
that this used to be common sense game design
to prevent the player from repeating the same
tedious work over and over.
And with so few benches you basically can’t
pass any up when traveling without getting
royally screwed with massive setbacks.
They should have called this game "Sisyphus
Simulator."
There are often broken benches that force
you to travel to the next area to save, or
you have to pay to unlock the bench, which
is a double punch if you recently died since
you’ll have lost all of your money.
You can only get it back by absorbing your
ghost before you die again, otherwise that
money is gone forever.
And because you probably died in a dangerous
area, you have to navigate it again- or sometimes
even fight a boss and your ghost at the same
time- while frantically avoiding that second
death.
I mentioned how a lot of the collectibles
exist just to trade for cash- if you happen
to have that cash on you when dying and don't
get it back, that exploring just became pointless.
This would be a little like losing all of
your missile expansions when dying and only
getting one shot to pick them back up.
When you put all of this together, the game
Hollow Knight reminds me of most is Metroid
1- because when you make an extremely repetitive
game where you have to explore without a map,
and where death is a punishing cycle of repetition
and refilling, you've recreated the tedium
of that game.
It’s so dull that I stopped playing it near
the end and only went back to finish it now,
years later, for this video and the main satisfaction
I got was the knowledge that I don’t have
to play it again.
I'm not saying Hollow Knight is bad- it's
still one of the most impressive indie games
ever made and the developers have a lot to
be proud of.
I can admire it, but I don't enjoy playing
it.
It's big, beautiful, boring, and kind of shitty
(just a little bit).
The next game is a radical departure in style
with the most simplistic visuals of any game
on this list.
Many pixel art games try to push a little
beyond 16-bit graphics but Environmental Station
Alpha goes way back with an early 8-bit look
so minimal that it can be hard to even tell
what objects are.
At a glance it may not be as impressive as
its hand drawn rivals but the strict visual
economy is part of what makes it interesting;
the game does a hell of a lot with just a
few pixels, and it wouldn't be hyperbole to
say the first 20 minutes alone have more variety
than 20 hours of Hollow Knight.
The audio is more on the 16 bit side of things
with some great sound samples for effects
and music.
Enemies explode like popping balloons - and
those are the most LAZOR sounding lasers I've
ever heard in my life.
The game delivers just what you should want
from a Metroid; areas where the atmosphere
surprises you in a way that you have to absorb
for a moment before going forward.
The game is basically a Commodore64 version
of Metroid Fusion; you're tasked with investigating
a station split into various biomes with computer
terminals providing objective markers to reach.
The difference is that Environmental Station
Alpha is far more open and places the markers
far enough away that they're more of a general
direction to head in than a specific route
to follow.
Powerups aren't always the key to progress,
but if a door has to be unlocked by a computer,
it's because you found the terminal to unlock
it yourself.
There are plenty of powerups and shortcuts
to other sections to discover as the game
goes on, and the power ups actually power
you up enough that the search for them never
gets old.
One of the most important items, the hookshot,
is tricky to handle at first but once you
adapt to it the wacky momentum actually becomes
fairly fun to abuse.
The game has some diabolical puzzles to unravel
and not once did I want to back out of the
challenge, and just about every time the reward
was something proportional to the effort.
Like Hollow Knight, there are some major assholes
in the boss roster but in this case the fights
are intensely brief; you may spend a dozen
lives on a fight that's over in just 20 seconds.
And because the developer placed save points
before these fights it's easy to try again
and again- and playing these games back to
back, I have to say that convenience doesn't
diminish the actual challenge of the game
in any meaningful way.
Unfortunately on rare occasions it shares
Hollow Knight’s problem of dead end powerup
hunting.
There are times when the game turns you away
when reaching a difficult secret too early,
often without much indication of what needs
to be done.
Some puzzles simply have no solution and are
just there to tease, and one or two others
can also trap you and force a game reset if
you're not careful about what you're doing.
If you probe around long enough you'll find
at least a few things that could use more
polish.
The visuals, while nostalgic and fun, don't
always communicate clearly and you should
expect a lot of trial and error in figuring
them out.
Sometimes the parallax scrolling is the only
way to sort out what's part of the background
and what you can actually stand on, or maybe
you won't know if an object is an enemy until
taking damage from it.
The faults are pretty minor in this case and
don't ruin the game's charm, which holds strong
over its relatively brief duration.
And if it sounds too short there’s also
some post game content to keep busy with.
It's not the biggest or flashiest game on
the list, but it's fun, doesn't cost much,
doesn't wear out its welcome, and probably
deserves a little more recognition than it's
gotten.
Ori and the Blind Forest is one of the best
looking sidescrollers I've ever seen, seamlessly
blending 2D and 3D elements together in a
style that resembles Rayman Legends but with
a bend towards Miyazaki films.
The game tells a story that's sappy but neat,
with Jabba the Hutt occasionally delivering
exposition from the background.
I believe he just called the main character
"bantha poodu."
The basic formula is that you explore a relatively
contained area looking for stones to open
doorways until finding a special tree that
grants new abilities, at which point the area
is complete and you move on to the next.
The map isn't as intricately connected as
the other games on this list and the trees
are usually at a linear dead end, meaning
you'll often have to backtrack pretty far
from them before finding the path to the next
area.
The simplicity of the map isn't really a problem,
as it lends the first half of the game a nice,
relaxed pace where you wander and enjoy the
scenery without much trouble.
And the variety is surprisingly good considering
that the vast majority of the game takes place
in forest areas that could have ended up too
samey.
Most of the powerups you find in between the
spirit trees are glowing orbs that basically
work like XP; collecting a certain amount
allows you to upgrade existing abilities.
In typical Metroid fashion, these are visible
all over the map but often inaccessible until
getting a new ability.
But Ori also does something fairly unique
by allowing you to use nearby enemies and
hazards to clear a path instead.
Secret passageways more often than not lead
to a small alcove with an orb and rarely get
more creative than that, which again, is fine
for the leisurely pace of this game.
That all changes about halfway through when
Ori begins demanding much more precise platforming,
and in my opinion things go downhill from
there.
It's not always clear what the rules are in
some of the more complicated sections and
a lot of the mechanics don't really work the
way I imagine the developer thought they would
on paper.
A dash move allows you to vault off of enemies
or projectiles but those enemies often aren’t
where they're supposed to be for the section
to work or won't fire when you desperately
need them to.
Stomping is done by pressing down in midair,
which is far too easy to do in a difficult
aerial section, especially if you're not using
a great quality D-pad.
Most of the time things like this aren't too
frustrating because of the unique save system,
which allows you to use some of your attack
energy to create your own save points pretty
much anywhere.
So if you end up having to backtrack a long
distance after dying it's entirely your fault.
There are a few moments where saving is a
bad idea, but I didn't encounter any game
breaking issues with it which seems like it
must have taken a lot of careful testing the
developer's part.
But you can't save during certain escape sequences,
which require you to do everything in one
shot, and this is where those iffy mechanics
do become really annoying.
The process for beating these is to die many
cheap deaths and memorize how to avoid each
of them; a first time player couldn't possibly
know that they have to be on the left side
of this cave to avoid a sudden boulder drop
or that they have to be in midair at this
exact moment.
It requires a lot of patience to build up
the muscle memory to avoid all of these traps
and get a run where none of the control quirks
do you in and the camera keeps up with the
action.
Playing Ori made me appreciate just how well
done Hollow Knight was in this regard; as
frustrating as that game could be, it was
never due to the controls.
Ori just isn't as mechanically sound and the
action isn't as readable, with the distant
camera and numerous lights making it hard
to differentiate your character from the rest
of the action.
Even in the best scenarios the combat is pretty
dull and repetitive; you mainly hammer a button
to fire weak light pellets at enemies, which
is very slow even after unlocking damage upgrades.
Eventually you can add a stomp and a charge
up blast into the equation, but you'll still
be fighting the same few enemies over and
over throughout the game- the goo thing that
shoots spikes, the jumping frog, and the spider
are 80% of it.
Combat is simply not the game's strength.
Ori is at its best when it lets you wander
and take in the sights and story without much
resistance, which is about half of the game.
The more intense parts are very inconsistent
and expose a few too many weaknesses in the
mechanics, but when the challenges do work
they tend to be really satisfying and it's
worth powering through all of it for the visuals
alone.
If you want a Metroid game that doesn't have
Metroid in the title, Axiom Verge is the game
for you.
This is probably the closest I've seen a Metroidvania
get to capturing the feel of an actual metroid,
but it sets itself apart from the source material
by cranking up the weird.
It specifically channels the darker and emptier
visuals of metroid 1, but with more emphasis
on the hypnotic, nightmarish qualities the
series occasionally has.
It also has far more detail and variety then
the first Metroid, with a constant stream
of new sights and sounds keeping it compelling
to explore.
Parts of the world are corrupted in a way
that resembles a glitched NES game, which
isn't just a cool effect but an actual mechanic.
Enemies and objects can be both fixed and
glitched in ways that can be beneficial or
harmful depending on the scenario.
Rather than basing everything on Metroid,
the developer showed a lot of ingenuity in
coming up with new powers specifically suited
to his world.
There are so many weird ideas that work so
well and they never let up; every minute of
exploration will turn up some kind of upgrade
or new weapon to try.
The pace of new abilities is so fast that
even going back to an area from just 20 minutes
ago can result in a good haul of new items
In fact, there are almost too many powerups;
you probably won't even use half of the beams
in the game and I’d have probably preferred
to have the upgrades stack together rather
than all being separate.
But they do provide useful options for hitting
enemies in every possible scenario and you’ll
often find that a beam you’ve ignored is
perfect for a specific boss.
The bosses have a different feel than Hollow
Knight and Environmental Station Alpha in
that they aren’t all trying to be white
knuckle bullet hell road blocks.
They have a very old school approach where
the main challenge is figuring out how to
attack them, and after that the fight is usually
yours.
And the game not only puts save points before
them but also color codes boss doors so that
you can always prepare for them.
Again, this kind of thing only makes the game
funner and diminishes nothing.
A great soundtrack isn’t exactly a rarity
in these games, but the music in Axiom Verge
is especially memorable.
It can be ambient, depressing, dancey, and
occasionally weird to the point of being annoying,
but all of it suits the mood of the area perfectly.
There’s also an interesting story with a
few twists and some supplemental lore to find,
if you’re into that sort of thing.
I didn’t mind secrets leading to journal
entries here because the game is so saturated
with powerups that a small break from them
is never a disappointment.
If I had to say anything bad about Axiom Verge
it’s that the travel system is the weakest
of any game in this list.
Indie developers are great at designing individual
areas, but organically connecting them with
other areas seems to pose more of a challenge.
Super Metroid and Prime tried to connect everything
with tangled shortcuts going everywhere, but
modern games tend to favor some kind of warp
system instead.
Hollow Knight had a beetle that ran to every
section while Environmental Station Alpha
and Ori used instant warp points.
Axiom Verge’s solution is a giant Monty
Python head running down a very, very long
hallway, which isn’t very efficient or convenient
to use.
That said, it’s mainly an issue late in
the game when going for 100% collection.
The other thing to say is that the game isn’t
as original as Ori or Hollow Knight; it is
a Metroid clone and it does an incredible
job of it, but it does make me appreciate
the ambition these other games put into pushing
2D visuals forward.
Axiom Verge is more like The Force Awakens
of Metroid, recreating something you’ve
seen before but with a new coat of paint.
And considering that we’ve only gotten one
decent Metroid from Nintendo in the past decade,
I’m fine with that.
I can’t recommend this game enough, it’s
really damn good and the upcoming sequel is
one of my most anticipated games this year.
If you haven’t played it yet just do it
you stupid baby.
There are many, many more games to get to
but too many for one video, so if you liked
this review then stay tuned for part two.
Which games will be included?
What will the scores be?
8?
7?
Will 15 make an appearance?
That’s for me to pull out of my ass and
you to find out.
We are in intermission, Barry what did you
think of Nerrel's performance so far?
Well I think he hurt himself right out of
the gate by criticizing Hollow knight, he
lost a lot of viewers there.
And I think the fans are going to call him
out in the comments for not being good at
the game, they know that that's what that
means, that if a game isn't fun it's because
you're not good at it.
Do you think he recovered enough momentum
after that?
Let's face it, he didn't really have any credibility
to lose.
He said Breath of the Wild wasn't perfect,
he said Resident Evil 2 remake wasn't that
great, and that the Star War movie was good,
that's three strikes against him already,
frankly it didn't matter what he did out there
today, he's not coming back from that.
