If only you could have heard the RPS treehouse chat a few months ago, during the great Metroidvania debate of 2017. Battle lines were drawn. On the one side: John, insisting that of course Dead Cells isn’t a Metroidvania. On the other side: everyone else, calling John an old fogey for insisting on overly strict and out-dated genre boundaries. On the other other side: the sensible people, who probably didn’t get involved because this is a silly discussion that’s of no consequence whatsoever.
Koji Igarashi’s Kickstarter for an exploration heavy Castlevania throwback Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is set for release later in 2018. But a stretch goal reward for one of the most successful crowdfunding titles of all time will reach your unholy game devices sooner than you might expect. The spin-off title Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon was just announced in Kyoto at BitSummit, and it will be yours to possess forever in just a few weeks. Inti Creates is putting out the 8-bit whip-em-up which was listed on the Kickstarter page as a mini-game. How “mini” this game is might be up for interpretation.
Hollow Knight incites a bit of debate around the site. As John brought up in his review last year: what do you do with a game that is genuinely good but rather unoriginal? It’s a Metroidvania game that a lot of us picked up because it was simply the most recent Metroidvania game, and that’s not the best excuse for buying a game. In the year since launch, Australian studio Team Cherry has met this criticism by consistently adding new, free DLC to the title, with each pack helping to define and improve on the base game. Today, Hollow Knight: Lifeblood is available, and if you already own the game the update is probably installed.
Yucatan is a Mexican Day of the Dead themed, neon-soaked, low poly adventure that wants to bring Metroidvania style game design to the arcade racer genre. I mean… throw the word “blockchain” in there somewhere and I think this adequately sums up everything the internet is into right now? Unfortunately, you’ve got a bit of a wait on this, as Yucatan is set to be released on PC and PS4 in early 2019. The good news is that there’s a demo available right now.
Dandara does something important. It has an original idea. And then very smartly puts that original idea inside lots of very familiar ones. It’s a metroidvania where you cannot walk, run, jump, let alone double-jump. Instead you move by zapping yourself from surface to surface, only able to stand on the white-marked ground, while the enemies have free reign. Read the rest of this entry »
So many people have been looking forward to Iconoclasts for so many years – we wrote our first impressions of it in 2011! – that it’s dangerous to venture any opinions into the fray.
But I fear no danger. Iconoclasts, properly released after all these years, is fine. Kinda. Read the rest of this entry »
I am completely and totally in love with platformer Necrosphere [official site]. I have also shouted at it so much that I now genuinely have a sore throat. I cannot remember a time when I’ve improved so, so much at a game in a relatively short space of time, to the point where completing certain sections has had me begin to imagine statues built in my honour. And then I come crashing down to Earth as I struggle with the very next moment. It’s a complete joy, a full 2D Metroidvania, and yet the whole game is controlled with only two buttons. Read the rest of this entry »
Sundered [official site] is the ridiculously beautiful Metroidvania from the people who brought us the ridiculously beautiful Jotun. In a busy genre, does it do enough to stand out? Here are my thoughts: Read the rest of this entry »
Hollow Knight [official site] presents a peculiar issue. What do you do with a game that is genuinely good, but rather unoriginal? A game that is so, so similar to others that have come recently before it, but is still a beautifully drawn, solidly built metroidvania? Do you say, “Get this one, because it’s the most recent?” That’s not a coherent argument. Unfortunately for Hollow Knight, I think the design decisions that narrowly define it are really its core weaknesses. Read the rest of this entry »
There are a lot of retro platformers about just now. And most of them are pretty rubbish, echoing games they remember without really understanding them, or fixating on some deluded belief that it was great in the 80s when they were near-impossible to play (Chuckie Egg 2, anyone?), and that pixel-perfect jumps and ludicrous insta-kills with no saves are a sepia-toned nostalgic cuddle we can only wish to embrace once again. No. They were terrible games, stop emulating them.
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.
AKA ‘Another Metroid 2 Remake‘ [official site], rather a self-effacing title for what might just be the best Metroid game in years. Trouble being, Nintendo weren’t involved – quite the opposite, in fact, as the blighters shut down this fan project soon after release. Fortunately, it’s not hard to find, for now at least. Read the rest of this entry »
Shadow Complex [official site] originally came out on the Xbox 360 in 2009. Then after a little six year pause, a so-called “Remastered” edition was released, for free, to try to push Epic’s “Epic Games” downloader that I’ve never heard a single person mention since. It has been released again, yesterday, on Steam, this time for money. About ten monies. Which is, oddly, fewer monies than it now costs on Epic’s entirely unused launcher. Anyway, here’s wot I think:
Blood Alloy is the game that John once referred to as Dark Souls meets Hotline Miami. After two and a half years in development, an unsuccessful Kickstarter, and a change of genre, Blood Alloy: Reborn [official site] is a a 2D score-attacking bullet-stormer and out now.
Get a couple of folks from Konami and Nintendo around a table with a few drinks inside them and I’m sure it won’t be long before the argument starts again. “What makes you so damn special?” cries a Konamiac slamming down her flagon (she brings her own) of foamy real ale. “Why do you go first?” A Nintendeer sips cooly from his glowing green cocktail fizzing with dry ice before responding, “Because Castletroid would sound daft.”
Whatever you call ’em (“action-adventure” seems such a useless term), another’s on its way. Following a debut on PlayThings in March, Axiom Verge [official site] is due on PC on May 14th.
I know what you might be thinking. There’s a checklist running through your mind. Action platformer: check. Art style recalls 8-bit era: check. Chiptune soundtrack? Can’t tell from a screenshot, but… check.
But hold on now. Just because Castle in the Darkness looks and sounds overly familiar doesn’t mean it’s not worth your time. I call to the stand last year’s Shovel Knight, which seemed to win over virtually everyone who tried out its signature trowel.
Daniel Linssen of Roguelight fame has once again been inspired by a Ludum Dare competition to do wonderful things with the metroidvania formula. Namely, to fit a delicious and beyond hefty platformer into a single screen and call it bird song.
Éric Chahi’s Another World did many things right, but what I believe it really excelled at was conveying the feeling that you were somewhere drastically different. Somewhere otherworldly yet also sensible and at times familiar and this is the exact same sensation Sundae Month’s Petrichor manages to re-create.
Though far from ground-breaking, I have to admit that what initially drew me to Super Skeleman were its graphics. Their crispiness combined with the sparing use of colour and the overall stylization of the visuals really did it for me. Also, I do have a thing for retro stuff. And for pixelated skeletons too.
I sadly have to admit that CastleMania is far too difficult for me. It doesn’t love me back, and no matter what I do or how hard I try the thing just won’t let me reach its finale. But, that’s okay. Really, it is.
CastleMania didn’t merely entertain me in the most masochistic of ways for a couple or so hours. It also enlightened me, as I finally understood that those few console games I tried and was never able to beat when I was a kid had less to do with my inherent incompetence and more with the brutal design sensibilities of the average NES game. And that nasty mechanic which has you bouncing back whenever an enemy damages you.
Shattered comes with a plot. Something about a world consuming dark power that has already shattered a planet in two and about you being there to rob said planet of its artifacts, but, yes, you couldn’t possibly care about such things, could you? Not when you get to control an impossibly cute black blob, you can’t.
