Quick Look: Axiom Verge

Is this game frog fractions 2?

I'm really looking forward to it now

Looks pretty damn well made but yeah, as someone with little reverence / nostalgia for this era of games, as well as a limited desire to play metroidvania style stuff, Ori looks way more appealing and is probably what I'll end up dumping time into.

Glad this looks good for people who are into the era / gameplay style though. Good year for metroidvanias it seems like.

@metal_mills: wow, hype already has me horribly disappointed for this!

Tbh it actually warms my heart when people have a reaction to something they really enjoy like this. Good art that moves you is hard to come by, and a little positivity is always a good thing to have in this world.

Looks good, may get it when the PC version arrives. I did stop the quick look before Jeff loaded up his completed save as I didn't want to see that stuff ahead of time if I do play this.

Great to hear such excitement in Jeff's voice. I'll have to check this out.

So looking forward to this.

This just looks so fucking good. I hope I'll find the time to play it.

its nice changed to hear Jeff sounding positive about a game

I've never played any of the Metroid games but I loved Symphony of the Night and Ori. Im really looking forward to trying this.

Never played through a metroid, tried 1 or 2, maybe i'll try this on PC? If it modernizes the old bits it could be great.

I see the quality of the game, i see that it's a solid metroidvania with a lot of guns. But i still wonder, what does this game do, that truly make it stands out from Metroid? What makes Axiom Verge, Axiom Verge instead of Metroid 2015?

Hearing things like 'you think you have to turn into a ball to get down there, but you actually get a different way to get in that space' , feels like you do the same things as in metroid but with a slightly different tool. Like using a door with a wrench instead of a key.

So is it truly just that the sheer amount of weapons make this stand out from that game? Is it the gun that changes the properties of enemies? I really want to see this game as the game it is, but the whole look, feel and structure of the game scream Metroid to me.

Ori , The Swapper, Guacamelee are all metroidvania's with a graphical update, and their own hooks to the genre.That helped these games to differentiate them from Metroid, while still being true to the genre and getting overall good scores. Is it that there haven't been any retro metroidvania's in a while and this one gives the people the retro metroidvania they've been lacking for so many years?

Any thoughts?

Same, the overall structure, effects, and weapons don't really do anything for me.

This game looks rad as hell!! Can't wait to get my hands on it

@cale: what a valuable and worthwhile opinion. Thanks for sharing.

I wonder how much of the appeal of this is coming from the aspect of subverting tried and true ideas.

@lando81 said:

Well a bunch of people agreed with me, so yeah, I guess it was worth voicing my thoughts.

This is a real video game.

Kinda seems like the general ebb and flow of opinion here goes counter to however jeff feels. Cynical and jaded? He didn't give the game enough time or a good enough chance. Enthusiastic and receptive? He likes it for weird/baffling/contrarian reasons and this game isn't as great in reality. I guess there may be some silent group that actually agrees with him from time to time? Sometimes feels like there's people who just can't wait to jump all over his opinions regardless of what they are.

Like i said earlier, sometimes it just feels good to see someone is genuinely liking something, regardless of personal feelings about said something. Maybe sometimes just leave that baggage behind?

5 stars! WOW!

Yo, the low health beeping changes tempo to stay on beat with the background music, it sounds like.

Holy crap, this looks fuckin rad. I haven't played very many Metroidvanias, but this look like a ton of fun.

Most of the comments here seem positive on the game. Some people will of course be negative, but I don't really get what you're saying here.

@ripelivejam: I'm sure there are lots of visitors to the site who don't post their thoughts often, like me. I tend to agree with Jeff's opinions more often than not, and for that reason I'm very interested in checking out this game.

Five minutes in: "Alright! That's enough of this!"

*Goes and buys game*

*Actually, decides to wait a couple more days to see what April's PS+ games are first*

*Still, gonna play this game*

Rad. I'll be picking this up tomorrow, hopefully I can play it with my SNES PC controller!

Edit: I am displeased that the PC release is not coming soon enough for me.

@lando81: You're not better than him if you post that . Not every post is important, not every post has to be important. Now i also made a useless post.

Not sure if this game is good to people who don't have the nostalgia for Metroid games (like me)

@ripelivejam: I dunno, I think the overall trend of people here, though, is to ape the site's (primarily Jeff's) negativity about certain things.

Anyway, this became a must-have as soon as the glitch gun thing came into play. Shit looks super rad.

Great, looking forward to playing it. I can't remember Jeff being this enthusiastic about a game since Far Cry 3. "I really, really like this game." I'm personally incredibly happy there's a lock position button.

Although I thought the Vita version was coming at the same time. Ah well, guess it'll just split PS4 time with Bloodborne. In other news, all my evening plans this week are canceled.

I've never been a huge metroidvania ("SpaceWhippers") kinda guy, but this checks all of the right boxes for me.

@missashley said:

Agreed, glad they are doing a PC release!

@onemanarmyy: Some people just want to play another Metroidvania and they happen to have a nostalgic soft spot for those older games in the looks and feels department. For those specific people this game is going to be really amazing like it is for Jeff. I don't have that nostalgia and I've kinda moved past to the point where I rather be playing new games than reliving the past so I just see a really well made title that doesn't grab me in any way.

Axiom Verge is catering to a specific crowd. It's the same reason why Kevin VanOrd is in love with Bloodborne and Jeff just couldn't care less. Also it's a little ironic, but completely not surprising, that the first game Jeff has really fallen in love with in a long time is a faithful 8bit throwback.

I mean, it looks good, but I don't see what makes it 5/5 stars worthy. 4/5 as "a very good Metriodvania game with a few slight tweaks".

Unless this somehow turns into Blitz '99 halfway through the game, I'm not buying it more than Jeff has a lot of nostalgia for old games.

This review made my dick hard. Thanks Jeff.

@humanity: Yeah after thinking about it for a while, It might totally be okay for a game to not breaking any new grounds. Instead, it just appears to be a really good oldschool metroidvania.

Pillars of Eternity doesn't seem to do many things Baldur's gate didn't , but just like Axiom Verge it seems to be a really good addition to a genre that doesn't get much love in these days.

Watched 2 minutes and decided I need this game.

" Sonly", for shame @brad !

"Fast" or "quickly" wasn't good enough, Brad?

I had today off from work and spent a sizable portion of it at least partially thinking how much I wished I could play this game now. Really looking forward to picking it up tomorrow!

I was somewhat interested before, but after seeing this, jeses, I gotta play this.

@onemanarmyy: Who cares? There have only been 4 Metroid ("normal"/2D) games I believe (Metroid, Super Metroid, Metroid 2, and Metroid Fusion), and none in the past decade. I don't mind another game that takes that mold and goes in a lot of neat, fun directions with a bunch of elements. Yes those games you mentioned as well as Order of Ecclesia and even Muramasa are all good games in the genre - but a game more directly invoking Metroid really isn't negative since Nintendo hasn't seemed to mind that in a long time.

Either way, both this and Ori seem to be tremendously fun games (Ori for combat/platforming, this for exploration & novel items) and will be something I get into as soon as I finish my first playthrough of Bloodborne.

@dan_citi:

Oh don't take it the wrong way, this game looks pretty damn great and i will surely play it.

It was just that the review starts out with saying it's not metroid at all. So when i read the rest of the review and watched the quicklook, i was looking for the ways that Axiom Verge is differentiating itself.

Hearing Jeff talk about the craziness that happens lategame and reading in the review that

'You think you know how Axiom Verge will play out. But you don't. Actually, if you read this review, you might know a bit more about how it'll play out.'

makes me think that theres something really exciting happening later on that Jeff doesn't want to spoil, and which might give the game truly it's own face.

Like i was expecting full on jetpacks soaring through the levels later on or something , as he said that the traversal in the beginning felt weird because in his finished game the traversal was so wild, but when he loaded up the finished game save the wildest traversal got was with the drone and the huge fast travel creature.

Anyone know when this'll be released on Steam?

June is the target, IIRC.

@please_love_me: Yup, looked like some of the background animations synced up with the music too

The abstract, random nature of the background sprites irritate me a surprising amount. The transition tiles don't blend much, and it's not very cohesive in general. Ignoring that, the moment and shooting looks ground to a point. I grew up with Commander Keen 4-6 and not Mario, so those tight, clean controls are critical. I'll wishlist this for its PC release.

Meh.. it looks like a game.

Yeah, I feel like that's my feelings towards it as well.. I wonder if the nostalgia bug is just hitting people hard or something.

Edit: okay, just saw the item; Looks like the games got real potential...

Edit: Okay, just saw Jeff's save... Okay, this game looks pretty baller...

I have no nostalgia for these kind of games so this kept me completely cold. Ori and The Blind Forest tho, now that was an awesome platformer and it looks incredibly.