Axiom Verge is the kind of game I wish I loved. It’s a tribute to Metroid, with a few other influences thrown in, and it’s incredibly well made. The graphical style is based on the 16-bit era but not slavishly devoted to recreating that aesthetic and the game is more than happy to throw in modern touches like scaling the screen back for greater visibility against massive bosses that the Super Nintendo or Genesis could never have managed. It all looks fantastic and the various areas of the map manage to be both distinct from and graphically cohesive with one another, with a biomechanical theme that evokes the game’s inspiration without outright copying it.

The soundtrack also deserves praise, with tracks ranging from creepy ambient music to mournful melodies to evocative music with vocals (though not intelligible words.) It’s all great stuff and the whole thing, from graphics to game design to soundtrack, was created by a single person, which is even more impressive. This is like if John Carpenter not only wrote, directed, and scored his movies but also acted in them and rigged the camera and lights and sound and did the editing and mixing. It’s a stunning accomplishment.

So how does it play? Great, for the most part. It’s classic Metroid style action, with running, jumping, and shooting, and they all feel good. Level design is strong and mixes and matches room types, with small areas mixed with long vertical or horizontal hallways and even some massive multi-tiered rooms that take several minutes to navigate even if you’re just passing through to return to an area you’ve visited before. There’s all those old Metroid tricks including lots of areas that are clearly blocked off for future upgrades, secrets that you can uncover if you’re perceptive enough, and save rooms that are spaced far enough apart to make the journey feel perilous but not so far that the game becomes truly frustrating, except for at a few small difficulty spikes. There’s truly impressive weapon variety and a host of upgrades from health and weapon power to projectile size and range boosts, and a lot of utility powers for world navigation or to help in combat, some required for progression and some not. It feels really good to return to a previously unnavigable area and finally have the new power you need to succeed, like a laser drill to cut through certain types of blocks. There’s even a quasi-gimmick in the ability to “disrupt” enemies and certain environmental features, causing bad guys to become “glitched” which usually, but not always, makes them easier to deal with. It’s a delight to turn a previously menacing enemy generator into a glitchy mass that shoots out health, or to slow a fast and invincible enemy down so he’s not a threat, or turn another enemy into a platform you can jump on. Bosses are massive and intimidating looking but frankly a bit of a let down to fight, with simple patterns that are easy to learn and not a lot to them. I’d say it’s the weakest part of the design but the bosses aren’t terrible, they’re just not up to the standards of everything else.

So if I’m singing the game’s praises then why am I a little lukewarm on it at the same time? What are my issues? The truth is, they’re mostly about legitimate design choices that I don’t personally enjoy. This game was made as a love letter to older games and it intentionally incorporates some elements of those games that I was never a huge fan of. The controls can be stiff, especially when trying to do more complicated maneuvers like grapple across the ceiling or throw a drone into a small opening. I found that frustrating, especially one move that requires you to double press the d-pad and hold down the second press, and seemed very unreliable for me; though it’s only used for certain puzzle-like situations so it never caused me to take damage or fall off something. The map is good but pretty bare bones. It shows you areas you haven’t fully explored (by reaching every square on the map) but not the particular obstacle that stopped you, and it doesn’t note power ups that you may have seen but not been able to get. This leads to not just backtracking, but fruitless backtracking as you slog your way back through a level to get to an open map area, only to find that you still don’t have what you need to explore it. There’s pseudo fast travel but no ability to warp between save rooms (and no true warp rooms) which makes all of this even more repetitive, and the feeling of passing back through an area that requires some nimble moves with the stiff controls only to find that the space in the map you’re checking out is still impassable is…not great. Because the game doesn’t give you a lot of direction, it’s hard to know what path to pursue and there’s a fair amount of not-entirely but kind of aimless wandering. Too much, when you ask me. I got lost at one point and wandered for literal hours until I just looked up where to go next, and it was an area that required some not at all obvious maneuvering to get to. Sometimes when you are able to find an area you weren’t able to get past before but can now, you find a disappointing reward, like a small part of a power up or some lore. Speaking of lore, the story is also kind of rote. It’s not terrible, and definitely picks up steam as it rolls along, but it doesn’t add much to the package. The journals, in particular, fell flat for me, and you pick up a fair number of them if you explore widely.

All of the above complaints (except the boring bosses) are intentional choices to make the game more like its inspirations. They’re all valid design decisions and they all make sense. Forcing you to travel on foot back through old areas both encourages exploration and looking for secrets and reinforces the power increases, as well as reinforcing the game’s atmosphere. The sparse map splits the difference between the original Metroid’s “I’m lost all the time” irritations and modern games feeling like a check-list, instead giving you the tools to explore but making you engage with and learn the levels yourself. The stiff controls just feel like throwbacks and increase the game’s skill ceiling, making you work for your power ups and really learn how to maneuver the character. It’s not a particularly hard game but it is more demanding than a lot of modern titles, and while I enjoy parts of that I also found it frustrating and even a little boring at times. I can be an impatient gamer, and Axiom Verge definitely triggered that within me.

None of this is to say I didn’t have fun with Axiom Verge. I did. I got immersed in its twisty hallways for hours, I really liked a lot of the weapons and the clever level designs, I got that burst of satisfaction from overcoming frustration and getting past an area that stymied me, all the rest of it. It came down on the “fun” side of the “fun/frustrating” divide for me. But I liked it at a 7.5 out of 10 even while I could tell that it really deserves a 9 or 9.5 out of 10 for how well it executed its vision. The things I didn’t like were mostly things that someone else will, and they were intentional and valid choices. This game was made for people with very specific tastes, and I only share some of them.

Axiom Verge is a great game. It looks fantastic, it sounds fantastic, it plays exactly as intended. The level design is classic, the visual design cohesive, and hey, it has a better story than Metroid: Other M. But it’s the kind of game I appreciate much more than love. There’s a sequel coming out soon and I’m not itching to buy it on launch. I’ll pick it up at some point, probably after it moves to PS5, and I’ll play it and enjoy it at some point. But it won’t blow me away the way I’m sure it will others. I wish it would.