Axiom Verge (PC, 2015)
Graphics-7 Sound-8 Control-7.5 Challenge-6.5 Story-6.5
Level Design-7 Frustration-7 Fun-7 Originality-6
Overall Score-7
+
Some interesting weapons (beam that you can trigger to explode manually - used to trigger some otherwise out of reach switches and hit some enemies from a safe spot, lightning gun - homing, dash attack/longer teleport (similar to Altered Beast and to what was later used in Hollow Knight, also lets you quickly dig through breakable blocks)) and tools (address disruptor - turn glitch tiles into platforms and some non-solid objects into solid glitch tiles+break glitch walls (upgraded)+turn some enemies into platforms+stun some enemies (can't stand on these though)+make some enemies break blocks you can't reach or break yourself+make some enemies weaker or neutralized+change some enemy patterns+freeze some liquid tiles, remote drone - switch control to a small drone while your avatar stays put and becomes invulnerable (lets you pass through smaller paths+drill through breakable blocks+pick up items and you can move into other rooms, can teleport back to your avatar at any point; the arc of yesod and tails' adventure), short teleport/blink which can be used in mid-air and lets you pass through walls vertically as well (similar to a short double jump when used in mid-air), drone teleport - teleport to where the drone is (speeds up traversal as both throwing the drone and teleporting are rather fast; might've inspired the light burst ability in Ori 1))
Start with an enemy drop magnet
Enemy drops don't disappear
Includes speedrun (no dialogue or cutscenes+removes some of the randomness in enemy patterns and spawn points) and randomizer modes from the get go
Pretty good map system (similar to Super Metroid, marks save points+doors and boss rooms, doesn't mark ability gates, can place two map markers but they are just two numbers so you likely have to write down what they represent (also can't use more than one of a number to mark several gates of the same kind), doesn't show room topology/walls and platforms within rooms)
Minor puzzle element to some bosses (turn glitch tiles into solid platforms for protection and to reach their weak spots)
Difficulty options (normal and hard modes - hard is mostly just a stats tweak (less health drops, less damage dealt and more taken) however bosses also move 25% faster)
Decent-pretty good art direction overall (various strange environments and enemy designs; sometimes overly tiled/8-bit look while some other backgrounds look too advanced by comparison)
A few shortcuts through vertical rooms
Makes you feel vulnerable while using the droid at times
Some good puzzles (glitch a laser crawler to make it break otherwise unbreakable blocks, some well hidden paths where the map is used as a clue, use the glitch gun on a specific enemy to create a bridge made of breakable blocks, some good platforming puzzles using drone teleport)
Some decent bosses (scorpion in area 4 besides its inefficient flamethrower attack, sentinel though it could've had one more pattern)
Find text notes for additional lore
Minor environmental change (when you release the repair drones you'll encounter some of them while exploring and they'll attack enemies - they kinda suck at destroying them though)
Partial quick travel system in a wagon ride of sorts in area 5/indi (cool but there could've been something more to cut back on some backtracking, the game should also have told you about it after getting the grapple as it's possible to miss it entirely when the "wagon" is a round statue with a standard looking small platform on top))
Pretty cool hallucination/clone segment during the story twist
Two neutral creatures (platform robot in area 7 - can be used as a platform but it's not needed since you can get to the item from the other side, hanging green spider - no use and doesn't take damage?)
Smart bombs (Super Metroid etc, doesn't break blocks here nor hit switches but glitches all enemies on screen and removes radiation walls)
Pretty good cutscenes (16-bit style)
Good story reason for the save points existing in the game's world
Can latch onto any flat ceiling with the grapple
Skippable staff roll and cutscenes
Shows completion stats (item and map percentages), time taken and number of deaths after beating it
A couple of sequence breaking opportunities (can damage boost jump to get back to the beginning of area 3 earlier (the room where you're supposed to use the grapple) though it's tricky to pull off, if you don't save after getting to area 3's preliminary point of no return you'll be able to teleport past the high jump before the grapple with save & quit and get to a new area to the east of the first while skipping the Gir-Tab fight+repair drone release, )
+/-
Partially non-linear structure (linear up until after the second boss - seemingly two paths to take after the first boss however the northern one locks you out of it pretty quickly and you can just reach the three-way beam there before having to go back, after reaching area 3 the game locks you onto a path towards getting the droid+the grapple and some other abilities in areas 3-4 via a one way path at the beginning of area 3/zi, then locks you inside area 7 after reaching it for story reasons (which is the only way to go after backtracking past the previous temporary point of no return), after that you can get to more optional upgrades but the ability progression seems linear)
Indi/Area 5 is a hub area that connects to six other areas
Fairly frequent save points (can also save and quit at any point - restart at the previous save point with restored health+save map progress (this can be used to quickly backtrack if you explore far into a new area and want to go back), only one slot per game)
If you die after beating a boss or collecting an upgrade then that progress is saved and you're transported to the last save point used
Metroid-style gameplay and setting (sci-fi horror, no leveling and not much of a gear focus (a few more weapons than in Metroid though), no shops, various breakable walls and blocks, decent platforming/movement focus, ranged combat, not much NPC interaction but more than in early Metroids). The grapple swinging animation is straight out of Bionic Commando (can't pull yourself up through a platform here however)
Pretty heavily inspired by early Metroid (visual aesthetics, early weapons and enemy behavior, re-appearing blocks, etc; the white enemies are kinda like re-deads/zombies in Zelda: OoT except they can run; area 2's music sounds kinda similar to Phantasy Star 2)
Some NPC interaction (radio communication at some points as well as in person at some points, non-interactive dialogue; can't manually initiate dialogue with Elsenova and can only talk to the other Rusalka/lady robots at certain points in the story)
Game pauses while switching weapons
Enemies respawn when moving two rooms away from them
Can't de-glitch what you've glitched - only previously glitched things
Parallel dimension theme (Breach is like the dark world in Zelda 3 or the Metroid Prime 2 equivalent, threatening to take over the real world)
Can't manually contact Elsenova (she seems able to talk to you anywhere you go besides the Breach)
Additional shots at full health upgrade (Zelda 1) - forward only though. Can be upgraded once for 2x rate of fire but still shoots only forward
Collectathon aspect to most health and damage upgrades (5 and 6 fragments per upgrade respectively)
HP regen for the droid's health bar but only when storing it on your avatar (a bit slow)
Doesn't show bosses' health bars but they turn darker and more red instead
The text notes feel placed as an exploration/puzzle challenge rather than in believable places
Passcode tool - kinda cool throwback to passwords and there are some interesting cheats you can unlock but they should've let you use the keyboard to input the codes and the game doesn't do that much with them
If both you and a boss dies then the boss is still dead after respawning
The shotgun-like weapon doesn't knock enemies backwards nor stun them enough and isn't strong enough to take out for example the zombies before they get to you (but it does hit through thin walls so it's still fairly useful and it can one shot smaller enemies later on). Some other weapons also temporarily stun enemies and have better stopping power due to higher rate of fire
No boss in area 8/NE temple
No auto-fire besides the ice shards, flamethrower and homing lightning gun for the main weapons. The sub weapon glitch gun (which works kinda like a flamethrower), drill and "full health only" shots are also auto-fire
The tailed flying robots and spinning laser shooting robots in area 9 aren't worth fighting
Play as a clone of the villain
Some secret areas but they're kind of boring (just a lot of enemies you've seen before and some minor upgrades (besides the heat seeker weapon which is pretty OP), only found two)
-
Some control/interface issues (can't lock your aim while moving - only while jumping upwards and if you were standing when pressing L (if not you'll stay crouched), can't start aiming the drill downwards while standing on the ground - have to jump first, can't view the map while using the droid, the grapple is a bit fiddly (let go by pressing l/r instead of by jumping), no quest log, double tap to dash/blink - should've been mappable to a button since it's also a dash dodge and double tapping is fairly easy to do by accident)
Some trial & error (bombs remove radiation walls - not mentioned in item description, ghost-like enemy in area 7/ukkina that swallows you, easy to miss that a pool of pink liquid in area 4 is glitched - can be frozen to reach higher, size nodes don't affect all weapon projectiles, some bosses, some enemy spawn points, finding some hidden items, the indication that you're near a secret area is too subtle - barely visible stripes on health bar)
Safe spot vs the second boss - can get behind it and it won't turn around
Some tedious aspects (no teleporting between visited save points - backtracking is a problem at times and there aren't enough shortcuts, potential backtracking from area 4 to area 2 twice if you didn't realize there was a one way path at the beginning of area 3, quite a bit of backtracking within areas and not knowing which path leads to story or ability progression tends to lead to more of it on a first playthrough, radiation walls and laser barriers don't stay opened, continous beeping sfx when near death, various crevices that seem like they'd lead somewhere but don't, some rooms don't flow that well (occasional pointless breakable block paths or out of reach platforms), several minor dead ends early on and it's pointless to try and explore area 5/indi with the droid from the east (same with NW area 3 and again in the Breach part of that area, same if you go back to area 2 with the droid - can't save nor open up any path for your avatar, same with the NE path in area 4 past the glitch wall in the surface part), some dead space, red herring small path near the beginning of area 4, annoying how you can't pass the radiation walls in western a6/edin after having gotten to the other side, keep getting bomb drops from enemies even if at full stock, some breakable blocks take longer to drill through for some reason, no gun upgrade for the drone - some spongy enemies and a few digging segments are kind of drawn out)
Kind of boring early enemies overall and various enemies can be cheesed by hitting them from a safe spot. Some early mid-game enemies are too easy (can hit some from afar without them reacting). Easy enemies in the NE temple due to poor pathfinding AI and having the shotgun
Some color swapped enemies with the same behavior already in the first area
Some items are just placed out in the open instead of requiring some searching, puzzling or combat to reach
Pretty easy third/area 3 boss (doesn't change its pattern enough, too zoomed out maybe?) and wasp boss (edin)
Kind of annoying drilling sfx
Weak spread shot and voranj/green spread shot
Passing through walls works too much like a key (movement-wise it's not interesting and a bit slow)
Some lame upgrades (the glitch gun/disruptor upgrade being used for a different looking wall (thick glitch walls), range upgrade on deploying the drone - you shoot/throw it out when deploying it)
Can't reach higher than what you grabbed on to with the grapple - makes using it to climb not flow as well and it's not as fun as in ESA for example
Some story oddities (why doesn't trace confront the rusalka about him being athetos after the realization cutscene?, kinda weird how Trace cares about sparing athetos besides thinking it would kill him if he's gone but he still cares after realizing it's not the case, last scene of the ending - wtf?)
Difficulty spike beyond the radiation wall in area 1 (lightning gun path - can cheese it but it's boring)
Can't say yes to athetos during the finale and somehow fight the robots instead (would've been cool since the game foreshadows it well)
Easy final boss (visually cool though)
No new enemies appear when revisiting previous areas
Bugs:
-Minor scripting issue with the rusalki in area 3 - the characters act as if you haven't got the item behind her even if you have when you go back to talk to her after activating the repair droids
Level Design-7 Frustration-7 Fun-7 Originality-6
Overall Score-7
+
Some interesting weapons (beam that you can trigger to explode manually - used to trigger some otherwise out of reach switches and hit some enemies from a safe spot, lightning gun - homing, dash attack/longer teleport (similar to Altered Beast and to what was later used in Hollow Knight, also lets you quickly dig through breakable blocks)) and tools (address disruptor - turn glitch tiles into platforms and some non-solid objects into solid glitch tiles+break glitch walls (upgraded)+turn some enemies into platforms+stun some enemies (can't stand on these though)+make some enemies break blocks you can't reach or break yourself+make some enemies weaker or neutralized+change some enemy patterns+freeze some liquid tiles, remote drone - switch control to a small drone while your avatar stays put and becomes invulnerable (lets you pass through smaller paths+drill through breakable blocks+pick up items and you can move into other rooms, can teleport back to your avatar at any point; the arc of yesod and tails' adventure), short teleport/blink which can be used in mid-air and lets you pass through walls vertically as well (similar to a short double jump when used in mid-air), drone teleport - teleport to where the drone is (speeds up traversal as both throwing the drone and teleporting are rather fast; might've inspired the light burst ability in Ori 1))
Start with an enemy drop magnet
Enemy drops don't disappear
Includes speedrun (no dialogue or cutscenes+removes some of the randomness in enemy patterns and spawn points) and randomizer modes from the get go
Pretty good map system (similar to Super Metroid, marks save points+doors and boss rooms, doesn't mark ability gates, can place two map markers but they are just two numbers so you likely have to write down what they represent (also can't use more than one of a number to mark several gates of the same kind), doesn't show room topology/walls and platforms within rooms)
Minor puzzle element to some bosses (turn glitch tiles into solid platforms for protection and to reach their weak spots)
Difficulty options (normal and hard modes - hard is mostly just a stats tweak (less health drops, less damage dealt and more taken) however bosses also move 25% faster)
Decent-pretty good art direction overall (various strange environments and enemy designs; sometimes overly tiled/8-bit look while some other backgrounds look too advanced by comparison)
A few shortcuts through vertical rooms
Makes you feel vulnerable while using the droid at times
Some good puzzles (glitch a laser crawler to make it break otherwise unbreakable blocks, some well hidden paths where the map is used as a clue, use the glitch gun on a specific enemy to create a bridge made of breakable blocks, some good platforming puzzles using drone teleport)
Some decent bosses (scorpion in area 4 besides its inefficient flamethrower attack, sentinel though it could've had one more pattern)
Find text notes for additional lore
Minor environmental change (when you release the repair drones you'll encounter some of them while exploring and they'll attack enemies - they kinda suck at destroying them though)
Partial quick travel system in a wagon ride of sorts in area 5/indi (cool but there could've been something more to cut back on some backtracking, the game should also have told you about it after getting the grapple as it's possible to miss it entirely when the "wagon" is a round statue with a standard looking small platform on top))
Pretty cool hallucination/clone segment during the story twist
Two neutral creatures (platform robot in area 7 - can be used as a platform but it's not needed since you can get to the item from the other side, hanging green spider - no use and doesn't take damage?)
Smart bombs (Super Metroid etc, doesn't break blocks here nor hit switches but glitches all enemies on screen and removes radiation walls)
Pretty good cutscenes (16-bit style)
Good story reason for the save points existing in the game's world
Can latch onto any flat ceiling with the grapple
Skippable staff roll and cutscenes
Shows completion stats (item and map percentages), time taken and number of deaths after beating it
A couple of sequence breaking opportunities (can damage boost jump to get back to the beginning of area 3 earlier (the room where you're supposed to use the grapple) though it's tricky to pull off, if you don't save after getting to area 3's preliminary point of no return you'll be able to teleport past the high jump before the grapple with save & quit and get to a new area to the east of the first while skipping the Gir-Tab fight+repair drone release, )
+/-
Partially non-linear structure (linear up until after the second boss - seemingly two paths to take after the first boss however the northern one locks you out of it pretty quickly and you can just reach the three-way beam there before having to go back, after reaching area 3 the game locks you onto a path towards getting the droid+the grapple and some other abilities in areas 3-4 via a one way path at the beginning of area 3/zi, then locks you inside area 7 after reaching it for story reasons (which is the only way to go after backtracking past the previous temporary point of no return), after that you can get to more optional upgrades but the ability progression seems linear)
Indi/Area 5 is a hub area that connects to six other areas
Fairly frequent save points (can also save and quit at any point - restart at the previous save point with restored health+save map progress (this can be used to quickly backtrack if you explore far into a new area and want to go back), only one slot per game)
If you die after beating a boss or collecting an upgrade then that progress is saved and you're transported to the last save point used
Metroid-style gameplay and setting (sci-fi horror, no leveling and not much of a gear focus (a few more weapons than in Metroid though), no shops, various breakable walls and blocks, decent platforming/movement focus, ranged combat, not much NPC interaction but more than in early Metroids). The grapple swinging animation is straight out of Bionic Commando (can't pull yourself up through a platform here however)
Pretty heavily inspired by early Metroid (visual aesthetics, early weapons and enemy behavior, re-appearing blocks, etc; the white enemies are kinda like re-deads/zombies in Zelda: OoT except they can run; area 2's music sounds kinda similar to Phantasy Star 2)
Some NPC interaction (radio communication at some points as well as in person at some points, non-interactive dialogue; can't manually initiate dialogue with Elsenova and can only talk to the other Rusalka/lady robots at certain points in the story)
Game pauses while switching weapons
Enemies respawn when moving two rooms away from them
Can't de-glitch what you've glitched - only previously glitched things
Parallel dimension theme (Breach is like the dark world in Zelda 3 or the Metroid Prime 2 equivalent, threatening to take over the real world)
Can't manually contact Elsenova (she seems able to talk to you anywhere you go besides the Breach)
Additional shots at full health upgrade (Zelda 1) - forward only though. Can be upgraded once for 2x rate of fire but still shoots only forward
Collectathon aspect to most health and damage upgrades (5 and 6 fragments per upgrade respectively)
HP regen for the droid's health bar but only when storing it on your avatar (a bit slow)
Doesn't show bosses' health bars but they turn darker and more red instead
The text notes feel placed as an exploration/puzzle challenge rather than in believable places
Passcode tool - kinda cool throwback to passwords and there are some interesting cheats you can unlock but they should've let you use the keyboard to input the codes and the game doesn't do that much with them
If both you and a boss dies then the boss is still dead after respawning
The shotgun-like weapon doesn't knock enemies backwards nor stun them enough and isn't strong enough to take out for example the zombies before they get to you (but it does hit through thin walls so it's still fairly useful and it can one shot smaller enemies later on). Some other weapons also temporarily stun enemies and have better stopping power due to higher rate of fire
No boss in area 8/NE temple
No auto-fire besides the ice shards, flamethrower and homing lightning gun for the main weapons. The sub weapon glitch gun (which works kinda like a flamethrower), drill and "full health only" shots are also auto-fire
The tailed flying robots and spinning laser shooting robots in area 9 aren't worth fighting
Play as a clone of the villain
Some secret areas but they're kind of boring (just a lot of enemies you've seen before and some minor upgrades (besides the heat seeker weapon which is pretty OP), only found two)
-
Some control/interface issues (can't lock your aim while moving - only while jumping upwards and if you were standing when pressing L (if not you'll stay crouched), can't start aiming the drill downwards while standing on the ground - have to jump first, can't view the map while using the droid, the grapple is a bit fiddly (let go by pressing l/r instead of by jumping), no quest log, double tap to dash/blink - should've been mappable to a button since it's also a dash dodge and double tapping is fairly easy to do by accident)
Some trial & error (bombs remove radiation walls - not mentioned in item description, ghost-like enemy in area 7/ukkina that swallows you, easy to miss that a pool of pink liquid in area 4 is glitched - can be frozen to reach higher, size nodes don't affect all weapon projectiles, some bosses, some enemy spawn points, finding some hidden items, the indication that you're near a secret area is too subtle - barely visible stripes on health bar)
Safe spot vs the second boss - can get behind it and it won't turn around
Some tedious aspects (no teleporting between visited save points - backtracking is a problem at times and there aren't enough shortcuts, potential backtracking from area 4 to area 2 twice if you didn't realize there was a one way path at the beginning of area 3, quite a bit of backtracking within areas and not knowing which path leads to story or ability progression tends to lead to more of it on a first playthrough, radiation walls and laser barriers don't stay opened, continous beeping sfx when near death, various crevices that seem like they'd lead somewhere but don't, some rooms don't flow that well (occasional pointless breakable block paths or out of reach platforms), several minor dead ends early on and it's pointless to try and explore area 5/indi with the droid from the east (same with NW area 3 and again in the Breach part of that area, same if you go back to area 2 with the droid - can't save nor open up any path for your avatar, same with the NE path in area 4 past the glitch wall in the surface part), some dead space, red herring small path near the beginning of area 4, annoying how you can't pass the radiation walls in western a6/edin after having gotten to the other side, keep getting bomb drops from enemies even if at full stock, some breakable blocks take longer to drill through for some reason, no gun upgrade for the drone - some spongy enemies and a few digging segments are kind of drawn out)
Kind of boring early enemies overall and various enemies can be cheesed by hitting them from a safe spot. Some early mid-game enemies are too easy (can hit some from afar without them reacting). Easy enemies in the NE temple due to poor pathfinding AI and having the shotgun
Some color swapped enemies with the same behavior already in the first area
Some items are just placed out in the open instead of requiring some searching, puzzling or combat to reach
Pretty easy third/area 3 boss (doesn't change its pattern enough, too zoomed out maybe?) and wasp boss (edin)
Kind of annoying drilling sfx
Weak spread shot and voranj/green spread shot
Passing through walls works too much like a key (movement-wise it's not interesting and a bit slow)
Some lame upgrades (the glitch gun/disruptor upgrade being used for a different looking wall (thick glitch walls), range upgrade on deploying the drone - you shoot/throw it out when deploying it)
Can't reach higher than what you grabbed on to with the grapple - makes using it to climb not flow as well and it's not as fun as in ESA for example
Some story oddities (why doesn't trace confront the rusalka about him being athetos after the realization cutscene?, kinda weird how Trace cares about sparing athetos besides thinking it would kill him if he's gone but he still cares after realizing it's not the case, last scene of the ending - wtf?)
Difficulty spike beyond the radiation wall in area 1 (lightning gun path - can cheese it but it's boring)
Can't say yes to athetos during the finale and somehow fight the robots instead (would've been cool since the game foreshadows it well)
Easy final boss (visually cool though)
No new enemies appear when revisiting previous areas
Bugs:
-Minor scripting issue with the rusalki in area 3 - the characters act as if you haven't got the item behind her even if you have when you go back to talk to her after activating the repair droids