I finally got round to playing Axiom Verge over the Christmas break, and it was such a pleasant surprise. This is a game which at first, like many other Metroidvanias, feels like a direct and blatant homage to Super Metroid, but piece by piece, pulls away and becomes its own thing.
What I loved most was the tone, and how things gradually unravelled. It was somehow more alien than Metroid; it was much dirtier and darker, more mysterious and disgusting. There are gross, pulsating walls made of bright pink flesh, huge caverns piled with greyed out corpses, and bizarre structures hanging above vast plains like Christmas tree decorations, all displayed in 16-bit splendor.
The story plays out in much the same way, and though you see its central twist coming a mile off, nothing ever fully slots into place. Without spoiling specifics, even if you digested all its lore and seen its secret ending, you’re not really sure where you are, who truly were your allies, and what was real and what was not.