Axiom Verge
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| Where am I? Z...Zebes? |
My friend, Brandon, has a problem. He can't stop buying games for his Nintendo Switch. Every time a game is physically released, or released on the Nintendo EShop, he has to scoop it up. The 10% discount he gets at his side job at Wal-Mart probably doesn't help with his temptation. However, Brandon's problem benefits me greatly. Every time he comes to my house with his Santa Claus sack of games, I get to sample them, and decide which one I want to seek out and buy next. A couple of months ago, Brandon visited, and I told him to make sure he brought Doom. I tried about 20 games that night, and yet there was one I kept coming back to. It wasn't Doom. It was Axiom Verge.
A couple days later, on a trip to Lafayette undertaken so my kid could grab a much coveted Jigglypuff Amiibo, and also so I could get a Poupart's kingcake, I snagged a physical copy of Axiom Verge for just $19.99. I finished the kingcake in about four hours. Thankfully, Axiom Verge's thrills are longer-lasting, and you won't have to call your doctor. Actually, maybe you will. I'm not sure how you play video games.
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| Also it doesn't give you cavities, though it probably can contribute to weight gain, especially if you pair it with king cake. |
Axiom Verge is often referred to as a "Metroidvania" game. This is a not very fancy way of saying a game is like Super Metroid and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. Those two games popularized the idea of a contained 2D world that must be traversed over and over again as the player gains new abilities, which in turn allow them to reach areas in the world that were heretofore inaccessible. Along the way, the player blasts or dices hordes of bad guys and solves simple puzzles. Super Metroid and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night are extremely awesome, and any game attempting to follow in their footsteps has a lot to live up to. However, when done right, even an only decent attempt at this style of game can be fun...for some reason, there is just something really satisfying about going back to an area you couldn't access before, and then accessing it...it appeals to some primal element of our brains...or my brain, at least.
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| The kingcake part. |
Thankfully, Axiom Verge is no paint-by-numbers Metroidvania money grab. It is a labor of love, created by one man, Thomas Happ. Yes, one man. The graphics, sound, music, gameplay, and level design were all created by Happ. Happ dedicated years of his life to making Axiom Verge, so I could purchase the fruit of his labor for $20 from a store sharing a front with a Sallie's Beauty Supply. This game has been ported to almost every current console, but I have a hard time believing any console will suit it as well as the Nintendo Switch. The Switch's portability matches this kind of game as well as the nice little dude on this show my wife is watching in the background matches women to wedding dresses.
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| Say yes to the flamethrower. |
Axiom Verge features simplistic, 8-bit/16-bit hybrid visuals with a few modern touches. They are clear and crisp, and all of the still-existing dopamine centers in my brain pump that stuff out every time I see it in motion. If you are of a certain age and played any amount of Contra and Metroid when you were younger, get ready for visual drugs. The Switch, less graphically capable than the steroidal PS4 and XBox One X (they should try getting even more x's into the name of the next model!), can easily produce these visuals, and they look vivid and beautiful, whether on the portable screen (with frequent save points, this game is an office lunch break marvel!), or on a home television.
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| You're welcome, game. |
The music also sets off those same dopamine centers, a great mix of bass-heavy 8-bit and 16-bit tunes, healthily dosed with late 2010's, Bladerunner/Terminator-inspired dark synthwave. The graphical design itself also fits into this mold, featuring a cool, 80's cyberpunk feel with just a touch of modernity (mostly in some of the more complex weapons effects). The melting pot of the glitchy, blocky cyberpunk feel, the Gothic, highly-detailed design of the game's massive robots, the retro music, and the Metroidvania gameplay is at once unique, and nostalgia-inducing. Really, this game falls into a bunch of overlapping nostalgia circles, but it's not just some "Remember Metroid? Remember the 80's? Remember cyberpunk?" replicant. It's able to tap into nostalgia, while bringing its own thing to the table.
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| I feel like I should expound upon that metaphor now..."thing" is like a fun-spin on a traditional dish...like putting ham and pineapple on a pizza...not, like...your penis. |
Axiom Verge tosses the player into a strange alien world/dimension/reality, where nothing is as it seems, even the game's protagonist. The story is twisty and morally complex, but while I enjoyed it, it's not Axiom Verge's selling point. The selling point is a. the way the game combines all of the elements I listed above, and b. that "own thing" I hinted at where I definitely didn't mean a penis: the world of Axiom Verge is malleable. Very shortly into the game, the player is given a weapon that alters the fabric of reality. Enemies can be mutated into new forms, sometimes beneficial, i.e. ones that stop attacking you and start pumping out health, and, sometimes not so beneficial, i.e. ones that stop firing at you once every few seconds and start firing at you a dozen times every few seconds. Once you realize what it can do, you're gonna want to watch out where you point that thing. Walls can sometimes be morphed into passageways, chaos can be unleashed, and as the game goes on, eveb more reality-altering items are accumulated. This is a great twist, making the world of Axiom Verge really feel alive, and giving the game a unique, purposely glitchy personality. This has been designed meticulously by Happ so that seemingly every possibility has been thought through, and nothing stops the game from functioning.
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| Watch me glitch...watch me nae nae...sorry that reference was dated...and I don't think it will stand the test of time like Metroid, Castlevania, Terminator, and Bladerunner. |
Thankfully, though, the game isn't just a bunch of random, glitchy weirdness. It nails the staples of the genre. Axiom Verge features a ton of unique enemies to blast and mutate, and a staggering amount of weapons in which to destroy them. Lasers, and electrical blasters, and ice guns, and flamethrowers, and physics-altering pulse guns--the bounty of weapons never ends. Some are acquirable on the beaten path, and some, like the flamethrower, are deviously hidden. The player can also acquire journal entries that advance the game's story, as well as well-hidden health and weapons power-ups. For the truly obsessive, the game's final map--which, by the way, is enormous, multi-tiered, and incredibly enjoyable to journey through--will have to be absolutely dissected in order to find 100% of its items...and the game knows this. It provides an item and map percentage completion rate on the game-loading screen every time the player boots up their Axiom Verge file. The game also features an ultra-cool drone the player can send into small spaces the main protagonist can't reach...and it's got a mini-flamethrower of its own.
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| The morphball...sorry, drone, is so awesome. |
It's not all wine and roses, though. Axiom Verge does have a couple of loose petals. For one, that sprawling map can sometimes lead to frustration. Yes, I know know that I said it was incredibly fun to journey through, but it is possible at points to miss a door, trek all the way to the other side of the map, and then wonder where you were supposed to be going. The map does mark off which rooms you've been to, and this problem doesn't crop up often, but when it does, it's quite frustrating. There's also no way to warp from one portion of the map to another--you've got to go all the way back by foot...well, your character does--you get to just sprawl out on your couch pushing buttons and eating kingcake. Late 90's and early 00's Castlevania's solved this problem--video game backtracking, I mean, not obesity--by creating warp points...I wish Axiom Verge had taken advantage of this more modern touch. Then again, such warps would have further shortened the game, which is only in the 15-hour range. 20-25 hours to completion for this genre is more of the sweet-spot. Also, as definitive as the Switch version feels with its options of portability, there's a controller quirk that sometimes selects a different weapon when the player is jumping. I don't know why this occurs, and while I'm sure there's a way to configure the problem away, it happens and it's annoying--the controls are otherwise spot-on to the point of being preternatural. Also, even though Axiom Verge has its own unique feel, it's hard to fight the itch to just go play Super Metroid instead. There's definitely the feeling that Axiom Verge is standing on the shoulders of giants, even if it's nearly as tall. Forget all those minor complaints, though. Did I mention that some of Axiom Verge's bosses that fill the entire screen.
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| 50-feet tall and full of lasers? Hold my beer, I got this. Is "hold my beer" overused? Does "hold my kingcake" work better? Cuz I am definitely feeling some level of intoxication right now. Also, how you doin? |
Overall, Axiom Verge is a blast. It might not totally reinvent the Metroidvania paradigm, but it features enough welcome personal touches and is well made enough to make a clear, loud argument for its existence. Any game this fun deserves to be played. Now, let me go see what Santa Brandon has for me next. Also, I need some more kingcake. I'll tell you when I've had enough.
SCORE: 8.7/10
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