Axiom Verge is a Metroidvania video game developed by Thomas Happ. The game was originally released in March and April 2015 for PlayStation 4, and May 2015 for Microsoft Windows, OS X, and Linux. A PlayStation Vita version was released in April 2016. The Wii U and Xbox One versions were released in North America and Europe in September 2016. A PlayStation 4 version was released in North America in March 2015 and in April 2016 in Europe and Australia. A Nintendo Switch version was released in October 2017.
Gameplay
Axiom Verge is a side-scroller action-adventure game where the player controls Trace, a scientist who, after suffering a crippling injury, wakes up in an ancient and high-tech world. The game focuses on action and exploration, and features over 60 items and power-ups. The gameplay borrows elements from classic games such as Metroid, Contra, Blaster Master, and Bionic Commando, among others.
Trace is a scientist on Earth who works in a laboratory when a frozen pressure valve causes an explosion that knocks him out. He awakens in the alien world of Sudra, where Elsenova, one of the Rusalki, giant war machines remaining from the Sudran civilization, asks for his help to stop Athetos, a mad scientist who destroyed the Sudrans long ago. As Trace explores Sudra in order to restore power to Elsenova and the other remaining Rusalki in preparation to confront Athetos, he discovers that he and Athetos are the same person.
Trace then remembers that the explosion on Earth turned him crippled and blind, but allowed him to see things from a new perspective and formulate a new, revolutionary theory regarding the laws of physics. But Trace's findings were ridiculed by the scientific community, who shunned him, leading them to start calling him "Athetos" (Greek for "without place"). By using his new knowledge, Trace managed to travel between Earth and Sudra, where he used the advanced technology he found to heal his body. Elsenova also reveals that Trace, now calling himself Athetos, discovered that there is a world beyond Sudra with a far more advanced civilization that the Sudrans have kept hidden due to religious taboo, but unable to reach a compromise with them, he used a biological weapon to exterminate the entire civilization as part of his plan to bring this technology back to Earth. Trace also discovers that he is a clone from the original Athetos, back from the days when he first arrived on Sudra.
Once knowing all the truth, Trace decides to keep fighting along the Rusalki against Athetos, eventually helping them to defeat him. After Elsenova kills Athetos, she sends Trace back to Earth and back in time to the point of the lab accident aftermath, altering history so that the event does not leave him injured, but he develops an obsession with returning to Sudra and starts researching on it, implying that he is bent on following Athetos' path.
If the player ends the game with a high completion rate, just as Trace is about to succeed on his research, Athetos himself appears saying that he cannot outrun himself, and after telling him that it is "time to wake up", he shoots him.
The Verdict
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| One of many of the game's bosses to put your skills to the test. |
This game was made as a love letter for any gamer who has any fondness of the early Metroid and Castlevania 2D games before both of those series ventured into the realm of three-dimensional gameplay. Several power-ups and upgrades make players want to find everything that the game has to offer, but at the same time, players are urged to keep exploring Sudra to answer all of the questions about this unknown territory. The artistic direction for this game alone is what drew me in - from the sprites to the backgrounds of the locales to especially the excellent music that suited and defined the atmosphere that players explore while in control of Trace.
I cannot rave enough about this game's music. Good grief that score was amazing. It doesn't go out of it's way to sound like a NES/retro title and that was a great thing. It was it's own original entity without trying to sound like a remix of something done already. That was the common theme with a lot of the similarities with this game too. Older gamers like myself will easily draw comparisons to Metroid, Castlevania, Bionic Commando, Contra, or even Blaster Master, but while this game is obviously inspired by those classic titles, Axiom Verge establishes it's own identity to the point where it has it's own iconic place alongside these classics.
Each weapon has it's own distinct feel, but none of them (at least to me) felt overpowered to the extent that I preferred one over the others. The Kilver was my favorite for majority of the early part of the game, then I got Lightning Gun and Laser Rifle (whatever it was called) before ultimately settling down with the Flamethrower for the last portion of the game. There's so many guns to try out that there's something that everyone will like. One thing I loved in terms of shooting mechanics though is the option for locking your position and aim direction while remaining stationary. That was something that the Contra series didn't see until MUCH later on in their history and I was glad to see that was included here right off the bat.
The power-ups/upgrades weren't too surprising at first until you start dwelling into the territory of the various Lab Coats. I was expecting for Hi-Jump Boots and a Screw Attack like Metroid, but boy was I surprised to see the stuff like the Red Coat (that allows you to "teleport" in any direction in rapid succession that left a trail of destruction in your wake) and even the Drone Teleport to improve your means of traversing Sudra. It's creative touches like this is why I see this game as more of homage to those classic games that people will draw comparisons to and suggest that it "rips them off" when instead it craves it's own place in gaming history for this genre.
If I had any gripes about this game, it's that the plot was just getting good as soon as you confront Athetos during the finale. I thought there was going to be more after the reveal that Trace was a clone of Athetos, but the game never deterred from it's focus after that plot reveal. Trace kept following the Sudrans' orders without question and never asked for any further information. I suppose that the player could go out of their way to hunt down all of those text files and documents scattered throughout Sudra, but I always found stuff like that to be lazy story telling when you could have presented those details in the main course of your video game.
My second gripe to the game was that annoying frustrating hornet boss fight. Until I figured out the timing on using an Address Bomb to transform his minions and deal massive damage to it (with precise timing and positioning too for that matter), I could've sworn I died to that thing at least 15-20 times easy. I wouldn't say it was a bad boss fight. It just kinda ruins the flow of the game to that point in a sense. That being said, I thought ALL of the boss fights in the game were fun in a sense and kept you on your toes in terms of figuring out how to take each of them down.
One last final gripe with the game is that the game leaves you feeling pretty aimless a lot of the time. You're mostly fumbling around by trial and error on guessing on where to go to next, while simultaneously keeping mental notes (or using the in-game feature of marking up to two key points of interest on the in-game map) of what and where you're unable to access until acquiring upgrades and/or power-ups that will allow you to reach otherwise unreachable areas. I had no problem with this from experience with other Metroidvania-type games, but the fact that some upgrades and power-ups are walled off by inaccessible walls by any means other than passwords. If I wasn't keeping track of my progression from the walkthrough guide(s) on GameFAQs then I wouldn't have had no idea on how to acquire some of the weapons and items, such as the Flamethrower. I'm guessing some of those passwords are in the text files and documents scattered within the game, but c'mon, you can't even read most of those files until you either put in a password for that or even find the means to translate them. That would've frustrated me to no end if I was playing this without a guide and wanted to 100% the game. I'm just sayin'...
Play It or Don't Bother?
Definitely play it. It calls back to retro classic gaming (specifically the NES era) with a lot of clever twists and spins on that style of gameplay. There's run and gun gameplay for Contra fans, exploration and power-ups for Metroid and Castlevania fans, while traversal elements that would satisfy some old school Bionic Commando fans to boot. I hate myself for not picking up this game sooner when I had plenty of chances to get it when I first purchased my PlayStation 4.
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