Tag: metroidvania

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Game Ramblings #30 – Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse

More Info from WayForward

  • Platform: PS4
  • Genre: Metroidvania
  • Also Available On: 3DS, Fire TV, Steam, Wii U, Xbox One

The Shantae series has been around for a while, whether as one of the most valuable Game Boy Color games, experimenting with digital distribution on the DSi, or getting Kickstarted for its latest entry.  This time around I played the third in the series, Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse.  As the series has evolved, it’s generally followed a Metroidvania style, with some key twists to stray a bit from the formula.

One of the key differences typical of the series was that Shantae gained Genie transformations, rather than the more typical weapon upgrades of the Metroid series.  However, that went away for Pirate’s Curse for some relatively valid story reasons.  This one uses the more typical gear upgrade path, but with a bit more themed variety.  Since this is ostensibly a game involving pirates, the gear upgrades end up being things like a pirate hat to slow falling, a cannon to allow multi-jump, or pirate boots to allow for speed boosts.  It all ends up feeling much like the Metroid upgrade path, with a very appropriate theme for the game.

Where this game highly differs from the typical style of the genre is that it is level based.  Each piece of gear is found within a dungeon hidden within a themed level.  The typical path is to get to a new level, explore and do some story quests to open up the dungeon, then head on in for an upgrade and a boss fight centered around the new piece of gear.  In a lot of respects, the game feels like it brings in a very Zelda-esque focus there, where the boss fight is clearly themed around the particular item you got.  There is some back and forth going to levels that were already finished for side quests and upgrades, particularly in picking up the effective replacement for health tanks, as some are out of reach without later upgrades.  Overall while the setup is very familiar to the Metroidvania genre, the breakup across different themed levels brings a nice change of pace to each new area as you get to it.

In general this is one of the mechanically better Metroidvanias in recent years that I’ve played.  Traversal is rapid, but easy to control.  Jumping feels extremely tight, and mixes in some of the Mario-style jump height differences based on how long the button is held.  The upgrades all serve noticeable purposes in enhancing the skill set available to get around the environment.  Generally speaking, the core melee attack is going to be the 90% usage, but there’s also upgrades available for it, so there’s a noticeable power curve as the game goes on.  The bosses are all pattern based, and by and large have some amount of challenge, but are fair and typically obvious in their weak points.  Despite its relatively short length (avg 7.5 hours), the time spent in the game will go fast due to its fun play.

All that said, the last dungeon nearly made me shelve the game entirely, and did stop me from completing a 100% run.  The tl;dr here is that its a multi-level dungeon with each level having its own mechanic to complete.  However, they were more often than not based around memorization, rather than pure skill.  One level had me using the boots dash to traverse across a set of spike traps.  Due to the speed of traversal, I basically couldn’t see where I was going, or which path was the valid one until I hit a wall and died.  Another level had me using the multi-jump cannon and destroying blocks in my way as I went through another series of spike traps.  However, there were a few spots where I couldn’t see ahead, and basically had to blindly jump and die until I shot out my perfect path to get through.  Once I got to the boss, everything was fine, but for a game that had to that point been so skill based in its traversal, it felt like a really strange turn right at the end of the game.  My as spoiler free as possible recommendation here is to finish the 100% run as much as possible before entering the last dungeon, as you need to be there to get the true ending.

In the end, the game was still worth playing, especially for fans of Metroidvania style games.  It’s mechanically sound, has a good story and soundtrack, and is visually fantastic.  Given the recent rarity of the genre outside the indie space, you could definitely do worse than to give this series a try.

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Game Ramblings #25 – Shadow Complex Remastered

More Info from Epic Games

  • Genre: Action/Adventure, Metroidvania
  • Platform: PS4
  • Also Available On: Windows (Steam, Windows Store, Epic Games Launcher), Mac App Store, Xbox One, Xbox 360 (XBLA)

Back before they spawned the mobile juggernaut known as Infinity Blade, Chair Entertainment released a nice little Metroidvania title called Shadow Complex.  In honor of why the hell not, a remastered version has come out for PC and current gen consoles.  With the great folks at Limited Run Games releasing a physical version, I figured it was as good a time as any to make a run through this one again, and as it turns out, the game is still damn good.

If there’s one genre I’m a sucker for nearly as much as JRPGs, it’s Metroidvania-styled Action/Adventure games.  If you ignore the setting, this one definitely strays much closer to Metroid than a lot in the genre.  It’s got upgradeable guns and pickups that unlock ways to get through new doors, a computerized mech suit that tells you where to go, and eventually a chargeable dash that breaks through even more doors.  Basically, a lot of what is here is straight out of Metroid, but grounded in a somewhat more believable Earth-based setting.

That said, all its similarities are definitely not a detriment to this game.  They’ve captured a lot of the exploration magic that the Metroid series, and in the roughly 3-5 hour adventure, you’ll traverse a lot of the same areas multiple times, but always in new ways.  The pickups and upgrades are scattered all over the place, so returning to old places always brings side paths to grab things that were just taunting you out of reach before.  To some extent I was even going out of my way once I got some of my larger weapon upgrades just because I’d remembered a handful of upgrades that I wanted to get right away.  In addition, unlike some games in this genre, ammunition for secondary weapons (grenades, missiles, etc) are plentiful, and available for recharge at all save stations, so you never feel crunched into not using some of your more powerful arsenal.

That said, there’s definitely some things that are missing that I wish were explored more.  There’s really not much in the way of memorable boss fights in this game.  For the most part, you fight the same spider mech a handful of times, with a couple other fights that can be mechanically exploited to avoid difficulty.  As an example, one fight has you up against a giant mech wheel that is jumping around the walls of a ring-shaped room.  By positioning yourself just behind one of the corners of the room, you could avoid all damage, while still being able to easily shoot at the boss’ weak spot, giving an easy victory.  In addition, there’s some points, particularly in the final battle, where I would get shot at and effectively instant killed without much of an idea where damage sources were coming from.

All that being said, when this originally came out in ’09, it was one of the best Metroidvanias that had come out around that time.  In 2016, I’d still say that it’s one of the better Metroidvanias out this year.  While the upgrade didn’t bring much new to the table, other than some improved visual fidelity, the game itself has not lost anything in its age, and should definitely be played if you missed it the first time around.

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Game Ramblings #20 – Xeodrifter

More info from Renegade Kid

  • Platform: PS4
  • Genre: Action/Platformer, Metroidvania
  • Also Available On: PC, 3DS, Vita, Wii U

I’ve been grabbing a lot of the releases by Limited Run Games for my collection of late, and being a fan of Metroidvania games, this one was at the top of my list.  While this isn’t the best Metroidvania I’ve ever played, it’s one of best in terms of its raw mechanics, and that props up the main issues that I had with the game.  In the end, I really had two main issues with the game; it’s length and repetition of boss battles.

Unlike Metroid’s generally single open world, Xeodrifter takes place on 4 smaller locations.  While there is a bit of revisiting to each location, the small size means there is not much in the way of secret paths to visit.  There are a handful of spots in each world with hidden health or weapon upgrades, but not the breadth of secret areas that the Metroid games use to open up entirely new paths for core traversal.

Like Metroid, each core upgrade is also given after a boss battle.  However, the bosses in Xeodrifter all have the same visual design, other than a color palette swap.  Each battle also builds on top of the previous, with largely the same mechanics, with generally a single addition using the skill learned from the previous battle.  By the end of the game, this makes the boss fights quite a lot easier, as you’ve generally already learned the pattern of how to beat the boss, and can generally make a pretty good guess at what the new mechanic will be.

That said, mechanically this game really does shine.  It’s core shooting and movement is extremely fluid, and at a generally faster pace than would be expected out of the bigger names titles in the genre.  The upgrades also add a lot of flexibility to the game, with the standout probably being the upgrade that allows you to pass between different depths in the scene, not unlike the 3D gameplay used in recent 3DS Kirby titles.  Combined with other abilities, such as the submarine and dashing, you’ll often be juggling movement and shooting across multiple planes of gameplay at the same time.

Also of note is the gun upgrade system.  This game ignores the more standard straight beam upgrades from Metroid in place of a point-based upgrade system.  The guns can be upgraded in 5 ways; bullet size, bullet speed, fire rate, fire spread, and movement wave width.  Because of this, the guns can be upgraded in a way that suits the player’s style, rather than just being a straight upgrade.  For example, I maxed bullet size and fire rate, while putting a few points into the movement wave.  What this gave me was effectively a machine gun shooting large pellets, while moving in a small wave pattern.  I could have just as easily made a powerful slow firing shotgun, or something akin to a rail gun depending on how I wanted to play.  It was a truly fun way for them to handle the hidden upgrades typical of the genre.

Generally speaking, if you’re a fan of Metroidvanias, this is probably worth a try.  The game has its issues, but it has great core mechnicas, and is relatively cheap, so for a bit of a time filler, it’s worth the play.