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Developed by Moon Studios, Ori and the Blind Forest is a competent Metroidvania that tells a beautiful fable about the importance of compassion. It’s a formidable game, but one that would have benefited from a greater connection between gameplay and story.
The moving introduction of Ori and the Blind Forest follows Ori, a white guardian spirit, as he falls from the Spirit Tree during a storm and is found by a creature called Naru. The developers quickly establish the relationship between the two creatures in a brilliant scene: they appear working and having fun together at different points on the screen, but the images keep moving to the right, which suggests the passage [...]
Dark Souls is one of the most influential games of its generation, becoming not just a genre (Souls-like) but also lending elements of its design, such as its minimalist storytelling and slow-paced combat, to numerous other games. Blasphemous is certainly one of them, since it shamelessly borrows everything it can from Dark Souls – from its narrative structure and mechanics to its sound design – and puts these elements in a 2D Metroidvania that has a strong and unique aesthetic. The game may often fail at adapting parts of the Dark Souls’ formula, but it’s an impressive effort nonetheless.
Blasphemous’ world is one in which the Christian notion of guilt and penance was taken [...]
Timespinner is a narratively ambitious 2D Metroidvania. It boasts a great story, which deals with difficult themes such as war and oppression, a strong art direction, and a brilliant soundtrack, but, unfortunately, it also leaves some of its mechanics underdeveloped.
The game’s protagonist is Lunais, a young woman who lives in an isolated village in the world of Winderia, training to be a Time Messenger: a person who is tasked to use the village’s sacred artifact, the Timespinner, to travel back in time and warn them of any incoming danger. When they are attacked by the Lachiem Empire, however, Lunais’ mother is killed, the Timespinner is damaged and she ends up sent to [...]
Hob is a top-down exploration game with great art direction and a vague story that can quickly become repetitive in its design: the player is constantly executing the same actions in different locales.
The world of Hob is one in which technology and nature are both entwined and in conflict. The first area is a lush forest, full of plants, trees, and animals, but also ancient technological ruins moved by strange, glowing forms of energy. The whole world acts as an enormous jigsaw puzzle: the lands shift and move to fit together, allowing you to progress further into that strange land.
You look at everything from a top-down perspective, which reinforces the verticality of [...]
Lords of Shadow is a subtitle many Castlevania fans – wary of change – have come to dread. For the first game to take that name changed the series’ direction from exploration to action and spectacle. Some of the previous games, such as Symphony of the Night and Aria of Sorrow, gave “Metroidvania” its suffix, cementing it as a genre thanks to their interconnected environments, feeling of desolation, little sense of direction, and a design that links progression to backtracking. The first Lords of Shadow, on the other hand, was more like God of War, with its protagonist using long chains to dismember his enemies during some elaborate set-pieces. Mirror of Fate, them, [...]