Dragon Warrior Monsters: Gotta Breed Em All When the Pokémon craze hit the West in 1998, it became clear that it couldn’t be stopped. Zombies (Game Of The Year) The most popular PopCap game everybody and their grandmother played back in the day was certainly the tile-matching browser game Bejeweled. Gobliins 2: The Prince Buffoon had a massive impact on me when I was just a wee lad it was my personal Monkey Island revelation. Gobliiins 5: Early Nineties Vibes Almost Included In case that isn’t yet clear from the theme of this website, I love the quirky Gobliins puzzle adventure games. 'Switch'-ing to the definitive nostalgic console The Nintendo Switch has been on active duty here for longer than I can remember myself playing on any of my previous home consoles. Metroid Dread: The Sequel Fusion Deserves? Nineteen years later, Metroid Fusion for the Game Boy Advance finally got a much-deserved sequel! I’m ignoring Other M and Samus Returns right now as the story of Metroid Dread picks up where Fusion left off, and it’s been a very, very long time since we’ve seen Samus in action on a 2(. Axiom Verge 2: Plenty of Nanites To Spice Things Up Thomas Happ’s 2015 Axiom Verge thoroughly impressed me: it is a superb and faithful Metroid game that is not Metroid itself coded, designed, and composed by a single guy. As much as I loved my deep dive into the world of Hallownest, as the end came near, I tried stopping playing three times. That’s my review, condensed into a single sentence. Hollow Knight: Metroidvania marries Demon Souls I hope they get divorced. Super Metroid: the Granddaddy of Metroidvania's After finishing Hollow Knight, I rather fancied playing another metroidvania-one I actually, to my big shame, never really touched: the granddaddy of ‘vanias, Super Metroid. Unless there was an ability I missed (and I managed to explore most of the map and finish the game without it), these half-dozen jumps really do require unforgiving, almost pixel-perfect precision, in a way that stands out from the rest of the game. Several platforming leaps where success finally, mercifully came after about a dozen failed attempts, made while I wrestled with the world’s most fiddly grappling hook. There are times when the game could be more accommodating. Which ability do I need here, and which part of the map should I approach this obstacle from? Can I even get around this barrier yet, or should I come back later? Discovering the solution is usually more satisfying than finding whatever trinket lies in wait as a reward, because you’ve been entrusted to discover it for yourself. Axiom Verge 2-more so than its predecessor-is a game where unexplored map sections are actually devious navigation puzzles. The Breach really blows open the game, particularly when you gain more freedom in travelling between the worlds. It’s an intoxicating place, contrasting nicely with the more grounded nature of the overworld. In the more cramped setting of the Breach, you control your adorable drone sidekick, bashing enemies and dodging traps while listening to synth prog-rock cover versions of an already extraordinary soundtrack. 
Unexplored map sections are actually devious navigation puzzles The Breach is a separate map-laid atop, or below, the primary one-but with a mostly different layout, and a wildly different visual style: super low-res and with a colour palette that hasn’t been seen since '70s sci-fi. You’ve seen the feature before in games, probably in other Metroidvanias, where the two dimensions are just reskinned versions of each other. However, its standout feature is actually borrowed from The Legend of Zelda: there’s another world running parallel to this one.
The newly fleshed-out world encompasses several distinct biomes, linking together in a more organic way than its boxy predecessor. It feels weird to say that combat is downplayed, in a game brimming with diverse enemies, but that’s only because the exploration side has received such a significant rework. As someone who dreads the bosses in Hollow Knight, for that very reason, I’m very much in favour of this change. Axiom Verge 2 doesn’t want to interrupt the flow of exploration. But there are no locked-off boss arenas-two encounters with the villain excluded-and no giant health bars to whittle down before you can progress. Oh, there’s a perfunctory final battle, and some optional scraps against unique enemies. There’s just as much fighting here, with one key exception: there are no boss fights in Axiom Verge 2.
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