I count Dark Souls as a Metroidvania in my head, honestly.
But I think the actual defining feature is unlocking new abilities to reach new locations.
DS1 has you unlocking new areas that are interconnected with ones previously explored, but you don’t really unlock new moves to get to a new place, it usually just happens after you beat a boss or buy an item.
It’s a good point, they all have item or ability gated progression with backtracking and alternate routes. The more I think about the question, the less of an answer I have…
The line I personally draw between Metroidvania and Zelda like is the ability to sequence break without glitches and a focus on platforming as the core of movement.
Getting lost is definitely a love it or hate it kind of thing. I love getting lost in games. I wish more games had it as a feature. It’s extremely rare these days. Most games hold your hand like a toddler at Disneyland.
It’s okay to hate getting lost. There are loads and loads of games out there for you. I just cross my fingers for a few more games for me!
Does it have an auto-map feature? That’s the biggest difference for me. I enjoy the newer MVs but the auto-map feature makes it impossible (for me) to get lost. I’m used to games without any kind of auto-map.
Edit: I checked it out on steam. Looks really cool!
I think I’d put it this way - I like adventuring, exploring, and finding my way through an immersive world. I don’t like when I can’t seem to stumble into the exact right clue or secret passage or interactable and waste up to possibly hours scouring the same locations over and over.
That said, metroidvanias are my favorite videogame genre. I just had to accept that it’s okay to look up a guide or wiki before I get fully tilted.
Yeah I don’t like banging my head into a wall either. What I mean by enjoying getting lost is being in a dangerous area where I don’t know how to get back to safety. It’s a mini adventure within an adventure to figure out how to escape without dying.
One game I play, Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, has a built in mechanism to create situations like that: shafts you can fall down that put you into an unexplored level that’s deeper and more difficult than the one you were on. It’s pretty effective at creating these mini adventures though fans of the game complain about them all the time.
I’m bookmarking this link so I can read it when I have the time. Having said that, it should be clear that I haven’t read the article, yet.
For me personally, 80’s and 90’s 2D Metroid and Castlevania games were fun, but for me, something transcendental happened with the release of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. I’m 100% certain that I am incapable of truly putting it into words, but I’m sure a myriad of people have done it, and done it far better than I ever could. I bought the game on a whim because I enjoyed Castlevania 3 on the NES so much. Other than fighting games, 2D games were basically blasé for 90’s 32-bit systems like the original PlayStation. Truthfully, I’m having a hard time recalling at the moment why I decided to buy the game. But I’m absolutely 10010% sure it was a good idea and I’m honestly thankful to my teenage self for that decision.
Modern Metroidvanias are fun, too. Truth be told, I gave up on Hollow Knight. I’m a patient, older gamer, so maybe that comes into play. But it eventually got to a point where it simply wasn’t fun anymore. I was confused about what I needed to do next and I wasn’t making any progress in the game. And then I had to set it aside for almost a year. When I tried to return, my memory had faded to the point where I really struggled to play it and make progress. That made me immensely sad. Once I realized that, I simply set it aside.
On the other hand, I played all the Nintendo DS Castlevania Metroidvania games back in the day and even still own the original cartridges. Via Steam, I also played the Gameboy Advanced Castlevanias. They are so much fun for me. So much fun that I purchased the Dominus collection on Steam, which is essentially all the DS games that I already own.
I also played Bloodstained: ROTN. I know there’s a lot of criticism about the game, but I’ll be honest, I loved every freakin’ minute of it. I wasn’t a huge fan of the graphics, but the game play was exactly what I needed at the time and I don’t regret that purchase one bit.
And to finalize things, nice to meet other Metroidvania lovers. We might not all agree on the nitty-gritty details, but it’s still neat to hear from others. Back in the 90s when I was absolutely in love with SOTN despite the fact that everybody else was hating on it entirely because it’s a “2D platformer”, it was hard to imagine that ~30 years later there would be entire communities of people who love these types of games.
Man…I had the same experiences as you with Castlevania games and loved the hell outta Bloodstained. Wish I had more to add but wanted to at least high five lol
Metroid and Castlevania are two of my favorite series, and I adore the genre. That being said… I just can’t seem to get into Hollow Knight no matter how much I want to. Maybe I’m not putting enough time into it but I just keep getting bored quickly every time I pick it up. I think it’s partly the environment, every room looks very same-y so far. I want to like it but I’m clearly missing something
Dokładnie. Chodzi o to, że chcą cofnąć i tak bardzo miękki zakaz, który miał być wprowadzany przez następnych 10 lat. Zupełnie bez związku, do agencji środowiskowej (EPA) dołączył między innymi człowiek, który dopiero co był lobbystą związku organizacji chemicznych walczących na rzecz azbestu na rynku. Inny zabawny fakt, to że to nawet nie jest amerykańska produkcja, tylko w większości import… z Rosji.
Wanting closure is a preference and does not apply to all games. Counter Strike 2 doesn’t have a story and there is zero closure for example.
The industry trying to force games into a live service model when they shouldn’t be is a problem, sure. There are a few games where the model actually is a benefit though, like Helldivers 2. Other than wrapping up things somehow while winding down the game there isn’t an opportunity for closure while an endless war is going on. The setting itself is why closure isn’t on the table.
So I agree with the overall idea as it applies to games in general, but it isn’t some universal truth.
The closure the article speaks to is also just not turning the game into a perpetual expectation that more is coming. Multiplayer games have always been built around being “endless”, but there was never the expectation that this Halo would be the last Halo and just keep getting updates when you bought it 20 years ago. That expectation has led to sustainability problems we’ve all seen and that the article calls out.
There are so many games being made nowadays that it’s not even hard to avoid the shitty “service” games. It’s just that the mainstream gamer/society doesn’t bother looking but there are plenty of games with closure.
Hmm… title is a little bit clickbaity—author seems to be mainly going after live service games, not necessarily every video game.
Also, novels and movies don't always end 😂 Not sure why they threw that into the title. Freaking Fast and Furious will surely outlast planet Earth at this point 😂 What about Star Wars? It'll never end.
I agree with the general sentiment though: I think players are flexible and will be inclined to give your new IP a shot, but capitalism is risk averse, and will obviously disagree.
Nah, Fast and Furious’ days are numbered. They already broke the glass on the storyboard card that says, “Go to space”, and the only one left to break is, “Time Machine”.
Oh, fair enough. But it’s still only going to have so much gas in the tank, and a cliff-hanger or sequel potential is very different than some continual expectation, either by consumers or the developers that the game can or should be updated forever.
Yes, but it's also devoid of creativity and takes up space that could be occupied by more creative endeavors, so it's a similar path at the end of the day.
My point is pointing a finger at Fortnite and Epic Games is fair, but same finger should also be pointed at Universal, Disney, NBC… etc.
And the biggest finger should be pointed at capitalism itself.
I enjoy the Fast & Furious movies. The advantage to them releasing one movie at a time, or in games, one game at a time, is you can more accurately gauge the appetite for the next one, and they don’t have ongoing costs to keep the last one going. The ten F&F movies out there now are not in danger of disappearing if F&F11 bombs. The people who worked on those movies don’t have an expectation for or reliance on employment any longer than the time it takes to make one movie. And outside of Fast X, despite being pulpy and constantly recontextualizing and retconning old events, they all have their own endings with closure. Fast X does have a cliffhanger, and that is a bet that they made with their audience that they’ll be back, but the most likely scenario is that the next one offers closure. In some ways, cliffhangers can be closure themselves, too; I think more highly of Arcane season 1’s ending as closure for the series than I do of season 2, for instance. Meanwhile, the most likely scenario for a live service game is that it doesn’t have an ending or even exist anymore, only a few years in the future.
And all that said, it also doesn’t mean that I don’t understand your perspective, but I do see eye to eye with the author.
Hmm… but isn't it an "ongoing series"? Like, you can have short or long arcs, but if the continuity is the same, the story technically hasn't ended.
I agree gaming takes it a step further, but this is like comparing a worse example to a bad one… yeah, one is worse, but they both suck at the end of the day.
I'm glad you like Fast and Furious, but it's only one example of many. It's not the only movie franchise being milked to death, and won't be the last.
It can be an ongoing series, but you can get a sense of closure each time. Star Wars had closure in 1983 and 2005 and 2019 as they kept adding on to it, each time seeming like it was done; and each spin-off had closure by the time credits rolled.
Hmm… I suppose I can just put this down to my disagreeing with the article's headline: I say a lot of movies and novels don't offer enough closure and are bad examples to follow—games can and should do better, IMO.
I'd rather get Project G.G. or Scalebound than the 15th Assassin's Creed game in as many years or even Bayonetta 3, TBH.
I only watched the first 2 movies back in the day. They were OK, but I never felt the need to watch them again (or the desire to watch the later ones).
They briefly got a Fierro into space so they could mess with a satellite. Somewhere around the fifth movie, they became very tongue in cheek action movies, with one character whose entire job is to break the fourth wall.
I deeply hate articles like this. They are just exploiting the hellish state of the industry to argue for why the games they don’t like shouldn’t exist.
First and foremost: Clearly the author (and anyone agreeing with the thesis) doesn’t read or watch movies. Publishers and schools basically constantly encourage leaving a hook for a sequel because it is a lot easier to get a follow up in the same universe published. And that has always been true. Same with movies where the vast majority of major studio films are remakes or franchises now. Hell… television is a thing.
But second? It fundamentally ignores what is ACTUALLY facing the video games industry. Making a successful live service game is the holy grail because it is job security… until it isn’t. But it isn’t like releasing a critically acclaimed single player game will protect you from layoffs because your parent company wanted to juice the Q2 numbers. And just listen to developers like Xalavier Nelson Jr about how hard it is to even get funding for a game these days.
Shit like this is disgusting. It is “I don’t like X. I am going to say that X shouldn’t exist because I totally care about the industry that I can’t even be bothered to pay attention to”
Video games do, which is why I buy so many story heavy games. If the industry moves more toward live service games, that’s fine, I’m just not going to buy them. There are plenty of non-live service games to choose from that I’m absolutely spoiled with choice to the extent that I’ll never play all the games I own, not to mention games I want to buy.
Yeah, live service games suck, so play games that don’t suck.
nytimes.com
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