{"id":15498,"date":"2016-10-07T00:01:32","date_gmt":"2016-10-07T00:01:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/?p=15498"},"modified":"2016-09-17T11:01:05","modified_gmt":"2016-09-17T11:01:05","slug":"axiom-verge-wii-u-ps4-vita-xbox-one-pc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/2016\/10\/07\/axiom-verge-wii-u-ps4-vita-xbox-one-pc\/","title":{"rendered":"Axiom Verge (Wii U, PS4, Vita, Xbox One, PC)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AXIOM_BOX\"<\/a>So Federation Force may not have been the Metroid game that fans wanted, but luckily you can get your 2-D Metroid-style game fix in with Axiom Verge.\u00a0 In the game you play as Trace, a scientist who gets caught in an explosion in a lab in New Mexico.\u00a0 But instead of dying or winding up in a hospital, you are transported to an alien world, and it\u2019s up to you to survive, explore, and find out how you got there in the first place.\u00a0 Axiom Verge is a 2-D platforming 16-bit style game very similar to Super Metroid on the SNES.\u00a0 It\u2019s available for download on nearly all current consoles, but reviewed on Wii U here.<\/span><\/p>\n

As Trace, the main things you do in the game are run, jump, and shoot.\u00a0 As you explore the alien world, you\u2019ll collect all manner of weapons to defeat aliens and robots with.\u00a0 Shotguns, flamethrowers, electric pulses, shrapnel shards, you name it.\u00a0 Some enemies are weaker against certain weapons, and it\u2019s up to you to figure out which guns are most effective for the situation.\u00a0 Other items you get in the game help you get around and explore new places, like higher jumping, warp coats, drones that can fit in small places, weird digitizing guns and bombs, and a grappling hook.\u00a0 You\u2019ll also find items that can increase your health and weapon power.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

Similar to Super Metroid, there are save points every so often on the map that you can step in and refill your health.\u00a0 You can also save at any time, but when you restart or die, you\u2019ll go back to the last pod you saved in.\u00a0 You\u2019ll also have to do a bit of backtracking around the interconnected map, but most of the time it\u2019s not too much of a hassle as you can view the map of where you\u2019ve been on the subscreen.\u00a0 There are two difficulty selections at the start: Normal and Hard.\u00a0 Normal is about on par with the difficulty in Super Metroid, maybe a teensy bit harder in places here and there.\u00a0 There\u2019s also a special speedrun mode for experts.<\/span><\/p>\n

The game does have a few problems here and there.\u00a0 Trace is a bit slow and clunky and not as much fun to control as acrobatic bounty hunter Samus.\u00a0 The controls for using some of the items take a bit of getting used to as well, like the grappling hook.\u00a0 Sometimes goals and objectives are a little unclear, and since the storyline is kind of garbage, that doesn\u2019t help matters much.\u00a0 There are also nonsensical notes you can collect and an option to enter in secret codes which must be very hard to find in the game.\u00a0 The graphics can be a bit garish in places, which isn\u2019t much of a problem but there are a few times where the visuals make it hard to figure out where you can and can\u2019t go.\u00a0 But other than that, this is an excellent game and one of the best I\u2019ve played all year.\u00a0 It really reminds me of my favorite time in gaming: the 16-bit days.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\"AXIOM_SCREEN\"<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Kid Factor:<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Axiom Verge is rated T for Teen with ESRB descriptors of Violence, Blood, and Language.\u00a0 You do shoot all manner of aliens and robots with many kinds of weapons, and they explode and fall to pieces when defeated.\u00a0 When you die, you just fall down and your digitized bits go back to the last save area.\u00a0 I really don\u2019t remember seeing any blood, and the 16-bit visuals keep the violence from being too graphic anyway.\u00a0 There are a few damns and hells in the text, but that\u2019s all the bad language I can remember.\u00a0 I\u2019d probably be ok with most preteen kids playing this, especially if they can remember and\/or appreciate the 2-D Metroid games, and are up to the challenge.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So Federation Force may not have been the Metroid game that fans wanted, but luckily you can get your 2-D Metroid-style game fix in with Axiom Verge.\u00a0 In the game you play as Trace, a scientist who gets caught in an explosion in a lab in New Mexico.\u00a0 But instead of dying or winding up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":15495,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-game-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15498"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15498\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15500,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15498\/revisions\/15500"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}