Latest news with #Metroidvania-style
Engadget
17-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Engadget
End of Abyss is when Metroidvania meets space horror
You'd assume that the latest game from the studio that made Little Nightmares 2 is going to be a bit spooky and dark, and Section 9's End of Abyss is that. However, it's also a little easier to describe and explain: an atmospheric sci-fi shooter with Metroidvania-style exploration. While there's no shortage of Metroidvanias to draw inspiration from, when I played a demo at SGF 2025, all I could think of was Alien . It might be the scanner, which the protagonist can use to glean information, spot hidden items and tag room details for further exploration once you've got new skills or weapons. Mattias Ottvall, co-creator of the game, praised my tendency to scan everything , which netted me several secret item caches during my demo playthrough. You'll have to tag between the scanner and your gun pretty often, too, as biped monsters, spidery little parasites and beefier foes swing their literal heads at you. Fortunately, End of Abyss' isometric layout is paired with the ability to move and shoot with each analog stick. If things get a little too dicey, your character also has a very forgiving dive roll. To view this content, you'll need to update your privacy settings. Please click here and view the "Content and social-media partners" setting to do so. After some early teething issues (scanning an alien zombie instead of shooting it down), the control setup eventually became second nature, and I was tumbling out of the way of an alien golem boss, firing shotgun rounds into its flank. The shotgun, unfortunately, has finite ammo (which you can both craft and find in the world), so I resorted to chipping away with my pistol at a distance. The brief demo (and teaser trailer) suggest a dark and shady atmosphere similar to the studio's previous games. Naturally, there's the occasional scare as you explore this rundown facility. If you do get overwhelmed, the character gets respawned back into the world — as do the monsters — but any doors unlocked and skills gained are saved. Even better, with a game that centers on exploration, when you come across something that you can't yet interact with (for example, a weakened wall that could be demolished or a security door that requires a key), scanning it in-game will 'tag' the feature on the menu map, making it easier to circle back once you have what you need to progress. During the demo, I unlocked explosives for tackling the weakened walls that were tagged, but I also spotted grapple hook fixtures, presumably for a later point in the game. The tagging is a nice touch for anyone who struggles to keep track of their path in sprawling Metroidvania games, although this is contingent on how expansive Into the Abyss turns out to be. The original Little Nightmares turned out to be a short, but sweet escape – how deep will the abyss go? Into the Abyss is coming to PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC.
Irish Independent
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
Revenge of the Savage Planet review: Gorgeously goofy game emerges from shadow of Google gorilla
One of the casualties of Stadia's closure was Typhoon Studios, a Canadian developer that made its mark with 2020's enjoyably wacky Metroidvania-style space adventure Journey to the Savage Planet. Google had bought Typhoon before the game's release but shut the studio down the same day a Stadia version of Savage Planet hit the shelves in 2021. Fast-forward to 2025 and a sequel has just emerged from the ashes of the sorry saga, made by former Typhoon alumni who bought the IP rights for their company, Raccoon Logic. Savage Planet was never a mega-budget AAA title despite Google's deep pockets and this follow-up echoes that approach. It's a reasonably compact mid-priced romp laden with slapstick humour and cartoonish worlds, poking fun at consumerism and rapacious corporations. Wonder where the developers got that idea? As in the original, your astronaut crash-lands on a far-flung world, leaving you to gather scattered pieces of his shattered ship in the hope of eventually escaping. Thus follows a Metroidvania loop of resource-gathering and equipment-recovering, all wrapped in a third-person platformer-shooter design. The local wildlife isn't particularly hostile, albeit with some exceptions, and progress depends mostly on exploring small areas of a handful of planets, platforming around cliffs, forests and caves in low gravity slow-mo leaps. It's an agreeable gameplay loop well worn in its concept – farming the elements to make new gear, finding key equipment and then revisiting areas that are further opened up thanks to your new tools. It supports a full co-op mode, though solo play is equally fun. Raccoon Logic ladles on the satire with some live-action video clips parodying the corporation that abandoned you on the savage planet. But the storyline functions as just a thin fig leaf for its anarchic gameplay, which puts acid, lava and electrically conductive goo at your disposal. The modest size of the team at Raccoon Logic becomes apparent sometimes – the awkward physics and occasionally funky enemy behaviour can hamper the gameplay mechanics. But this a goofy little treasure, a passion project for a small team bruised by their encounter with a corporate gorilla. They're still here and Stadia is long gone. Who's the monkey now?
