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Love/Hate: Metroidvania
Written by Tom Dalis on Thursday, February 14, 2008
The handheld Castlevania games spawned from the formula made popular by Symphony of the Night have gained the moniker "Metroidvania" due to their heavy emphasis on exploration and item usage. This term can be taken as either a compliment or a put-down; here are a few ideas why.
Love: Exploration
A sense of discovery is one of the main reasons I play games. There is no greater feeling than exploring a new area that took hours to reach, or discovering a hidden room accessible only through arcane means. Exploration is why I overlooked the flaws of Shadow of the Colossus, slogged through the boring parts of Dragon Quest VIII, and. exploration is what keeps me coming back to Metroidvania. I just love filling in those blank areas of the map; I'm like the Lewis and Clark of video games except instead of Sacajawea I have GameFaqs.
Hate: Backtracking
Sometimes though, exploration can become confusing. The auto map, which is usually so helpful, can also hinder your progress if you forget where you are while backtracking. There it is, the word hating by every video gaming soul out there: backtracking. Nobody in our short-attention-span, ADD-afflicted demographic likes to do thing more than once! Unfortunately, the non-linear nature of the Metroidvania template makes backtracking a necessity in order to visit previously unavailable areas. In Castlevania, the only deadly curse worse than vampirism is backtracking
Love: Customization
Who doesn't like tweaking their in-game avatars to better suit their game play styles and tastes? Communists, that's who. Metroidvanias offer plenty of opportunity for customization from the card system in Circle of the Moon to my favorite, the revamped soul collection featured in Dawn of Sorrow. Plus, the RPG elements in Metroidvanias give the player a tangible sense of progress and the ability to grind for experience, which no hardcore obsessive type can resist.
Hate: Collect-athons
Speaking of obsessive-compulsives, any time a game features items or objects to collect, it risks becoming centered on pointless fetching and collecting. Luckily, Metroidvanias mostly avoid this sin of game design by integrating collecting into the game world in a natural way and making the powers gained useful for game play. Still, if you are a completist, gathering rare souls in Aria of Sorrow can be as tedious as the worst Rare has ever spit out. Well, not quite... nothing is as bad as Donkey Kong 64.
Love: Gothic Art Style
I'm not an angst-ridden teenager who shops at Hot Topic. I don't own any Marilyn Manson or HIM albums. I have never worn a studded leather dog collar and my hair is cut normally and still is its natural color. Yet I do dig H.P. Lovecraft. I own some Bauhaus and Cure albums and wear nice leather boots and black jeans once in a while. My point: I'm no Goth, but I dig classic and restrained elements of the subculture. Ayami Kojima's art straddles the line between stylish darkness and gothic excess, but it is always interesting and never bland. Her unique illustrations and character designs have become as synonymous with the Castlevania franchise as Yoji Shinkawa's work and Metal Gear Solid or Yoshitaka Amano and Final Fantasy.
Hate: Anime Art Style
If my old school side-scrolling action games are going to be full of pale androgynes, I at least want them rendered as glam-rock creatures of the night and not generic kiddy caricatures. Koji Igarashi chose to switch up the style of his last two Castlevania games for the DS to appeal to a younger audience. Here's the problem: a younger audience just isn't interested in the style of 2D game play Castlevania has to offer and some safer character designs aren't going to make much of a difference. Igarashi should have gone in the opposite direction and pandered to his core audience: teenage deviantart members and grown-up nerds.
Love: 2D
I love two-dimensional side scrolling games and do a little shuffle of joy every time a new one is released. It's the genre of game I grew up playing most frequently and is where my fondest gaming memories lie. Now, nostalgia only goes so far; some of those older 2D games are tough to play, with crappy controls and ugly graphics. That is why the modern Metroidvanias are such a treat: they are beautiful and responsive, like a Ferrari or a high-class hooker.
Hate: Reused Assets
The problem with 2D games is that the art assets are expensive and difficult to produce. There just aren't as many skilled pixel artists as there used to be and animating sprites frame by frame is time-consuming. This has led to the recycling of various Castlevania enemies, backgrounds, and animations throughout the series. There are only so many times you can see the same skeleton before it stops becoming a charming staple of a series and starts becoming a numbing sign of laziness.
