Xeodrifter - going through the motions

I love the Metroidvania style of game. Games like Metroid and Axiom Verge and Strider are all about exploring labyrinthine worlds, unlocking cool new abilities, and slowly becoming more powerful and adept.

But Xeodrifter has taught me there's more to it than just locking off bits of the map until you find the next power-up.

The game is about a teeny tiny spaceman who darts between four nearby planets, killing aliens and bouncing between platforms, as he looks for a warp core to fix his busted spaceship.

On each planet you'll come across obstacles you can't overcome. Like pools of sizzling lava, deep lakes of water, chunky blockades, and towers too tall to jump up.

So you turn around. Try a different route. Try a different planet, even, until you come across a boss. When you kill it, you'll unlock a new power that will now let you tackle that obstacle. A submarine to traverse water, for example.

That's how these games have worked since Metroid one, but more than any Metroidvania game I've played, Xeodrifter feels less like getting cool new powers and more like finding keys for locks.

Maybe it's that the powers are all a bit boring - most have been seen in other games of this ilk, and the ability to hop between the fore- and background is borrowed from Mutant Mudds, and not innovated upon in any interesting way.

Or it's that they rarely have any use outside of bypassing that specific obstacle. They're not often used in combat and few can speed up your exploration.

Either way, it quickly feels like busy work. Less like chipping away at some enticing alien underworld, and more like working through a checklist of power-ups to get. Speed run? Check. High jump? Check. Short-range teleport? Working on it.

It certainly doesn't help that the game has a punishing difficulty curve.

You have very little life, health pick ups are ultra rare, and checkpoints are infrequent. You'll spend much of the game traipsing slowly through the same section over and over again, as you die to some annoying off-screen enemy.

Combat in the game is not massively exciting, especially as you have just one gun and can't shoot at an angle or do any alternative attacks until the very end of the game.

Xeodrifter does have an interesting weapon system, though. You unlock generic gun bits, which you can use to temporarily boost different aspects of your blaster.

You can spend them on shot speed to tackle one creature, then quickly change them to impact and spread to beat another.

Ultimately, the game just isn't very inventive. The four planets are barely distinguishable, the music grates as it repeats, the enemy design is lacking, there's only one boss critter, and the whole thing is over in about three hours.

And inventiveness might be the core tenant of what makes this genre so good - not locked doors. The surprise of finding something new - a new area, a new power-up, a new wrinkle in the narrative - is what keeps you digging deeper.

Without any of that, only the most stalwart fans of the genre will scratch beneath the surface.