I do have a 360 backlog; just finished Sonic Generations, got Witcher 2 and Battlefield Hardline waiting on the shelf. So I'm not completely starved of games, I just wish there was more coming to Switch that was to my taste, cos I really, really like the Switch, the system itself is my favourite since the Wii, its just so snappy and cool.

Yeah, it's pretty much as good as Super Metroid. Except the part where it's thematically interesting, or has a cool story and setting and protagonist... of course, those things don't matter as much as the gameplay, which is very good, except of course, for the completely unintuitive level design and exploration, thousands of different roadblock variations that always deceive you, and you know, when it's not fun.

No seriously dude, just don't. You might really like Axiom Verge and I can see why. I played that game for a good number of hours and I too think I'd have loved it if I didn't get tired of aimlessly wandering around because every new power-up I acquired never opened the roadblock I thought it would. But just don't compare it to Super Metroid, please. It doesn't deserve that.

curl considers Super Metroid to be a lacking game because it demands the player to move and shoot at the same time. He says that's bad game design.

Is this a reference to Resident Evil 4 being his favourite game?

Yeah, it's pretty much as good as Super Metroid. Except the part where it's thematically interesting, or has a cool story and setting and protagonist... of course, those things don't matter as much as the gameplay, which is very good, except of course, for the completely unintuitive level design and exploration, thousands of different roadblock variations that always deceive you, and you know, when it's not fun.

No seriously dude, just don't. You might really like Axiom Verge and I can see why. I played that game for a good number of hours and I too think I'd have loved it if I didn't get tired of aimlessly wandering around because every new power-up I acquired never opened the roadblock I thought it would. But just don't compare it to Super Metroid, please. It doesn't deserve that.

I don't blame myself for that one time where I got this power to go through walls, which led me straight into another roadblock (getting roadblocked right after getting a new power-up, seriously? but anyway...) involving the Disruptor. And here I thought I could just use my Disruptor and get past it, but nah. Just nope, wouldn't work. So I kept exploring, and after a good while I found a Disruptor power-up that allowed it to handle bigger disrupted thingies! I thought "yeah, now I can finally go across that one roadblock!!" so I go straight for it, and guess what? Nope, still doesn't work.

That's bullshit level design. It's designed around roadblocks and not around an interesting game. Axiom Verge is a game of keys and keyholes, and it does everything it can to make you believe certain keys will open the roadblocks they don't. You know why Super Metroid is a masterpiece? Because it never blocks you from progressing after you get a power-up and the whole world is built in a very intuitive way that subtly guides you where to go next. Because most of the roadblocks (except colored doors, which aren't confusing because they use different colors you know) are tangible and natural, so you understand exactly what you need to go through some place most of the time, and if you don't understand, you will understand the moment you get that power-up.

But most of all, because Super Metroid isn't just about keys and keyholes, it's also about having a deep and interesting playable character who can perform a lot of different moves and skills regardless of which items you acquired. It isn't about finding Item A to open Door A and Item B to open Door B. If you know how, you can get through a lot of things in different and unexpected ways - and I'm sure Axiom Verge with its "speedrun mode" (ugh, the cringe) also has this, but the difference once again is, in Super Metroid it's intuitive. The game subtly teaches you how to walljump and how to shinespark, and it never expects you to put that into use in any particular way - they're just extra skills that you can use however you want and they feel like natural parts of your skillset because the level design is rarely built upon the use of these specific things. In fact, there are a lot of items in Super Metroid that have alternate uses or just interesting things you can do with, like the bomb spread or using the grapple beam as a weapon (it's pretty decent actually) or using all your missiles and power bombs to do a crystal flash or doing a pseudo-screw attack with the charge beam. The items aren't supposed to be just about unlocking a certain door, they're about expanding your possibilities. Axiom Verge doesn't get that.

Except in Metroid, especially Samus Returns, these things are mostly optional. In Axiom Verge, I just got stuck on a very large area by the right side of the map and no matter where I tried to go I always always stopped by the bullshit disruptor thing (because the power-up makes your disruptor work on bigger things, but not big enough. Fun!), or not being able to jump high enough, or other things I remember. It took me hours upon hours to - get through it, if the game was any good - give up.

It is terrible when compared to Super Metroid, which is why this argument started in the first place. You just don't compare stuff to Super Metroid like that.