Iconoclasts Review - Metroid has never been so colorful

lyra.roberge (56)in #gaming • 7 years ago (edited)

Those who want to play an old-fashioned Metroidvania can hardly ever go to Nintendo and Konami. The two-dimensional Castlevania games seem to be in the fridge for a while, while Metroid only recently gave a full sign of life with Metroid: Samus Returns on the Nintendo 3DS. Fortunately, there are indies that are working hard to revive this almost lost genre.

After games such as Ori, Guacamelee and Axiom Verge, Iconoclasts also reverts to the old-fashioned Metroidvania. In this colorful adventure you play as Robin, an engineer with a gigantic wrench in a world where repairing things is strictly forbidden. Only the religious order from the capital is certified to perform even the simplest repairs. As a result, the average citizen lives under an authoritarian regime, fearing that a prohibited repair would deny them access to heaven.

You might think that this is a gray, serious game, but the opposite is true. Each screen of Iconoclasts is filled with colorful and beautifully animated sprites, which are accompanied by dialogue that is both humorous and mature. Iconoclasts thus reaches a special center, combining the charm of a carefree platform game with an underlying story that sometimes feels a bit like a Black Mirror episode. The game succeeds without one of these two halves ever feeling unnatural. A special achievement.

Metroid

Iconoclasts is basically a Metroidvania. You can explore the game world freely, but sometimes certain obstacles can only pass with a certain weapon or object. For example, rather early in the game you need a rocket launcher to destroy walls, so you have to look for the location of this object. Every weapon that is added to your arsenal is also needed for puzzles. These puzzles never become complex, but they do bring the game world to life.

Once in a while you encounter a boss fight, in which your new weapons have to be used to their full potential. These fights often remind a bit of old Mega Man games. You learn patterns, avoid attacks at the right time and perhaps die a few times before you master them. Especially later in the game we sometimes sat at the tip of our chair with sweaty hands. During that few boss battles, the game requires your utmost concentration, making it feel all the better if you succeed.

Although you are free to go and stand where you want, the game world is split up into a number of 'levels' of their own. You can travel freely between them, but for a large part the game feels a bit linear. That is not necessarily bad: an emphasis on dialogue requires that the game follow a certain linear path, and the writing is smart and funny enough to justify this.

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Magnificent

We can not emphasize enough how good the sprites of Iconoclasts are. Characters move fluently through the game world and have unique animations for even the smallest arm or hand movements in films. From every image in the game it becomes clear that Iconoclasts have been put together with much time and love. This is even noticeable in the game menus, in which simple options such as 'yes' and 'no' have been replaced with the head of main character Robin.

Iconoclasts feels like a love letter to the 90s. The game tackles the sometimes deadly genre of Metroid and Castlevania and combines that with the colors and atmosphere of, for example, an old Sega Mega Drive game. This may not be the most unique game of the moment, but that is not the intention of Iconoclasts. This is a game that harks back to your feelings from the past and gives you a good feeling. Former Metroidvania indies did that too, but this is perhaps one of the nicer versions of this concept.

Iconoclasts is available for PC, Mac, Linux, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita. For this review the game was played on a PlayStation 4 Pro.

Conclusion

Iconoclasts is perhaps the most beautiful Metroidvania we have played in recent years. The underlying concepts of the game may not be very original, but this game feels like a love letter to the 90s on every level. A damn well written letter that will certainly stir up feelings if you grew up in that period.

➕ Beautiful sprites, surprisingly mature dialogue, good balance between two contradictory ideas

➖ Not the most original game