The use of instrumentation that my untrained and uninformed ear can only describe as sitars and lyres coupled with otherworldly chanting layered on a nostalgic bed of 80s synthpop is an absurd amalgam that results in a tremendous soundtrack. And the game is better for it since these influences are at their most stark in the soundtrack, which is utterly fantastic. Despite a heartfelt endeavour to understand the connected Axiom Verge universe this time round, towards the end of the game I ended up skipping over a lot of the written dialogue as I was lost from the beginning.įrom what I could gauge from the plot, other than the presence of a Matrix-esque Breach World you can access from different parts of the map, is that the alternate-Earth setting takes some inspiration from Sumerian/Mesopotamian history and culture. To be honest, most of the story told via small character interactions and collectible journals dispersed throughout the world didn’t keep me engaged because, much like the first game, it was asphyxiated by convoluted lore, an overuse of proper nouns and technobabble that I’m not sure anyone outside of brilliant sole creator Thomas Happ’s cerebral cortex could properly understand or articulate. In this sense Axiom Verge 2 reminded me of Flashback not just in its liberal use of colour but also in the fact that the game is about your player character, Indra Chaudhari, stumbling upon what at first appears to be an ancient civilisation but soon finding that they are an inexplicably advanced culture using children as bioweapons. The game begins in Antarctica with piercing white snow-caps of the icy tundra and expands to other colourful biomes such as deserts and forests as you delve deeper into the game. Instead of the dark, brooding, claustrophobic settings often associated with the genre (and the first Axiom Verge for that matter), Axiom Verge 2 takes place in an open-air alternate Earth. Both Epic and Tom Happ teamed up to release the game for free from February 7-21, 2019 as part of the Epic Games Store continuing promotions of the platform.What is immediately noticeable about Axiom Verge 2 is that it breaks from the traditional Metroidvania mould by…actually having colour. The game then arrived to Switch in late 2017, where it surpassed launch sales of the PS4 version. Originally released on the PS4 in 2015, Axiom Verge went on to the PC, Mac, and Linux later in the year, with Vita, Wii U, and Xbox One releases in 2016. In Axiom Verge players take control of a character named Trace, who utilize several weapons and power-ups to navigate a massive world that plays on the appearance of glitches and errors in older Metroid-like titles. Both Tom Happ and Sergey Galyonkin (creator of Steam Spy and current employee at Epic Games) apologized for the error and not getting far enough in the uploaded version of the game to encounter the crashes before they appeared for the public. Update 1.46 is a simple download that fixes this error. Tom Happ, developer of Axiom Verge, was quick to put out an update just this afternoon that fixed the error as well as admitting that it stemmed from him not wanting to include Valve's DLLs (I assume this is referencing Dynamic-Link Libraries).
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