The Best Genre Still Has No Name

I've been playing through animal well and I came across a new gaming term I hadn't heard before Metroid brainia I find it ironic that the name of the genre itself is like something you would find in a Metroid brainia a word that makes no sense unless you've discovered the mental keys to decipher it so what is that word Metroid brainia anyway well as many of you know it comes from the term Metroid Vania here's an example of a Metroid Vania distilled to its most basic elements you start with nothing and and much of the map is blocked off but you're able to pick up the flippers which allow you to swim and grab the ice skates allowing you to walk on ice and get the fire boots and lastly the suction cup boots as you get more items more of the map is unlocked and eventually you're able to reach your goal of course you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who considers Chip's challenge to be a classic Metroid Vania game although Metroid Vania titles can have items similar to the flippers which allow Passage through a hazard most Metroid Vania items are movement based navigate downward through an intricate oneway maze then get a wall climbing ability at the end so you can get out before long you'll find something like a double jump or a Glide or a charge expanding your movement even further and allowing you to travel farther higher or faster the maps are generally far far more expensive as well with rooms that loop back on each other so that when you find that special item you were looking for backtracking is reduced and when you do make it back to those early rooms you may find a ledge that was once impossible to reach or a corridor filled with spikes you had previously dismissed that's suddenly accessible with your new abilities leading to Fresh areas or hidden upgrades and that's where most of the enjoyment comes from in a Metroid Vania game the realization that a once insurmountable problem is now solvable a strange detail in the background is suddenly a useful part of the level it can be particularly satisfying to practice those movement abilities and chain them together sometimes you can feel so overpowered and reach such extreme places you almost feel like you're getting away with stuff the devs hadn't intended now Metroid Vania games are typically synonymous with 2D platforming adventures in an alternate universe where Metroid Vania was considered a broader genre people could categorize something like say the traditional 3D Zelda games as Metroid Vania games since they gate progress in the world based on certain items and they also reward backtracking with hidden areas after more items are obtained Metroid brainia games however tend to cover a far wider range of genres puzzle games 2D Platformers Zelda games walking simulators the surface gameplay between these games seems pretty varied but it's the gameplay lurking underneath that unites these under one genre rather than just giving you physical keys or upgrades to the character the keys in these games are nuggets of knowledge you've learned about the rules of that world greater understandings to help you do you want to know what it is okay okay so you're right let's dive into some examples here but we have to warn you this is your last chance after this there is no turning back and this isn't just some bit Metroid brainia games are by their very definition best experienced knowing as little about them as possible I'm going to be careful when I talk about these games all right I won't be talking about anything that would ruin the experience for a first timer so you should feel free to watch on but if a game intrigues you I encourage you to pause the video leave a like and to sub and come back when you're ready cuz when you hear people say things like I wish I could erased my memory of this so I could do it again for the first time these are the experiences they're talking about I don't want to remember nothing nothing you understand I think most people would agree that the Pinnacle of this genre is outer Wilds essentially you're a space Explorer stuck in a Time loop it's up to you to figure out what's going on and how to fix it one of this game's most notable features is the absence of any progress Gates whatsoever you know when you want to go through a locked door but you haven't found the key yet in outer Wilds if you have the those knowledge Keys meaning you understand the rules of the universe what happened and why you can wake up do what you need to do you can beat the game in about 10 minutes I'm sure we've all wished we could do what Bill Murray does in this scene here from Groundhog Day saying the perfect combination of things to get that exact outcome you want and that's exactly what outer Wilds allows you to do in that final Loop I'm a God I'm not the god I don't think unfortunately this is a bit of a double-edged sour because it completely tanks the game's replayability making for a game with one of the best first playthroughs ever and one of the blandest second playthroughs ever there's still fun things you can do in the game just to goof around I for one really enjoy the physics of the spacecraft and trying to manually land on the sun station is a fun challenge but at the end of the day the real reason why you fell in love with the game those Revelations about the universe the realization of what you to do and the cost of doing it those epiphanies can never be experienced again a game that balances replayability and Revelations more evenly is the witness a big part of the game is also discovering the nature and rules of the world but once you figure out the rules the majority of the game play is just straight up doing puzzles the other half of the game is completing the obelisks and although these don't have replayability the same way the main puzzles do you can still get a similar effect just by marathoning the game for 6 hours and then taking a walk outside in a way the obelisks are just training your mind to think that way anyway I can tell you firsthand the witness is far more replayable than outer Wilds I've have 100% of it at least 10 times being available on phones makes it a great train or bus game and for PC there's a randomizer mod that basically gives this game infinite replayability although the Metroid brainia aspects of the experience will have long Faded Away by that point Return of the Orin is a good example of what a Metroid brainia is not in the game you deduce the names and fates of the 60 people once aboard the oradin I love this game and I'd recommend it to anyone but the things you learn throughout your journey are not mechanical in nature you might learn new ways to identify people that you hadn't thought of when you first started my goodness what an idea why didn't I think of that hammocks but those re ations don't unlock new areas or anything like that they just fill out the book progress is dictated by which vignettes you've watched not your knowledge of game mechanics replayability can be a bit of a SLO with oberin as well but for the exact opposite reason as outer Wilds to many progress Gates it's worth saying that not every game needs to have replayability I wouldn't change a thing about outer Wilds or overden and I think they completely accomplished what they set out to do but when games as special as these come along you want to have a reason to revisit them I guess there in lies the question for aspiring devs looking to make their own Metroid brainia how do you make your game worth revisiting while still keeping the magic intact from that first playthrough the answer is you don't go full Metroid brainia I think one game that manages to capture this really well is Fez or as my daughter calls it paper tow Man the game at its core is a 2d platformer at least it's what you spend the majority of your time doing so going back and replaying it for that gameplay is a good enough reason but the Metroid brainia elements of the game are extremely memorable and the puzzles are complex enough that if you return to the game after a few years you'll be getting out your pen and paper all over again the starting area alone has so many little details for people who understand those hidden mechanics rooms hidden from the original 2D plane or Barren walls contain secret information that only someone with a fez could see things that seemed like set dressings or actually meticulously detailed puzzles hidden in plain sight it's all just it's great that being said one of the biggest flaws Fez has is that despite having the knowledge to continue some of those codes and secret messages you're looking for to apply your knowledge are only visible with the sunglasses which are only obtainable after completing a playthrough on that save in other words without using external guides you have to complete the bad ending to get the good ending the sunglasses introduce an unnecessary progress gate if there were some way to get the sunglasses early either through finding them in a chest or obtaining a certain amount of anti- Cubes I think it would make the whole experience smoother for players who already have those knowledge Keys unlocked in their mind you know something to think about for the release of Fez 2 now this is something that tunic a very similar game to Fez in its Metroid brainia elements manages to rectify just like in Fez you need to gather every piece of a McGuffin to get the true ending but here it's possible to complete just using the knowledge you get along the way you choose the bad ending or the good ending you aren't forced to do one to get the other just like how Fez front loads a lot of its 2D platformer elements tunic front loads a lot of its Zelda elements then reveals its Metroid brainia secrets in the back end and like any good Metroid brainia game you had that power within you the whole time even if you start a new save and that unlocked knowledge adds additional depth to a second playthrough and that's mostly where I think animal well resides as well just like how tunic is a Zelda game with a Metroid brainia undercurrent or Fez is a 2d platformer with a Metroid brainia undercurrent animal well is a front-loaded Metroid V Vania with a Metroid brainia undercurrent in fact animal well leans far more heavily into the Vania than the brainia even in the first few hours this has some hardcore jumping in it that is manageable for a Pro Gamer such as myself but that I wouldn't dare recommend to most people I know many of the puzzles in this game don't involve secret codes or languages but are skill testing movement challenges closer to something you might find with the strawberries and secret hearts in Celeste based on the buzz surrounding this game I was expecting something even closer to tunic where the controls have hidden uses and then you get additional items as you go although there are Easter eggs in Animal well that can turn you into the fox from tunic or Gomez from Fez that's nothing like the gameplay impact of tunic's cross rather I think animal well starts you off with absolutely nothing no secret moves at all and then the items you get each have special secr Secrets some of these secrets are surface level perhaps even taught to you during gameplay whereas other secrets are obtuse enough that you'd be more likely to learn about it on a community Forum which brings me to the final aspect of the Metroid brainia genre and perhaps the most controversial Community collaboration all of the Metroid Brin games I've mentioned so far have had some sort of community collaboration associated with them I mean hey if a game is about finding Secrets it's perfect ly natural for people to want to share those secrets with each other and see if they missed anything or search for major Secrets together on the more innocent end of the spectrum we've got something like the witness if you were stuck in a room with no internet and you couldn't leave until you 100% of the witness you could probably do it most of the community collaboration with that game comes with the non-gameplay related aspects like the philosophy surrounding the game the various visual Easter eggs stuff like that where it starts to get controversial is when certain gameplay Secrets require Community collaboration to be completed of the games I covered in this video Fez is definitely the most guilty here there's this Block Puzzle which requires you to spell out a certain word but the solution is extremely obtuse and requires like a corkboard I mean seriously if anyone got this without a guide or help I'd love to know the other offending puzzle is this stupid monolith which literally has no solution basically what happened was the answer was brute forced by the community a day after the game's release and to this day the devs won't reveal the intended way the puzzle should be solved who knows perhaps it was an ARG that was canceled after the solution was brute forced but you know whatever a puzzle with no solution after 10 years that's not a mystery it's just a bad puzzle I say this because Fez is a game that's otherwise full of great Mysteries you've got things like a secret message on the wall that leads to to the coordinates of a triangular field in real life or the soundtrack with a series of deliberately chosen images hidden in the audio or these squares these concentric squares hidden on the floor one of which requires development tools to even see I mean these are great Mysteries are they Easter eggs are they for the monolith are they just an elaborate troll I mean come on man it's been 10 years give us something no curs isn't cranberries my biggest argument against puzzles requiring Community collaboration is just how poorly Solutions age when the game first comes out and you realize you need help on a puzzle and you search online and you realize oh my God no one has solved this yet and what people are working together to solve it I mean that's an incredible rush and for the 50 or so people who solve it together for the first time it must be one of the greatest highs of their lives an unforgettable experience for the hundreds of thousands of people who come after it's nothing more than following a tutorial on a forum post and don't tell me you're not going to read that post for someone to solve it fresh years later they'd have to look it up see that the puzzle has been solved and requires people to work together then intentionally hide all mentions of the solution find a group of intelligent people who are also willing to hide all mentions of the solution and work with you and then solve it it's just not going to happen and in my opinion it completely goes against the philosophy of a Metroid brainia because you're being robbed of the Epiphany you have to look up a guide I don't think Community collaboration is bad I just think that if you're going to have puzzles in your game that require outside help you need to find a way to signal that to the player in some way animal well is not nearly as guilty of this as a game like Fez but I think it's a problem developers should think about for people who prefer not to use a guide and then are left frustrated when they're unable to get the true ending you can help me achieve my true ending by liking and subscribing I'm a small part-time Creator who would love to have more time in the day to make videos liking subscribing and sharing helps me to do that then if you want to share your experience with any of these lovely games or you have a better name to replace Metroid brania I'd love to hear it in the comments below thanks very much for watching and I'll see you in the next one [Music]

Channel: Tin Sensei

Views: 106,251

Keywords: animal well, tunic, fez, the witness, outer wilds, antichamber, return of the obra dinn, obra dinn, metroidvania, metroidbrania, 2d platformer, zelda, puzzle, easter egg, secret, obelisk, hidden, arg, reddit, discord, discovered, second layer, third layer, secret eggs, hidden bunnies, analysis, video essay

Id: JA3UAYgd5Nw

Length: 16min 4sec (964 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 22 2024