Game of the Week: exploring the other things that make a Metroidvania great

Some weeks picking a favourite game is pretty easy, but there's been a lot of lovely stuff in the mix of late. Stellar Blade brings a surprisingly pleasant sense of PS2 focus to proceedings, while Manor Lords and No Rest for the Wicked are both much-wanted early access games that promise to blossom in their own ways. Final Fantasy 16 had its own pleasures too. What a week!

That said, I can't get away from Tales of Kenzera, the Afro-futurist Metroidvania that Ed reviewed at the start of the week. It's not just the appeal of the setting or the art or the thrill at seeing truly personal games that deal with personal experience. It's something Ed wrote in his review that made me realise I had been misreading an entire genre for years.

Maybe ‘misreading’ is the wrong word. More like mis-weighting. It's more that I had been missing a vital component of what makes these games so special. When I think of Metroidvanias I think of the big, obvious stuff. These are intricate games in which you're dropped into complex spaces, and these spaces offer a lot of options for where you can go at any moment. They have different types of doors and many of these doors are unlocked by new powers you steadily collect as you explore. That, I had assumed, was it: the Metroidvania template.