The Mobius Machine

A good, if somewhat flawed, little Metroid experience that surprised me in a pleasant way. Fully 2.5D games are a rarity in this space, so I commend the development team for taking that route, and the art suitably mixes alien landscapes and unnerving strange beings with familiar concrete and steel structures, and seeing the lighting visibly shift between zones was a good way to keep things distinct. I'd have liked to see a bit more variety in two certain late-game areas, but 3D environments are complicated and expensive enough as is, so I understand the practical reasons why this wasn't done. Though the weapon upgrades are a bit lacking on impact relative to the effort taken to acquire them, actually firing them is reasonably satisfying and the overdrive mechanic makes the typical "hold button to heal" system a lot more mechanically interesting as overdrive shots are [b]really[/b] powerful, adding a neat little risk/reward feature. Mobility upgrades were the highlight here, some of them are a bit familiar (wall climbing, gliding), but there's one upgrade that recontextualized a gameplay element I hadn't thought much about in a [i]big[/i] way which gave me the same feeling as learning how to wall-jump in Super Metroid. What also surprised me in a good way was the emphasis on shortcuts. It felt like every other area where I'd expect a scrap cache or an upgrade fragment, there was a shortcut that could be blasted open that made exploration a smooth experience. Definitely a bit of an underlooked experience that has its own positives to offer.