Review Mazinkaiser 4/5 · Sep 7, 2019
The Divide: Jazzing Up the Metroid Formula
The Divide may not approach the greats of its similar Metroid brethren, but provides an intriguing and solid nonlinear experience from a mostly successful 3D perspective.
Starting as two mercenaries Tanken and Advina, you play as Tanken. Tanken is stranded on an alien planet where one of their probes has accidentally infected the planet with a strange sentience. Tanken must …
The Divide may not approach the greats of its similar Metroid brethren, but provides an intriguing and solid nonlinear experience from a mostly successful 3D perspective.
Starting as two mercenaries Tanken and Advina, you play as Tanken. Tanken is stranded on an alien planet where one of their probes has accidentally infected the planet with a strange sentience. Tanken must explore the planet's surface, retrieve the probes, and find out what happened to Advina.
Somewhat complex plot aside, the game starts out up front with suitably teaching the player everything they need to know, then takes it away from them and has them explore the world and collect upgrades to get back to their full potential. Everything from walking to double-jumping to flame lasers and particle cannons lie behind every corner, and exploration is very encouraged. Luckily the map is fully 3D and fairly easy to use and navigate, with maps for every stage and a full world map.
Combat and movement works for the most part. The player is a mech that can walk and shoot in eight directions, as well as hold themselves in place to strafe and aim their guns up and down to fight enemies. Killing enemies can be tricky and the player can get the hang of it, but later on the hardiness and erratic movement of enemies make combat less fun and avoiding them a necessity.
As for traversal, it's eye-opening to walk around on the ground through little mazes a few feet high to be able to approach massive vertical movement later on, and it's a very wonderful thing. That said, the game isn't too kind to people who miss their jumps and fall from massive heights.
The game's environment has some very good and haunting ambient music, hearkening back to the games it derives from. The graphics look a bit chunky for the enemies, but the worlds have that simple, dark, and enticing feel to them, ranging from the forests and jungles above to the oppressive volcanic depths below.
The game takes some twists and turns and attempts to make more of its plot, but the meat definitely lies in taking one of the first big 3D attempts at the Metroid formula. Combat may get frustrating later on and vertical traversal might become a maddening game of trial and error, but for the most part this game is quite solid.