New Gaming Genre for Metroidvanias?

[axiomenterance]

Being an older gamer (my first game system was the Atari 2600) seeing the rise of every single video genre come into existence the rise of the Souls Like has thrown a wrench in some gears of categories. Now I don't want to gate keep but I being a stickler for these things I want to see what the folks on vgcollect think.

Metroidvania to me is purely a 2d platforming experience where the focus is on exploration and item progression. However with the souls like stat builds and combat being put into the mix I feel like we have a new genre that is part Metroidvania but something that does deserve its own permanent category.

MetroidSouls?SoulsTroid?SoulsVania? The important distinction is that stat builds and higher difficultly combat are weaved into the game causing a slower more deliberate experience because of how you have to interact with the enemies. The below games I think would qualify for the new category. Am I over thinking it, does it even matter. Sound off.

Death's Gambit
Salt and Sanctuary
Blasphemous
The Last Faith

[dhaabi]

"Metroidvania" is a phrase that describes games adopting action-adventure and platformer genres with an emphasis on non-linear exploration often through an interconnected web of rooms.

"Soulslike" or any of its contemporary phrases describes games adopting the action-RPG genre often with an emphasis on difficulty and play-and-learn observation alongside a variety of other systems (which may or may not all be present, which diminishes what this "genre" even is exactly) like the bonfire mechanic popularized by Dark Souls.

As one should presume from how my post is written, I'm of the firm opinion that these styles of games aren't spearheading any new genre that sets itself a part from others. They've merely incorporated specific mechanics into frames from much broader genres.

[redblaze57]

At this point I'm not sure what there's more of... Metal sub-genres, or Video game sub-genres.

Honestly trying to say a game that's "soul's like" and "Metroidvania" is it's own genre sounds just about as ridiculous as "Pirate Metal" being it's own genre.

[shfan]

Being a gamer of a similar age I'd have to say that video game genres are, and have been for probably 20+ years, functionally useless.

The classic wisdom is to use gameplay as the 'tell' as to what genre the game belongs to, with anything more precise than the two massive lump categories (action and strategy) either having more clearly identifiable gameplay elements (platformer, beat 'em up, shoot 'em up) or being an emulation of a real-life activity or game (sports, racing, gambling, board games). Now back in the day when every original idea which found an audience had several identical knock-offs (home computer versions of arcade games in the early 80s for instance) it was easy to do this, although several types of games failed to 'calcify' into genres through nobody's fault, there just weren't many games like 'that', meaning genres were never all-encompassing in the first place.

Then you have the passage of time, technological advancement and changing expectations. My favourite example is Super Mario Bros. vs Super Mario Odyssey - they're both platform games and part of the main Mario series. Do they play the same? Not even close. If games in the same genre in the same series don't even resemble each other then exactly how useful is the recommendation or comparison?

New genres are extremely rare, yet new types of game appear regularly, so why the disparity? Unless a game has a very specific focus then it's very difficult to group them together into that cohesive category. Most of the newer genres I can think of happened in the casual space when Big Fish Games were a thing - time management, hidden object etc.  A more recent example is 'bullet heaven' - Vampire Survivor clones, a very simplistic game pattern which has been nailed down accordingly.

Then you have dabbling/mixing within genres - elements of other games being added. Soulslikes/Soulsborne games started appearing after FROM Software's unexpected hits, no sooner to start being messed around with or some aspects (particularly bonfires and being able to reclaim your exp/status) being dropped into other types of games. Nothing stays still for long. Survival horror games, loved them back in the day, hence my tag, but I play very little SH these days, instead playing the TPS influenced games like later Resident Evils or Dead Space. Apparently some 2D games like Claire and Lone Survivor are survival horror. Really? Don't see it myself.

Then you've got the sheer amount of dialogue present in many games, you can't have hours worth of chatter in one game and no dialogue or cutscenes in another and them somehow be the same thing. The singularly useless term 'visual novel' gets bandied around a lot, yet many of these games aren't novels of any kind, they're just games with dialogue!

It's a mess. The whole idea of being able to say "it's like this" by using a term like 'platformer' is bunk, the only way to group games like Streets of Rage, for instance, is to drop loads of other terms and games in, like 'side scrolling' '2D' 'arcade style' 'co-op' and "like Final Fight/Captain Commando". You can't just say "beat 'em up" because apparently that includes everything from Kung Fu Master through to Vigilante through to Devil May sodding Cry and Tecmo Koei's Warriors series.

Nah, would heartily recommend against wading too deep into the murky waters of video game genres, nothing good down there..