I'd love to live in a world where Hollow Knight is "too familiar"

I quite like Rock Paper Shotgun and John Walker, but reading his Hollow Knight Impressions left me kinda puzzled. There's a lot I disagree with in the article, but the part that stood out the most to me was Walker's claim that the game is "too familiar". I feel like I either need to play the games Walker has been playing or smoke whatever he's been smoking, because, while it has its issues, I've played very few games of this level of quality.

Walker claims that Hollow Knight follows the Metroidvania formula too closely, and that it makes variations in the wrong places. Keeping in mind that innovation is often nothing but snake oil, these changes are exactly what make Hollow Knight stand out from other Metroidvanias. The need to consider abilities part of a loadout instead of a fixed addition to your arsenal, the tight, methodical combat, the way the game encourages exploration and finding your own path through the world - those are the things that make Hollow Knight very much a game of its own.

In fact, I feel like if Hollow Knight wasn't in 2D, far more people would recognize that it has more to do with - and please hear me out, because I know how terrible what I'm going to say is - Bloodborne. Not in terms of mechanics, but definitely in terms of lore and atmosphere. In fact, almost all the top comments on the article make the comparison to - sigh - Dark Souls. So it's not even me saying it, so I'm not a hack games writer or anything.

Not that the fact that something gets compared to Dark Souls proves anything. But in this case, if - and only if - we put mechanics aside, the comparison is apt.

So Walker decides that Hollow Knight belongs exclusively in a specific genre, finds its adherence to this restricted genre too strict, and then finds its variations lacking. To substantiate this, he compares the game to two other games, of which the two that I've played - Owlboy and Axiom Verge - are nothing like it in terms of mechanics or world-building (and are, in addition, quite dull). The whole critical approach just seems bizzare and misguided.

Having just finished Hollow Knight with 50 hours into it, I'll definitely say that it has its problems. Fast travel is minimal and awkward, so there's a lot of backtracking, and although this is more of a problem with me than the game, there are weird things to its action's rhythm that I never quite got used to. For example, sometimes using a special ability will allow you to move left and right, but not jump, which is a very weird and awkward limitation that nine out of ten times will make you crash straight into an enemy or a pit full of spikes.

Still, I'd say this is one of the finer games I've played in a while, perhaps the best Metroidvania I've played since the game that got that label started, Symphony of the Night.

The first thing you realize about Hollow Knight when you start playing is that oh my god, it actually looks like that. People who follow games are used to trailers looking much better than the end product, to the point where a lot of people will look at a game like Cuphead cynically, not believing the devs can actually deliver on the unique art style shown in promotional material. But Hollow Knight delivers, and my god is it amazing. It's like playing an animated movie of the highest quality, and as fashionable as it might be to say that graphics don't matter, I think art style and aesthetics can be as important a part of a game as anything else. Hollow Knight would still be a great game if it were ugly, but the way it looks adds so much.

The second thing you realize, after the first few bosses, is that this game is crushingly hard, mostly because it relies on a completely different skill set than the more obvious examples of challenging games. There are no combos, stamina or counters, and enemies rarely get stun-locked. Instead, surviving boss fights depends more on choosing the right loadout and carefully platforming around obstacles and attacks. It really takes the typical SotN combat to new places, and it's pretty glorious.

Trial of the Fool is still nonsense, though.

I'm not reviewing Hollow Knight - it was a total impulse buy, mostly due to it being an indie game and looking absolutely beautiful. But I felt like I had to write about it, because no one is talking about this game and that, to me, is downright criminal. Having done that, I'm now looking forward to reading Holly Jane Amareta's official Steam Shovelers review - you know, the hip new site everyone's talking about and where all the writers are really sexy.