i also played wario land 3 recently and frankly felt similarly. it's such an interesting game, a wildly different take on the now well-established metroidvania genre, and while it can be frustrating to run into dead ends, i also really like how breaking up that gameplay style into fairly small levels keeps the exploration from getting overwhelming. at the moment it's an evolutionary dead end since wario land 4 is much more conventional in its structure, but i think there's great potential in the concept...
Yeah, there's bits that scratch that itch of "hub-world/other-level" affecting puzzles that pop up in SMW's switch palaces, or Banjo Kazooie/Tooie's inter-level puzzles. Something narratively neat about the way that levels actually relate to each other when they're usually considered conceptually separate from one another
i also played wario land 3 recently and frankly felt similarly. it's such an interesting game, a wildly different take on the now well-established metroidvania genre, and while it can be frustrating to run into dead ends, i also really like how breaking up that gameplay style into fairly small levels keeps the exploration from getting overwhelming. at the moment it's an evolutionary dead end since wario land 4 is much more conventional in its structure, but i think there's great potential in the concept...
Yeah, there's bits that scratch that itch of "hub-world/other-level" affecting puzzles that pop up in SMW's switch palaces, or Banjo Kazooie/Tooie's inter-level puzzles. Something narratively neat about the way that levels actually relate to each other when they're usually considered conceptually separate from one another
Consume Me looks interesting. Wishlisted!