So I Sat Down to Play… The Messenger
(This has been a while coming. I know I said updates would be infrequent, but still holy shit.)
There’s one thing you need to know about me, my biggest pet-peeve in games is respawning enemies. I can’t stand it when you switch rooms and the enemies in the previous room have already respawned.
The enemies in this game respawn while you’re in the room. And I still loved it. Why? Keep reading.
So, The Messenger is a 2D side-scrolling platformer from 2018 (how is 2018 half a decade ago, jesus christ) that’s one part a loving homage to the original Ninja Gaiden and one part of… those games. You know the type, the ones where people will tell you to go on blind, because that way you’ll enjoy them more.
But then again, it has been out for half a decade as we’ve already clearly established, so if you haven’t played it already, you might as well read this post. And if you have, let’s compare opinions, shall we?
So, since we’re doing spoilers, I’m just gonna go out and say it right away. The game starts off as a traditional 8-bit old-school action platformer where you have to be precise with your jumps and your slashes (no NES level of difficulty here, thankfully) and it all seems linear at first. But you kinda get the impression that there’s more to it than meets the eye. Not just because it’s listed under the “Metroidvania” genre on Steam, but more so because while you’re navigating its various stages you can definitely tell that there are some areas that are clearly out of reach, and how could you ever reach them if there’s no backtracking, Metroidvania-style?
It was at this point that my mind started racing, maybe you play as different characters, maybe you go to a different timeline and play the stages again, maybe who knows what else. This is why it’s so cool to have little to no knowledge of what happens in The Messenger before playing, that is, if you plan on playing it.
So this is your last warning, spoilers-wise.
Because some of my guesses were actually correct. The game has a brilliant bait-and-switch moment halfway through, where your character (the titular messenger, if you hadn’t already guessed) completes his mission of handing the Map to some other dude, and then takes up a position as a shopkeeper NPC, like the ones you had already interacted with. With him out of the proverbial picture, a soldier takes his place and I had this big “I CALLED IT!” moment when this happened.
But then the soldier promptly dies off-screen and we have to keep going.
However! Even though the game starts as an 8-bit homage, both with the awkward graphics (sorry, I always hated the 8-bit aesthetic, must be all the CGA games I had to endure as a kid) associated with the era and the delightful chiptunes, it rapidly changes after this point. It actually changes into a 16-bit game in both its graphics and its sound. This is even explained in-game somewhat since you’re actually in the future. This one I did call, and it felt great.
Better yet, at some point in the latter part of the game, you can switch between the two modes in order to traverse some stages, sometimes on the same room and multiple times at that. And even though this could get clunky and convoluted, its implementation feels great and really intuitive. It’s amazing how such a small team managed to do this.
The other spoiler-y thing is that, well, after the mid-way point in the game, it really does turn into a Metroidvania. You’d think it’s an obvious thing when it eventually happens, but you’re so caught up with everything else that it really does come as kind of a surprise.
I have to confess that my favorite twist was that the map that you were carrying with you was… actually a map of all the areas in the game, and you can use it to navigate the Metroidvania-style levels once the Shopkeeper tells you that. It was a great “oh DUH” moment both for the game’s protagonist and myself.
If there’s one thing that I realized while playing this game is how much platformers have evolved in the 30 years that I’ve been playing them -my first being Super Mario Land back in the summer of 1992.
So many things have changed and refined. Enemy placement, platform jumping, secret areas, game mechanics. All these things existed back in 1992, but they have been improved on with every game that has been released since. This is great to see, especially with how much other genres that were all the rage back then (much like the phrase “all the rage”) have stagnated; point & click adventures being the obvious example of a genre stuck in time, but even fighting games have not evolved as much since. But this is a matter for a different blog post.
One example of how The Messenger refines things that existed in the genre before is its double-jump. I don’t even remember which game introduced the double-jump, but I know it exists in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, and that game came out in 1997, a quarter of a century ago.
But in this game, you don’t just press the jump button a second time to execute a double-jump. No sir, this game is hard and it wants you to give it your all. You can only double-jump after a successful melee attack. But you can do it over and over and over again, and for some puzzles it’s necessary, so you can breeze through a room like some sort of pogo-jumping, flying squirrel god. And if I can do that at the ripe age of 42, I really want to see what speedrunners can do with this system. This game is probably my favorite Metroidvania from a mechanics standpoint, especially when you combine it with the time-jumping mechanic I talked about earlier.
I should point out that when you switch between the 8-bit and 16-bit styles, it’s not just the graphics that are changing but also the music. It changes on the spot from a chiptune style to the more refined music of the 16-bit era. And trust me when I say that the music is glorious. It’s incredible, if this game came out in like 1989, people would still consider one of the best OSTs ever. Just look it up on YouTube, and thank me later. Seriously.
Still, even though this is a Metroidvania, the game differs in a very specific way to most other games of the genre. You see, a genre staple is that you can’t access certain areas of the game until you get a specific upgrade or a completely new ability, and then you’re free to roam at least one new area. Rinse and repeat, until you finish the game.
There are upgrades and new abilities in The Messenger. Some you have to unlock, some you have to earn by yourself. However, these alone will not provide you access to new areas. To reach some of these areas, to reach some of these hidden rooms, you have to just, pardon my French, git gud.
That’s right, you just have to get better at the game, there’s no leveling system here, no XP farming to get you through a tough spot. You just have to get better with your jumps and more precise with your attacks. And make no mistake, this game is hard. I had to take extensive breaks because I’d get so stuck in some rooms until it felt almost hopeless. But during these difficult spots you get such an adrenaline boost (my heart rate was actually shooting up, I’m old, dude) that it’s difficult to give up on the game completely. A little break to clear your head helps, and the intuitive level design and mechanics make it so that you never really feel hopeless. Just mildly irritated. Okay, fully irritated. But the game fully respects your time, and pays you back with interest.
Nothing is ever perfect, of course, and neither is The Messenger. Out of all the things that old-school platformers did and this game copies, chase sequences are by far the worst, a design choice that should have died in the early 1990s. Chase sequences take away a lot of the control and comfort offered by the game’s mechanics, and generally as a gameplay experience it has simply not aged well. Back in the day, due to the limitations of technology this was a way to create tension for the player. But even then it felt cheap and annoying. Fast forward three decades later, and it feels out of place. And there’s a short but free DLC stage but it’s just meh.
One other thing that really didn’t do it for me was the story. For like 90% of the game, there’s minimal story and that is fine. Platformers never really had much in the way of story, and what’s here works. The humor in the game is fantastic (I have dozens of screenshots saved of the game’s one-liners) and the Shopkeeper’s stories make up for any lack of exposition.
But then right before the end, you get a big ol’ lore dump and by then it feels a little too late for that. At least for me, it didn’t work. It’s cool that the developers created such a rich world and backstory for the game, and that is why they will expand on it this year with an actual jRPG set in the same world. But talking heads explaining the world to me, instead of me experiencing it first hand? That doesn’t do it for me, chum. Still, there are some Neil Gaiman-esque undertones in the story that I would really like to see expanded on in another game.
That being said, something that really caught me by surprise in a positive way was the Shopkeeper’s last story; a story of a man who finally managed to convince himself that his stories are worth sharing. This man is clearly the game’s designer, programmer, and director Thierry Boulanger and it’s such a heartfelt way of expressing gratitude for one’s friends, it was the very definition of heart-warming, literally. No, seriously. My heart felt warmer IRL, fr fr.
So that’s The Messenger. One of the best Metroidvanias I’ve ever played, probably in my top-5 in the genre, come to think of it. It’s just a stellar game, probably the best mechanics in the business, a stellar soundtrack that will keep you going even when you’re stuck in a difficult room, and a lot of humor and heart.
Oh, and you also get to do the thing!
