Review - MiO: Memories in Orbit

I love the process of starting a new year of video games.  I keep a running list of all the games I complete in a year, I bookmark websites for games coming out in the new year that I'm interested in, I start following YouTube channels for updates on new games, etc.  I find it a very exciting time.  The problem is that a new year of releases normally takes some time to get going.  The opening weeks of a year are normally fairly slow and most studios are just kind of spinning up plans for how the year is going to look.  That's why when a January game comes out that is remarkable it gets a bit of a boost in my mind just because the landscape is fairly barren.  Which is how I came to MiO: Memories in Orbit, a metroid-vania from French indie dev Douze Dixiemes.  It's fun to like new things and I liked this one a lot. 

    MiO tells the story of MiO, a friendly and extremely agile robot, attempting to restore a spaceship known as The Vessel, a massive space ark that is run by massive supercomputer AI thingies called Pearls.  Essentially, you are thrust into this ship as a small robot who is tasked with both figuring out what happened to the ship and to restore power to The Spine, the nerve center that controls the ship.  Honestly, don't worry about the story too much at the outset.  A big draw of this game is what you don't know.  When I started this game there was no map, no direction, no breadcrumbs, no nothing.  I didn't really know where I was or what I was doing there.  I found this frustrating and this section lasted about two hours, which was risky in my opinion.  In my first two hours I almost quit the game multiple times because it felt like the game wasn't revealing itself quickly enough to sate my curiosity.  However, this changed dramatically once I was granted access to the map.

    From the outset there is a focus on bringing back resources to the spine.  Like Hollow Knight or many souls-likes, when you kill enemies you are granted a currency.  If you die, you lose this currency.  Pretty standard.  What this does differently though is that you can not reclaim your resources when you die.  If and when you die your resources go to the pool of resources at the spine, essentially whatever you have gathered goes to the greater good to restore The Vessel.    So, after exploring in several directions and dying a lot, eventually I had brought back enough resources through my deaths to repower the Overseers, cloaked robot figures who act as your save and fast travel points.  At this point, the Overseers could "see" again due to my contribution and I could use their power to chart my progress, AKA the map was unlocked.  Once this happened, the game blew wide open and I felt that wonderful itch to explore the corners of every room I had been to.  The map is incredibly useful, showing unexplored points of entry and exit in each room so you know where you should be looking for your way forward.  Once the map became a usable tool, I never truly felt lost again because I always had a few new paths to explore thanks to the way the map would nudge me.  More on those resources in a bit, but lets talk first about what this game feels like.

    MiO is a dream to control.  This game makes the fantastic choice to start you with a double jump, which I love.  It's a metroidvania.  You know you're gonna be able to double jump, I know I'm gonna be able to double jump, why beat around the bush?  Like other games in this genre MiO gives you upgrades that impact both combat and traversal.  The traversal upgrades are universally fantastic.  You start as a robot who can double jump but by the end of the game you are zipping and gliding through areas with ease and the act of running around this environment is always a blast and it only gets better as the game moves along.  Some of these upgrades will feel familiar to fans of the genre but others are unique to this game.  For example there are contact points you can use as part of a hookshot mechanic to reach higher areas.  Your abilities evolve in such a way that these anchors can be used for hookshotting, resetting double jump abilities, and can be used as projectiles to make enemies more vulnerable.  The evolution of these abilities makes you feel very powerful by the end of the game and I think they are staggered in such a way that it never feels like too long of a gap between upgrades.

    And thank god this game is a dream to control because it has several INTENSE platforming challenges.  Maybe my favorite part of the game involved these long and brutal platforming challenges that feel akin to a Celeste or Prince of Persia in their levels of difficulty.  There were multiple sections that required air dashing and recharging of abilities to navigate gauntlets of obstacles to reach your goals.  I found these sections thrilling, having to pause multiple times to strategize how I was supposed to get from A to B.  I haven't felt this way in a platformer since Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown with how difficult and elaborate these sections can be.  The cool thing is that there isn't a ton of them, so they don't feel forced or unfair.  You get to a section where you get a new ability, you get a 15–20-minute section of gameplay to learn that ability, then you get a platforming section that challenges the way that you think about the new ability.  These sections were incredible and I was always excited when I was presented with a new hill to climb. 

    Combat in MiO is going to feel very familiar to fans of Hollow Knight.  MiO is a melee attack focused game where you need to get in close with enemies in order to deal damage, so combat feels like an exercise in risk and reward.  Memorizing enemy patterns is essential as every enemy in the game has the potential to be deadly.  If there is one complaint I have with the game it's that these encounters can feel repetitive by the end.  Once you have fought an enemy once you kind of have it figured out.  The way it scales combat challenge with traditional enemies is less of an evolution in enemy types and more of a "how many of these can we throw at you in tough situations" type of thing.  Only once or twice can I remember them being annoying and they are, in general, more additive to the experience than they are subtractive.   MiO comes complete with a dozen or more boss fights that are varied and interesting.  Boss fights are very challenging and maybe the most direct comparison one could make to Hollow Knight.  Several bosses took me 10 or more tries to conquer and, much to the chagrin of some, several of these required looooooooooong runbacks to get to.  This has been a frequent point of discussion recently and I do admit that these runbacks did annoy me from time to time.  A lot of time these runback annoyances were exacerbated by Overseer fast travel points that were near boss fights but were not able to be unlocked due to me not finding the lost Overseer that is required for fast travel.  This is the push and pull of a game that doesn't handhold the player.  Discoveries are earned and feel meaningful but there are things that most players just will not find and it is up to each individual player to decide how much of this they feel they can handle.  For me, I just chose to accept the runback and use it as an opportunity to strategize, but I could see this frustrating many people.

    Aside from upgrades to combat and mobility that you unlock you can also install modifications to MiO and these are very interesting.  MiO has a certain amount of modification slots available, more can be purchased.  Each mod takes up a certain amount of slots and at my most powerful I could only have 4 or 5 equipped at once.  Some of these are combat focused, dealing more damage when at low health for example, but some of them are truly gameplay changing.  One of the modifications is to have a HUD that displays your health and amount of resources you carry.  At the beginning of the game when I only had 3 health pips and was resource focused, this HUD was necessary for me.  By the end of the game I had unlocked most of the health pips and wasn't resourced focused so I chose to forego the HUD in order to equip more combat focused mods.  The amount of customization available here is interesting and will allow players to focus on the things that will help them progress in the way they want to progress.  This is a really great idea but I found the types of mods to not be all that interesting.  The two that I mentioned above may be the two most interesting that I found with others not really impacting my playstyle that much.  I love the idea of it though so I would like to see how it could be iterated on in their next effort.

    One of the most striking things about MiO is the marriage of the visuals and the music.  The visuals in this game are striking because they go against the norm for this genre.  When I think of metroidvania games I usually picture dark hallways, destruction, and spooky corridors.  MiO is a game that is bathed in light.  This is shown in the game's first area, the Nexus.  A gigantic open room that is bright white with all sorts of spokes to explore.  It feels warm and comforting while also being dangerous.  It stands in stark contrast to the way these games normally present themselves.  Don't get me wrong, there are dark environments in this game.  There is a stand out section of the game called The Vaults that find you sent far below the ground in order to find an ally and solve a mystery so this game definitely has those, but they are bookended by the process of returning to the Nexus, returning to the light to chart your progress.  The music is haunting and atmospheric, melodies yielding the right of way to ephemeral soundscapes that exist to make you feel like you are a part of a living place and not concerned with having you bopping your head.  It all feels very refreshing in a world where 10 of these games come out every week.  Traversing the vessel was always a joy and it was because of the visual and auditory feast that this game serves up.

    This is not a game without flaws.  I have my issues with the modification system and the combat.  There were times where I felt a little too lost but by poking at the edges of the map I was able to find my way forward.  The boss runbacks didn't bother me but there were a couple of difficulty spikes that were a little too harsh for my tastes, with a special mention being the final boss who was an absolute motherfucker.  The economy of this game is a little broken and I never quite felt like I figured out a good cadence for buying and installing upgrades, but these are all small potatoes that feel like good first attempts by a studio who has never made a game like this before.  

    Overall, I really liked MiO!  It felt like a fresh start to a year.  This industry has been gutted, stepped on, squashed by layoffs, abused by bad corporate practices, forced to swallow AI bullshit, and been influenced by politics in such a way that it is hard to remember that the reason we engage with this hobby is to have fun.  MiO is a great reminder that a good idea executed by a talented team can bring us joy.  It is not without fault but it is a hell of a start to the year.

Rating: 8 out of 10 Robot Pearls