This! I can totally accept not liking them because it's true they're not exactly the same. They definitely have a lot in common though and saying otherwise just seems snobbish...

Ask yourself if you would feel the same way if Prime had Halo characters and weapons instead of Metroid elements.

Metroidvania's I enjoyed which are not in the OP:

- Unepic - excellent metroidvania/RPG hybrid

- Project Black Sun - very basic gameplay and rather hard, but good atmosphere and only $2 on Desura. Don't expect a story though, there isn't any.

- Bunny Must Die: Chelsea and the Seven Devils - great game full of content. Jumping mechanics take a little to get used to


Roguelikes:

- Dungeons of Dredmor - I spent 400 hours on this game according to Steam!

-Tales of Maj'Eyal - free game, great lore, very good gameplay and TONS of races/classes options

- Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup - an extremely good traditional free roguelike

- Dungeon Hack - cause why not? Basically a roguelike using the Eye of the Beholder engine / gameplay, no idea where you'd get it outside of Ebay or an abandonware site though.

- Diablo, Diablo 2, Torchlight, etc - if Binding of Isaac is a roguelike, so is every Diablo clone with randomized maps, items, and monsters. Torchlight in particular has that infinite dungeon that unlocks after you beat the game with any character for the first time...

It would be a Halo game I'd actually be interested in playing. Are you seriously trying to say that Prime is just a first person shooter with Metroid aesthetics? This argument between us is never going to go anywhere.

I have to thank you for linking this. I've now read the eleven first parts and it is really entertaining.

This is one of those games that I'd love to play but I think the user interface would be too much of an obstacle for me.

Give Gnomoria a try. It is similar to Dwarf Fortress, but is designed with accessibility in mind. While not as deep or feature-rich yet, it should be a pretty good way to get used to the gameplay that you would find in Dwarf Fortress.

Glad to hear someone catched the fish so to speak.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rh4qzP-qoGY

Just of an example of different kind of graphics pack to dwarf fortress - skip some 4mins ahead and goes isometric.

I have to admit that when I played DW there werent any graphics pack yet, but i am going to try out some of them eventually.

...this is the most epic game after all -> In how many other games your dwarf minion can decide to kill his friend and make artifact dwarf skin boots of his hide? Well that, and whole lot of other stuff has happened ;)

Anodyne could be labeled a metroidvania-type of game, too (in any case it shares similarities with those, in that it's got an open world to explore which progressively allows you to unlock new areas etc.; well, it's kind of like Zelda). And it's currently on sale (for anyone who hasn't noticed the two other threads about it).

Aside from the ones already mentioned:

- Batman: Arkham Asylum and Batman: Arkham City.
- Darksiders.

I would say that none of those are Metroidvanias on account of them not being sidescrollers but maybe that's just me. I'd call them Metroidvanialikes (like how FTL is a Roguelikelike). :P

They are adventure games in where you explore a map with locked zones looking for upgrades, after which those zones come open. It doesn't need to be a sidescroller to be a Metroidvania game. What are the Metroid Prime games then?

Metroidvania like or not, I decided to go ahead and get it. I saw the other threads but for whatever reason never clicked on them before now.

3D first person games with metroidvania aspects. The definition of metroidvania doesn't magically change to accommodate whatever direction the Metroid series takes...

Anyway, you're welcome to call them whatever you want. I was only saying that I certainly wouldn't consider them metroidvanias.

"Metroidvania" isn't a real genre, so I don't why the definition matters. Metroid Prime is basically Super Metroid in 3D: platforming, shooting, nonlinear, open-world exploration, it's all there. Mario 64 is 3D, but that doesn't make it any less of a platformer than Super Mario World.

"Metroidvania" isn't even an accurate term since Metroid is the one started the open-world-platforming-adventure thing, and Rygar predates Castlevania II by several months. "Rygaroid" might be a more accurate term.