The Divide is very much of its time, but look past the shaky graphics and odd controls and you have a solid isometric Metroid-esque experience.

According to interviews with the game’s designer, Ian Verchere, the intent was very much to make “Metroid, but in 3D”, and this aim shines through as you explore an inhospitable alien landscape of differing biomes, battling grotesque, partially mechanised creatures and gathering powerups for your armoured suit. Keep in mind this well before the “Metroidvania” boom, and in fact The Divide would sit well in the modern indie landscape as a short experience with chunky polygonal graphics… but when it was made, it was cutting edge, not a throwback.

Because it was so pioneering in the field of 3D games, it clearly invented its control scheme from scratch, and many of its conventions… did not become standard, let’s say. It takes some adjustment to figure out all the functions of your Terragator mech: switching between weapons, strafing, cycling through the available aim angles, shoot is on triangle?, swapping between the available camera angles. It doesn’t help that the hitboxes for enemies can be a little off what you’re expecting, so it’s harder than it should be to hit everything, especially flying critters.

So combat is tricky but a lot of the time can be skipped. The platforming… is also tricky, and plummeting off a moving tile at the top of some of the large, vertically aligned rooms can be devastating. The boss fights, probably the most inventive and enjoyable part of the game, are suitably challenging (if occasionally cheesable) and make it feel worthwhile to explore and kit yourself out with all the health and ammo expansions you can find. Other upgrades are required, such as the dash and double jump(!).

Being a PlayStation 1 game, The Divide features FMV sequences at the start and end, which are quite dark and moody. The story has your spaceship (the player character is an alien that you never get a good look at) launching exploratory probes into a chasm on an uncharted planet, which has unforeseen and disastrous consequences for the local ecology. Your goal is to salvage the probes to end the rampant mutation of the local life, and locate your missing partner who was dragged off by a vengeful creature. The ending presents you with a simple moral choice, the context for which seems to come out of left field, but it doesn’t matter because the grim voiceover sets a satisfying tone.

The Divide is worth checking out, especially since it’s relatively short. Despite the clunkiness that pervades the experience, the developers certainly achieved their ambitious goal in my eyes, which was to attempt to capture some of what made the Metroid games special, and translate it to the third dimension. In particular, the initial (post-tutorial) segment where your character is ambushed and wakes after a cryosleep of unkown strange aeons, then stumbles around in their damaged suit until the first upgrade restores the full function of its legs, will stick with me for some time. Cool stuff.