Environmental Station Alpha is the most Metroid-ass Metroidvania I've ever seen, but I am quite enjoying it so far. It's got a bit of fun genre-savvy subversion going on, and structures its screens in such a way that you occasionally go "wait, maybe I can get through this with my current equipment", instead of every room feeling like a Specific Kind Of Obstacle that needs to be defeated with a Certain Kind Of Upgrade (a.k.a. one level of abstraction away from just having keys and doors)
Also the grappling hook is satisfying as hell, which is really all a platformer needs.
