Metroidvania's got a nice cling to it, though. so does First Person Shooters, Platformers, Role-Playing Games, etc. Exploration-Platformer is clumsy and doesn't roll off the tongue, either.

plus, it gives the impression that you're gonna play a platformer, while the gameplay, while indeed having platforming elements, might not follow that, strictly. like Metroid Prime, that's enough to call it a Metroidvania style of game, but it's also got the well-known, you know, FPS-aspect to it, even though that's mostly because of how you control the character in First Person. i might be in the wrong calling it that though.

anyway, Exploration-Platformer is a clumsy word compared to Metroidvania, which is much smoother. another good candidate might be to call it an Adventure game, i guess. that makes more sense... right?

Metroidvania's got a nice cling to it, though. so does First Person Shooters, Platformers, Role-Playing Games, etc. Exploration-Platformer is clumsy and doesn't roll off the tongue, either.

 

plus, it gives the impression that you're gonna play a platformer, while the gameplay, while indeed having platforming elements, might not follow that, strictly. like Metroid Prime, that's enough to call it a Metroidvania style of game, but it's also got the well-known, you know, FPS-aspect to it, even though that's mostly because of how you control the character in First Person. i might be in the wrong calling it that though.

 

anyway, Exploration-Platformer is a clumsy word compared to Metroidvania, which is much smoother. another good candidate might be to call it an Adventure game, i guess. that makes more sense... right?

Alrighty then. Open-world explorer or Open-Worlder for brevity. That better?

I'm of the opinion that the semantics behind genre names is a futile battle. People come to know a game or genre by a specific name and it's impossible to try to call it by anything else without confusing people or making it sound awkward. Then there's games that don't identify with any one genre and then people argue over what it actually is. Zelda, for example, is often said to be an RPG but others will say it's Adventure. People just don't seem to want to acknowledge that some games blur the line between two genres and you can call it any one of those things. Fallout 3 is another example where people will say it's a shooter while others call it an RPG when it can technically be played either way and has elements of both that mix so well you can't just call it one and be done with it.