Metroid Prime introduced us to Tallon IV, a world quite unlike any other seen in a Metroid game. Here the environments were far more realistic, spreading across the planet instead of tunneling below it. Temples, laboratories, space stations, and open areas joined the dangerous cavernous environments that defined previous Metroid games. It was an involving world, with very intuitive level design and many things to do. Yet, as interesting as it was, some Metroid fans can't help but feel that there was something a little off on Tallon IV. Level design is somewhat of an art form. The best levels nudge you forward but never pull you by the nose, are challenging yet not frustrating, and always keep you coming back for more. Not to mention that they also look good. Metroid Prime manages to fulfill all these criteria despite its immense size. An optional hint feature (which old-school Metroid fans turned off as soon as they found out they could) helped keep the large areas from becoming too daunting. So if the levels were well constructed with a well balanced challenge level, what did they do wrong?
The Metroid formula: Part of it has to do with the fact that this is a Metroid game and as such should not play by the rules of other action/adventure games. In general, getting stuck and not knowing where to go and what to do is a no-no for modern games, whereas classic Metroid titles were liberally sprinkled with such moments. Each one had certain "what do I do next?" areas where you weren't quite sure how to proceed. Sometimes, it was obvious you needed a new power up, but other times things weren't quite so clear. However, throughout the years of play Metroid players developed a kind of sixth sense about this, somehow being able to feel when a wall was breakable or hiding a small passageway. In the absence of the scan visor, we discovered these things by bombing and shooting. With the scan visor, most of the 'secrets' were discovered by looking as
activating said device immediately revealed a plethora of icons
in the room. Sadly, simply looking is nowhere near as fun as
shooting and bombing, and it took away much of the satisfaction
that came from almost randomly discovering the right
passageway or cleverly hidden secret. While the visor was a
useful addition to the game, the next game should be a bit more
reserved about what it can discover. If a wall is made of a
breakable material, mark it with a slightly different texture or,
better yet, give us an indication of how it can be broken after it's
bombed. If you find the icons used in Super Metroid and Metroid
Fusion to be too unrealistic for a 3D world, how about having the bomb reveal some areas of green or orange ore to indicate their cordite or bendezium core. If the wall is meant to be broken with the speed boost or screw attack perhaps some characteristic stress marks could do the trick. As a compromise between the old and the new way, these weak areas revealed by bombing could become scannable by the visor, but only after being bombed. I do believe that having the scan visor point us in the right direction is necessary at times. The freedom provided by the 3D environment does run the risk of being overwhelming. However, having it point us in the right way all the time merely detracts from what makes a Metroid game fun. Progressing through the game shouldn't just be about obtaining the next power up. A little ingenuity on the part of the gamer should play a part as well.
Secrets: This brings us to another aspect of the levels that faltered in its transition to 3D: the secrets. Past Metroid games had power ups hidden in every nook and cranny of the world, and only a very curious gamer that was willing to bomb and shoot at everything had a chance of finding them all. Metroid Prime takes an almost opposite approach to the power ups, this time placing most of them in plain sight and limiting you from obtaining them simply by virtue of which power ups you had or didn't have. This not only took away from the challenge and replay value of the game, but it detracted from what made a Metroid game fun and replayable: searching every corner of the world for hidden secrets. Even those that weren't in plain sight were made obvious by a particular buzzing noise that they emitted, one of the more dubious 'additions' to the game. I understand that 3D worlds offer a freedom that 2D does not. The limited nature of 2D games simplifies the exploration up to a point, which is perhaps the reason that the buzzing noise was added. It served to narrow the places where we would search for the item, since finding them in a huge 3D world could have become daunting. I must however, ask the designers this: Just what good is the X-ray visor then? In Super Metroid it served to reveal many of the game's secret areas, and the potential for this was wasted in Prime. It's not that there weren't some secrets that the X-ray visor, as opposed to simply the scan visor, allowed you to discover. It's just that they were too few. And it's not that the buzzing noise is a bad idea, it's just that in most cases it was so loud and the power ups were so near the main path in the game that it took the challenge away from discovering them. Past Metroid games had entire corridors and paths dedicated to harboring secrets, and finding these areas was a big part of the games' appeal. While I understand that constructing rooms and passageways separate from the main quest (of which I accept there were a few in Prime) seems like a waste of resources for today's modern and complex 3D games, having more of them would add immensely to the game. The secrets that were most satisfying to discover in Prime were those that were so well hidden as to be almost imperceptible, but they were too few.
Deep and wide: A look at the map from previous Metroid games
reveals another aspect where they and Prime differ. Mostly due to
necessity, previous Metroid games were labyrinths of vertical
passages interconnected by horizontal corridors. You generally spent
as much time jumping up and down tunnels as you did running
through them. This played no small part in selling the illusion of
tunneling through a planet's interior and exploring the depths of a
world. Metroid Prime, while punctuated with various vertical areas, is
mostly horizontal, spreading across the planet instead of into it. This
is understandable since jumping in first person games has always
been difficult, but Metroid Prime was possibly the first exception. The
platform elements in the game were intuitive and fun, thanks in part to
tweaked controls and solid level design, so why not add more vertical
areas to the next game? While there is something to be said for making a world wide instead of deep, as it conveys the feeling of exploring a larger area of the world, much of the enjoyment in past Metroid games came from the feeling that you were falling deeper into a planet's mysterious core, never knowing just what you could come across. Let's face it, finding a Chozo statue or strange inexplicable technology hidden amidst dark rocky passageways deep under the surface of a level conveyed an excitement that the more rational level design of Metroid Prime many times didn't.
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