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Friday 9 February, 2007
Game Log #4 Session 1
For this forth installment of my game logging sessions, I chose to play Super Metroid for the Super Nintendo. This game is one my all-time favorite games because it has one of the best reward systems, level designs, and boss fights. However, Super Metroid’s reward system owes much of its due to the original Zelda series. With that said, after the introductory battle sequence with one of the last bosses of Super Metroid, you explore your way through the Planet of Zebes. In order to gain access to specific areas on the planet, Samus must obtain various power-ups, abilities and weapons that open colored doors. The first of these rewards are the infamous morphing ball ability and missile powerup. One thing that surprised me, playing Super Metroid again, was how decontextualized the story was, in a way. Sure Samus is a bounty hunter in search for a stolen metroid larva, but during gameplay, none of that matters and the game is not dependent on the narrative arc of the story. The only actual character that has space for development is Samus, who only develops as a “body” because of the various power-ups and abilities the player can gain. One a player is immersed in the gameplay, it becomes easy to forget the primary objective of the game, to find the larva. Part of this is probably due to the ambiguous introduction to the character of Samus and her mission objective.
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