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Sunday 13 January, 2008
GAMELOG #2
GAMEPLAY
The morph ball returns to Metroid Prime 3. The morph ball ability tucks your character into a sphere, pushing the camera out to third person and adding a new puzzle/platform element. While in this mode, you can roll around and leave up to three small bombs at a time in your path. Stopping on top of one of these bombs allows you to hop while still in the ball form, and certain switches are activated by rolling into a receptacle and planting one of these charges. They managed to do at least one really cool, new thing with it this time around, which was forcing the character to fight while rolling around in a pipeline, foreshadowing the following boss fight. However, they also failed to realize that some players may not be familiar with the series. A handful of times I found myself thinking that someone who has not played any Metroid games before might not recognize that a round switch, or a crack at the base of a wall, are asking to be detonated. The only explanation I recall with regards to the morph ball told me that it can fit in small places and hit certain, ambiguous switches.
The grappling hook also returns, after being added only recently. It's more of a beam than a hook, allowing adhesion to a larger variety of surfaces without the audience jeering about physics. The nunchuck attachment is cast forward to deploy the beam, and jerked back to withdraw it. This beam adds a platforming element, swinging between ledges, as well as combat and exploration features. It is capable of yanking enemy shields away, and pulling statues and blocks from walls. It opens a creative and curious thought process in me, because now I know it is good for more than swinging, and I wonder what else they may have me use it for. Combined with the smooth, interactive feel of actually throwing and retracting it, the grappling beam makes a nice addition to your arsenal.
A new feature is Hypermode. It takes some of your life and adds a temporary boost of firepower. This is needed to destroy certain resilient obstacles, but can be used any time. At the moment, it seems like no big deal, but certain things have hinted that later, you may be able to go beyond the "safe" time limit, but put yourself at risk of corrupting your body with the substance that fuels this added power. This clearly connects to the title of the game, and makes me very curious about its potential later on.
Falling is a big issue when platforming. The common result is death or major setback, and this is something that tends to frustrate me when platforming from a first person view. The player can never actually see their feet, and shouldn't be looking down anyway. In Metroid Prime 3, I fell, and I was devastated until I saw that it took me right back up to the platform I fell from, without freezing time, sending me to the entrance of the area, or killing me entirely. At that point I was thrilled. This feature is something you can't exploit, as you don't recover any health or ammunition from it, nor do the enemies that may have been near you disappear. Also, it does not force you to repeat content. I think this was a very smart decision.
DESIGN
Primarily, I would like to vent about save points. They are few and far between. Even though they make sure to put one before boss battles and at the start of each zone, so much time is spent in each area, that you could potentially play for an hour without seeing one. If worst comes to worst, the player can usually run back to their ship and save there, keeping the puzzles and upgrades they have finished and found, but spending some time running through empty, pre-cleared areas. I was unfortunate enough to find one spot where this was not possible, right as I wanted to shut off the game and have dinner. It was impossible to go any direction but forward, as I could not yet swing across large gaps, while behind me was a gap, and in front of me I was lost. I eventually figured out how to proceed, but it took me an extra ten or fifteen minutes while others waited for me to finish. After playing games with Quicksave features I see no reason for this to happen. Quicksave is something implemented in Fire Emblem and lots of RPGs, which allows you to quit at any point, and resume at that point, but once the game is resumed, it behaves as though you have not saved since the last "official" save point. I think something like this would have helped me enjoy this game at least a little more.
A major element of the game is finding new upgrades and weapons that allow you to open doors that you previously could not. Going through the first couple planets I see doors in passing that I currently cannot open. However, there are probably fewer of these doors than save points, so I'm doubting that I will ever return to these places to seek out these doors for the single health or ammo boost that most likely lies behind it. There is certainly a spirit of exploration in this game, and I love discovering new things, but the environment is so vast that I would have to lean from explorer to completionist if I were to ever return to places I had already seen and explored for a small and unnecessary boost.
Doors and hallways are key limitations in this game. They separate areas, giving each one an isolated feeling, and allowing them to take on a theme. I find they usually feel like either a puzzle (if there are switches, morphball paths, and blocks), a platforming trial (given lots of ledges and things to swing from), or an arena (with open space, some plateaus, and nowhere to fall to your death). This distinction is usually helpful getting the player thinking in the right direction about how to proceed. Hallways are the relief gaps, sometimes with small enemies but usually containing a room with a health or ammo boost, or a save point.
The environment is an interesting combination of technology and ancient civilization. Despite the colonization of other planets, humans seem to be absent from most of the places the player is sent. Instead of a bunch of cities and modern influence, the player sees the ruins of ancient cultures, and wild creatures all over be them hostile or ambivalent. With the feature of the scan visor (and an interest in the background of the game) the player has the option of finding out a lot about what happened on each planet that left it the way it is. The scan visor is a feature that lets you scan objects for a description of what it is, and its function, but can also be used on artifacts to find some story about the culture.
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