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Friday 25 January, 2008
/GAMEPLAY/ Entry #2 (Super Metroid)
I got stuck after fighting a giant cabbage looking alien that was swinging wildly like a ball & chain. At this point I had become less creeped out by the game and music and such, more than anything really I forgot that I was actually playing this for homework. I truly became lost in the game.
As I gained more power ups, the game became much harder to navigate through. I had to remember rooms that I had visited an hour before, across the planet, that I had previously been unable to do anything in. My new Hi-Jump boots and Speed Run ability essentially expanded the world to three times it's size, I started needing to check my map, revisiting rooms, retracing my steps... I was immersed! As I gathered these items i realized that I was becoming more addicted to the game, I wanted to keep playing and not write about it, I wanted to fight the next boss so I could open those orange doors I see all over the place.
/DESIGN/
I had to go play the game more, for a third time, before I could really write about it's design. The game is designed to become more challenging as it progresses, growing in depth as your repertoire of bounty hunter gadgets increases. When you begin the game, you are limited in what you can do; running, jumping, shooting, ducking. Once you gain your first item (morph ball), your world of control is changed, all of a sudden you can get into very small holes and the gameplay has taken on a new level of complexity.
This is the pattern that develops: with each item you obtain, you must spend more time searching in each area for a place where you can use that item. As you collect more equipment, the more tricks the game can play on you and the more complicated the puzzles can be, in fact most of rooms require the use of multiple items. This is a very good quality in a game; it's addictive to find those hidden areas and furthermore it requires the player to think and act tactically, forcing them to be engaged. If the player is not thinking and is not being smart, they will not be rewarded, it's a clever game design trick.
Being on an alien world and being an awesome bounty hunter is also a cool concept, it allows for a lot of freedom in creature design, weapon design, and level design. These things come together to set the tone for Super Metroid, and what is created is a very serious setting, a dark and curious and most of all foreign place.
It's hard to think up anything really negative to say about the design of this game.
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