Monday, 12 October 2009

• Adventures With Flawed Game Design

  
  

  
  Ah, the endgame/boss battle. The point of destination for any and every gamer on Earth. Some of the boss battles or end games I've come across have been quite disappointing. That also goes for game endings, but I'll leave that for another post.
  
  My most frustrating experience with flawed level/game design would have to be the original Metroid. Now don't get me wrong, it's not Mother Brain herself that made the endgame difficult. Allow me to explain.
  
  Metroid is a non-linear game as most of you know. At different points in the game you get different weapons. Some of these include long-ranged lasers, ice rays and so forth.
  
  So while I was towards the end of Metroid in the area known as Tourian, I came across the creatures that the game was named after. I found it nearly impossible to kill them with the weapon I was packing. Since I was stumped, I went online to do some reading on what I was up against. I started to wonder if I was doing anything wrong. What I learned made me want to pull my hair out.
  
  I needed the ice ray in order to freeze the invulnerable Metroids that populated Mother Brain's lair. The problem with that was that I already used the ice ray and picked up another weapon in favor of it ages ago. One of the biggest flaws of Metroid is that there was no inventory to speak of. If you had one weapon but you picked up another one, that became your one and only. You couldn't switch between weapons.
  
  

  

  
  

  So I looked at the game map (thank you, GameFAQS) and I saw that there were actually two ice rays in the whole game, which I found to be peculiar since there's only one of every other weapon. Perhaps they put in two in order to remedy this game design flaw. Well, what would happen if a player picked up both before reaching Mother Brain's lair? Then they're screwed. That doesn't make any sense. This game sorely needed an inventory system.
  
  Anyway, so after I located the other ice ray on the game map, first i had to remember whether I even picked it up in the first place. Of course, I couldn't remember. So I chanced it, making the hour-plus journey allll the way back to where the remaining ice beam was. Lucky for me, I didn't pick it up earlier in the game. So I grabbed it, and then proceeded to make the trip allll the way back to Tourian. FML. :: shakes head ::
  
  Do you have any great stories involving flawed or nonsensical game/level design? Please share.
  
  

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