Exploration / Progression

[Jarno]

One of the things i liked about metroid, is that in the realy game you pass through quite a lot of different area's but you cant do must there because you lack the ability to open certain doors, or reach certain platforms, or other tricks to prevent progression.

An good example i remember is running through a glass tube in super metroids under water level, i think it was called Maridia. it looked really cool and it was a large level, but all you could do at that point was watch, you needed the (spoiler) super bomb to blow up the tube and access the rest of the area, i really like that sort to sight seeing, it makes you curious of what is to come

i hope time spinner has such things so it wont be to liniar

iv put this post up to some shared opinions maybe i am in the minority here i dont know

[cthomlan]

Super Metroid has a few places like that where the level design hints at things and teases you. There's the grapple lake east of the landing site in Crateria. You've just come from Brinstar with your newly-acquired power bombs and there's a yellow door. You open it and there's a missile on a pillar that you can't reach yet. This is actually a big deal because the room is configured so that the camera puts the grapple blocks on the ceiling into view.

There's the shutter gates when you first enter Brinstar (and Norfair). If you try to run through them, they'll close quickly and you'll run into the gate face-first. You need the speed booster to get through. (In both cases, speedrunners subvert this by utilizing the "mockball" to roll underneath quickly, thus acquiring super missiles or the ice beam early.)

In Metroid Prime 1, the very first thing you see that you need an item to get is on the Tallon IV overworld. There's a halfpipe in the room right before the elevator to the Chozo Ruins. (Technically you'll probably find the morphball tunnel or the wide double-jump only gap at the landing site. If you do a bit of climbing, you'll find a missile door too.) And then once you get up to the Chozo Ruins, you'll find another halfpipe in the main plaza (first big room). And you don't get the boost ball until you get to Phendrana, which won't be for another hour.

To expand on your Maridia example: The glass tube is a cool set piece, but there's never any indication that you can (or should) use the power bomb to break it when you first see it. Luckily, you can still get to Maridia through the Wrecked Ship. Though that route will drop you off at the bottom of the area, near where the glass tube is. It takes a keen eye to notice that there's a broken glass tube along the way, which is your only hint that they can be broken. You see the end result and work backwards to discover the action. It's a neat inversion.

[Jarno]

you seem to have a lot more experience with my favorite games then me , when i first saw the half pipes in metroid prime 1, it was far different then the rest of the environment, so i noticed that it had some sort of purpose, but i never figured out their purpose, until after i got the boost ball

an other cool example in metroid prime 2 was the some room in the underwater area, that was filled with water, you could powerbomb off a glass plate (that was crackled) and the hole area would drain, allowing you to progress, but it isn't until later in the game where you can revisit the area with the magnet ball, and use the drain as a half pipe, that one was much harder to find and took me a while to figure out

you just made me google up the 'mok-ball' i didnt know about the glitch, cool stuff

metroid game <3

i hope timespinner has some those area previews / teasers

[Charleon]

i hope timespinner has some those area previews / teasers

The biggest tease at the moment is in the end of screen 1 or 2 of the demo, there is a ledge before going down into the caves where it SEEEMS you should be able to get up, but without flight or doublejump it's impossible at the moment.. what's up there, i need to know!!

[Bodie]

Yeah, Metroid did a great job of teasing future areas. You guys talking about Super Metroid and Metroid Prime is getting me all nostalgic, haha. I'm definitely planning on doing some area gating-teasers like that, although we'll have to wait and see if I can make them as epic as the Maridia glass tube :3

[Jarno]

Yes iv recently been watching metroid video's on you-tube to get in the mood, for example: this 1h30 speed run, it covers a lot of the mechanics of the game. its even the secret rooms have secrets, and they have also got secrets, some secrets can be entered by shooting a few bricks but some actually require you to super missile blocks, power bomb blocks or as he calls it shine spark (id call it speed boost) through blocks that hang in the sky and are near impossible to find, i guess that where the xray is for.

and since those secrets are scattered around the map you have to come bank to get certain things later, since you don't have what it takes certain secrets

i think its importants to have light weight rewards in the game, if you look at metroid its not all about new weapons or suit upgrades, the majority of thing you find are just missle packs, this allows the developers to spread them all around without having to be afraid its to game breaking

[fulldepwell]

the only thing i hated about super metroid is the scan/x-ray you need to use everywhere to find secrets. it makes the game so slow you want to make sure you dont forget a secret passage but you end up scanning to whole game. that i hate a lot

[Bodie]

the only thing i hated about super metroid is the scan/x-ray you need to use everywhere to find secrets. it makes the game so slow you want to make sure you dont forget a secret passage but you end up scanning to whole game. that i hate a lot

What about in Castlevania? You can go through it and just attack every flat wall in sight, and I don't mind that. Although, I suppose the later 'Sight' perks from Eye monsters get around that, where they automatically reveal breakable walls on screen, without slowing you down. So, an improvement on the X-Ray?

[fulldepwell]

at least with castlevania you can just whip real fast a wall and if nothing happen you move on but in metroid you sit there , you choose your x-ray, you scan, you wait for it to scan everywhere you need, rinse and repeat. off course it's a bit harder to know in castlevania if you can break something but it was not necessary for the progression ( at least in the ones i have played ) i love finding hidden things but if i need to stop every 10 feet, then no. this is the reason why i love metroid 2 on game boy, but hate super metroid on snes

[cthomlan]

the only thing i hated about super metroid is the scan/x-ray you need to use everywhere to find secrets. it makes the game so slow you want to make sure you dont forget a secret passage but you end up scanning to whole game. that i hate a lot

You don't really need the x-ray scope to find stuff, though. There are plenty of hints in the environment, be it a different colored tile on the edge of the screen, the placement of a plant, a small indent indicating a hole, or a cracked tile. If something looks out of place, then there's something there. If enemies drop one specific type of item, then you probably need to use that item somewhere in the room.

The only time xray is useful is for a missile tank in Maridia. You can see the tank just fine, but you can't bomb the tiles around it. (You can but then you have to know how to do an infinite bomb jump.) You point the xray at the tank, see the speed booster blocks underneath, and you'll know that you have to shinespark up there. But that becomes its own problem: how do you shinespark up there? (Charge it up in a tunnel down below, find the plant that indicates where to stand, and JUMP.)

Metroid Prime (1 at least) is bad at this though. Generally you can sorta look for stuff out of place but there's a lot of repetition so stuff often doesn't look out of place unless you have the scan visor out. And then it only tells you something like, "this grate (which looks like a bunch of other non-destructible grates) contains trace amounts of radion." Well what does that mean? Better open up the logbook, read up on the lore of all your items, and see what item destroys radion. (It's missiles.)

And then the tutorial level shows you debris piles that you use the charge beam to destroy, and they reappear throughout the game. But then you get to the Phazon Mines and now debris piles can't be destroyed with the charge beam anymore! Gotta use power bombs.