Super Metroid Part 10 - Interesting Curves, and Some Less-Interesting Norfair

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         Last week, we took a look the lair of the miniboss Kraid. The area's tight corridors and linear path served as a good foil to the open exploratory areas we had been through so far. With the Varia Suit in hand, we can now explore some further into Norfair and see what awaits in the fiery depths.


          The Varia Suit provides immunity to the heat-damage rooms we came across before. However, since we have only ever seen two of them so far, getting the suit doesn't really feel that major. In fact, it only opens up one pathway, making it overall feel pretty useless. It's an artificial upgrade that only unlocks one lock, and in fact, it seems quite arbitrary. You're exploring Norfair when you obtain the high jump boots. Then you have to return to Brinstar to use them to gain entrance to Kraid's lower. Once you reach the end of that area, you then have to backtrack through the entire compound, and return to Norfair where you originally started. It seems more ridiculous when you look at the map and see just how back-and-forth it is.

         It seems interesting that the developers would design this part of the game to flow like that. It seems meaningless to have your player, in the middle of Norfair, go on a side-quest to get a new item, and then return right back to Norfair. One could argue that since the developers were busy inventing the Metroidvania genre, they didn't have the experience to know how much players dislike backtracking. I think that's definitely part of it, but I also think that the developers did this because they ended up working themselves into a corner. To explain what I mean, I need to explain Interest Curves.


        An Interest Curve is a way of measuring how engaging the general structure of a game is. To make one, all you have to do is plot the games moments on a timeline, and give an approximation of how interesting they are. As an example, here is a popular interest curve someone made for the first Star Wars (spoilers ahead, if you somehow don't know the plot of Star Wars)

        Notice how it is all bumpy, having large peaks and then lesser valleys. Each peak is a climactic moment, and then the valleys give the audience time to relax a little and get prepared for the next climactic moment. The peaks get progressively higher and higher as the movie builds up to its most intense moment: the climax. The same kind of curve applies to video games, and it is important for games to keep their audience engaged with similarly exciting curves. I went ahead and drew my interpretation of what this part of Super Metroid would look like if we didn't have the Kraid fight:

        Notice how after getting the Super Missiles, things reach a kind of lull and don't really go anywhere else. There is just a lot of quiet exploration, with only a couple little diversions. We don't want our curve to flatten out like that, players would lose interest. Notice what the curve looks like with Kraid:

         Suddenly, our curve gets a lot more interesting. The fight against the epic and giant Kraid gives our curve some much-needed variety, especially since it is our most climactic and spectacular encounter yet. The developers most likely noticed that the game's interest curve had gone a little flat, and decided that now would be a good time to fight the game's first (and most visually impressive) boss. I'm sure that the developers had the vision for this immense, giant-sized Kraid fight well before now, and they knew that the player needed the high-jump for their vision of the fight to work. So that is most likely why you need to do the little backtrack dance with the High Jump Boots to go fight Kraid. And as we see what comes ahead, it will be increasingly obvious why the game needed something big to recapture the player's attention right here.


         Now that we better understand some of Super Metroid's structure, it is finally time to explore it further. Returning to the only hot room we can progress in, some quick bombing will reveal the way forward.

         

         For a bit, you just progress through linear challenge rooms that introduce you to lava and all the threats that come with it. Imagine this game's water physics, except you constantly take a lot damage as long as you're in it. Despite the challenge, things are still, literally, straight-forward, until you reach a room with a very different look.

        This room alone is a bit of an enigma, it has an upper level just out of reach of your jump, and the ground level here has all sorts of weird twisty tunnels. Some bombing can reveal a path to a cleverly hidden missile tank, and you can also find a way down through the tubing.

       This whole room, feels a little tricky and twisty, and it sets a really good precedent for what's to come. From the moment you enter this room you can feel lost, due to its multiple dead ends and the fact that it has no direct way forward. Super Metroid begins to show some of its true colors in this moment, because there are multiple paths out of this room, and they all branch and dead end in different ways. It is really easy to get lost in the following section, simply because of how many dead ends you run into. They aren't conventional gaming dead ends though, just gates you don't have the power to pass through yet. It results in a section where the player feels overwhelmed, which is pretty intentional. Despite this, it is still pretty hard to get stuck due to the constant dead ends, so it works as a pretty good illusion, tricking the player into thinking they are getting lost and turned around, without ever letting them stray off the path.

        Eventually, you'll end up where you need to be. In this case, it is a long hallway full of crumbling blocks you have to run over. We see the game pull a familiar trick here. Odds are, you will first try walking over these blocks normally, only to end up falling into a pit. Once you climb out, you will be reminded that you have a run button, and then proceed to use that to cross this room. This little segment serves to remind the player that they have a run ability, and remind them of what its power level is.

       And the reason it's doing that is because...

        Immediately after, the game gives you the speed-booster. Once again it reminded you of your current power so you could feel the increase given by an upgrade. However, once you get the booster here, the room starts to flood with lava. You have to run out, and then run back along the straight hallway back to the door before the lava gets you. As you run, you'll notice Samus is starting to go faster and faster, until she's flashing blue (not pictured here), with speed trail of ghost images behind her.

        The lava is perfectly timed so that running with the speedbooster let's you outrun it just barely. It makes for a really cool set-piece moment. More importantly, though, it is a really clever tutorial. The speed booster is tricky to teach, because unlike the rest of the items, its use depends on the environment. You only activate it if you run long enough down a stretch, and how do you convey that to the player? Here, it is set up perfectly. The first run the long hallway teaches you to sprint down all of it. That sets up the moment so that when you see the rising lava, you know you have to hold sprint all the way down to get back. The lava forces you to. And when you do that, the speedbooster kicks in and you get to see exactly how it functions and figure it out. It's a really clever moment that combines spectacle with tutorial, and makes a moment players won't likely forget.

        

         That's all this time, so until next week, here are some key points from all of that.

Key Takeaways:

• An interest curve is a way of measuring how engaging a game's structure is
• An optimal curve is not a straight line, nor one that continuously increases; it's one that has peaks and valleys
• Moments of quiet and inaction give the player time to think and unwind, but make them last too long and that begins to shift to boredom.

Super Metroid Part 9 - Kraid, and a Lot of Talking

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         Having discovered the fiery caverns of Norfair, and obtained the vital high jump boots, it is time for Samus Aran to have her first climactic battle. Before we get there however, players still have to climb out of Norfair to reach the strange lair we found last week. Such backtracking isn't usually noteworthy, but having to climb back up the area's shaft gives players a perfect taste of the power of the high jump boots. Before, shafts had to be taken slowly, and jumps had to be precise, as all the ledges were placed almost exact jumping distance from each other. However, with your radically extended new high jump, it's possible to breeze through these vertical climbing segments without any fear of missing or falling. It is an incredibly freeing experience, and is one that really shows how useful your new ability is.

       

   
        It's funny in fact, just how big of an impact this tiny change makes. You would think that in a game all about gaining epic power, the most important upgrades would be the most outrageous ones, the ones that turn you into an unstoppable powerhouse. Yet instead, the high jump boots feel like one of the most freeing advancements in the game. Looking at it analytically, we can see that the high jump really only serves two purposes:

• It lets the player jump up to ledges they previously couldn't reach
• It gives the player a boost to their general mobility

          One of these enhancements is an example of artificial growth while the other is an example natural growth. Sorry for making up my own terms right there, but they seemed fitting and I really wanted an excuse to put things in bold. By "artificial growth" I mean that the upgrade exists solely to overcome artificial barriers that the developers put in place specifically for that upgrade. Consider the first purpose of the high jump boots, and pretend it is the only one that exists for a second. The high jump would only exist to let you jump up to high ledges, and those ledges only exist to halt your progress until you can jump high enough. Take away those gate-keeping ledges and suddenly the boots have no purpose at all. In essence, all the platforms that you couldn't jump up to before functioned as locked doors, and the high jump is the key to those doors. Think of HMs in Pokemon. When you gain the move cut, the only thing it lets you do is chop down specific trees that block your path. Outside of those trees, the move is entirely useless; that is a very artificial enhancement, and the trees are like locks and cut is the key for those locks. When a player grows artificially, it means all they really obtain is a key for an artificial lock.

         Contrast this to the "natural growth" that occurs now that the player has heightened mobility. Natural growth gives players an inherent enhancement to their character as a whole. Samus' base move-set is better due to the enhanced jump height. It is easier to move around, and the act of moving feels more fluid. This natural growth doesn't overcome any fake barriers that the developers put into place, it just makes your character better and gives you more options.

         But it probably feels really silly to break the boots up into two functions like that. I mean after all, those "purposes" I described both really just mean you can jump higher. There is no way to separate the two, yet they are two slightly different purposes. Let's use something that's a bit more obvious as a better example. Take your missiles. They too can be broken up into two, much more discrete purposes.

• They give increased firepower against foes
• They can be used to open red doors

          Looking at this, it should be able to very easily discern which one of these provides natural growth while the other provides artificial. Having extra fire power is great, it gives you more options in combat all the time, meaning your character's abilities are enhanced from this, making it natural growth. Yet the red doors offer no expansion to your character's abilities or move-set. They don't do anything besides lock out players that don't have missiles. They are an artificial barrier, and the missiles' ability to open them is an example of artificial growth. That should be a much clearer example than the high jump boots could ever be.

         Don't be fooled by how superior natural growth seems to artificial at first. Even though giving the player new tools to use and play with is more fun and interesting than giving them keys, there is still a need for both. Metroidvanias, in fact, need forms of artificial growth most of all. Their worlds exist as labyrinths that slowly expand as the player progresses. In order to do that, they need locks and keys to keep players out of certain areas. The problem only comes when an item or upgrade is solely artificial.  In Metroid Prime 2, for instance, one of the upgrades you can collect are language databases. These let you open different alien doors. And that is it. When the player collects one of those, it is only useful for a couple doors, and outside of those the upgrade might as well not exist. That is a boring upgrade, and the kind one would want to avoid in a Metroidvania game.

         That was a whole lot of words for literally no gameplay progression, but that is the way of game analysis. There's no point in talking about the action if you don't talk about why that action exists and what decisions went into it. At this point, we can now enter the strange blue area, which turns out to be the lair of the game's first boss, Kraid.

         Kraid's lair is a mechanical base full of tight metal corridors. Fittingly, it serves as somewhat of a test over the pathfinding skills you have learned so far. There are a lot of hidden passageways and destroy-able blocks that must be revealed using your bombs in order to progress. All of the rooms appear to dead end at first, and you'll have to use your sleuthing skills to figure out what part of the environment to blow up. It really works well to make the area feel like some kind of maze, as you always have to figure out the path forward for yourself. It also feels very different from the areas you've explored before, because this is your first real dungeon area. A "dungeon" is an area in a game that serves as a self-contained challenge with and end goal. It's an area where once you enter, your goal is to beat that area, and you don't go anywhere else until you do. Kraid's lair exists as a series of challenges leading up to the boss. It is an area where the focus is on progression, and not exploration. 

         Near the end of the area, you'll come across this strange green room full of space pirates. The pirates in here are the very same kind you found earlier in the game, but they will seem like so much less of a threat now that you are way more powerful. It is a moment that shows really how much you've grown already. But as you progress down the long hallway, suddenly spikes from offscreen begin to fly at you. Having to defeat the pirates while dodging these spikes becomes a lot trickier, making sure that this room isn't just a cakewalk. Once you make it a bit further in, you find the source of all these spikes:

        

        It's none other than the boss Kraid, looking quite upgraded from his original appearance on the NES. Surprisingly, however, he only takes a few missile hits to go down, really strange for the area's boss. When you pass through the door behind the beast, the one that you assume will lead to a reward, there isn't one there.

          Instead there is just another room. This one offers one of those infinite enemy pipes that lets you refill on health and ammo, which is probably much needed by now. However, should you notice the strange gap in the ceiling above you and try to shoot it, you'll find a path that leads to a station to fully refill your health and ammo. It's a balanced way to reward the player. Either way you can get yourself up to full health, but by noticing a secret, you can get there much faster. The presence of a refill station here does a lot to clue the player in on what's really about to go down. Most players could have assumed the "Kraid" they just fought was a decoy after it went down in a couple hits, but the fact that the game is prepping you now is like a guarantee that the real fight is still to come.

         The game throws in a dead soldier here to foreshadow just for good measure, and then you can tell things are really about to go down when the ground and wall textures change to this lifeless and foreboding gray thorny one. There is also the strange eye covering the door, which is a kind of mini-boss. You have to shoot the eye with missiles a few times to destroy the creature and get the door to open. It can often fire back with projectiles of its own however, making it a bit of a challenge to defeat. Once you do however, you can step through the door and enter the real fight of the area.

        The real Kraid is much larger than his doppleganger, and way larger than he was in the original game. Despite this, his weakness stays the same, which is his gaping mouth whenever he opens it. You have to jump to reach his mouth with your missiles, meaning there is an element of timing in the fight. Not only do you have to time your shots for when his mouth is open, but you have to time them mid-jump so they are at the right height to actually reach the mouth. Hit him enough times and Kraid will reveal that this isn't even his final form.

         He expands the room, and grows to be twice as large. Now in order to hit him you have to stand on these narrow platforms, which is quite difficult considering the new barrage of projectiles he throws at you. Overall, this phase ends up being much more frustrating than the first due to how many objects in the room threaten to collide with either you or your missiles. He's not terrible, and if you can aim well and use good timing, it only takes 4 super missiles total to end the entire fight. Unfortunately, due to the whole nature of the fight, getting those hits in can be hard, especially for a first timer. The platforms you stand on are above a spike sea. If you get knocked off by a projectile, you'll have to hit the spikes first before being able to climb your way back up. Kraid also moves back and forth, making it a very risky venture to try standing on the closer platform since at any given moment he could move closer and into you. It's unfortunate that such a colossal behemoth ends up being a bit of a cheapskate.

         However, once he does go down, the spikes on the floor will disappear and you'll be able to claim your prize. The Varia Suit will be very helpful back in the area of Norfair, which is where we will be heading next week as we start to wrap up our escapades in the depths of Brinstar.

Key Takeaways:

• Artificial growth is growth that lets players circumvent developer placed obstacles and nothing else
• Natural growth is growth that upgrades the player's character, giving them more options or increasing their power or moveset.
• It is often important to use both, but upgrades that are strictly artificial will end up feeling empty
• Upgrades that give the player more mobility will often be the ones that they value the most
• A dungeon area is one that exists as a self-contained challenge with an end goal. The player's goal is just to reach the end goal, and the area just exists as a set of different rooms to be progressed through.
• Knockback and narrow platforms are not two things that go well together, and they should be used sparingly because they often lead to frustration.

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