what is immediately notable about the metroid series is not the fact that it features a womon protagonist but the fact that it features a womon protagonist who is not othered from the player. jane pinckard (of game girl advance) has noted that in the marketing media surrounding the tomb raider series, the player is always being asked to "guide" lara croft or to "lead" her, never to assume her identity. this othering is based in the assumption that the player is male and is not interested in inhabiting a female role, and is aided by the presence of a detailed representation of lara on the screen (as opposed to a simpler figure such as puchiwara no bouken's stick figure protagonist).
metroid's samus aran also appears on-screen in detail, but the androgynous metal suit completely covering her body functions like the television screen of a first-person game - it is a mask behind which the player can insert her identity. metroid fusion, released seven years after the previous game, took a large deal of control over samus's identity from the player. in a series that previously told its dramas through unspoken narrative, fusion distanced samus from the player by giving her monologues.
this is one of many problematic choices fusion's designers made. exploration, an intrinsic element of metroid gameplay, has been streamlined to a a linear sequence of events to better service the plot. the designers accomplished this by eliminating all branching paths (abilities can not be accquired "out of order" as they can in all other metroid games), quarantining the player to limited areas of the game (so that she can only progress by moving through the game exactly as the designers intend), dramatically increasing the amount of damage samus takes from non-"boss" enemies (shifting the focus to action - running and shooting - rather than detailed exploration), and closing the majority of the gameworld for exploration until she accquires her final ability at the end of the game (until she fulfils the story progression to the designers' satisfaction).
but metroid zero mission, the follow-up, is a direct result of the experimentation the designers conducted in fusion. (some of zero mission also flows from metroid prime. particularly, the "cut-scenes." they are always placed on a bottleneck, such as an elevator ride between game areas - an event in which the player would not normally be expected to move - and show events happening elsewhere in a "meanwhile, deep within the bowels of tourian" fashion. they never usurp the player's autonomy, as scenes in prime do, by having samus move or act without player input.)
what fusion accomplished was the creation of a minimalist interpretation of the metroid gameplay as established in super metroid (third game in the series). the problem of that game was that parts of it were unnecessary or excessive, as were many 16-bit games of the era, lending to a general sloppiness. having to swap, one-by-one, between five different types of weaponry, a "run" button that serves no purpose until the player accquires an upgrade, a whole section of the gameworld - "maridia" - that exists only to pad out the game by acting as a repository for extra items (by zero mission's release, all of maridia's unique items - the "spring ball" and "plasma beam" - would be incorporated into other upgrades.)
these design decisions - the streamlining of abilities into other abilities, the elimination of unnecessary buttons (partly necessitated by its releae on the gameboy platform) - define metroid fusion and will shape zero mission. the speed boost is made automatic - the player will always want to use it wherever given the opportunity. special weapons are toggled through the holding of a trigger - missiles when standing, power bombs when in morph ball form. fusion made some errors in this process, such as assigning the ice beam, the most clever game mechanic in the series, to the missiles (the only items with nearly no navigational purpose, and thus best put to the use of fighting enemies - prior to fusion). but for the most part the result of these decisions was to tighten gameplay dramatically - and zero mission was the result of this tightening.
fusion's other major accomplishment - the task to which it sacrified so much of metroid's open, exploration-based structure - was to renew the series's storyline. metroid and super metroid were a closed circle (with metroid two - return of samus - in the middle). nintendo may have intended for this neat trilogy to be the series's entirety, as the next installments would not be released for another seven years. prime distanced itself from this story arc by positioning itself as an appendix to the original metroid. the events of metroid fusion's story comprise a literal rebirth for samus; they close the mythos surrounding the first three games, drastically change her appearance and equipment, and set her a course toward new adventures.
zero mission rewinds fusion's story. the story was mired in trappings that were highly problematic and leant toward a narrower pacing and characterization of samus that robbed the player of her control of the character. but the events of fusion also functioned as a set-up for further, original, samus adventures. structured as a remake of the original metroid, zero mission largely discarded that potential. following fusion and prime's simultaneous release, and following neither of them chronologically, zero mission has set the series adrift in terms of continuity. (the name "zero mission" defies attempts placing it numerically within the series.) while many of nintendo's miyamoto school games, such as the mario brothers and zelda series, mythologize their stories by continuously retelling them with refitted game mechanics, metroid has to this point been a series with a clear narrative flow.
the game's major attempt to create new gameplay - autonomous of the events of the original metroid, which the events of zero mission are based on - is the endgame. this "suitless samus" sequence contains the best and worst elements of metroid fusion: it replaces the melancholy of the game with suspense, restricts the player's exploration to a limited portion of the gameworld until a necessary task has been completed, and witholds from the player the ability she needs to complete her exploration of the planet until the very end.
though well done, this segment of the game stands shows the designers' uncertainty with where to take the series. clearly the series needs a new direction if it is to continue - this has been samus's third trip through the planet zebes. zero mission introduced few new gameplay mechanics, and used others to their fullest - the "shinespark," or charged boost jump, has been thoroughly exhausted. metroid fusion gave samus as much of a new direction as she could ask for, but zero mission's rejection of it may have placed it beyond reach. for as well-designed as zero mission is, it is also a cul-de-sac, and it remains to be seen if the series can escape it.
myst iv: revelation
when i start myst iv: revelation, i see two things in succession. first, the logo of cyan worlds, the developer of the original myst and its first sequel, riven: a light tune is played as my view drifts over an environment of simple shapes to a mountaintop. as the mountaintop becomes cyan's logo, ornate, detailed and inlaid with gold, the booming of an ominous note suggests a shift to a darker, deeper realm (the original myst was this to cyan, their first game not intended for a child audience). the second thing i see is the ubisoft logo: a quick, loud run through a flashing tunnel of bright white and purple lights, culminating in a stylized logo. cyan and ubisoft are very different companies.
while cyan was busy developing uru, ubisoft hired presto studios to create a sequel to riven and myst: myst iii: exile. the uncertainty and cautiousness of the designers to whom the series had been handed was clear not only in the game's title (more eager to market itself as a myst sequel than to establish itself as an original game) but in the degree to which myst iii was modelled after the original myst, as evidinced by the two major design flaws both games share: poor integration and poor pacing.
integration refers to the synthesis of puzzle and gameworld. myst's puzzles were arbitrary combination locks, such as a set of buttons with constellations engraved on them that must be pressed in the right order to drain water from a ship. the puzzles of riven, myst's first sequel, were perfectly integrated: every object and puzzle had a reason to be where it was. learning the local civilization's numerical system involves playing with a children's toy - designed to teach numbers to children - found in a schoolhouse.
the worlds of myst iii contain puzzles because they are puzzle-worlds, created by atrus as tests for his sons. this allows the designers to circumnavigate the problem of integration, but fails to provide the rich game experience that riven does. one of myst iii's worlds involves balancing weights and programming rotating platforms in order to move large marbles along tracks. in the world's final moment the player learns why she has been doing this - but until then, she is solving puzzles with no idea what her goal is. she is expected to solve them simply because they are there.
the problem of myst's pacing is rooted in what andrew plotkin (eblong) called its "star-shaped plot," referring to the game's linked beginning and ending but open middle. myst's midgame is comprised of a series of areas that can be completed in any order. they can be completed in any order because they are connected neither to each other nor to the larger game. the player moves laterally through a series of scenarios, and only once they are completed does the story develop and resolve itself.
riven had a progressive story, in which the player's actions drove the plot and promted events to occur which developed the story. note, though, that this did not force the story to develop linearly: events could be approached in different orders, from different directions, and the player would still see what she needed to see and reach a satisfying conclusion.
here again myst iii is modelled after the original. the game features a tight beginning and ending connected by a loose middle in which the player can solve puzzle-worlds in any order because they have no impact on the development of the game's story. the game also does little to advance the overarching story of the series, sharing only a tenuous connection to the original myst and failing to acknowledge the place of riven in its history at all.
fortunately, the designers of ubisoft's myst iv: revelation attempt to create a game that is closer to riven than to the original myst, although they are not without their failings - a "lights out" puzzle in a fireplace, for example, may be an homage to the original myst's endgame but is just as arbitrary. most puzzles are better integrated, and allow the player to discover their solutions by visualizing her goal. the devices that comprise the puzzles serve purposes, and not only challenge the player to understand the ways in which the game environments operate but illuminate the motivations of the characters who built them.
in pacing, too, the game is similiar to riven. the player is shepherded along a developing plot but is allowed to approach and explore different places at her discretion, though she must see the events of the plot in the order the designers intend her too. the means through which the designers enforce their control over the plot development is noticably contrived: characters the players will need to talk to simply will not be there until the player has been deemed ready to participate in that encounter.
also problematic is the game's implementation of "zip mode." first appearing in riven, zip mode allows a player to move quickly between places she's already been to - essential when elements of the same puzzle lie more than one click away from each other. in riven this was accomplished by moving the cursor over the place the player wished to travel to. if the cursor transformed into a stylized lightning bolt, the player could move there in one mouse-click. myst iii implemented zip mode in the same way, but at many points zip nodes were not properly connected - the player could zip directly from one location to another, but not back.
in myst iv, zipping is accomplished through thumbnails. as the player explores new locations, she accumulates a collection of thumbnail images of places she's been too - arguably centralized locations that serve as convenient waypoints. clicking on an image will bring her to that location. note that in riven's implementation, the player can only travel to places she can see from where she is - what zip mode does is remove some of the less necessary steps from the traveling process. myst iv's zip mode can potentially transport the player instantly from one side of a game world to the other. to prevent the player from using this system to bypass navigational puzzles between her current location and destination, images of places the player does not currently have access to are greyed.
this is problematic in situations where it is not clear why locations are inaccessible. early in the game i solved a puzzle i knew would have significant effects on other parts of the gameworld. i wanted to travel to a specific room which contained a device that previously did not work, but now should have. my zip thumbnails, however, were greyed for reasons that were not immediately obvious. resolved that i would have to travel there manually, i took several steps, and a bridge collapsed beneath my feet. the zip feature provided an unintended window into the designers' plot contrivances.
the other feature that changes the way the player interacts with the world is the addition of the ability to tap. the player's cursor is no longer a static image of a hand, but a living, moving, grasping appendage. clicking on an object that can't be held or examined will cause the hand to tap on it. this accomplishes a surprising number of things: it helps the player sense depth (the hand will merely wave at things that are far away) and texture (a huge number of sounds convey information on many different types of services), and also confirms that an object cannot be interacted with.
this contributes to player presence. whereas in other games in the series the player is a roving spirit, faceless and bodiless, in myst iv the player falls, slides, sails, climbs, is threatened by animals, dizzied by gas, abd approached by other characters. the player inhabits space in this game in a way that she doesn't in other myst games - though sometimes this means that control of her motion is taken away from her by the game.
the game makes two major concessions to player helpfulness: it gives the player a camera (as in traitors' gate) for recording useful diagrams and icons, and includes in-game hints. three levels of hints are available for each puzzle: the first merely nudges the player toward what she is trying to accomplish, the second explains how the elements of the puzzle work, and the third provides a step-by-step solution. more useful then the hints are the world maps that accompany them.
these player safety-nets have allowed the designers to create a gameworld filled with more complex and difficult puzzles. unlike the comparably straight-forward puzzles of myst iii, to solve myst iv's puzzles the player will have to look above, over and around devices, make sense of game environments, follow cords, synthesize knowledge. she must understand what she is trying to accomplish in order to accomplish it, and that makes this game more on par with riven then it is with its immediate predecessor.
