Zelda Master Quest 3heart-shieldless challenge!

I recently started playing Metroid Prime again. I had a quick look on GameFAQs to see what sorts of tricks and secrets I could find, and I spotted a "Minimum Percent Walkthrough". It seems that, far from trying to get 100% items, there are people trying to get as small a percent as possible. Currently? 23%. If you know the game, you know that's very impressive. It uses all kinds of cheats and tricks to skip large portions of the game. After a quick look around, I discovered this was common for Metroid games. For example; Super Metroid's version of the guide is down to 15% (unless you don't mind using glitches, then it's 14%).

I also came across, on the TIG Source Forums, a procedurally generated Super Metroid like game, still in development, called Gentrieve. It got me thinking how it would be possible to do a minimum percent run through a game that changes every playthrough. In Gentrieve, probably to combat this, every room that you need an item to progress through is specifically designed so that you must have the item and there is no other way. This actually seems a bit sad, but completely understandable. With less rigidly designed levels, you risk a level being made that the player can use to accidentally skip parts of the game, which you don't want. However, levels made like this make you feel more railroaded, and it feels more gamey, like the place was made for you (which, of course, it was, but it always is. The idea is to make it not seem that way).

I have always loved the Metal Gear series (yet to play Solid 4, sadly). My favourite so far is 3. It is like the designers made a sandbox game that just happened to have a storyline. You can just mess around so much. Some of the videos of clever tricks and funny setups on Youtube are amazing. What they have done is create the game so that the player has a large scope for experimenting and arseing around, which is a game trait normally reserved for open world games.

What I love to see in games is scope for players to play the way they want. Linear games are fine, but freedom within the limitations is a factor that can elevate a game from good to great (in my view anyway). It's about creativity.

(To a certain extent, this also applies to competitive games, but it's a different kind of creativity, I think. Although, it's probably even more important there.)