#snow levels

Ice levels are, like desert levels, fire/volcano levels and water levels, a staple of any self-respecting platformer, which is to say they are more omni-fucking-present than morons on the internet are. In fact I'm pretty sure the only reason you don't see them in the earlier Mario bros. games is because technology hadn't advanced enough to invent ice physics, which are like real physics but shittier.

                                 Not to be confused with this.

...Okay, so obviously that's a bit of an exaggeration. And that's one slippery slope that we don't want to go down.

Seriously though, ice levels of some kind are practically a given in any game which has 'worlds' of some sort. Actually, unoriginal jokes aside, sonic is one of the few platforming franchises which doesn't normally have any ice levels - it's certainly had a few, but compared to Mario or Kirby for example it isn't necessarily guaranteed. Of course, given Sonic's thing is speed, that isn't very surprising since sliding around a bunch isn't very conducive to that.

That's sort of besides the point though - I'm pretty sure that that's the only reason there hasn't been as many ice levels in Sonic as in other series. Even when they do do proper ice levels - and I'm not talking about the snow ones either, they're a bit different and I'll get to them in a bit - they rarely use the sort of ice mechanics you see in other platformers, essentially making all the ice a purely aesthetic thing. To use Sonic Unleashed as an example, the ice level there for the daytime sonic levels (I can't remember the name of the level; by that point in the game the horrendous night levels had made me give up) featured plenty of "ice" which wasn't actually slippery. Or maybe it was, but you were going too fast for it to make much of a difference, I can't remember. 

Regardless, there's an implication there that the reason ice levels are so ubiquitous is just as a generic aesthetic thing; that developers are including them because they're a pretty obvious level theme to have for the same reasons fire levels, forest levels, water levels (which deserve a post of their own at some point). And the problem there is that, being ice levels, ice physics of some sort is expected, and those usually being annoying, it just becomes bad both from a gameplay point of view and from a creative point of view.

Now obviously that's not universally true - there are plenty of games out there that do really great things with ice levels both aesthetically and in terms of gameplay. In fact although I was complaining about Mario and Kirby's overuse of generic ice levels, they actually are pretty good at doing it fairly non-obnoxiously, as they get around the whole ice physics thing by incorporating some sort of ice skating mechanic which overrides the otherwise slow pace of moving around on ice and replaces the slippery aspect with a constant momentum, overall making for faster than normal gameplay, and thus giving it an element of a 'break' from the usual without it being too different for it to be a negative. The fact that these levels often appear around the middle of the game to me suggests this is an intended effect.

Let's look at it in a little more depth with a quick comparison between Super Mario Galaxy and New Super Mario Bros. Wii.

The Ice flower is one of my favourite upgrades in the original Galaxy, and with good reason. In case you don't know, it allowed you to essentially walk - well, skate - on water by creating ice platforms underneath you as you moved. And it was fantastic. 

Why? Well first of all, I should point out that it was on a time limit - but it wasn't just a time limit that you had no idea of knowing the duration of, nor was it shown with a boring old countdown. Instead, when you picked it up, music started playing that sped up and which gave a very clear idea of how long you had left before returning to normal, without dividing your attention between yourself and a clock or something. Admittedly, this isn't strictly relevant to ice levels specifically, and nor was it only used with this power up (the fire flower did the same thing), but the first time this mechanic is shown is usually with the ice flower, at least on a first time through where the player is likely to play a bit of each galaxy before going back to them later to finish them off and is therefore going to run into the Freezeflame galaxy (where it first appears) before the the other areas it and the fire flower appear in. 

It's certainly no slacker in the actual power up part of it, either. Thanks largely to the ice skating mechanics in the Galaxy games, it's just downright fun to play as for one thing, especially compared to some of the other power ups in the game, which, while still good, are more slow paced (like bee Mario). The Ice flower therefore was a good way of offering a faster level, and also wan't a fucking spring.

There were also plenty of small, unique things that made the Ice flower shine even more - for example, right near to where you first get it, there are these little things shooting a small spray of water out which are too small for normal Mario to jump on to get to where you need to go. But as Ice Mario, you can jump on to them and because of the water, you create a platform to land on. It's a neat way of creating a platform that 'appears' only in certain conditions that still requires skill as a result of the momentum that you naturally have from skating. All in all, the ice flower is a really good example of doing an ice level well gameplay-wise, and the whole space setting makes for some unique aesthetic too.

NSMB Wii, although not so good in the aesthetics/uniqueness department (which it isn't very good at in general really, but that's not the point), is another pretty good case of using a power up to make ice levels not awful. Like Galaxy, this is mainly in that it makes moving on ice better by letting you slide around on it, penguin style. But there's more to it than that.

You may notice in that screenshot above that there's also a penguin doing the same thing Mario is - this is one of the really well executed parts of the power up as, aside from being fairly effective enemies, they serve to illustrate to the player how the penguin suit can be put to use. Again, this sort of design isn't exactly limited to ice levels or anything but it's still noteworthy and anyway that's kind of the point of examples.

The other thing though is that, unlike Galaxy (which is actually pretty easy in general, at least compared to the sequel), the game makes you work to keep it - a part of that is of course due to the chaotic nature of multiplayer and dying a lot, but even in single player, there are a lot of bottomless pits and other things to get in the way that make you lose the power up. In this sense, there's actually an almost sonic-like design in the sense that although the speed is fun and convenient, it's also risky and messing up can easily screw you over. Which leads me to my point - although the ice physics are annoying, they make you wish that you hadn't messed up previously and lost the suit so you didn't have to deal with them so much. Which is pretty great design because it gives you a good, obvious incentive to play well, and not just half-ass it.

Oh yeah and it lets you shoot ice balls as well - well not ice, more like magic glowy bullshit that freezes things - but who seriously gives a shit about that.

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The point is, incorporating an ice world or whatever just for the sake of it is not uncommon. And while I certainly don't mind the existence of 'traditional' themes - there's a limit to what someone can come up with that isn't completely insane, after all - when that theme involves a certain gameplay mechanic, it needs to not be an annoying one. In fire levels, there's fire everywhere; the lava, shit jumping out of the lava, enemies breathing fire, whatever. That can be hard to deal with for obvious reasons, but it doesn't really affect the way you move - ice, however, does. And that's the problem, which a lot of the time seems to get a blind eye turned to.

To show an example of how this can be done wrong, let's look at Rayman Origins. Now in general, it's a really good platformer in every sense. But it falls down in one specific ice level. 

Before that though it's worth pointing out that it does still do a really good job otherwise at not falling victim to the generic ice level theme - it takes 'generic ice level' and makes it interesting by basing the world on food, with one half being the ice or fridge (aka relevant) section, and the other half being a sort of literal hell's kitchen. For the former part it means that you see lots of liquids that look like various drinks, citrus fruits, waiter enemies... and so on.

In fact in general, Origins is really great at adding awesome aesthetic twists to generic level themes - such as its taking of the desert theme and adding digeridoos. But the one level I'm talking about is in one of it's 'chase' levels where the goal is to chase a treasure chest to the end of the level (don't ask) while trying to navigate various falling platforms and so on that act as a 'time limit' of sorts. Now in other levels, this is normally okay - hard, certainly, but rarely unfair hard. However, due to the ice physics, you can easily feel unfairly screwed over and hence frustrated, which is one of the worst things to have in a game. 

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Wow okay that's a lot of words, and we're not even finished yet. Maybe we should just cool off for a moment. (Actually I'm surprised I found it in myself to go that long without another pun. Huh.)

Seriously though, as you may have noticed, I've missed out something kind of big here... games which aren't platformers. Which is to say, the majority of them. RPGs, games like Zelda... really any game that has a variety of different locations - particularly fantasy games - tends to have some kind of ice or snow level.

Of course all of what I've said before still applies. But there are some differences - for one thing, 'ice physics' is often a lot less of an issue, and not at all in most RPGs and so on. At most, you might have a few of those sliding puzzles like in pokemon often does, but you can't really make much of a case for those being detrimental to gameplay. 

In fact at this point we enter more of a grey area, as a lot of the time it doesn't have to make a difference. In RPGs again, at most it may affect the types of enemy you'd be expecting to see, but although there's a point there about enemy variety and unoriginality and so on, that's more to do with the problems that RPGs in general can have, so we'll just have to let it slide for now.

However, for games like Zelda, there is much more of an impact. Ice physics tend to be present again here, although the problems there tend more to manifest in regard to fighting enemies, and even then they aren't so bad. In fact I'd argue that using ice as a general theme for an area works a lot nicer here than in platformers on the basis that it can make for some interesting puzzles and enemies, like the Chilfos (those sort of ice-skeleton guys) and Freezards in Twilight Princess. 

In fact Twilight Princess generally does a pretty fantastic job of an ice/snow themed area - I'd argue the best out of all the examples I've shown.

Let's start with the very beginning - when you first enter the area for real after doing some small quest to do with a fish, it's pretty atmospheric. The music's all quiet, and you have to deal with the fact that the mountain the area consists of has blizzards that push you back to the beginning of the area, and you have to navigate in wolf form through the beginning in a similar fashion to the Gerudo desert in Ocarina of Time. Although this part of the area isn't all that unique, it's still done pretty well because of how atmospheric and mysterious it is.

Eventually, you get to the top, go through a small cave, and one of the first things you see is a huge Yeti - at this point, some context is necessary. The reason you've been going here is to find a fragment of the Mirror of Twilight, and the quest about the fish I mentioned earlier is relevant because you're told that there have been sightings of a Yeti appearing and getting fish from the Zora's domain nearby, and you're investigating that as well. So by this point there's been a fair amount of tension built up, and you're not really sure how things will turn out.

...And then you speak with the Yeti (called Yeto), and he's actually a pretty nice guy, if suffering from a slight speech impediment. He tells you he lives in this old mansion type place further along the mountain with his wife, who is currently sick and the reason he's been getting fish is to make soup to make her feel better. 

Then he suggests snowboarding (on a frozen leaf) to said mansion.

It's awesome.

Anyway, after that vaguely anticlimactic but ultimately fun end to the area, you arrive at the mansion, which it turns out is the dungeon of the area. It's a pretty cool one, too - in fact all of TP's dungeons are pretty awesome even compared to the rest of the series - as instead of being a generic Ice dungeon, it's mixed with a semi-ruined old mansion, which is where the unique aesthetic part comes in. It's also structured a bit differently - after telling Yeta about your search for the mirror shard, she tells you that it's in the bedroom, which is locked. So she tells you where to go to find the key, marking it on your map.

The thing is, being ill, she doesn't get it right multiple times, instead taking you to chests with various ingredients inside.

                  What Pumpkin?

It's worth pointing out that you fight the mini boss as a result of all these shenanigans. This is worth pointing out because the mini boss you just killed drops his Ball and Chain. Which you then pick up.

                   Hell. Fucking. Yes.

Admittedly, you don't really use this awesome item much again after this dungeon - one of the problems the game has - but for the dungeon at least, it's pretty awesome, without feeling too overpowered due to its weight slowing Link down and the swing itself being somewhat slow. But it's without a doubt pretty satisfying to use.

Anyway, throughout the dungeon you also do some pretty neat puzzles involving cannons, which are automatically awesome because of obvious reasons - like I said, Twilight Princess has some really good dungeon design, and there's no letting up here, which of course makes for an ultimately pretty awesome experience as an ice/snow level - hence avoiding the problem of an ice level that was thrown in for the sake of it and which suffers from poor gameplay.

Eventually, you find the bedroom key (aka the equivalent of the big key) and go to what's obviously the boss room with Yeta. What could it be?????

...Oh wait, it's just a bedroom, never mind. Yeta shows you the mirror shard you're looking for, and then... 

...Yeta goes insane, and then turns out to be the boss. 

To be honest though, it's... not that great of a boss battle. She transforms into "ICE CUBE FORM", a name I made up just now. Boss battles are not a particular strength of Twilight Princess, primarily because they lack difficulty, and this boss isn't as much sheer fun as Stallord was.

Still, it's not really that bad - it makes pretty good use of the floor being ice by having the camera give a more top down view so you can see the boss' reflection and hence avoid the attacks. It's not tremendously unique, but it's still a pretty good usage of a property of ice that tends to get considered a lot less than it perhaps should be in games.

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But all in all, Snowpeak ruins ends up being a pretty awesome example of how to do an ice level well, very well in fact. Which I think finally brings us to the end of this article. Thanks for bearing  (think about it for a moment) with me on this if you did, and uh, good for you if you didn't. I'll metaphorically see you all next week, all zero of you.