Hmm. For me, Metroid Prime has been an example of the *Legion* Stops Playing Approach to Backtracking.

A very interesting take on the subject Morrolan. I'll admit I hadn't thought of it that way before but I generally still despise backtracking unless significant changed take place like in Eternal Darkness. I personally wouldn't even call it backtracking because while you are technically visiting the same location, it's not at all the same anymore. I always found the Metroid games to heavily overuse backtracking in order to pad the length of the game (Corruption did this much less but still too much) and I find that if a game uses this mechanic, that's usually why, similar to how The Darkness used the mechanic of making you walk and take the subway between all your destinations when there was nothing to do. Games like Oblivion eliminated the core problem of this by having fast travel. I don't think anyone necessarily minds going back to somewhere they've been before to do something new so much as they hate the time wasted in making the journey through previously explored (and often now empty) areas to get there. Assassin's Creed began to bother me in this respect as well until I reached the point where I could skip the whole traveling aspect and just warp between the cities. I think backtracking can be good, I just wish developers would figure out more ways to do it than just to artificially extend their games.

I love games that rely heavily on exploration. So I don't mind backtracking as long as it serves a greater purpose. I believe games like Castlevania and Metroid handle backtracking rather well. I actually enjoy seeing an item out of my reach and thinking "Okay, I can't get up there yet... but the second I'm able to transform into a bat I'm coming back here and I'm gonna get that badass 2 x 4 and then I'm gonna give Dracula a Concussion de Belmont."

Totally agree on Eternal Darkness. The same-levels-different-eras was so much cooler than just throwing new areas at you.

The metroid type is fine, as long as there's quick travel. Unfortunately, it sometimes gets annoying as its often blatantly obvious what you need to do first to those familiar with the series.

Overall, really cool post.

How do RPGs or other adventure games fit in where you need to run around a certain area a bunch of times for fetch-it type quests? Such as, you bounce around between two characters (who are fairly far apart) trying to resolve an argument. I vote for annoying.

Metroidvania-style backtracking can be quite good, since you're going back, fighting enemies all the time along the way (but this time around, they're hopeless!), to get a fancy object thanks to your newly acquired bouncey-bounce power. So yeah, it doesn't have to be synonymous with crap.
Bad backtracking is in lot of RPGs I think, where you just have to walk back through old areas (now empty) to talk to the bloody quest-giver in order to get some XP. Plain boring. I remember stopping playing Morrowind abruptly when I realized I was spending more time walking back and forth (at that abhorringly slow pace) than I was doing interesting stuff. If there is ONE worthy thing they did in Oblivion it was to add fast-travel (and of course all the hard-core RPG players thought it was hard evidence that they had "dumbed down" the game).

As 1D noted, I haven't liked Halo 3's backtracking much at all and I agree with his guess as to reasoning. I actually liked the original Halo's backtracking in the Pillar of Autumn when you revisit it after the flood trashed it. That was kind of a cool way to do it.

Damn you for stealing my point!!!!

Au contraire...

... it is exactly what I meant.

o_O

My brain asplodes...

Anyway, the Halo series' approach to backtracking would probably have been a better example of a bad way to do it, but I didn't think of it.

I can see not liking the enemies in Half Life. They've got really polished, old-school AI.

Halo's backtracking jumps all over the place. Halo 1's backtracking is divine, a topological thesis on combat design. Halo 2 replaced backtracking with godawful elevator rides. Halo 3's backtracking was crap on a crap cracker.

Metroid's a special case. I don't mind backtracking in the 2D games, because the act of traversing terrain in 2D is inherently entertaining. It's the 3D backtracking that's a chore. The third dimension heightens the sense of exploration the first time you enter a new area, but the tank-like controls kill any fun the second time through that area.

The pretentiousness has nothing to do with something being, or not being, commonplace. Just because something has been a widely accepted crutch in game design for the past 20 years, doesn't mean that it is magically cured of its less than attractive attributes.

Most FPS puzzles I see are a manifestation of pretentiousness of the game designers, who believe that the game would "stimulate the player's brain less" if the puzzles were not there. In fact, these puzzles don't stimulate one's thinking at all. They require rote memorization, looking at tedious maps, blind luck, and trying to outguess the ego of their creators. There's no satisfaction to solving someone's "flood the tunnel and float" puzzle because it is painfully obvious that it is just an artificial, awkward crutch that is there because it supposedly makes the game "smarter" somehow.

So yeah... I wish they'd drop the pretense of being a thinking man's game, because their means of doing that are woefully poor. Just give me a juicy, fun, imaginative FPS. Those weight balancing catapults, timed key hunts, and exploration of pretentiously convoluted maps can go frak themselves.

I think you're making some pretty strange assumptions about the intent of the designers, however. I don't think a lot of people are under the illusion that those devices to make the game "smarter", they use keycards and puzzles and switches because they're an easy means of pacing the action and controlling the route the player takes. If you listen to the commentary tracks for the Half-Life 2 episodes, they talk about the extensive testing they do to balance the action and puzzling portions in order to avoid player fatigue and keep them in the game, for instance.

I'm going through DMC4, now, and I was reminded of this post. DMC4 is fun, but it is a perfect example of how NOT to do backtracking. Bleah. They're lucky they're so good at designing combat systems.

I love Half-Life 2 and don't care much for the Halo series. However, I do like Halo 3 and probably had more fun with it's basic shooty bang bang stuff than when fighting the Combine in HL2. But much of HL2 also involves fighting other stuff in interesting ways. Of particular note, the final battle in Episode 2. Anyone who got to that and didn't like it just hates video games in general. There's no other explanation.

I agree with 0kelvin, whatever it was he said.

I think a good rule of thumb is backtracking sucks when you're doing the exact same thing as before, and is fine when you're doing something somewhat new or different. Metroid Prime 2 was fun when going all over the place with new abilities to reach new places to do new things, but then when it turned into, "NOW GO EVERYWHERE TO FIND MAGIC KEY!" it started to suck a bag of lamps because you were sent really, really, really far in every possible direction, but there was nothing new to do along the way. You get somewhere you've been before and now there's a door that will open. On the other side, the key. Nothing else.

Yet much of the entire series is pretty much that, except that for the majority you're going across a short distance with a cool new weapon or ability in order to access an area you've never seen before that will provide you with all new challenges.

It was interesting to see such a relatively minor difference cause such a dramatic shift in fun within the same game.

I like physics puzzles. Especially the one in Episode 2 where you have to put the grenade under the big metal flap to throw yourself to the walkway above. Took me a bit to figure that one out.

I also like Portal. Some of those are physics puzzles.