Sewer Shark, but that's only because the entire game is in a sewer. Then again, the entire game sucks, so maybe you have a point.

The only sewer section of a game that comes to mind is a small part of an instance in WoW. You go into the sewer if you can't bypass a door to the first boss. Really, the only point of that sewer is so rogues and engineers (the two types of players that can get through locks) have a use for that skill.

I wonder if Sewer Levels are just a holdover from the past when designers used the enviornment as a crutch because of hardware limitations.

If you think about it, sewers are just about the easiest levels to develop because they require such low poly count and variation. The shapes and textures are all the same.

I think it's a tired convention too, but it can still be used to break up the pace a little with above-ground settings (as long as they're used sparingly).

I can think of one series where sewers were a necessity: TMNT.

I don't have any problem with sewers. I don't see anything inherently bad about them. Like anything, they are a tool which can certainly be misused.

Agreed, sewers are universally unfun. I don't like drab surroundings, so I always try to rush through them to get back to where it's bright and colorful. Even in Prince of Persia I felt that the sewer section was merely bearable.

I swear, when I first saw the thread title, I thought it was a "defend" type mission in a sewer, and that didn't make sense to me either. Might want to change it to "Defend the use of sewers in games because I don't get them."

I think it's in the same vein as the hulking space marine, it's all video game cliches now.

Sewers/Dungeons have been overused, but were once necessary. When games took the turn from text-based to graphics, sewers/dungeons were needed because the afore-mentioned limits to graphical processing power and because gamers were used to drawing maps to chart their progress and sewers/dungeons were the simplest form of that.

Anyone who has tweaked Oblivion graphics settings on the PC knows the difference in framerates, even on today's rigs between indoor and outdoor environments, so in many senses, sewers are just indoor environments that are big enough to hold an entire level. Dungeons, mines, space ships/stations, underwater utopias, etc. are all ways of limiting the environment to meet level-size limitations.

As for sewers in contemporary games, I don't mind them as a throw-back. HL2 was probably excessive, but we still have sewers for the same reason people still role-play dwarves and elves. Nostalgia and fun. Sewers still work as alternate points of entry. In a sneaker game, if the front door is heavily guarded and the back door is locked, your options are limited to climbing in an upper-story window or going in through a sewer.

I'll grant that they are over-used and that I don't look for good sewer design in a game, but they work in many fantasy or post-apocalypse settings. The sewers to get to Srelock's hideout in STALKER had very good level design. The imperial sewers in Oblivion made for a great tutorial. I'm sure there are other examples, but until gaming platforms can regularly render outdoor environments at acceptable framrates, we will still need sewers, tunnels, mines, dungeons, aqueducts, catacombs, subway tracks, parking garages, etc.

Personally, I'm more tired of mines/dungeons as an overused excuse for limited environs than sewers, but I understand your frustration. Yes, Moria was cool and it probably the reason role-playing games were invented in the first place. Still, I've played it hundreds upon hundreds of times. I still consider a gritty urban sewer or post-apocalyptic sewer environment an fresh change from orcs in a cave.

I think half the fun of the sewer levels in Deus Ex was that they were very rarely forced on the player. I could go to the sewer, past the guards and bots, turn the bots to attack the guards with my hacking skill, pick a lock on a door, and get on with the game. Or I could pull out my silenced sniper-rifle, hotkey my belt-fed shotgun, keep a few rockets at the ready for bot attacks and go to town without thinking about sewers.

Agreed. There's something off about that bit. It just feels like it was forced into the game on some executive's advice. It's like a dance-off in the middle of the palace to defeat the vizier.

Sewers are basically the more modern alternative to the classic dungeon crawl.

At least in most modern games they are shorter that in Baldur's Gate. The mines in that game drove me insane.

But people, without sewers, how would Link get to Zelda in Link to the Past? Every castle needs a secret exit/entrance that the princess/rebels can use to flee/invade.

Or is that reason a little too litwank?

Indeed. How else are you supposed to sneak into Castle Krondor?

I find the notion that any analysis might conceivably be "too litwank" viscerally disturbing... and yet, in no small measure, arousing.

Indeed. What "adventure" will the hero in your food have?

You ask us to defend low hanging fruit level design? Here let me get snarkier. In an RPG where else are you going to find low level animals like rats to grind until you are prepared to trek out into the great dark world to become a savior, after epic quests killing lions, gathering shells, and taking letters from point a to point b.

That is the truth. Why are so many shooters set in nondescript offices and space corridors? How many fire and ice levels have you braved as Mario, Sonic, etc? How often in a racer do you have to suffer through that Honda Civic in order to maybe get a Mclaren?