Elements of gaming that I don't care for: Underwater levels

I have been gaming since there were home consoles to play. We got a Pong system when I was a very young kid so yeah, i've been around for a while.

In a lot of games we start to notice things that are constantly re-used in games kind of regardless of what the type of game actually is and one thing that constantly pops up in almost all games is some sort of underwater level. These have irritated me as far back as I can remember, with one or two exceptions.

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I'll get into what made me think of this recently but the first irritation at this kind of level goes all the way back to 1985 with Super Mario Bros. The underwater levels made you move slower, you had less control over your direction and the techniques you had to use in order to evade enemies were totally different that the rest of the game. I just don't like it and if that one irritated you as well lets go back in time to what is considered one of the worst underwater levels of all time on any console.

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The TNMT underwater level is something that lives on in history as being completely absurd. There was a time limit, if you touched almost ANYTHING it would damage you, and there were certain parts of it you were forced to go to before you could leave in order to deactivate bombs on a dam. It was absolutely maddening and when you consider that this game also had perma-death, this was an infuriating level that was so difficult there is a story out there about how the co-creator of the game couldn't defeat this level. Once again the controls were completely different on this level than any other level in the game. This wasn't towards the end of the game either, it was like the 2nd level of the entire game. Talk about a killjoy!

I think where I truly start to despise underwater portion is in modern day RPG games though such as the Horizon games as well as AC Odyssey which is a game I pop in and out of every now and then even right now.

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Thankfully, you don't have to go underwater very often and so far as I have played in the game there is only one location that I have encountered where going underwater is part of the story progression. When you are underwater you are realistically slow, you are a sitting duck to enemies for the most part and you also have to contend with running out of air.

One of the first games I played that really pushed the limits of my patience as far as how long one breath would last was Tomb Raider on PS1.

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On these levels the dev's gave you maybe a few seconds more air than you needed in order to survive and it required pinpoint timing in finding the switches that would open the various gates to get you to the other side. This took a lot of trial and error and simply memorizing where the switches were or you were not going to make it through. I don't know how many times I rage-quit because of this but I am sure it was a lot. No matter how much any of these games try to make the controls straight-forward I find myself getting turned around underwater so often and not even knowing which way is up. It's annoying.

At least in AC most of these areas are completely optional but I was talking to a friend of mine recently and he and I were talking about a game that for the most part, is an amazing part of the overall Zelda experience.

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There are certain levels in this that are mandatory in order to progress and the most maddening is likely the "Song of the Hero" section where you have a time limit and must get all these musical notes before time runs out and jesus, they give you like just as much as time as you absolutely need. I recall walking away from this game multiple times specifically because of this level.

Now I mentioned before that there was an exception for my ire as far as underwater levels are concerned and that comes at the hands of Rayman Origins underwater levels, which happen at multiple points in the game.

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These levels were beautiful, had amazing music, and the various levels differed. One was whimsical, the next was a bit spooky with the light-hearted music turning spooky and while the boss at the end of it was a bit tough and required you to kind of just remember how it was going to pursue you, it was kind of fun. After 3-4 times you were going to get through it anyway and you would never run out of breath.

In my mind this is the only time that I can think of where I don't just groan when presented with underwater levels... quite the contrary actually: I found the underwater levels in Rayman Origins to be some of the best gameplay that existed at all in that game and I was actually a little unhappy to be returning to dry land after they were over.

I think out of the decades that I have spent gaming that underwater aspects of games are something that will make me quit the game more often than not and there are very few exceptions to this rule o' mine. I could do without them entirely. What about you?