Not to take anything away from sewers (they're fantastic at what they do), but does every game really need a sewer level? Because as much fun as wandering through tunnels intended to carry human waste is, the gameplay is often repetitive and the aesthetic design is invariably drab. We've seen the sewer level in all its various incarnations: the puzzle segment, the platformer, the corridor shooter, the stealth sequence, the boss battle and so on ... but in each of these scenarios nothing has been more apparent than the fact that it is, after all, a sewer. The inherent problem of setting a level in a sewer is that there really isn't that much to do in them. Once you've exploited the tropes of turning valves and crossing bodies of water, the sewer is little more than a glorified tunnel; a more subtle route that characters often use for getting from A to B without attracting too much attention. Then there's the issues that arise from actually having to look at the damned things. Whether it's walls are made of cobblestones or concrete, the colour palette is always that same blend of dismal greys and dreary browns, scarcely illuminated by the level's few light sources. It's not that sewers should be luminescent menageries of colour that dazzle and excite our senses, it's more that game developers should be coming up with something else if they want to keep gamers invested in their titles.
