Gaming Whatever happened to three lives and you're dead?

Just got to a 5 man boss fight in prince of persia. Managed it on my 7th or so try then died at a simple trap through no fault of my own, it didn't register the button press for some reason. Where did it put me? Back at the mother****ing boss marathon and I haven't been able to do it since. Not only that but its several rooms back. I have to run through empty corridors for no reason first.

So Ben, will I be more satisfied when I finally beat this awful boss part again and hail to the golden age of gaming or will I just be glad its over while going through immense frustration at the fact I've already beaten it before and it didn't save?

It doesn't help that it seems random as hell. I beat 4 guys without taking a single hit but the last guy owned me. I nearly screamed in angry lol.

EDIT: Did it. The last two levels (18 +19) have taken me 70 mins. The whole game only gives you 80mins :/

 

I talk about this problem in the article: your problem isn't a lack of saves, it's a problem of unfair and unbalanced gameplay, and poor input detection. Instead of saying "there should be more saves!" you should be saying "that fight should have been fairer and it's unforgivable my button press wasn't detected!" Extra checkpoints shouldn't be a cure for poorly balanced gameplay.

 

Alright, true. You win this round...

 

Ahh Toki. Thanks for that picture Ben! Brought back loads of fond memories

 

There are games that still have no save points at all.
This one for example.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgW6r-UG_iM
Its really fun once you get the feel for it

 

Perhaps rather than the simple save/checkpoint mechanic, future games will have the Heavy Rain model. The game had issues, but having a game that continues with failure, but has an effect on the ending and your final reward.

 

hardcore mode in Diablo 3 - thats 1 life and game over

 

Dark souls and it's friends say hi

Game doesn't do save points and if you die you going to recollect that corpse of yours

 

Giving players lives or even some form of death penalty for failing to defeat a particular boss or huge mob of foes is rarely a good thing and having to grind through that or repeat numerous times is hardly fun at all.

Let us fail even remarkably at that but give us another path or solution rather than just, oops you died, try again and again and .....

Let us be captured, held hostage, put out to ransom or any other reasonable game mechanic that allows us to continue and that also changes the outcome / storyline for us that also doubles up to give us replayability as well as other options for being able to deal with harder areas. Even MGS saw up captured and tortured and a chance to escape our confines.

Dishonoured is a new title yet to grace the "shelves" but does at least seem to offer alternative ways of dealing with situations. Blatant makes it harder to continue.

Why not give us a chance to escape capture, survive torture or even be rescued ourselves or even by a trusted ally who we then who something too and have to repay.

There are so many options than just having to replay a section simply because of failure. The option to save at any point tho should still be an option cos sometimes even the best of us have to suddenly return to real life.

 

I remember NES games when I was young (Mega Man...) which I simply never finished due to the lack of a save system. I simply couldn't complete them at that age, because they were rock hard, and offered no chance of a comeback.

Basically, I'm glad we have saves rather than lives. Gaming is often about the story, not just the satisfaction of beating the game.

 

On a nearly unrelated point - that link, whilst initially looking awesome for the games it purports to allow you to play, is compelte sh/te, as none of the games are available to paly, and I've clicked on over 15 of them so far... Such a disappointment!

 

To be honest I only tested it for Toki. It wasn't meant to be an endorsement for that site, just it seemed the most ad fee way to play the game (it's hosted many places but most seemed to insist you watched a 30 second advert before playing).

 

Good article. Thanks

My biggest complaint with game design is with games that allow you to customise your character. It's not that this is a bad thing but too many games give you options which later turn up to be dead ends or way underpowered. Even that isn't too bad unless there is no way to respec your character. This effectively leaves you with a fully leveled and equipped character that can't win the game. Saved games won't help much here. What is the answer then?:

1) Start over? Sorry, life's too short (/I don't have time for that).

2) Read guides and spoilers that end up spoiling the adventure? I'd rather not though this is too often what I end up doing.

3) Allow me to respec my character? This works but can break the immersion (and it's a kludge for a bad design).

4) Design the game with no dead ends / underpowered abilities? That would require more work from the game developers but is the best answer so far - and should be done anyway.

5) When my character dies (/I give up) allow me to create a new one that can pick up the story where the last one left it (you, a trained / already experienced warrior / ..., acquire an adventurer's journal ...)? That would require more work from the game developers (maybe not even too much if done right) but would be a fun option with all kinds of new possibilities.

couldn't agree more.

Funny I do the exact opposite: play through on normal (or even easy if I'm in a hurry or just not sure of the game) just to get a feel for the game. If I liked the story / atmosphere / game mechanics / ... I'll play through again on a harder setting and attempt to explore every nook and cranny in the game world.

 

Why would you not want to save a game? Why would you want to play the same broken part of a game over and over because it randomly kills you and you can't save? Do you like to leave your game running, maybe for days, because something more important came up like your girlfriend wanting sex and you can't save the game?

Having so few lives and so many random things that just kill you is what made manic miner and jet set willy annoying and got very little play from me. Nope if a game doesn't auto save and let me save and quit when I want I'm not buying it.

It would be diferent if I had no girlfriend and no job and just played video games all day maybe but I'm not a video games journalist, a child, retired or unemplyed but I think most people with money to buy games are none of those things.

 

Good article, have often thought the same way.

IIRC that situation also happened in Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory; the final level Kokubo Sosho had a part where if you failed at a stealth approach, you were captured and interrogated. There was then a small challenge of having to break out of the interrogation room and retrieve your gear.

I would love to have this sort of mechanic in games. Even if the final outcome isn't affected, it would still be a punishment (for example with say 5 mins spent trying to escape and return to the mission) without the menial task of re-trying from some past checkpoint.

 

Great article Ben.

I have been playing since the Amstrad / Amiga days also. I loved playing all of those games when I was younger, two of the harder games that spring to mind are: Gunfright on the amstrad and Dragons lair on the amiga.

I for one would love to see games become a little harder. For instance, smashing my way through Crysis 2 on a harder difficulty was relatively easy. I feel that you can lose interest in the gameplay and sometimes storyline, when a game only takes hours rather than days to complete.(crysis not the best example for story).

I read an interesting post in the skyrim forums.(seeing as you mention skyrim in your article). The discussion("argument") was about the difficulty setting and leveling up. One guy loved the idea of the game being always at a higher difficulty than the player levelling up, so every battle had the risk of you dying. Where the other person didn't want to have to replay the same dungeon scene over and over again just to get the reward of completing something really difficult. I think that somewhere in the middle would have been nice. I guessing you will say that the gameplay isnt balanced enough and you could be right.

I think ultimately, the time where three lives and your dead have gone because of mass marketing and pure impatience. Not saying everyone is the same, but it seems like todays youth especially want everything NOW and instantly. Replaying a level being a negative experience.

Does this work for every game type, certainly not. Is it a shame its vanished entirely.......for me yes.

I miss the days when I celebrated defeating a boss because it had taken me a couple of days. Cant remember doing that.

Cheers.

 

Looking forward to Dark Souls for PC.........

 

I like the way mount & blade does it. you don't die but you get knocked unconscious and might be rescued by your comrades if they survive or you might be captured and ransomed or just dragged around and then released.

I'm mostly into multiplayer games of the battlefield ilk so if there is a single player game everyone says I should play I tend to want to power through it on easy mode just to get the experience and the story. Playing the same part again again because I died to some random quicktime event where I didn't know what key to press is not my idea of a fun time or a good way of enjoying the story. I didn't enjoy the BF3 campaign as much as BFBC2 for those reasons.

 

I think Sid Meier's Pirates founded this approach...

 

aah, Loved playing Toki back on my ST. Can't play it for toffee with a keyboard though, needs a Kempston Joystick...