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

Discussion in 'Article Discussion' started by brumgrunt, 15 May 2012.

  1. brumgrunt

    brumgrunt What's a Dremel?

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  2. aoakley

    aoakley FriesWithStatic

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    Even by the mid 1980s, though, three-lives was finished. Although many 8-bit games did not build a Save feature into their games, memory dump cartridges such as Freeze Frame and Action Replay allowed gamers to save a Commodore 64's entire elephantine 64k of memory to tape (or, if your dad was loaded and/or worked for the right university, to disk). You press a button on the cartridge, it dumps the complete state of the computer. Later you load it back in just like loading a normal game (complete with turbo loader) and it continues from the exact point you left off. A friend and I took shifts doing a marathon 36-hour Manic Miner session, using a Freeze Frame cartridge to save progress every 3 levels or so.

    So the rosy halcyon days of three lives and your dead, was really over and done with by about 1985 for hardcore gamers.
     
  3. aoakley

    aoakley FriesWithStatic

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    Aargh: s/your dead/you're dead/ - apostrophe error at line 15
     
  4. Jehla

    Jehla Minimodder

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    You keep away from my check points! I really like that I can put a game up to hard and have to play a more tactical game than would be needed on normal or easy, without having to rerun the entire level when I find an extra challenging section that kicks my arse for a while, which will typically be right at the end.
     
  5. ChaosDefinesOrder

    ChaosDefinesOrder Vapourmodder

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    ugh, I hated (and still hate) check-points or specific save points!

    "dinner's ready"/"we have to go out now"

    "Hang on, just need to get to the next save point"

    .....half an hour later...

    "Still no save point!"

    Not everyone has the time to play through an entire game in one sitting. The current system of autosaves and save-when-you-want suits me much better.

    Saying that, there are certain types of game that work well in that respects. Devil May Cry, for example, becomes a proper challenge when you only have one continue per "mission" in the hard modes and each mission can be a good chunk of time. The emphasis here is the challenge.
     
  6. Jim

    Jim Ineptimodder

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    Personally, I hate nothing more than replaying a section of a game that I've already completed. In that respect, I would like *more* checkpoints in many games. If I've already proved that I can do it, to me it feels like an arbitrary time-stretching exercise.
     
  7. blohum

    blohum What's a Dremel?

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    I still remember completing Shadow of the Beast 2 without any cheats, now that was tough!
     
  8. tonyd223

    tonyd223 king of nothing

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    isn't there a way to enable "save game" IRL?
     
  9. runadumb

    runadumb What's a Dremel?

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    Oh god no! Lives was hardly ever a good idea outside of Arcade games. It could work okay sometimes depending on the continues model that was used ( infinite?) and how far back each continue put you.

    Why replay the same levels over and over and over and over and over again just to get back to the part that's kicking your ass only to fail and have to do it all over again? Its monotonous, time consuming and unnecessary. Back when I was a kid, had all the time in the world and one game to last me months it wasn't as big a deal but no way do I want to return to that.

    In Mario did you wait until you ran out of lives or go and grind an easy "lives" level whenever you were getting low? Making the whole lives thing nothing but a time waster.
    Imagine if in super meat boy you had to beat every world with a set number of lives. That frustration and brutal penalty was what the developers wanted to avoid to keep the game challenging but fun. Which they succeeded in doing.

    I recently finished Castlevania (nes) and it had lives but infinite continues which for the most part was just about manageable. Then I got to the almost impossible last boss.
    First you have to play a short but difficult level then you had to piss about getting hearts (grinding) and then go and fight. Each death would put you back to the heart grinding part and each continue puts you at the start or the level. Even grinding the hearts was a huge pain in the ass so I relented and used a save state after that. Still couldn't beat the boss after 40 million attempts so I cheated and saved stated after every successful hit on it. Screw that!

    Currently playing though Prince of Persia (snes) and it has a clever take on the challenge idea, being time limited. You have 2 hours to finish the game but I ran out of time on level 18 (took me 40 god damn mins) and the game is letting me play on. I assume I won't be able to do the last challenge or something but at least it hasn't thrown me right back to the start and I can attempt the later levels.
     
  10. cjmUK

    cjmUK Old git.

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    This whole argument comes up regularly, particularly when comparing the [generally] more restrictive save modes on consoles (sometimes a limitation of the platform) vs PCs. And my response is the same: if you are not comparing 'high scores' as we used to do in arcades, and if you are no trying to earn more money by limiting peoples play (arcades again) then there is no need to restrict when and where players save games.

    A save-anywhere/save-anytime regime allows safety and comfort for those who prefer it, but doesn't prevent any player from setting their own challenges. If you want to limit saves to 3 per level, or only want to save in certain locations, or a maximum of once every 15 minutes, or only when the sun is shining, you can do. If you only want to allow 3 death per game, 3 deaths per level, or if you prefer a single perma-death, you can do.

    IIRC, Bioshock allow PC player the option of save anywhere, or they could use the fixed locations that console gamers were limited. Customisation and configuration is the mantra of PC gaming - why place any more restrictions on the gamer.

    Gaming these days has closer ties to story-telling... some games are even barely more than interactive videos [but that is another story entirely]. The point is that the objective of many games is to enjoy the game lore, the story and the aesthetics... not simply to see how far you can get without dying.
     
    Tyinsar likes this.
  11. Kris

    Kris Lord Lolwut

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    Today is a fitting day for this comment: diablo on hardcore. :) received my copy, waiting to play. I won't play hardcore of course :D
     
  12. Buck_Rogers25

    Buck_Rogers25 Minimodder

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    Love that image of Toki on the front page, brings back memories :).
     
  13. [USRF]Obiwan

    [USRF]Obiwan What's a Dremel?

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    I can't remember which game but last year I was playing a first person checkpoint game with a extremely frustrating level which I had to replay at least 72 times before I could go past it, in the end I had to do a certain scripted and timed playing sequence I did not had a clue about I had to do. I was so pissed off, I didn't play the game for a month after that.

    WHY OH WHY? is there no intelligence build into a game that can do a simple : IF replay >10 THEN easier OR hint player. With all the technology of today it can't be that hard to do something like this.
     
  14. sub routine

    sub routine Archie Gemel

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    arghhhhh, still can`t finish manic miner after 30 years playing the bloody game.
     
  15. AngelOfRage

    AngelOfRage Minimodder

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    One experience that sticks in my mind was Shenmue on the Dreamcast. I never finished that game, down to spending all day playing and forgetting to save, thus when I died the amount of stuff I would have had to replay was off putting and I never picked it back up!

    Going further back, I can remember leaving my Megadrive on over night, so I could carry on the next day on certain games. Even further back Dizzy games on the C64 were frustrating but addictive at the same time, the feeling of dieing from a mis-timed jump and having to start all over again.

    Lemmings' idea of having a code shown on screen after you complete a level which allowed you to skip to that when entered was a good idea.
     
  16. lysaer

    lysaer Suck my unit! Kirk lazarus (2008)

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    I remember getting my Jedi fairly early on in Star Wars Galaxies, if you died 3 times you lost your Jedi and had to unlock it again, of course I nor anyone else knew how that was done in the first place, you just got a message saying it had been unlocked.

    So the first time a BH and a bunch of players came and killed me, yes Jedi padawans were weak, whilst leveling at the far edge of endor, I didn't log my Jedi on for a week, for fear of losing him.

    The 3 life fear did make me a better player but in those days I had more time to game, nowadays if I was locked into 3 lives for something that took a long time to attain and I lost it I would probably just stop playing, or not bother buying the game at all since I do not have the time to dedicate anymore.

    But I would be all for developers offering a 3 life option in certain games, that way you could choose to be hardcore or not, I mean any game I buy I always play it on the hardest difficulty available, because odds are I won't go back and play it for a long time and if I do I might just want to blow through it for story reasons as opposed to a challenge.


    Sent from my HTC Sensation XE with Beats Audio using Tapatalk 2
     
  17. Niftyrat

    Niftyrat Dremel overpriced like EA games

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    Limited lives works in simple games e.g. Manic miner, jet set willy etc. but not in today's blockbuster games as this would mean you would have to play through it all in one and not many people of my age have a spare 10 - 15 hours to play at once.

    It would also require a new approach to game design that sadly no one would take the risk on.
     
  18. misterd77

    misterd77 What's a Dremel?

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    play Stalker, CoP on hard and disable autosave.....and only save when you complete a quest/mission, took me bloody 7 months.....
     
  19. faxiij

    faxiij Minimodder

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    this i can totally agree on.

    wow is the best example. vanilla was cool, but reaally a game full of grinding. endgame was really awesome, but for me, bc was the climax really. difficulty was still there, yet some of the stupid grinding decreased by quite a margin. with the three raid-tiers at any time every raiding guild and person had a really good challenge ahead. for most it was tier5, some tier6 (mh/bt) and very few sunwell. of those few, much fewer actually cleared the content.

    now look today. a lot of the content is thrown at you. leveling is not an adventure anymore (jeez, i remember questing in stranglethorn back in vanilla, that was just really amazing..), you lfd and are 85 rather quickly and can actually completely skip vast elements of wow lore. if you dont have ds heroic clear, some people will think you a fool.

    it has turned around to be a very casual game which is sad. it reminds me a bit of wall-e - i fear we're looking at a future, where we dont have to fight hard for anything and end up being lazy ****s who cant do ****. or something like that.

    i pray deep inside though that this casualisation-bubble will pop some day with a big blast and some 50% of the games industry turn back to good-quality games, that actually last a while.

    (just played nfs the run recently...5 hours or so, thats it. thats some 50 euro for 5 hours of playtime.)

    so yeah. some like EA can continue doing bland stuff, i dont care. i just hope good game producers have a comeback with neat games, that have been developed with love and passion for detail and last a little bit longer to play than 1/5 day.
     
  20. pizan

    pizan that's n00b-tastic

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    I remember Streets of Rage 3 on the Genesis. To beat it, it took me three lives and to continues. then switch over to 2nd player and use those lives and continues, but i was only a kid back then.
     
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