Do you like games where you cant die?

So my dear friends, there are plenty of games where you cant die most notable is Prince of persia 2008, Prey 2006, Rage and some others and most recently battlefield 1 where you die and respawn as different soldier.

no matter what you do. you cant die in these games. these games lack any sort of challenge. in POP everytime you fall elika save

you while in Prey 2006. once you die. you go to different world to collect spirits lol.

I mean what is the point to play games when there is no game over mechanics. these games feel like tutorial mode because of no failing mechanic.

what do you think?

No. But I'm not against it.

For bored wife's, old people relatively close to death and young children ignorant of the terrible world they are about to be thrust upon, a passive experience can hopefully be a good entry point.

Unfortunately many AAA games are essenailly movies. Sony users helped facilitate this.

but my friend, you like prey 2006 which is easiest FPS ever made and one of the most bland and mediocre one. poor mans Doom 3 for childrens who dont want challenge.

A terrible truth.

Sure. I like the Myst-style puzzle games; also some adventure puzzle games like The Longest Journey. This is provided I'm in the mood for a mental challenge instead of a skill challenge.

Of the games you've listed I've played PoP and RAGE - I thought they were both pretty boring.

The failure state (or lack thereof) is a tricky one and I think they can only be judged on a game by game basis.

Take Catan, for example. Nobody loses a game of Catan until a winner is decided. There are small victories and set-backs when reaching your goal but the fail state only happens once in the game.

In Prince of Persia (2008) you could argue that the lack of a failure state is more in line with Super Meat Boy. Rather than negating too much of the player progress, the idea was to let the player focus on the challenge they failed at rather than past challenges they've already accomplished.

Generally speaking, a number of designers feel it's necessary to move away from the 80's/90's decision to take large chunks of progress away from the player and throw in a game over state for failing a single challenge after accomplishing so much. It's a tight-rope that isn't possible to walk perfectly, I think.

There are arguments both ways, I think.

Game Over state pros: Re-challenging the player on past accomplishments will narrow out the possibilities of passing by pure fluke.

Game Over state cons: Redoing long segments of a game that a player has completed so that they can get back to the part they actually find tough is a needless waste of time.

Checkpoints were introduced for this very reason but even checkpoints have a habit of including portions of a game that are unnecessary to replay. When you look at PoP, it's not that the game lacks a fail state, it's just that the game doesn't make a song and dance about failing a challenge. The challenge still needs to be accomplished. It just doesn't waste the players' time by cutting to black and slapping Game Over on the screen, so the player can focus on what actually matters - the gameplay.

You don't die in Prince of Persia, but you don't pass the challenges by falling either. It's still a fail state. It's just not contextually framed as the protagonist dying.

I don't mind, I've played Heavy Rain and Kirby's Epic Yarn. You can't die in those, but you can fail to do something though.

Depends on the game. But no I do t have an issue. Braid for instance is fantastic.

Probably has to do with portals and gravity which it was first FPS which use portals. but thats it. gameplaywise it was mediocre. now luckily Arkane is making PREY to be hardcore PC immersive sim and nothing like old prey which suck.

But you could die in Rage

you solve some stupid puzzle to bring back to life. its worst Id software game of all time. cant believe a company that revolutionized FPS genre can make mediocre game like Rage.

But then again after DOOM. Im not against Rage 2. if they learn thier mistake. Rage 2 can be good.

Implying that he has never played the game.

If I remember correctly, the first Way of Samurai death count as an ending and you can just start again as new game plus with all the experience points.. it was one of my flavor game in ps2 era.

Technically you do die in those games, but the punishment for doing so is negligible.

Im a id Software fanboy. How come you think i never played the game?

when you die for once. you have to solve the puzzle. then you respawn.

Rage was faliure as a result Id software cancelled Doom 4 and Rage 2. to work on new DOOM which become one of the GOAT!.

So you can die

When you say 'die' you actually mean 'lose game progress as a result of failing to perform the game mechanics correctly. Depends on the game. Back in original Everquest a death could cost you 8-10 hours of play or even the complete loss of all items - is this too much? Many thought not but WoW proved you could make a super successful, similar game where progress loss on failure is minimal.

As long as they have good story, lore and characters to keep me hooked (like the old point and click adventures or story driven games like Gone Home or Everybody's Going to the Rapture), sure.

I prefer games where you can only die once.... Fire Emblem, Teleglitch, FTL, Dungeon of Dredmor, Dead Space 2 just to name a few.

@enzyme36:

You're a Rougelike with Permadeath fan then?

The ultimate of those for me was ToMe (Tales of Maj'Eyal).

I love those games too, yet there is still room for a more casual approach to death penalties.

I don't have a problem with it. Challenge comes in a lot of varieties. Every game just featuring the same subset of gameplay would be boring.

A lot of the linear, AAA games have short checkpoints because they don't want you replaying large sections of the game. Heavily scripted games work better that way or the scripted sequences would get tiresome in a single playthrough.

Yessir! I am currently playing The Pit: Sword of the Stars and Dungeon of the Endless for the co-op. I hear a lot of people talking about ToME too. I bought it a while back and havent given it much of a playthru yet. I may need to buckle down one day and get thru a solid attempt, it seems to get a lot of praise in the genre.

No, usually not. They often feel pointless to me.

@enzyme36: Both great games but get ToMe back out and sit down with it for a couple of hours. At first it seems so simplistic but it hides an incredible depth and the most diverse and unique classes. Play semi-roguelike to start (3 lives i think) as it gives you some wiggle room to get further into it and build your character a little. It is one of those few roguelikes where knowledge and skill can always out play your bad luck...as long as you prepared for it!

Depends on the game.

Prince of Persia (2008) was a brilliant game. Just because you didn't get a "game over" screen doesn't mean you didn't "die". Elika saved you from death in order to not interrupt the flow of the game. The game still kept track of every single "fall" and counted it against you.

I don't get this obsession with a game telling you you "failed" being challenging. Challenge comes from design. Prince of Persia was one of the most challenging games I've played through not to fall less than 100 times (in order to get the achievement). A "fall" also included the boss characters hitting you three times consecutively.

Assuming that "die" means "failure state that results in at least some lost progress" then I would still say that no, not every game needs this. Whether a game benefits from a "death" system or not really depends on what desire the game is trying to meet. Narrative heavy "walking simulators" don't need to have a specific failure condition to be engaging. Gone Home, Dear Esther, Ethan Carter (although Ethan Carter did have one section where you could be "killed"), Everybody's Gone To Rapture, etc are all really compelling games without the fear of death. On the other end of the spectrum, other times of games really benefit from a death system or a limited number of lives (arcade-style SHMUPS). There's no "one size fits all" box that games fit into. That's what makes them so compelling.

-Byshop

my friend, my non gamer cousin once watch me playing POP 08 long ago and even He thinks its a casual game and no point of playing it if you cant die.

Its among the worst games I have ever played. there is not even a combat in game. just button smash QTE.

Cool story about your cousin

Dude, just stop. You talk more about Prince of Persia (2008) than I do, and I absolutely adore the game.

Get the achievement for dying less than 100 times throughout a single playthrough and get back to me how "easy" it is.

That achievement doesnot make game not easy because you can end your game by falling down 10000 times.

Are you acting purposefully stupid to garner a reaction or are you genuinely cognitively lacking?

I play football manager the most, a situation were you can die in that would be just wrong lol.

Same goes for euro truck simulator, fsx etc.

As in not sending you back to a checkpoint nor receiving a game over? Well in stuff like shmups, using a continue results in restarting your score, which basically derails the whole run if you're not in it for the practice, so I don't mind it in them. Games that aren't scoring you, at least in any meaningful way, I don't care for them though.

Yeah because those games where you die and just load your saved game a minute before you died, makes it so much more challenging.

It's a design choice of the developer. Sometimes it makes games better and sometimes worse.

Super meat boy with a finite number of lives? Forget it.

Eliminating a death penalty doesn't mean the game is easy, it just means the challenge is (hopefully) found elsewhere in the game design.

i have been playing the 2008 POP again. nice and theraputic game. sloppy controls though. but its not like the game doesnt punish you. if you take too many hits the enemy recharges some of their health. if you fall then you are brought back to the last platform to start that platforming sequence again. for a platformer it can be quite a sensible approach. if you get to a certain point then you beat the challenges to get there. whats the point in having the player do something that they have beaten again?

the structure is not that different from dark souls. you get from bonfire to bonfire. if you die before getting from A to B then the game resets the enemies (unless its DS2 where the developer likes to patronise you.....bas&^^%s) and you go again. the only big risk is dying again before retrieving your corpse but thats not the end of the world either (unless, again, its DS2 because the developers are wa&*(£s).

the only games i can think of where you are not punished for mistakes (or cant make mistakes) is the likes of dear esther or flower (which, personally, i dont class as games. very interesting use of gaming tech and worth a look. but not games).

lives and game over screens are a relic from the arcade. if the game charged for continues then the structure makes sense. but you dont pay have to pay EA for 100 lives i BF1 (no EA, dont even think about it. bad EA) or pay from software after dying 1000 times in DS so you can continue. i mean why do lives in mario games exist today? i have no idea.

Because you're not a gamer, Sniper, just an internet troll who was banned earlier and continues to troll with two alts. Pretty pathetic, really.

Wario Land 2, 3, Braid were all fantastic games.

You could die in Prince of Persia 2008, however. Instead of ending your immersion with a game over screen (temporal dissonance), the game killed you in a way that did not break the flow... or immersion.

Tc is so hardcore.

What was cool about Planescape Torment was you kind of had to die to advance the plot. Too many saves/checkpoints can take the suspense out of alot of games these days.

Depends on the game. I love Planescape: Torment, and sometimes you gain progress by dying in that.

Someone didn't play BF1, or atleast the campaign

The dying and respawning as different soldier part is just the first mission (that is no longer then 10 minutes) and that was the whole purpose of it.

I actually loved Prey, all the other games can't comment on.

Imo I think that it's kinda the same with quick saving and quick loading, you die you just reload 2 seconds before you died (if you saved ofc). Or Redo very fast an obstacle.

its different. for example when you quick load or have checkpoint system. you restart where you last save. while in games like Prey you dont restart after "died". you just magically get your health back and enemy health remain same.

You get to retry the challenges as many times as you want so a "death" state really isn't necessary, its just how a game handles failure and what you lose for it.

but generally in this sort of system you lose ammo/consumables. If this is a survivalist type game than dieing can still penalize you in the long run.

My enjoyment of a game isn't limited to challenge. That's fine for some games, but others can provide you with different points of interest.

A game could have a system where you can't die but still get punished for not doing very well, for example, if the objective of a game is to score high, you could get less unlocked levels or progression ingame somehow.

I think the system is only useful where the players are encouraged and rewarded for trying as many things as possible.

A key example being classic LucasArts adventure games like Monkey Island series. It's an environment where you are free to try out all the wacky options and have fun from the process without being needlessly punished.

However, if a game relies on tension (i.e. shooters), then absence of danger simply takes away from that.

I liked the defib mechanic in RAGE. Instead of reverting back to a save game/previous state you get one more try. You make it out like this big deal but it's just one more try.

Also I love both RAGE and DOOM. They are both very similair in the way the shooting feels very satisfying and the way enemies behave and move. Plus I actually think RAGE tops it out with having more interesting weapons, though DOOM does have some kick ass secondary fire options on its weapons. But RAGE has that sword boomerang...

I don't think a game needs a failure state. Thinking about it ,in a way the so called"failure state" is the easy way for a developer to keep the player engaged.

It all depends of what game and player wish to achieve. You can have a super engaging game with no fail state and a super boring game with it.

I think it's extremely reductive to say it's a fundamental thing to have in a game.

Just cause 3 you cant really die in that either. Currently playing and liking it.