Hey everyone; this is the first blog entry I have decided to write so I hope all two of you that read it enjoy it.

With this first entry I wanted to take some time to try to comprehend the *death's okay* genre of games we seem to be seeing at the moment. I have been let down by a number of titles due to this factor. It isn't that I want a game to be so deeply punishing that if I die I throw my controller at my relatively expensive t.v; no that isn't the point at all. It is more that I want to feel compelled to survive and to put some effort into beating the game whilst letting my character suffer as little as possible.

My first example as of recent is going to be Bioshock; that game is mind bending in all of the mechanics that work together and produce this enriching, almost defining moment of the first person genre. It does so many things well and has such a fantastic and compelling atmosphere and I really love it for that. However; when you die you simply respawn... Yup; no punishment no health resets on the people you were fighting at the time- no nothing.

Now I understand that they want to take you out of the game as little as possible but I sort of feel more detatched from the experience knowing that my character's life is near on worthless. If they wanted to make a film or a novel then they could have done that but they chose the video game genre and it just seems that a little more was needed in terms of punishment for dying. I found myself wanting to reload saves and attempt to kill the Big Daddy's in one life as I just did not like the whole charging at them and dying flow of the game which was clearly a fesible way to play it.

But I don't want to come a cross as specifically targeting that game as other games are just as wimpish. Look at Prey; despite prey being at best a medicore shooter; they just simply teleported you out or a couple of seconds and then teleported you back in with near full health if you were good enough at the minigame on the ghost plain.

I mean on the opposite side even a game like Mario Galaxy; - a game constantly criticised for being targeted at a younger audiance - sets you back to the beginning of the level in most cases (or in some circumstances, uses a checkpoint system). You don't here people complaining that they were punished for dying as it makes the game more engaging; at least for me anyway.

I do know there are acceptions and there are games that try to fix this is some manner; Especially with team-based online expierences where you sit out for that round (games like CoD4 Search and Destroy, Counter-Strike, Gears of war, Rainbow Six: Vegas) but these just seem to be becoming thinner every year especially when you look at the single player exeriences currently available.

I guess the problem is that the checkpoint system is now slowly showing that it is out-of-date considering it has been the standard for so long so developers are trying to innovate at the cost of the overall difficulty of the game. I want to go on record here and say I do not think a good game is always a hard one but I do think getting the difficulty right within games is a factor that contributes to the fun you get out of them.

So here are the question's I would like to pose to the community:

firstly what do you think about this shift towards easier games and lack of punishment for death within them?

and secondly; How would you change this or what would you impliment to make death a bit of a bigger deal again?

Hope you enjoyed the article, thanks.

Luke