The inscrutable po on 12/8/2008 at 08:22
To me it's a lot more important that you have fun things to do in the game. How the game handles death doesn't matter because you always know it's just a game and that you can reload, rewind or reinstall if you have to play again. Much more important that you have different, satisfying tools to get your jobs done in the game and different paths or strategies to attempt. Also, it's good to have skills to master. If you feel like you've mastered the game when you're one tenth of the way through it, the game tends to become a bore.
Prince of Persia was different, but I didn't think it added that much to the game to be able to rewind. It was the fluidity, beauty and speed of the movements I liked and the ease with which I could become proficient. Soul Reaver seemed very gimmicky and repetitious. I don't think I got to the end of it. When I quit I wasn't thinking, "Gee, I hope somebody makes fan missions for this." I was glad it was over.
Thirith on 12/8/2008 at 08:37
Quote Posted by The inscrutable po
How the game handles death doesn't matter because you always know it's just a game and that you can reload, rewind or reinstall if you have to play again.
I'm afraid that simply doesn't tally with most gamers' experience. A fair number of people didn't like the Vita Chambers and the way they resurrect the PC, at no cost - it made the game less tense and thrilling for them. Similarly, many who played the first
Aliens vs. Predator game will testify that the lack of a save function (before the patch) made playing the game many times more tense (and, at times, frustrating).
People get involved in the game fiction to different degrees. "You always know it's just a game" - that may be the case, but by and large people want to get involved in the fiction of the game, and the more it's foregrounded that it is fiction, the less involved they get. There are more than enough gamers who, for instance, try to keep their NPC comrades alive even though they're just bits and pixels, essentially, or who try to avoid killing innocent(ish) guards and the like in stealth games for reasons other than gameplay.
Although the word means different things for different people, gamers often want to feel immersed, and a quicksave/quickload match can take away from this immersion. Cleverly handled character death (or alternatives to this) can add to the immersive quality of a game, just as badly handled death can make a game exactly "just a game" to a much larger extent.
nicked on 12/8/2008 at 11:40
The thing is, I never used the resurrection chambers in System Shock 2. If I died, I'd just hit quickload. I guess I just take the path of least resistance.
Lansing on 12/8/2008 at 18:32
I didn't use them either - but for a slightly different reason. Dying was the game's way of telling me I'd failed to deal with the situation the game had presented me. If I was playing against enemies (PC or NPC) with the same respawn abilities then I wouldn't have any problems with carrying on.
What SS1 and SS2 did right and bioshock did wrong was to make the ressurection chambers a reward. Die before you activated them and you were still dead. Find them, activate them and at least you had done something to justify the benefit they gave. Ultima Underworld did something similar with the silver sapling as Digital Nightfall said. Mind you, most of the Ultima games had an automatic respawn point although it would often be quite inconvenient to retrace your steps.
catbarf on 12/8/2008 at 19:17
Quote Posted by Lansing
If I was playing against enemies (PC or NPC) with the same respawn abilities then I wouldn't have any problems with carrying on.
An interesting note is that while it is not explained with in-game fluff, they do respawn, which makes the situation rather convoluted.
Ulukai on 12/8/2008 at 20:44
Recently, I've been impressed by one aspect of GTA IV's handling of death - if you die whilst on a mission, Nico gets a text message on his phone when respawning at the hospital and, if replied to, you get taken back in time to the beginning of the mission and can try again. It's simple and unobtrusive. I like.
Thirith on 13/8/2008 at 07:40
I think it's a good idea too. You still have to do the mission, but in games with savepoints the annoying thing usually isn't redoing the boss or whatever it is that killed you - it's doing the ten minutes before the boss that you could do in your sleep but that you'd prefer to fast-forward.
DaBeast on 13/8/2008 at 12:20
Quote Posted by Ulukai
Recently, I've been impressed by one aspect of GTA IV's handling of death - if you die whilst on a mission, Nico gets a text message on his phone when respawning at the hospital and, if replied to, you get taken back in time to the beginning of the mission and can try again. It's simple and unobtrusive. I like.
I'm pretty sure they added that in Liberty/Vice city stories. But yes it is nice, I also liked that you could buy back your weapons if you died or got arrested.
Ulukai on 13/8/2008 at 14:44
Quote Posted by Thirith
From what I've heard about
Braid, I very much like that game's rewind mechanism. However, it seems to be an integral part of the game's storytelling, so it's somewhat of a different situation.
Indeed. Yet, whilst the rewind is integral to the game and some of the puzzles, it's also oh-so-useful when you time something just a little bit wrong and end up jumping into lava etc. But as the game is more about puzzles than being a platformer, this works well.
There's no one size fits all though - if that rewind mechanism was applied to another game genre, for example, the aforementioned GTA, it would effectively kill any challenge the game possesses as the ultimate light-speed quick load. For me, anyway.
Does anyone feel like they'd want that feature in GTA?
DaBeast on 13/8/2008 at 15:15
Quote Posted by Ulukai
Does anyone feel like they'd want that feature in GTA?
I'd prefer better mission design. Some of those infuriating missions were you can only pass with foreknowledge after having replayed loads.
The thing about GTA is that some missions are great, but are interspersed with weak as fuck ones that feel like cheap filler.
