F'ing Up Isn't So Bad

[ManupBatman]

I have two favorite fuck ups, the first was in Hitman: Blood Money (the king of OHSHITOHSHITRUNRUNRUNRUN!). It was in the theater mission while I was still poking at the system. I left an explosive right outside the door where my target would come out of, though much to my surprise a little 4 foot potted plant didn't quite cover me and the guards started shooting me. I got some distance and noticed that my target was RIGHT on top of the bomb as he was being escorted out and BLEW THAT MOTHER SKY HIGH! Along with a group of fleeing tourist. Probably some mothers in there too. Wasn't terribly professional, I know.

Second was the original Assassin's Creed. I was trying to kill a doctor or someone, I don't honestly remember. I hid inside a group of monks until we got close and broke off for a little stabby stabby until OH NO one of his patients decided he was going to twitch his way between us. Cover blown, guards everywhere, after killing about three people I realized my target was already about three blocks away. "Should I restart?" I thought to myself, followed by an "Ehhhh fuck it" and I started bolting after the guy. Starting climbing buildings and running past archers until I had him in my sights. He jumped off the building onto the street and I jumped to another building, ran along side him, and LEAPED on top of him. Missed. Got hit by a few guards and started throwing knifes at the dude. After about four in his back he decided he was done moving and FINALLY stabbed him, as stabbing seems to be the only way to kill important people in the AC universe.

Stealth games are fun.

 

[Kargathia]

It occurs to me that it would be nice if games could find a way for the player to fail every now and again without getting a game over and subsequent failure-cancelling time rewind.

What about a system similar to Bioshocks Vita-Chambers? The way they work is that, even if you fuck up, the game world continues on and you simply respawn in another location, the world still been afflicted by the fuck-up you caused earlier. Unfortunately that can't work for every game (and there are those who think that Vita Chambers didn't work for Bioshock anyway).

I was one such person. I always played with the vita-chambers turned off.

The problem with those and systems like them is that they remove the consequences for fucking up. They don't even penalise your progression the way a checkpoint or quickload does.

A perfect system would allow you to fail, penalise you for it, but then (at least in the case of a non-terminal failure) allow things to keep going without compromising the narrative... somehow.

The only example I can think of is losing a battle in a strategy game. You suffer a failure, but the wheels keep turning. However that sort of thing can't really be adapted to other forms of gameplay.

Many semi-stealth games have a quite effective way of handling this. The most notable attempt would be the Hitman series, where your fancy-pants ninja approach of assassinating your target by dropping poisoned fish on him while dangling from his favourite chandelier is quite liable to fail - and plan B involves guns. Lots of guns.

There's also dark/dead souls, with its "shadow" mode if you die. I can't really comment though on well it actually works, as being a member of the Glorious PC Gaming Master Race means I haven't had the chance yet to play it myself.

 

[octafish]

[snip]

I think adding in mechanics that you can succeed/fail at without having to die directly because of the failure is the best way to go.

Some games do that, at least kinda.

There's this one bit in Human Revolution where you have to protect Malick, your pilot. If you don't dispatch the enemies in time she dies, but the game keeps right on going.

Of course, that doesn't stop people from quickloading the failure away, which is exactly what I did.

I played non-lethal the first time through, and just bugged out and sprinted across the construction site to the elevator, thirty minutes later I was looking for an old save because letting Malick die without even trying to save her was...an unpleasant feeling.

I see where you are coming from, and am reminded of X-Com (obviously) and also the "good" Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon games. With X-Com of course failure was always an option but not an end game state. While in Rainbow Six you could fuck up and lose an entire fire team and yet still complete the mission. I still remember one time in Rogue Spear finishing the final level after losing both my assault teams and only having a sniper left. Recovering from fuck ups is really what is needed. To often fucking up just results in a game over screen.

 

[Shjade]

The only example I can think of is losing a battle in a strategy game. You suffer a failure, but the wheels keep turning. However that sort of thing can't really be adapted to other forms of gameplay.

Nor does it do what you're suggesting you want to have happen here. Losing a battle in a strategy game may not cause you to get a game over at that instant, but the long-term ramifications of that loss are likely to cause you to lose five, ten, twenty minutes further down the line.

Delayed game over is still game over. You're already dead even if you haven't accepted it yet.

Which strategy games have you been playing?

If losing a single battle loses you the entire game then they obviously weren't very good ones.

Not every battle will lose you the game, but a single pivotal battle very easily can.

Take Starcraft (or Starcraft 2, either way the principle is the same). Early on in the game you find yourself attacked by a far stronger push than you're expecting. You manage to hold it off, but you take significant damage to your economy in the process, enough so that for the rest of the game you're pretty much behind. Roughly seven to ten minutes later your opponent follows up with a larger push you simply don't have enough units to defend. You lose.

Let's take a long game example instead. Aside from a few scouting skirmishes here and there the game is pretty much even up to about twenty, twenty-five minutes in. One side harassed, the other defended, vice versa, until both sides are pushing 180+ supply. There's a big full-on battle in which one side has a positional advantage and crushes the opposing army pretty handily, but not in a manner so one-sided that they can just keep pushing and destroy the base. It is, however, a significant enough advantage that the supply differential is always in the favor of the winner of that battle from then on, who proceeds to simply strangle his opponent by denying expansions, containing, keeping control of most of the map, and eventually wins a war of attrition.

In other words, winning a single battle can be all it takes to make it your game to lose, rather than your game to win. Assuming both players are competent, anyway. If you're talking about the AI, that's a different ball of wax in which you basically just have to figure out what strategy a given map is designed to encourage and exploit that before the AI cheats enough to kill you, in most strategy games anyway. ;p

 

[weirdee]

The bit you said at the end there, like we'd never know happiness without sorrow and stuff, I still think chocolate would taste brilliant even if we didn't have broccoli. Broccoli, in no way, affects the taste of chocolate. I think Lindit Bunny's taste better than Cadbury's cream eggs, not because cream eggs are bad, but that Lindit Bunny's are better by comparison, even though I love Cadbury's cream eggs. There doesn't need to be a binary switch between happiness and sorrow, there can be inbetweeny bits, and some inbetweeny bits are better than others. But happiness compared to extreme happiness, I would choose the latter, but it doesn't mean that we shouldn't have happiness because one is better. But yeah, I see what you mean.

that would be all garden of eden again, where there is a simulation of contrast (shooter a vs shooter b) but you would never know about actually well prepared broccoli, and it would be a false joy born of oblivion

 

[Squilookle]

It occurs to me that it would be nice if games could find a way for the player to fail every now and again without getting a game over and subsequent failure-cancelling time rewind.

I find it extremely important for a shooter to let me carry on after a failed mission. In Goldeneye or Perfect Dark, having the game quietly tell me I had failed an objective, but then step back and allow me to take out my murderous frustration on the guards that caused me to fuck up, isn't just cathartic, but in my view a very important design decision. I can let out my rage, calm down, and be ready to try again, all during actual gameplay rather than a death screen.

In Operation Flashpoint, you get a death screen, but there's a nice touch where the camera hovers over your corpse, then gradually pulls back into the sky. If you died during a firefight, if you're lucky you get to watch the whole rest of the firefight play out, and perhaps see who wins the fight without your continued input. I like that.

That was infinitely more interesting, exciting and tense, than any set-piece dreamt up by one of the many failed filmmakers that seem to have wormed their way into mainstream developer studios.

Yeah, I'll say. I could only imagine the gut wreching tension you would have been under as you dragged yourself through that town, bleeding, knowing there were definitely zombies nearby, looking for morphine.

 

[ResonanceSD]

Arkham City. Make sure you're alone if you try to do a finishing move, or you'll get rupted by an elbow to the face.

 

[duchaked]

when I picked up Max Payne 3 and did a slow motion dive...only to smack my head against a cubicle wall...man that was something!

nice to see Yahtzee picked up on that in the game and saw something in it. I do agree it was pretty hilarious even if I ended up getting shot to hell. plus it fit better with the story considering Max constantly going "oh man I'm so old and stupid but I keep doing this whyy" lol

 

[JCAll]

I remember a moment in one of the Tenchu games. Sneaky stealth ninja games, not like those flying everywhere shooting lightning ninjas we get these days.

Anyway, two guards were patrolling side by side, I knifed one without the other noticing, but missed the second. I chased after him, but he started to turn and was going to see me, so I jumped over his head. He saw his dead friend but missed me completely as I broke him in half before hitting the ground.

It was as amazing as it was impossible to duplicate.

 

[Georgie_Leech]

Seems to me that the big difficulty with alowwing you to fuck up (in some major way, not just ending up with a bucket on your head or something) in a game and have it keep going in some way is the sheer amount of planning and work it would take. Every single critical failure point would need to have two (or more) stories created from that point forward, one for success and one for failure.

 

[Kahani]

Much as I hate to say this given Yahtzee's views on them but - MMOs. Some do it better than others, but they're almost all built around the idea of allowing you to fuck up so badly you die, but still allow you to carry on playing without having to go back and reload. You may or may not need to start your quest from the beginning and you'll probably get a financial cost to make it clear that you did, in fact, fuck up, but the game carries on. You might even have done enough that your friends can finish the quest without you, turning your apparent fuck up into a heroic sacrifice instead.

Then you have Eve, where fucking up can mean anything from getting into the wrong fight and going out in a blaze of glory, to simply not paying enough attention while carrying something valuable. Or looking like you might be carrying valuable. Or looking like you'll make a pretty explosion. And Eve actually manages to have multiple layers of fucking up available to you. Losing a fight and having your ship blown up is a fairly minor one. But you can then compound that by having been flying something you couldn't afford to lose, or by not buying insurance and losing skills as well as just money, or by having started a fight that promptly gets someone to declare war on you. A single fuck up has the potential to cascade into a giant clusterfuck involving hundreds of other people. And all the while the rest of the game carries on in the background completely oblivious. Of course, not every enjoys Eve and it wouldn't work in many genres anyway, but that's how to make a game that really lets people fuck up in style.

Not every battle will lose you the game, but a single pivotal battle very easily can.

Take Starcraft (or Starcraft 2, either way the principle is the same). Early on in the game you find yourself attacked by a far stronger push than you're expecting. You manage to hold it off, but you take significant damage to your economy in the process, enough so that for the rest of the game you're pretty much behind. Roughly seven to ten minutes later your opponent follows up with a larger push you simply don't have enough units to defend. You lose.

You appear to be confusing Starcraft with a strategy game. Much as I love the RTS genre and have done since I first played Dune 2, it's a severely misnamed genre since there is no "S" actually involved at any point. You can't lose a battle in Starcraft without losing the game because the entire game is just a single battle. What Zhukov means by strategy games, I assume, is games like Civilisation, Total War, Hearts of Iron, and so on. Games that aren't about building a couple of tanks and telling them to attack another tank, but are instead about the actual strategic decisions of how many armies to build, where and when to attack, what territory to take and what to accept losing, and so on. If you lose your entire invading army in Civilisation, you've lost the battle, you might lose the war and you might even lose some territory. But unless you're really bad at the game it certainly won't mean you're guaranteed to lose the whole game later. Hell, in my current game of Europa Universalis, one of the most powerful countries is one that didn't even exist for 50 or so years because it lost all of its battles and was completely wiped out. A rebellion followed by some good choices and a bit of luck now has it dominating most of northern Europe.

 

[Mortamus]

It's like failing a quick time event v.s. failing in a fight against a dragon in Skyrim. A fight that results in you hilariously ragdolling down the mountainside. That, or screwing up the dive and landing on your character's face. It just has a certain...charm to it. Failing is irritating. Failing in a comical manner is always funny.

So I guess the real arguement is that it's better to be able to fail in a way that actually improves your future gameplay, or give you an extremely good laugh.

 

[rembrandtqeinstein]

This is why the youtube video of the guy burning down his house in Minecraft was the best selling point there could possibly be for the game. Unscripted, emergent gameplay is by far the most unique and memorable.

And this is why Dwarf Fortress is the best game ever made. The whole game resolves around screwing up and having fun doing it.

 

[TheMoD1234]

Yessss this article is great . It's very true . Last gen EVERY game let you fuck up EVERYTHING . It was solely about your skill as a player therefore the whole experience was about a billion times more satisfying than those terrible modern games that could just as well be movies with tiny gameplay segments that any five year old could get through, inbetween . For example I also hated having to watch these stupid executions in the darkness 2 over and over and over again . Modern games are always like "HEY MAN CHECK THIS OUT ITS FUCKING AWESOME" and older games (or games that still have the mentality of older games like Kane And Lynch Dead Men (which I wished Yahtzee had reviewed), a game that's far from perfect but very fun in an oldschool kinda way) uhm where was I .. oh yeah right older games were more like "Hey here's a game we made, we hope you like it"

 

[SiskoBlue]

This explains why some games seem fantastic and your head tells you it's great game but your heart doesn't agree.

I know Yahztee hates multiplayer shooters but a large part of their appeal is that it's based on f**king-up. You are well aware of just how badly you can f**k-up at every turn.

There's also a more sinister aspect of people never f**king up in movies and on TV too. I have to constantly explain to my 4 year old son when he sees footage of things like a guy doing amazing stunts on his bike, that this isn't the first time that guy has tried to do that stunt.

He had to practice over and over, doing smaller stunts, and he probably hurt himself a lot. It explains why you see so many kids try something these days and if they're not instantly good at it they give up. They're being fooled into thinking you can either do it straight away or not at all.

Guess that's why "You've been frame/Funniest Home Videos" is still so popular. Besides watching people f**k themselves up it also gives a more realistic sense of just how useless we can all be a lot of the time.

 

[achilleas.k]

I've been saying this for years, ever since a mate told me how cool Devil May Cry was when he first discovered it. I think that's when I realised how uninvolved button-mashers are. Yes the moves are cool, but continuously hitting the attack button while the character looks cool doesn't give any feeling of accomplishment.

When this topic comes up, my go-to example is the Jedi Knight series. They added automatic lightsaber moves in the last one (Jedi Academy), but ignoring those (which people rarely used), or looking at Jedi Outcast, the character's moves looked clumsy and didn't flow together like a proper Jedi Knight's moves should be, unless you timed your moves right. But you were in charge of making combinations of moves and using the powers. It required proper timing and proper chaining of moves to make something that looks good AND gets the job done.

Compare it with Force Unleashed, where everything looks great, but you have no control. Just mash the attack button and the character dances around with finesse while everyone gets sliced. Impressive to look at, but the player's involvement is merely one step closer than merely ordering the character to "kill everyone" with a voice command.

 

[Shjade]

Not every battle will lose you the game, but a single pivotal battle very easily can.

Take Starcraft (or Starcraft 2, either way the principle is the same). Early on in the game you find yourself attacked by a far stronger push than you're expecting. You manage to hold it off, but you take significant damage to your economy in the process, enough so that for the rest of the game you're pretty much behind. Roughly seven to ten minutes later your opponent follows up with a larger push you simply don't have enough units to defend. You lose.

You appear to be confusing Starcraft with a strategy game. Much as I love the RTS genre and have done since I first played Dune 2, it's a severely misnamed genre since there is no "S" actually involved at any point. You can't lose a battle in Starcraft without losing the game because the entire game is just a single battle. What Zhukov means by strategy games, I assume, is games like Civilisation, Total War, Hearts of Iron, and so on. Games that aren't about building a couple of tanks and telling them to attack another tank, but are instead about the actual strategic decisions of how many armies to build, where and when to attack, what territory to take and what to accept losing, and so on. If you lose your entire invading army in Civilisation, you've lost the battle, you might lose the war and you might even lose some territory. But unless you're really bad at the game it certainly won't mean you're guaranteed to lose the whole game later. Hell, in my current game of Europa Universalis, one of the most powerful countries is one that didn't even exist for 50 or so years because it lost all of its battles and was completely wiped out. A rebellion followed by some good choices and a bit of luck now has it dominating most of northern Europe.

You appear to be confusing strategy with longevity. Chess is a strategy game that is a single battle from beginning to end as well; are you going to suggest there is no strategy involved in it for that reason? Or perhaps because all the possible moves are known before you begin? (Hint: the latter is true for most games if given the same level of analysis chess has had over the years) Strategy games don't require dedicating a month to play. They require strategic planning to be a key part of gameplay. Starcraft has that, therefore, etc.

For the sake of argument, however, let's assume your premise is correct and Starcraft isn't a strategy game. Okay, Civilization, then. I played a round of Civ only a couple weeks ago in which I was powering hard on economic and cultural advances and, without warning (because the AI likes to be a dick), found an entire army of my "friend's" abruptly on my doorstep. I managed to fend off that initial assault, but China kept expanding its control out around me while I was recovering and I just couldn't keep up at that point given there was no way to really push out my non-military advances with so much territory gobbled up by the opposition. Got steamrolled later on; there was really no way to come back from the position I was in. One battle, game-ending, just not at that exact moment.

 

[MS267]

Like so many previous XP's I'm finding myself in almost total agreement with what is being said. Messing things up can be brilliant. The moments like in Just Cause 2 when I developed a really stylish plan, where in my head a scenario plays out where I stick some bombs to a car, speed towards some solders, leap out, detonate the car-missile just as it hits the soldiers, picking off the strays with my pistols from the air before landing perfectly on nearby roof. However when I actually attempt this to find what actually happens is that in all the excitement I detonate the car about 10 feet before where I should have, missing everyone then face planting onto the wall of a building only to be turned into a bullet sandwich is the sort of thing I find so memorable.

However if there's one thing I will say, it's that I really don't mind the whole die --> respawn from nearest save method, purely because I'll always know I failed. What I do mind is games where you have plan A, then the moment that messes up you die. I much prefer having plan A, then when you mess it up you can still have a chance with plan B, and depending how skilled you are plan C.

The best example I can think of this is Skyrim. When I'm being an assassin (the best build) there is always an added challenge in that you can't really afford to be seen. At the start of the game I have 100 Health, 60 levels later I might only have 150 Health, so a high level Draugr can 2 or 3 hit kill me, so I have to desperately struggle through. What I like is that the struggle will never be as rewarding as doing it properly, yet it's tense and can be done. If I enter a room with 3 Draugr Scourges and 2 Deathlords I get a tremendous sense of satisfaction when I clear the room without detection. If I am seen, sure I can get all the enemies into a nice little chain then Fus Ro Dah them all into a corner and fire arrows at the body pile until everything stops moving but it'll never be as rewarding, so I refine my tactics and try harder next time.

So like everyone else I enjoy a game which doesn't punish you for cocking up when trying something different. Incidentally, it's why I'm not really a fan of most stealth games. Even if I have multiple methods of completing a mission like in Hitman: Blood Money it always comes down to how perfectly I can plan my route of attack, how perfectly I know the area, and how long I'm prepared to wait. I can see full well why people would enjoy it, but if I have to spend 20 minutes surveying an area, tracking enemies etc. then another 40 initiating my plan I like to have a functional but unrewarding failsafe. Call me a rubbish gamer all you want, but if I'm 30 minutes into my hour long mission when a mis-timed break from one cover to a next results in the whole building I'm in being alerted to my presence or not waiting an arbitrary 20 minutes for a guard to stand in the position I want him in results in my instantly failing a mission then I just get bored and annoyed with a game.

So basically what I'm saying is I can deal with a game killing me and knocking my progress back 15 or 20 minutes as long as I have a chance to make amends for a mistake and can pull an unlikely victory from the jaws of defeat. I don't like a game which knocks my progress back by an equal amount of time by an equal amount of time where a single mistake leaves me dead.

Moments like being on Arkham Asylum with a room full of 6 or so armed thugs only to be shot down to a slither of health are made all the better when you can swing up to the gargoyles, have your heart pounding and up your game so you take out every thug knowing full well 1 shot will be enough for a kill are infinitely better and more rewarding then sticking your head up in the wrong nanosecond and having it blown off by a sniper 2 blocks away on any first person shooter, only to be sent back 20 minutes and then knowing that perhaps next time you should look for a sniper you had no way of knowing existed.

 

[eddyshore6528]

I like Dungeons of Dredmor for this.
The whole game revolves around how far you can get before you fuck up.
And then you're dead, permanently. Try again, from the beginning, until you fuck up again.
There are even trophies for fucking up a specific way.

 

[XMark]

Left 4 Dead is probably the best example of a game that makes fucking up fun. So many good times arise out of doing something wrong that makes the situation drastically worse (car alarms are a great example)