Poll: Down with game-overs!

[Sewblon]

I am beginning to think that game-overs wear a bad idea all along, at least in a single-player context. In board games, sports and competitive multi-player games the only way for anyone to win is for someone else to lose, but in single-player and cooperative games you can win without anyone losing.

The most obvious rebuttal to this is "without the possibility for failure you would not get any sense of accomplishment." We have had multiple alternatives to the possibility for failure for giving people a sense of accomplishment for years,for example, stat gains as RPGs do,I have never seen them used like this but a way to give the player a feeling of accomplishment without the penalty for failure is present, or merely figuring out what to do next and how to finish the game, like in adventure games.Games like the Monkey Island franchise, and certain indie games, like Braid, already do this, other single-player centric games should emulate these games.

All game-overs do is hinder your attempts to play. Imagine if you wear looking at a painting, then the painter took it down for 30 seconds on the grounds that "you wear looking at it wrong" You would wonder what was wrong with him. Wear do you stand on this?

Or... you could, and this will come as a big shock I'm sure, not suck.

I do not know what you consider being good at games, but I have been gaming for most of my life and have beaten Halo 1 on Legendary, Ninja Gaiden and The Heart of Darkness, so most people are worse than me.

 

[Agayek]

Or... you could, and this will come as a big shock I'm sure, not suck.

 

[Jedoro]

Game-overs get annoying, because they only postpone what you're about to do: retry from your last save. Unless it looks really cool, I don't want to see it twenty times.

 

[dsau]

i play(well used to play) games for fun and not for achievement. so i hate game overs. its just a tedious waste of my time

 

[Ace of Spades]

Metroid Prime 2's game overs got annoying very quickly. I don't want to have to redo a half hour because I can't kill a boss with one energy tank left after the game shut down the cannon that shot me to the top of the room where the save point is.

 

[GamingAwesome1]

I think Game Overs will forever hold a special place in my heart.

They have given us some very memorable screens over the years.

"Ness, looks like you got your head handed to you" - EarthBound
"GAME OVER YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"- SEGA Rally?
"WOW! YOU LOSE!" - ?

 

[AkJay]

I haven't seen a "Game Over" in. . hell, it's been years, so it doesn't really effect me.

 

[timmytom1]

The i agree to an extent ,if you`re going to include game over`s at least make them awesome like the ones sierra point and clicks used to have that mocked you

 

[Sassafrass]

its only annoying if it comes as a result of something which is cheap

EDIT: thinking of the last remnant, a boss (won't say which) kills 1 of 5 of your 3 man parties, brings them back to life on his side, proceeds to rip apart your other partys with them. WHY CAN HE DO THAT!?!?

 

[Casual Shinji]

Every game needs to have a little bit of punishment.

 

[Bigeyez]

I haven't seen a "Game Over" in. . hell, it's been years, so it doesn't really effect me.

Thats what I was just thinking. I haven't seen a real "Game Over" screen since...um...PS2??? What games nowadays have traditional game over screens? Most just load up your last save automatically or give you the option to load, quit, whatever.

 

[maddawg IAJI]

A game over is only prolonging the end of the game. It ain't an Arcade machine. You can restart from your last save.

 

[Proteus214]

Hmm, I died. *presses Quick Load*

 

[Avaholic03]

It depends on the game. If you want as immersive experience as possible, the idea of "dying" and then restarting from a previous checkpoint tends to break flow. Features such as the GoW rescue is more effective, but even then you could die and restart. The ultimate feature is time manipulation, so when you "die" you can just rewind to before then and try again. But that doesn't work in every game obviously.

 

[not a zaar]

When was the last time any game had a game over? 5 years ago? Longer? Practically every game in recent memory has some sort of autosave/checkpoint system.

 

[AvsJoe]

I love 'Game Over's because I hate them so freaking much. It's like the game is laughing at me when 'You are Dead' or 'You Fail' pops up when I die in a game. It gives me all kinds of motivation to beat the level and give the game the finger. I hope 'Game Over's never die.

 

[Aardvark]

Depends on the game.

Ninja Gaiden's the best example of Game Over done correctly. When you see that screen, it's not because of unfair bullshit, a glitch, lag or the planets aligning against you. It's because you're not good enough, yet. Games like Ninja Gaiden, though few and far between, some fighting games, even your little 2D shooters like Geometry Wars, aren't punishing you with a Game Over. As hard as they get, the Game Over screen isn't a punch in the cock. It's merely the game telling you that you're just not good enough, yet. Go back, meditate, master, develop technique and stop button mashing and you will overcome these insurmountable odds.

The worst Game Over screens come in two flavours. The ones you see thick and fast, simply because the game is bullshit hard, unresponsive, imbalanced or just throws random instant death at you if you happen to look in the wrong place. Then there's the ones that take 5 hours to play out. Then there's both. I'm looking at you, Too Human. When the game is obviously bullshit, it makes you feel helpless and frustrated. It's like running into a brick wall repeatedly, because the wall happens to be the Great Wall of China and you're dead centre and there's lions with shotguns sitting on the top incase you try to climb it. And you have to cross, because your cancer medicine is on the other side. Also, you have cancer. Then when you rub it in with a 5 minute death montage, it's like pushing your teeth against an angle grinder before you get the opportunity to run into the brick wall again. We're talking an arseload of pain here.

I figured the CS syndrome had something to do with the game over screen. Which was essentially being forced to be an observer, watching people with better aimbots than you play, until the next round started. It's like the aforementioned tiger-lined Great Wall with the cancer medicine and tooth angle grinders, except the tigers are also underage whiney tools as well.

 

[Valiance]

http://gameoveryeah.ytmnd.com/
http://thevoiceforschoolchoice.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/bstarfail.png?w=320&h=224

Come on. These are classic, and awesome.

 

[BehattedWanderer]

But without gameovers we wouldn't have the amazing "YOU ARE DEAD!" messages! I'm all for them, especially since it lets you know precisely and without any shred of doubt that you fucked up something aweful.