When You Die, You Go Back to the Beginning.

[Koh]

Who actually enjoys this design choice in games? I'm curious. This encompasses the main type of going back to the beginning: You have limited lives and continues, and have to start the entire game over from the beginning if you even want so much as a CHANCE to try the place of failure once more.

I've honestly never heard of anyone enjoying it. Who has that kind of time to waste playing the same stages over and over?

[Kosheh]

Who actually enjoys this design choice in games? I'm curious. This encompasses the main type of going back to the beginning: You have limited lives and continues, and have to start the entire game over from the beginning if you even want so much as a CHANCE to try the place of failure once more.

I've honestly never heard of anyone enjoying it. Who has that kind of time to waste playing the same stages over and over?

Um, can you give examples?

If it's what I'm thinking - like Giana Sisters Twisted Dreams' Ultra Hardcore difficulty, where you die once and you start back at level 1-1 - it's for true gaming masochists; you know, the type that attempts to speedrun games with a perfect time or without dying once. :V

[Koh]

Um, can you give examples?

If it's what I'm thinking - like Giana Sisters Twisted Dreams' Ultra Hardcore difficulty, where you die once and you start back at level 1-1 - it's for true gaming masochists; you know, the type that attempts to speedrun games with a perfect time or without dying once. :V

But there, it's served as an option, which is the best way to approach this I feel. Games that just force it on everyone, like Fester's Quest, Zelda II or Double Dragon 3 (one life, back to stage 1) for example.

[Kitsu]

In some cases, it's done just for tradition's sake (which is to say, because they couldn't think of another way to handle player death that met their needs, so they stuck with the normal method).

In other cases, especially something like roguelikes or other skill-focused games, it's important to give real meaning to the player's actions; if you fuck up, you have to suffer some serious (if only annoying) setbacks, so you'll probably be trying harder to do well in the game. Of course, for games with static content, that content had better be really good to warrant forgiving the long trek back.

[Kriven]

It depends on the complexity and difficulty of the game. For games which are very complex and require a lot of thought and skill, I dislike this style of punishment. The difficulty of games like Mega Man are punishment enough, there's no reason to set the player back at the beginning. Whereas, I feel it works well for Super Mario Bros., where you can reach any stage in about a minute if you know what you're doing.

[puggsoy]

It really depends on the game. Like Kriven said, for complex games that already have a lot of other things to take care of, this would be pretty lousy and ruin a lot of hard work. But for fairly simple arcade or platformer games, this is fine, and sometimes it might even be necessary to get the player to be careful. But I remember playing Kid Chameleon with my friend, and how we'd spend a whole afternoon trying to get as far as we can, and take turns whenever you get a game over. Sure, if it had a saving feature we might have actually finished it, but the fact that we didn't gave it so much play time. And it never really got boring to play those first few levels over and over, we'd still slip up on a trap we'd already seen 20 times.

So yeah, it depends on the game. It's not really common anymore, mostly because implementing a save feature is significantly easier than it used to be, but also because starting all over again would be horrible in most modern game mechanics. I'm sure there are some games that still do it though, and they probably have good reasons for it.

[Koh]

I hated the fact that Kid Chameleon did it, considering how long of a game it is. To this day, we've still never finished it on the actual console; we finished it using save states as our battery backup save.

You don't need to be sent back to the beginning to have a challenging game. Take Street Fighter 2010. This game kicks your ass, but is also extremely fair when it comes to continuing: You have infinite continues, and when you continue, you do so on the same stage. That's a hell of a lot better than starting back at stage 1. Stage 1 isn't even where you need the practice if you failed at Stage 6. So all of that backtracking is a giant waste of time and energy.

[NICKtendo DS]

I don't mind restarting a level from the beginning if the level is short. I like a challenge, but take the Impossible Pack from New Super Mario Bros. 2: I can do it if there were checkpoints, which there aren't because of the nature of Coin Rush Mode. It can go fuck itself if I have to die 20 times again just to retry level 2. I'd probably die 20 times there to get to 3 and die 20 times there. 20^3=6000 tries. No thank you. That and every Mario level that has a Crown in it's world number can die in a fire for all I care. I need some room to make mistakes.

[Kriven]

Along those lines, Super Mario 3D World is a really good example of a game where fresh-start continues would be awful. Can you imagine making it all the way up to Champion's Road and then... Game over. Go the fuck back.

No, lol.

[psychospacecow]

It depends on the game I suppose. I'm working on a rouge-like with this being a feature so I guess I'm a little bias.

[Koh]

The analogy I like is this: When you fail senior year in high school, what happens? You just need to do senior year again right? You don't have to go all the way back to freshman year or Kindergarten before you can graduate.

[FinalSmash]

It makes the game more challenging; I cannot die or I have to start ALL OVER from the point I got past 2 hours ag...*dies*o...FUUUUUUUUU!!!!!!

[Koh]

That's not challenge more than an annoyance. It doesn't add any difficulty to the game; it adds to the punishment factor.

[FinalSmash]

...which in turn motivates you more to not die.

[Koh]

I agree, but that isn't a challenge. It's just an incentive to not fail. A challenge would be something like a difficult boss, puzzle or the like. It also artificially increases the length of a game by making you repeat the same stuff over and over again. But failing is going to happen regardless, for first time experiences and human error. Such punishment is way too extreme IMO. Send them back to the start of the level or a checkpoint. But not back at the beginning of the damn game.