Friday, June 20, 2008
Favorite Deaths
In video games, death is simply the game's way of telling you, "Neener, neener!"
It's frequently a meaningless penalty requiring you to reload or, in older games, simply an expenditure of "lives." In the new 4th edition of Dungeons & Dragons, it sounds like (at epic levels) its something your characters are more-or-less expected to endure on an almost daily basis (Yeah, that's always sounded silly to me).
But sometimes... sometimes... it brings a smile to my face. Or is simply memorable for one reason or another. Sometimes its a little more than an annoying game mechanic. Sometimes it is spectacular. Here are four of my favorites:
Death #1 - Zork
Text adventure games - particularly the old Infocom games - often had great deaths in 'em. But leaving it at only one, what sticks out in my mind was an item that was described as resembling a tube of toothpaste. Attempting to brush my teeth with it revealed that it was an industrial-strength adhesive which killed me in a very amusing paragraph.
Death #2 - Karateka
The whole game, Jordan Mechner's precursor to the Prince of Persia series, centered around rescuing the princess. However, after defeating all the minions and the final boss, you enter the princess's cell. If you run to her arms, the two of you embraced in an early 80's version of a cinematic, and the game came to a satisfying conclusion.If you approached her in a martial stance, she let her open arms drop. Come closer, prepared for battle, and she kicked you in the head. And killed you in one shot. You do not MESS with this princess! I think I fell out of my chair laughing when this one happened to me. And I always wondered how in the heck the villain managed to capture this deadly gal in the first place.
Death #3 - X-Com
I swear, the AI for the aliens in this game was programmed to be vicious. Whenever you'd pull out a grenade, you had to prime it and then throw it. I never had enough time units to do both on the same turn. The aliens seemed to ALWAYS target the guy with the primed grenade.
In this occasion, the dude with the primed grenade had just gotten off the ship, and was bunched up with a bunch of other squaddies at the base of the ship's ramp. They shot him. He dropped the primed grenade.
Boom! I lost half my squaddies before the third turn of combat.
Death #4 - EverQuest
I could fill this thing with MMO deaths. But here's just one: We were resting after a combat in North Ro. In the early days of EverQuest, there were Sand Giants in North Ro. A few months later, you'd almost never see them, because they'd be killed by players within two minutes of appearing. But back then --- they ravaged the population, as there was almost nobody over level 20 on the entire server.
I was 9th level. We were chatting with each other while resting (via text). My only warning was to see my companions stand up and run away, suddenly. I guess I hadn't heard the 20 foot tall giant sneaking up behind me. I'd also never seen that much damage done in a single blow at that point! And my companions could either type out a warning, or escape with their own lives. I couldn't blame them for their sudden, silent abandonment.
Okay, there are my favorite "death scenes" in games. What have you got?
Labels: retro
- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 2:22 AM (Permalink)
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For cool deaths, I can't beat the old Heroes of the Lance game, based on the Dragonlance world. If things were going badly, you had the option, with Raistlin, to do something called Final Strike. It gave an impressive display of falling rocks (and maybe even fireballs, I couldn't find a youtube of it), and killed anything on the screen. Including yourself.
I played Sierra adventures. There were amusing deaths at every possible step!
In Space Quest 3, back when you had to rely on the text room descriptions to figure out what the pixels on the screen were and what objects are gettable, if you try to pick up what looks like an important piece of metal, the game informs you that it's razor sharp, you slice your hands off your arms and bleed to death. Memorable for sheer randomness.
And for something that intrigued my teenage self, I had heard that one of the endings to the 11th Hour involved a very nasty surprise, but I don't think even with walkthroughs I could manage to force myself all the way through the game to see it for real.
Best I can remember, near the end of the game you have to choose one of three doors, or maybe one of three girls to save from the madman. One is the correct choice. One kills you offscreen and dumps your body in the river. The last one... you get a movie sequence where you see the girl talking to someone and offering them "a bite" of something, and then the camera readjusts to show your charater's body lying on the bed ripped open and she's eating your ribs. Yum.
In Space Quest 3, back when you had to rely on the text room descriptions to figure out what the pixels on the screen were and what objects are gettable, if you try to pick up what looks like an important piece of metal, the game informs you that it's razor sharp, you slice your hands off your arms and bleed to death. Memorable for sheer randomness.
And for something that intrigued my teenage self, I had heard that one of the endings to the 11th Hour involved a very nasty surprise, but I don't think even with walkthroughs I could manage to force myself all the way through the game to see it for real.
Best I can remember, near the end of the game you have to choose one of three doors, or maybe one of three girls to save from the madman. One is the correct choice. One kills you offscreen and dumps your body in the river. The last one... you get a movie sequence where you see the girl talking to someone and offering them "a bite" of something, and then the camera readjusts to show your charater's body lying on the bed ripped open and she's eating your ribs. Yum.
Of course, there's the Monkey Island 3 'death' (SPOILER) - LucasArts didn't let anything in the game kill you, no matter what you did. Except, at one point, you have to get into a mausoleum. Which was locked tight and so on - you had to be dead so they'd hold a funeral and put you in. So, in practice this meant that you mixed up a 'sleep of the dead' potion, and drank it - and then the credits started rolling! After going through 2/3 of the game with no lethal options whatsoever, this was quite the shock!
After maybe 30 seconds of credits, your character wakes back up and you go on from figuring out how to get him out of the coffin, back to the game, but the impossible death was pretty awesome.
After maybe 30 seconds of credits, your character wakes back up and you go on from figuring out how to get him out of the coffin, back to the game, but the impossible death was pretty awesome.
Not an RPG - but I *really* got far too much enjoyment out of the "nuke" option in Lemmings.
The goal of the game was to get a certain number of Lemmings through obstacles and to the exit on the board. Once you managed to get the requisite number of Lemmings to the exit, you could (and sometimes *had* to) nuke any Lemmings remaining on the board to continue on to the next challenge. When you did this, a timer would count down from five. When the timer ran out, all the Lemmings would stop, look out of the screen at you, start to shiver. There would be a final mass cry of "Oh NOE!" and... then all the Lemmings would asplode.
But, you know, in a really *cute* way :-)
The goal of the game was to get a certain number of Lemmings through obstacles and to the exit on the board. Once you managed to get the requisite number of Lemmings to the exit, you could (and sometimes *had* to) nuke any Lemmings remaining on the board to continue on to the next challenge. When you did this, a timer would count down from five. When the timer ran out, all the Lemmings would stop, look out of the screen at you, start to shiver. There would be a final mass cry of "Oh NOE!" and... then all the Lemmings would asplode.
But, you know, in a really *cute* way :-)
I'm surprised nobody mentioned the "death" of Floyd in Infocom's Planetfall. That one has always been pretty memorable.
whiner: I had forgotten about the Sierra games!
I always found Police Quest to be the most brutally hard of the bunch. There were so many ways to do things wrong in that game, and even if I managed to make my way through the police station I'd die trying to navigate the streets.
Eventually I got frustrated and decided to go one up on Death Angel and engage in murder spree of my own right in the police station. I buckled on my gunbelt, stepped out in the hall, typed "fire gun", then died, because I had forgotten to draw my pistol.
I always found Police Quest to be the most brutally hard of the bunch. There were so many ways to do things wrong in that game, and even if I managed to make my way through the police station I'd die trying to navigate the streets.
Eventually I got frustrated and decided to go one up on Death Angel and engage in murder spree of my own right in the police station. I buckled on my gunbelt, stepped out in the hall, typed "fire gun", then died, because I had forgotten to draw my pistol.
My friends & I were doing the 4-player co-op mode of Hunter: The Reckoning. We were up to the werewolf, and we determined that the best strategy was for one person to be "the bait" and run around in desperate circles, having the werewolf follow them while another player peppered it with rocket launcher rounds.
Unfortunately, it was tough to hold the werewolf's attention, which resulted in a lot of circuitous running. Due to the random direction changes and the vagaries of the game's auto-targeting system, my friend Mike ended up accidentally aiming at me. Before he could stop himself, he fired.
To my eyes, nothing unusual had happened yet. The rocket launcher flared, and I jumped in surprise as Mike blurted desperately: "AWWWWWW, MAX!!!" and an instant later, my character was duly giblitized.
Unfortunately, it was tough to hold the werewolf's attention, which resulted in a lot of circuitous running. Due to the random direction changes and the vagaries of the game's auto-targeting system, my friend Mike ended up accidentally aiming at me. Before he could stop himself, he fired.
To my eyes, nothing unusual had happened yet. The rocket launcher flared, and I jumped in surprise as Mike blurted desperately: "AWWWWWW, MAX!!!" and an instant later, my character was duly giblitized.
Aw, man --- this thread is bringing up some great memories. And yes, I loved nuking Lemmings...
Okay, I thought of one more. If you managed, through the physics of the game, to climb "out of bounds" in Microsoft's Motocross Madness, you would get shot like a cannon a country mile back into the playing field. The "wipeouts" in that game were pretty spectactular in general and made your groin ache in sympathy pains, but being shot out like that into the middle of the field like that was just hillarious. Well, the first twenty or so times you did it, at least...
Okay, I thought of one more. If you managed, through the physics of the game, to climb "out of bounds" in Microsoft's Motocross Madness, you would get shot like a cannon a country mile back into the playing field. The "wipeouts" in that game were pretty spectactular in general and made your groin ache in sympathy pains, but being shot out like that into the middle of the field like that was just hillarious. Well, the first twenty or so times you did it, at least...
Ah police quest and space quest - great times.... I think the worst deaths though were in police quest: (1 or 2 can't remember) where if you didn't walk around the squad car before you got into it you died for "not properly inspecting your vehicle"..also in the first point and click police quest (4?) there was one scene where you had to copy your partners keys at the mall...if you didn't do it fast enough you "died of embarrassment".... I never made it past that part.
I didn't think I would ever track this one down. It is Crop Circles: Escape from Planet 3.
The entire game is humor based, but death is the best part. If you abduct 3 mad cows, you crash your ship, and death is rewarded with a headline in a tabloid with a full article. The sasquach is a frequent visitor on this tabloid as well, and it's funny watching the little alien wrestle a mad cow in the space ship.
The entire game is humor based, but death is the best part. If you abduct 3 mad cows, you crash your ship, and death is rewarded with a headline in a tabloid with a full article. The sasquach is a frequent visitor on this tabloid as well, and it's funny watching the little alien wrestle a mad cow in the space ship.
Whoa, what an awesome post. Bringing back some awesome memories memories.
A couple of the most memorable where in the game Tribes. The first was when we first loaded it up on the college servers. Never played it before. My buddy had one of those vehicles that looked (loosely) like a speeder bike from Star Wars. I logged in just in time to see him making a strafing run against one of the enemy bases and then "bam" he hit an antenna. I'd never seen anyone/thing fly so far in my life.
Another time I was trying to snipe him and had him in my scope. He must have looked over and saw my monitor because he did a Monty Python and the Holy Grail riff and got me laughing. It looked exactly like when Sir Lancelot raided swamp castle and kept reappearing the same distance away. Needless to say I laughed way to hard and couldn't shoot me. I was easily disposed of.
Other deaths were in Tomb Raider. All of them. I can't tell you how many massive falls and miss-timed steps I took. Usually ending with a bone chilling crunch followed by lotsa laughter.
Holding your breath for over 10 minutes in The Secret of Monkey Island was quite funny too.
A couple of the most memorable where in the game Tribes. The first was when we first loaded it up on the college servers. Never played it before. My buddy had one of those vehicles that looked (loosely) like a speeder bike from Star Wars. I logged in just in time to see him making a strafing run against one of the enemy bases and then "bam" he hit an antenna. I'd never seen anyone/thing fly so far in my life.
Another time I was trying to snipe him and had him in my scope. He must have looked over and saw my monitor because he did a Monty Python and the Holy Grail riff and got me laughing. It looked exactly like when Sir Lancelot raided swamp castle and kept reappearing the same distance away. Needless to say I laughed way to hard and couldn't shoot me. I was easily disposed of.
Other deaths were in Tomb Raider. All of them. I can't tell you how many massive falls and miss-timed steps I took. Usually ending with a bone chilling crunch followed by lotsa laughter.
Holding your breath for over 10 minutes in The Secret of Monkey Island was quite funny too.
In Quest for Glory (Another Sierra Game), if you were a thief you
could type "pick nose"; if your lock-picking skill was high enough, the game would respond "Success! You now have an open nose". If the skill was too low, you would insert the lock pick too far, give yourself a cerebral hemmorhage and die. Good times!
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could type "pick nose"; if your lock-picking skill was high enough, the game would respond "Success! You now have an open nose". If the skill was too low, you would insert the lock pick too far, give yourself a cerebral hemmorhage and die. Good times!
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