Can games be fun without the threat of death? On this week’s show, we’re talking about death and consequences in gaming. We also got a coffin-load of your Viewer Mail and we weigh in on the new Mario, Sound Shapes, Papo and Yo, and The Last Story.
Episode Timeline:
Intro: 0:00
Viewer Mail: 2:20
Hangover: 12:18
Death and Consequences: 44:08
Last Call: 79:40
Outro: 86:05
Listen and Subscribe:
Connect and Interact:
This Week’s Music:
“Dark Flute” and “Army of Assholes” from Sword & Sworcery LP and Indie Game: The Movie, by Jim Guthrie (Bandcamp, iTunes).
Links:
7 Days a Skeptic – indie horror game by Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw
Mars Rover Landing on XBLM – free NASA-developed Mars landing game
Killswitch – hoax game you can only play once
One Chance – another one-time game, this time about the end of the world
Secret of Mana Genesis on iTunes
SQ Chips and SQ Chips 2 – chiptune/electronic remixes of classic Squaresoft songs
Listen to Selected songs from SQ Chips
Kickstarter for GaymerCon: Everybody Games
Hands down, the saddest video game death there will ever be is when Barry Burton dies in Jill’s bad ending in the first Resident Evil. Barry is one of the best characters in video gaming history after all, and even when getting past the bad acting seeing him die in such a pitiful way really hits home. http://bit.ly/RIb43k
Two notes on death and consequences.
First, the night before listening to your podcast I was playing Lolllipop Chainsaw on Ranking Mode. Then near the end of the first stage, right before the first boss, I miss one of the QTE and ahve to restart the whole 30min stage. That was it for my run in ranking mode. The game has enought checkpoints, but ranking mode really is for those who have time.
Second, Rayman Origins has none of that bs of lives and continues that Mario still has, apparently just for the sake of it, because it serves no prupose. If a player at some pont early in the game have 50 lives, that means no game overs. Except if there is a Donkey Kong Country Returns dificulty like stage. That one had some extra levels in which was easy to burn through 20 or 30 lives.
That’s all.
Keep up the good work,
Hey, Piel!
Thanks for commenting! The checkpoints in Lollipop Chainsaw were ultimately the reason I stopped playing that game. I got to one of the early bosses and died and the game set me back about 20 minutes. The game is hysterical but I definitely don’t have time in my life to slog through the same segments of the game over and over.
As for Rayman: I’m a huge fan of that game and I know Matt, our reviews guru, is as well. Aside from being beautiful and a blast to play, it does so many unique things that separate from the traditional Nintendo-style platformer. That new Rayman game for the Wii U is the only thing in the launch window that even looks remotely appealing to me.
Nice mention of the deaths in Resident Evil Paul, what about when Luis dies in that game? I thought that was sad.
Interesting show! I think you forgot that the video game version of Groundhog Day was Majora’s Mask. I remember seeing something happen (like an old woman got robbed), so I would go back to that time and wait to catch the robber! Fun times! I would love to replay that on the 3DS so I hope they come out with it. Also, this was after you aired this episode, but there were some particularly sad deaths in the Walking Dead video game’s current episode. 🙁