Games Where The Only Way To Win...Is To Lose?

[Dree]

Futurama the game on Xbox. It's a time paradox.

 

[Darren716]

Well let's count the amount of times you have to die in a CoD game to progress
Sgt. Jackson
Pvt. Allan
Roach
Russian president's body guard who I forget the name of
Random Tourist in London

So about five times over the course of 3 games (and that's not counting the times a character you play as dies when your not playing as them)

 

[Trull]

At the start of Metro 2033 I'm fairly certain I died.
Although it was hard to figure out what was even happening.

I should play it again to figure out what happened exactly.

 

[Tiamattt]

Alot of JRPGs use this. You usually come up against a ridiculously overpowered enemy and you have to die in order to progress.

Ah I remember that. In fact I got so used to it whenever I got up to a enemy that was seriously kicking my ass I figured it was one of those and just didn't fight back, and instead of progressing I got a game over screen.

 

[demoman_chaos]

Isn't there a bit in Oblivion for one of the Daedric lords to have a fellow kill you? I remember it only because somehow I had a glitch (via a bugged mod perhaps) so my characters have retardedly high HP (into the thousands) and it took the fellow about an hour or so to wear my guy down enough.

 

[Nekron_X]

How about some love for Drakengard? The first ending (there are five) involves

Spoiler

Your biggest ally sacrificing herself to save the world,

and then each ending beyond that gets progressively more depressing. Except ending five, fuck ending five, with splintered balsa wood, nothing that difficult should be so goddamn bad, especially considering how much I loved the rest of the game.

Well....at least ending 5 started the story for Neir and i'm thankful for that...

OT: The first fight with Gongora in Lost Odyssey. you have to fight him until he loses....i think it was 50000 HP if i remember right. at which point he'll use his Bullshit move called pain surge that instantly KO's your entire party. like always there's no warning for this and no matter what level you are before hand it is not possible to beat him, since the move automatically activates when he takes that amount of damage

 

[RedRuby185]

In Dragons Dogma you had to stab yourself with the Godsbane to complete the game. It's the only one I know of.

 

[thedoclc]

PlaneScape: Torment has already been mentioned because the only way to progress through a certain trap is to die, but this is not much of a loss since the character who built that trap built it knowing only an immortal could pass through it by being killed and reborn over and over again. So it was not so much a loss as a subversion of the player's expectation and a clever way to play with the game's inherent resurrection mechanic. The Nameless One (the protagonist) isn't losing; he's using his powers in a creative way.

However, there's definitely a win-by-losing element to the ending. No matter what, The Nameless One is damned for all he has done and has to pay for it. But by accepting this and forcing the final villain to merge with him, so that The Nameless One accepts his punishment and regains all his power, he can ensure that his friends survive the adventure, free them of their debts to him, and get in a final goodbye before facing his fate. For a good TNO, that's as close to victory as PS:T is going to let you get.

 

[Strelok]

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl, of the 5 bad endings all of which some thing terrible happens to you if you chose that path. There are 7 total endings for SoC. Or to another extreme, War Games for the Colecovision:

Spoiler

"The only winning move, is not to play." -WOPR (Joshua)

 

[UltraXan]

The best and worst game that illustrates this is Shadow of The Colossus. It has one of the most annoying endings I've ever seen. I hope that a third game comes out to explain the story. The game itself was super fun, but I couldn't stand the ending - which I won't spoil.

Ah yes, I agree with you. Mind you, I took the time to work my ass off to escape the light, and guess what. There's a fucking invisible wall that prevents you from escaping the fucking temple. All that work wasted >:L

Anyway, the first game that comes to mind for me is Quake 4, where half way through the game, the Makkron comes in to beat your ass and send you off for stroggification. And wouldn't ya know it, I found a video of it.

 

[wottabout]

The first thing I thought of was Might & Magic 9. Throughout the game, the death screen has you go to this gate in the clouds, then some guy opens a slot in the door and says something like, "Sorry, it's not your time yet. Go back down there." But eventually you have to travel to the land of the dead for whatever reason, so you have to go kill yourself. It's actually kind of satisfying to finally see what's behind that door. I don't remember the game that well though, and I don't think I made it very far past that point.

 

[Creator002]

Global Thermonuclear War

oh, and Tic-Tac-Toe

I'm surprised this took until the second page to emerge. It was the first thing I thought of.

The only games I've played where losing is the only option actually had ways to win. Demon's Souls[footnote]Sort of.[/footnote] and Dragon Age: Origins, which have already been mentioned.

 

[Extra-Ordinary]

There's a "fight" against Zeus in God of War 2 and a couple quick-time-events across 2 and 3 that you simply can't win. You can try, heck, I still mash the prompts when they come in screen just so I can keep saying I tried, but it's fruitless all the same.

 

[Olas]

Though it's just a short indie flash game, [a href="http://adamatomic.com/fathom/"]Fathom[/a] is almost the epitome of this concept. I won't spoil anything about it though.

 

[squeekenator]

There is a mission in StarCraft 2 where you have to lose to win

Umm, which one? I don't remember any such mission.

 

[Prosis]

Blazblue. It's a fighter game. You have to win and lose fights in a certain order to see all possible endings, get 100% completion for that character, and unlock their best stuff.

There is something overwhelmingly aggravating about standing there, waiting for the computer to finish screwing around and kill you. Dumbest game mechanic I'd ever seen.

 

[theswordsmn]

I don't think I saw one mention of this the whole thread, but come on. Metal Gear Solid 3? The Sorrow?

 

[Nikolaz72]

Spec Ops: The Line.

Spoiler: SPOILERS

Spoiler: Seriously, its a spoiler

When you see a heavy as one of your dead teammates. When you die just as you enter and get overun and re spawn its like 'I've been here before' and you have to kill him again. But this time he talks like the dead team-member but looks like a heavy.

 

[loc978]

Hmm there is a fight in DA:O where you are suppose to lose but think you can win that and the game progresses it?s just hard and pointless since you just end up skipping a fun quest.

Are you talking about the one where you rescue Princess Uninteresting and then get stopped on the way out by a pack of guards?

Because you can't win that fight. I've tried. I killed every enemy except the boss guard lady. She has infinite health. You can beat her ridiculously long health down to nothing but she'll never die.

Nope, you can beat her.

Spoiler: video

Damn that fight was close. Seriously, those guards fell like autumn leaves to my team.

But then you miss out on the opportunity to witness Sten and Oghren try to pass themselves off as circus performers.

Wait, you were supposed to lose that fight? Shit. I completely missed out on that... didn't even have a hard time with it (though my playthough was on the sissy ol' normal setting).

...on topic, I've got nothing that hasn't already been said. That just shocked me, is all.

 

[Unia]

I think simply telling the game might be a spoiler in this case; Trilby's Notes

Spoiler

The very last solution is literally typing in the command "die",
at which point the protagonist is shown lolling out his tongue staring at the ceiling.
Possibly the only time a horror game made me laugh out loud.