Topical Tuesday: In-Game Death

[BobisOnlyBob]

A singleplayer moment:

Fighting the final (secret) boss of Cave Story, the enemy is initially in human(oid) form. His attack pattern isn't too complex, but a bit of a nightmare if it's the first time you've got there. I narrowly beat it, and he staggers, then flies up off the top of the screen.

SMAAAASH, down he comes again, this time as a giant, monstrous, grinning sphere. Right on top of my head. "You have died. Do you want to try again?" I think my jaw physically dropped there and then, and my hands went limp, dropping the controller to my lap. Just too ridiculous to handle at that moment - it comes after a solid 5/10 minute Platform Hell experience, INCLUDING another boss, without any save points! Essentially, I was awed by the designer's amazingly cheap shot that I should've seen coming.

Multiplayer:
The phrase "Blue ones stick!" yelled out from the other side of the couch, as a perfectly-arced grenade came flying down out of the sky, attached itself squarely to my face for less than a second, and exploded. Just came outta nowhere, and perfectly timed. The original Halo in 4-player. Priceless.

 

[daftalchemist]

It was in Bad Company 2. I was playing as a medic on some server with my boyfriend. Our final computer point was in some little house, and we ran in before anyone else did so we could wait in the corner for the enemies to run in. I threw a med kit down in the center of the room. All at once, both teams were crammed into this tiny house and my heal points started climbing. Eventually I was running around the room using the defib on anything that died amidst explosions and bullets, hoping the obscured body in front of me was an ally. Finally the whole house came crashing down right on top of us and we lost the round, but not before I had racked up more than 450 points from that medkit on the floor.

 

[Igen]

The original unreal tournament.

Two towers, two worlds, what ever the map is called. I had made my way into the opposing teams tower, killed several people with the flack cannon. a few began to try to gun me down, with half my life left I ran through the portal to a room half way up the tower, containing the "redeemer" (a portable mini nuke). Figuring I was about to die when the two chasing me came through the portal. I leapt from the tower, much to my joy the enemy was regrouping at their tower entrance (where I was about to land and die from the fall). So I aimed down and shot the nuke right before impact. 8 kills and a very surprised enemy team =D

 

[erbkaiser]

Would have to be Left 4 Dead (the first one), shortly after it came out. Two friends and I and one random stranger who didn't type or speak once were playing campaign on Expert (the highest difficulty setting).
We make it through all the maps of No Mercy and through the Crescendo, with good health. The helicopter descends, we make a break for it... and the cruel, oh so cruel AI decides to bring out another Tank.
Before I know what hits me the bastard slams me off the roof, leaving me to fall (and fail the campaign) while the rest makes it out alive.

Totally awesome even if I have yet to ever make it through the campaign on Expert.

 

[Jacob.A.]

My best in-game death was in Halo 3 custom games with a map varient on sandbox. In short, tanks, grandes and explosive containers do not mix so well with a fighting spartan. In long, it was when I was awesome at Halo, now I am just good but not great, anyway, I was sencond or third on my team but I was pssing off the most people by using rockets, spartan lazers and grenades just to kick there asses out into the open to funnel them into BR, sniper fire and minigun spray. I get cut off looking for ammo and get coughtgoing for a tank. Now a grave hammer hits the tank that hits me a drops my shields . Now the real unfortunate part is that I am now stuck in a room that has fusion coils and a tank on top of me and am I glad to see that there is no roof except for that the walls are to high. And they kill me will a grenade that detonates the fusion coils that blow up the tank. The real funny part is that the fusion coils gave the lift off power that propeld me into the air and the tank set the tragectory of the my borabola flight which I end up in the around half way acrose the map with at least 10 seconds of flight.

 

[UFriday]

Not my own death, but funny enough to add
Halo 3, Rats Nest, slayer free for all,
I was driving around in a mongoose, looking for someone to kill, when in one of the tunnels
I passed a guy running forward.
I jumped of the mongoose, it kept moving forward and splattered my brother, who was sneaking up behind the first guy.
I put down the controller and laughed like a madman

 

[Worgen]

in badcompany 2 on atacoma (or whatever) desert. Getting sniped out of a chopper, only to have the chopper crash on the sniper who shot me, that was cool. Massively lucky shot since I was going at a good speed to rocket strafe a tank under me

 

[snowman6251]

Playing Blazblue Calamity Trigger. I still have this replay and I will never ever get rid of it because it was so crazy.

I was playing Noel and fighting a Hakumen. I win the first round. Second round starts. I get a big damage lead, he makes an epic comeback, its anyone's game, and then boom DOUBLE DOWN. That NEVER happens. Trophy unlocked "This Just Got Real".

It was so epic. It gave him the win though, presumably because I was up a round, which led me to lose the match overall as he won round 3. That was kind of lame since we both won one round and then had a tie but whatever, still epic.

 

[Heart of Darkness]

I Wanna Be the Guy for me. I just got done with a vertical segment about four screens high, and I died (but I don't remember how). My gibs proceeded to fall down the screen, until my death had traversed every screed I had just went through. Kinda lame? Yeah, but I'd like to see you die across four screens.

 

[FaceFaceFace]

Playing COD4, I had one of the better machine guns. I had killed one or two guys and turned a corner to see another. I had the perk that makes you aim better without looking down the sights so I just started spraying. It's a machine gun after all. The guy just keeps coming at me and knifes me in the face. In the replay, from his perspective, I saw my bullets flying past him on every side. Not one hit. Nothing to do with his skill, but I still found it pretty hilarious.

 

[DiscoAtThePanic]

Accidentally hitting auto-attack when standing next to a guard in EverQuest when setting up my toolbar on a brand-new character.

 

[DiscoAtThePanic]

Red Dead Redemption's multiplayer frequently produces this kinds of moments. The fact that I'm quite good at the game and can convincingly defeat the average player means that when the truly awesome players punish me with lighting fast headshots, I can't help but be utterly stunned.

It's very humbling.

LOL Yeah, right.

 

[SteinFaust]

in kane and lynch 2, we were playing fragile alliance.
when you die, you come back as a cop to try to stop the heist from being successful.
i got killed by some nonsensical bullshit, so i came back as a cop.
i snuck around, turned more than half the remaining players into cops, and then got caught in an absurd CQB firefight in which i made a last ditch effort to kill the last man by throwing a propane tank at him. he shot it in the air, and we both died.

 

[DaxStrife]

Is it cheating if I talk about a death I caused for someone else?

It was a few years ago and I was playing "City of Heroes," on the Villain side. One of the PVP zones, where heroes and villains can duke it out, is a devastated island called Bloody Bay. The villain base is much smaller, but more vertically challenging than the hero base. I was waiting by the zone entrance, a helicopter pad on the top of the base, and messaging a few friends to come join me for a mission or two. Suddenly I start getting hit from above and look up; a hero was flying over the base, just out of reach of the protection drones. [Drones are how they keep people from mobbing the zone entrances; you get zapped and instantly killed if you get too close to the drones].

The hero was a blaster, the long-range but frail class, and they were flying just out of my range and peppering me with attacks. I was playing my corrupter, similar but with some healing/buff powers, so I was taking the damage in stride but it was super annoying. I decided to teach the hero a lesson for griefing me, so I fired back with my sniper blast: high damage, high range, slow fire rate but a chance to do knockdown. The blast hit and the hero, still alive, plummeted from the sky... directly between two drones who turned him into a pile of ash.

 

[Twad]

In tribes 2, when the ennemy team had us pinned down in our base with constant air raids with a pair of bombers, plus tank support. It was so well done and effective it was just beautifull.

 

[Prof. Monkeypox]

Mine was also in Call of Duty. I was crouched behind a wall, shooting at an incoming enemy. He ran right up by me, jumped out of my way before I got a clear shot, and ran around to the other side of the wall. Then I died.

It wasn't until I saw his kill cam that I realized that he'd planted C4 under my scope and detonated it as soon as I turned around. I had to stop and congratulate him for that.

 

[TimeLord]

Fallout 3 is filled with tones of ways to die!

A Fat-Man to the face will do that to a character!

Couple that with the following event of; hurtling through the air like an angel and you get a hell of a death.

 

[Amethyst Wind]

My second playthrough of Mass Effect.

I'm on my way to pick up my sexy blue teammate in my makes-the-warthog-seem-like-a-Honda Mako. I round a corner to see a stomping Geth Collosus blocking the way to the tunnel ramp. So I do the civilised thing and drive full speed in an attempt to kneecap the cute robot (seriously, if they were the size of cats they'd make great pets).

I manage to fling the thing off its feet, but in the process also topple myself over the ramp and end up stuck down the side and upside down.

The (presumably upset) Colossus then gets up, rounds on me and proceeds to slowly blow me to hell while my Mako's wheels spin helplessly in a comical, turtle-like fashion.

 

[DangNabbit]

I think it was in the first Resistance game on the PS3, I ran into a small room from one side, and an enemy ran in from the other. At this exact moment a hedgehog grenade landed directly between the two of us, thrown by someone else.

We didn't even shoot at eachother. We both just stood there watching the hedgehog rise up and explode into needles, taking us both out.

MGO was also good for funny deaths when playing TSNE, especially when only one sneaking guy was left against a whole team of mercs. I managed to oil drum roll 3 people at once, which was really badass until a fourth guy casually strolled around the corner and knifed me.