Yet Another Stupid Death

[Internet Kraken]

So have you ever felt like a game with some factor of chance involved has completley screwed you over? I don't mean those times were you're getting somewhat unlucky, I mean when the game seems to have gained sentience and is now going out of its way to torture you.

I was playing Crawl and actually doing well for once. For those that don't know Crawl is an ASCII rouguelike in which you delve through a sprawling dungeon in search of fabulous riches. Most of the time you just end up dieing horribly due to your incompetence. However I was doing fairly well for once, but there was one problem constantly harassing me; hunger.

If you don't eat food in Crawl, you die. Normally this isn't an issue since you can eat most of the corpses of dead enemies and can find food items throughout the dungeon. I saw playing as a Spriggan though, who are herbivores and can thus only eat plants. The result of this is you're reliant on the RNG giving you food to eat. If no food is generated, you're fucked. This rarely occurs since food isn't very rare and Spriggan have a slow metabolism. Yet despite all this I literally could not find any food. I searched everywhere but couldn't even find a single pear. Now in real danger of death by hunger, I blindly charged into hostile territory to find something to eat. This is normally a death sentence, but I was desperate.

My hunger-induced insanity rewarded me though; a single loaf of bread was in sight. If I could reach it, I would be able to have enough energy to hopefully find more food and get back on track. But this was just a cruel trick. For as soon as I approached the bread, a red wasp flew down a corridor, paralyzed me, and then killed me a single step away from the bread.

Several hours of playtime and my best character yet thrown away becuase I couldn't find a bloody plant to eat.

 

[bushwhacker2k]

So have you ever felt like a game with some factor of chance involved has completley screwed you over? I don't mean those times were you're getting somewhat unlucky, I mean when the game seems to have gained sentience and is now going out of its way to torture you.

YES. I hate games that rely too much on chance, but on the other hand, Roguelikes are usually meant to be really mean like that and slaughter you at every opportunity.

 

[archvile93]

My friend always died in the most ridiculous ways in Halo 2.

1. Failed to board the scarab and fell to his death. As I continued to fight, he respawned...over the edge and fell to his death again.

2. Jumped over an obstruction in the way and fell to his death. Turned out it was a cliff edge. Who knew?

3. Stole a ghost at one end of the bridge while I blew the others up in a tank. I mistook him for one of the many enemies as he returned. The results were predictable as you think.

4. Drove his warthog off a steep cliff and bailed out, thinking it would flip over and crush him. He didn't survive the fall. The warthog never flipped, it landed just fine.

So many memories.

 

[Wuffykins]

Wait, you mean that Roguelikes aren't sentient programs designed to torture you? ... Are you sure?

But naw, what you've just described is precisely why I'm all for the concept of Ironman modes and Permadeath. Granted, I'm not yet summed up the courage to truly delve into the world of ASCII (but looking at the lack of dungeon crawls I haven't touched I'm soon to be there) I think that the closest I've seen to such an evil act by a game (within memory that is) is from a playthrough of Monster Hunter oddly enough.

I was hunting a Gypceros (this [http://monsterhunter.wikia.com/wiki/Gypceros] for those not familiar), and quite frankly I was doing quite poorly. 2 out of 3 'lives' already taken, round 3 was doing a little bit better as I was slowly learning it's pattern and doing my best to damage it and move away before it struck.

Then it got lucky and poisoned me.

Now I did have an antidote handy, but by my position I knew that finding a safe spot in the area would take too long and I had too little health, but luckily I was close enough the exit that I could quickly run out, cure myself, and run back in. Sheathing my great sword so I could run faster, I made my way to the exit. Just before I got there though, the Gyp stunned me with it's flash. All it needed to do then was hit me once, which would probably knock me out of the area and into safety (assuming I survived the attack).

But no. It just stood there, right on top of me and waited. And just when I was about to to move, it stunned me again. And again. All the while I was watching the poison slowly trickle my health down to zero, and seeing it do a little taunt as it stood there in between stun flashes. The smug bastard.

Yup, I died, and I must say that's one of the few times I've ever sworn quite loudly over a video game. And I speak French, just to give you a better image of that moment.

 

[Trivun]

It happened to me once in Halo 3, on Legendary mode. Normally, I'm pretty damn good at Halo and can even race through Legendary without any problems, killing whatever I want whenever I want. The reason being I play the game sensibly, with a smart stealthy approach, so my opponents rarely have a chance to do any real damage.

This wasn't the case in this level. It was early on, during the bit when John is trying to reach Voi after abandoning the base near the city, and my AI allies had fought pretty damn well but had ultimately succumbed to death's sweet embrace. I ended up in an area that is basically like a big dam-type structure seperating safety from where you need to travel, an open plan space with a bunch of bunkers on the left, pipes on the right, a high path on the far left wall, and two access points onto the top of the dam to snipe from. I had limited ammo from a previous firefight, and there were probably 15 Jiralhanae in this area, another ten coming along after I killed a few (as reinforcements dropped from a Phantom), and a Wraith tank near the back guarding the only exit, which I had to get through to reach the next area. I died so many times then, though to be fair I came close a couple of times to victory, with only the Wraith standing in my way (there were almost zero decent heavy weapons around save for a Fuel Rod Gun, and the Wraith always killed me before I could take it out myself). In the end I just gave up and ran like hell straight through, managing to avoid all my enemies and the Wraith and getting safely to the next area. Bizarrely enough, the enemy AI didn't even bother following me in and just let me carry on to wipe out their colleagues in the next valley...

 

[dkyros]

Kinda already mentioned (poison that is), but when I used to play FFXI many moons ago it would always suck to get poisoned while soloing. It was a for sure death sentence if the monster was the same level as you and a probably death sentence if you were only slightly stronger.

Also lame deaths in a different way are fable deaths in the orginal Fable for xbox. You always had a revival on you and there was no penalization. Yeah way to show me fable.

Lame deaths on another differenter note is when your playing an RPG in dungeon and you don't come across a save point forever, meet up with a boss and lose an hour of gameplay.

 

[Lekonua]

Not sure if it qualifies as stupid, but I got trolled by a water demon while playing Nethack. I was fairly early in the game and wasn't having much luck finding food, so I was near death from starvation as I drank from a spring. Out popped a water demon. Having encountered one before, my reaction was, "oh shit." Luckily, the demon decided to grant me a wish as a reward for freeing him. Naturally, I asked for food.

The demon gave me a tin of food.

I didn't have any way to open it.

I eventually started fainting from hunger and ended up getting killed in a fight.

 

[Frozen Donkey Wheel2]

Any really bad round of a multiplayer game. You know, when the other team is made up of these crazy fuckers that seem to home in on you as soon as spawn and never let up, no matter what you do?

Yeah, fuck those guys.

I also had a bad experience with Shadow of the Colossus, but I already typed the whole thing up in a topic yesterday, and I don't feel like doing it again. Suffice to say that I'd gotten the final Colossus' health bar down to the point that his health was no longer visible (this took me about half an hour) and then he threw me off. Then I THOUGHT I'd be able to get up and survive and work my way back up to kill him....but then it turned I wasn't unconscious, I was dead.

Only time I ever threw a controller.

 

[hopeneverdies]

Spelunky, just Spelunky.

Throw a rock, rock triggers arrow trap while you're mid-jump. Arrow hits you, you go flying and trigger another trap. You get sent flying in the other direction. Bounce off a wall and get impaled on spikes.

Yeah.

 

[Internet Kraken]

The demon gave me a tin of food.

I didn't have any way to open it.

Reminds me of that short story I have no mouth and I must scream, which gives further credence to my theory that all roguelike games gain sentience at some point. And they hate you.

Speaking of dying I just lost another really good character in Crawl. It was technically my fault but it was still pretty shitty to see a fucking boring beetle deal more damage than a hydra in a single attack and kill me.

 

[Saelune]

Hyper Potions in Gym fights in Pokemon...then they use their signature move (the one they give you as a TM for winning) and waste me.

 

[StormShaun]

Demon Souls for me, basicly Im dying all the time but this one takes the cake (its not a lie) im on the side of a castle and their is a huge band of demons blocking me way, I thought I cold kill them all and I was until I noticed that the archers were shooting something and then a dozen boulders rammed me down and killed me, and so I didnt notice that their was a box full of boulders.... *SIGH*

 

[hopeneverdies]

Most of these deaths don't sound all that stupid. But whatever.

Pick a danmaku(Bullet Hell) game. Any danmaku game. I guarantee at least once you will weave your way through a really dense, complicated pattern. Only to either A) Hit a lonely bullet you didn't pay any attention to right in front of you or B) Backpedal right into the mess you just worked so hard to dodge. Bonus points if the game asks to use a continue. Even more if you were close to your next life extension.

 

[The Wykydtron]

Crysis 2, on Skyline i always, always fall down that gap between the two buildings because i forget its very existance so i powerjump over a wall into a huge chasm

Hmm i wonder if Armour will save me this time... No

Why does that hole even exist?

Oh and whenever i decide to pull out the Fat Man in Fallout 3, i always end up misjudging the distances and blow my own stupid arse up as a result

 

[MostlyHarmless]

I was playing Final Fantasy 7 and finally beat the two-headed fire and ice dragon boss. It nearly killed me and I only had RedXIII left with barely any health. I went back to heal and got forced into battle. I beat two of the weird bastards and the third did some water spout and killed me. Right next to the heal station..

 

[Seives-Sliver]

Ugh, I've had those times where I would think the game has just decided I needed to die, I would go into the same area and be one-shot by a boss, glitch on something and die, or walk into a room where all the enemies had thrown me a surprise party and the confetti was replaced with bullets...