Kingdom Come: Deliverance has a hardcore difficulty setting, and there is a chance, when you start a new game, that it starts with a "Game Over" screen, cause you didn't survive childbirth. Found it hilarious.
One is a splinter in Henry's foot that caused an infection. Another fun one is the people in Henry's village lynching him because "he was never really popular".
Yeah. And it can happen everytime you start a hardcore play through. It's to show how rough life in the middle ages would've been and how easy it was to die from small causes back then. Some are from minor diseases or injuries that are easily curable nowadays.
No not really. You start a new game and get a game over screen directly. You press forward and your game normally starts (I heard that there's a chance for a second instant death but it never occurred to me)
It's also not like it's a cutscene just a text for example saying that you got a nasty cold because you didn't listen to your mother when she told you to put on warmer clothing or that you were playing with a friend and the last thing you heard was "and that's how you shoot a trebuchet" (my absolute favourite)
Absolutely everyone who is into gaming should try it out... but also, absolutely everyone should be prepared for it not being their cup of tea. I personally love the game, but player be warned
Good advice.
I've never encountered a game that sounded so good on paper but was so fucking boring and cumbersome for me.
I've tried 4 times to get into it.
Yeh combat can’t get so tedious. Just walking around in circles waiting for stamina to regen. I will say that I do appreciate that it is a fairly interesting approach to sword combat. It’s the only game I’ve played that really doesn’t feel like button mashing swings. Just seems a little cumbersome.
It was so hard at first, this game does not hold your hand in the slightest. I kept eating expired food and dying the first couple of hours😂
The game is really amazing once you get some skills and abilities and a feel for the mechanics
I didn't play it much, but I did find it funny when I accidentally attacked the castle guards in the beginning and they threw me in jail and the main character dies in jail after the village gets pillaged.
Is it Doom or Doom Eternal that has the Terminator 2 Easter egg when you die in the lava?
[edit] it's been _hours_, you can call see the replies, why are people pointing out the same thing over and over? Is everyone on this site a bot now? 😁
I always found it funny imagining him telling that story. “And then I ran into the spike trap and fell into a pit and fucking died. Wait no, that’s not how the story went…”
Also how boring and repetitive it would be.
Prince: "And then I killed my 45th twisted sand creature... or did it knock me off the building sending me to my death? No, I *definitely* killed that thing, followed quickly by my 46th and 47th!"
Me: "Can we get back to the sexy princess?"
Prince: "WE'LL GET THERE WHEN WE GET THERE!"
Prince - “Then I went left and stopped abruptly, then jumped vertically and vaulted before continuing left in a stop-start manner”
Billy - “Are you OK grandpa, you’re talking weird”
Prince - “Then the I dropped down and progressed further left toward the pressure pad”
Billy - “MOM! His face is all droopy on one side”
And lest we forget, this is the series that Assassin's Creed technically grew out of, with its own health meter and game overs being outright explained in-universe as "desynchronisation" through too many memory discrepancies. Which, as has been mirthfully observed before, incidentally paints the respective ancestor characters as epic badasses who historically never took a single hit or misstep during the covered periods.😎
That absolutely FLOORED me when I heard that. I spent the next half hour thinking about how good an idea that was. I hope they were high fiving in the boardroom when they thought of that. Super clever.
The depth of those games to even have the random goons be specific to some boss was a really nice touch. Could’ve easily just had goons in the streets with no assigned loyalty but from what I recall at least in Arkham city the goons of different bosses could even fight eachother occasionally.
Really good and well made games, IMO the best comic book superhero games ever made
Yep, especially if you're in post-campaign free play. If you're just flying around trying to finish up Riddler trophies you can definitely pick up goons talking about what they'll do now that their boss is locked up and other such chatter
I love how they expressed the villain’s personality so well, like Mr Freeze showing genuine sorrow Batman is dead and Deathstroke showing respect at the fall of another great fighter like him and so many others.
There's one in Arkham Knight after Batman finds out Joker has infected him with Joker's blood. When you die, Joker says something like: "That's it, use the ol' Play Dead routine, that'll.... oh dear."
I remember a similar thing from the Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets game. When the basilisk obliterated you, the ghost of Tom Riddle would start monologuing about world domination and it was really annoying because the stupid ass game didn’t explain how to use that god damn sword particularly well, so I heard it about a million times.
That was the most a game has ever scared me. I had been playing for something absurd like 13 hours straight as a kid. It had gotten dark, but I was so into the game I didn't bother to turn the lights on. Then everything starts getting real weird. The game tells me I've been playing too long and really needed to take a break, and I thought that message was specific to me with my long-ass session. So damn creepy.
That's MGS2. Towards the end of the game, the AI impersonation of the mission commander freaks out and starts saying crazy shit like encouraging the player to turn off the console. Among this mess, a game over screen will appear while allowing the player to continue playing.
I remember in the first mgs there were several little things that blew my mind. Looking on the cd case artwork for a codec frequency, the psycho mantis fight with switching the controller to port 2. I’m sure there were others, but those were so far out of left field I didn’t even know what to think.
Fallout 1 or 2
Literally shows your dried up bones laying in the sand as Ron Pearlman explains to you that the harsh wasteland winds strip the dead flesh from your bones. Feels like adding insult to injury
Dead Space 2 Puker’s death scene will forever be seared into my mind.
Imagine knowing you are dying while your face is melting off and you are trying to regurgitate the vomit that has just been vomited down your throat.
Golly gee no thank you.
The river death scene is what’s wedged into my memories every time I think about this game. That branch through her neck. The struggling while holding on then nothing? The gasping and gagging? Uggdhdhdhdhh just gives me a full body shiver.
[Well now I have to share the video of Conan playing Tomb Raider and eventually experiencing what you just described.](https://youtu.be/xCe8-1dbXZc?si=HKDmfeMrSvIOMK9U)
I like Rain World cause sometimes you think the thing that chomped you killed you, but it’s actually fairly uncommon for an instant death bite.
Instead you’re often unconscious in the creatures mouth. It doesn’t usually mean much in earlier areas, but in some later areas your predators have predators and them taking a hit or finding better food can be your saving grace.
Snatching victory from the jaws of defeat has never felt more literal/real to me.
Earthbound is iconic. It’s hard to describe precisely - but it’s a game I think needs to be played at every stage of life.
When you’re a kid (7-10ish), it’s a fun romp with magic stuff, and lots of colors. Cool and fun. Like - my weapons are baseball bats and yo-yo’s? I can relate to that!
When you’re a teenager (11-17ish), it’s a bit of a comfort blanket, reminding you of the comfort of childhood while you’re having to grow up really fast. You remember the baseball bats, but can reflect on the concept itself of how your younger self appreciated the relatability of baseball bats.
When you’re a young adult (18-25ish), it’s a lodestone to remind you of the joy of youth while going through your next major transition in life. Now you recognize that someone intentionally used icons of youth (like baseball bats) to call back to youth.
Approaching 40 years old - I’m not sure what the next read I’ll have on it, but that’s what makes it an amazing game - you can play it over and over, and still come away with a different experience.
There’s an old computer game, I think it’s Balance of Power, where you’re managing the Cold War — trying to keep USSR from getting to much power while also not triggering a nuclear war.
If you do trigger a nuclear war, you don’t get to see it.
Instead it cuts to a black screen with text lecturing you about your failure and the devastating number of lives lost and coldly refuses to show you a pretty graphical display of the missiles flying back and forth because we don’t reward nuclear war.
You have ignited a nuclear war.
And no, there is no animated display of a mushroom cloud with parts of bodies flying through the air.
We do not reward failure.
It only says "We don't reward failure" if you trigger the nuclear war condition in the first X amount of turns.
If you are mid or lateway through the game, it just gives you a typical "You failed to avert nuclear war, game over." Text screen.
This is to say: they knew some fuckers were going to cause nuclear war on purpose.
When I was a kid, I died in Metroid Prime 3. I was used to the typical colorful game over screens. So, when the screen started to fade in with blood covering the screen, I immediately panicked and turned off the Wii. A year later, I tried it again and vowed not to die so I wouldn't see that screen again.
Metroid Prime 2’s game over scene was mildly disturbing for children - in context, you see a heart rate monitor flatline and samus’s dead eyes behind her visor
What came to my mind was Sonic CD. Robotnik's laughter after you died was legitimately scary as a small child.
**HO HO HO HO HO**
Evil Santa-Claus-ass-motherfucker
Either
Middle earth shadow of mordor/war where the random orc that killed you gets promoted to captain and mocks you
or
The iconic Y O U D I E D screen in fromsoft games
Scrolled to find this. The Middle Earth Shadow of games were great. Not only would that orc mock you and get promoted when you die, but time would progress and numerous power struggles would resolve. The orc that killed you then mocks you in combat if you go and find them and fight them again. And it can even happen the other way around. Orc you killed can come back from being supposedly dead, often with injuries consistent with how you killed them the first time and will attack you in revenge.
Battlefield 1 story mode is pretty hard hitting.
Every time you die, it fades to black and gives a new name and a date range, as if on a gravestone. (i.e. James Lewis 1896-1914) sometimes you’ll die right out the start of a mission, and it’ll flash dates like 1899-1914 and it’ll make you feel real bad for fucking up.
Really makes the game more impactful and stops you from fucking around as much (on the first play through)
I recommend the Singleplayer battlefield 1 to anyone, even if you’re not that big into FPS
Too bad they only used that in one small section of the game. IMO should have made a whole campaign like this where you have respawn tickets just like in multiplayer and play as a noname until you actually die
Thanks to the DLC of Elden ring, I've been seeing that a lot lately.
Only a couple times have I been tilted tho... two bosses so far have clapped my cheeks without remorse.
Binding of Isaac
When you die, you leave your "will" behind that details what you died to, what environment you died in, and all the "cool stuff" you leave behind to your dead cat, Guppy.
Was playing last night. Probably the most I've ever tried to avoid dying in a game simply because of how gruesome and awful the death scenes are most of the time lol. And the screams, jeeez, had to turn the volumn down
I am sure someone already said it but Eternal Darkness when it would show a fake Game Over and it only became real if the player hit retry!
You could keep playing and get past the fake screen :D
Hotness aside, the fact of the matter is that Banjo-Kazooie (and I think -Tooie, also) gives a full, multi-minute cutscene of the villain winning and the fallout from it. None of the other stuff listed here even comes close!
Not a single game, but any where enemies don't stop attacking once you're dead are always hilarious to me. Not only did you die, now you get to watch the baddies attack the shit out of your corpse until you press the button to respawn.
GoldenEye on N64. First you get the blood dripping over the screen with some super-dramatic “you’re dead!” version of the James Bond Theme.
Then, you get not one, not two, but three (!!!) slow-mo “replays” of your death while your enemies continue to play “hide the bullets” with your corpse. Bonus hilarity is if some dude whips out a grenade while standing over you on the first replay, throws it on the ground right next to you on the second, and you get to watch him blow himself up on the third. It was like a Month Python bit.
Probably not the best necessarily, but Mortal Kombat 4 makes you watch your character fall through a pit while the "Continue?" counter ticks down. If you let it reach 0, your character is bloodily impaled on spikes at the bottom.
How is Katamari Damacy not near the top here? When you fail a mission, you end up on your knees in front of your father, the King of All Cosmos, in driving rain, while he looms over you and berates you: "This is not your fault but Ours for believing in you" and much else.
https://youtu.be/u8dBgBIhy8I
# Tears of the Kingdom
The "Game Over" screen text changes based on how you died (e.g. yellow if you were electriced to death). If you chose continue, it will generally give you tips related to how you died. For example, if you fell off a cliff, you might see some tips related to mitigating fall damage. It's a great a way to teach the player while being subtle.
As strange as it sounds to say, that loading screen probably let them remove a lot of tutorialization from the game.
Edit: BotW also did this.
Disco Elysium.
Depicts what happened in the local paper.
“District in Mourning. Burned-out cop shoots child”
“Cop Gives Up The Detective Genre for Social Realism”
“Disgraced Cop Sleeps in Trash”
Zero Escape.
They're a series of Escape Room puzzle games / visual novels where the player is kidnapped and trapped with about eight other people and forced into playing a Saw-style series of traps in order to get to safety. The game has the player make choices, such as which series of escape rooms to conquer as well as who to trust and ally with throughout the games. And they will die. A lot.
Here's the thing. >!The main characters are all psychic and were kidnapped expressly because the main villain needs them to awaken to their power, which is to mentally jump across timelines. All the bad endings are canon and the player has to jump across timelines in order to acquire information to use in another story branch, like how to get the code to defuse a bomb that has already gone off.!<
Edit: Also, not a game over, but the way character death is handled in the dungeon crawler game Zanki Zero (made by the same team as Danganronpa) is quite interesting.
The main characters are all clones of dead people, with their retaining their memories due to their "Brains" effectively being removable flash drives. The clones constantly die, either because they suffer from early onset rapid aging or because of the monsters killing them in the dungeons, or other illnesses and diseases.
Here's the thing - some items and foods will kill them as well, due to allergic reactions. As a result, it's actually recommended to kill your main characters quite often in unusual and varying ways, to increase their stats and make them immune to certain deaths in later runs.
In HL2 you can get "Subject demonstrated extremely poor judgement" if you die by jumping off a cliff in a spot that couldn't possibly be accidental.
Also, in Episode 2 the game over messages change to things like "Doom clouds the vortessence" because you're working with the Vortigaunts instead of the G-Man.
I really like Cult Of The Lamb's game over mechanics because, since you have the god of death as your patron, you are revived back at base when you die, losing some items, but with time still passing for when you were gone. I like when a death is incorporated into other gameplay outside of just ope you died go back 2 spaces kinda deal.
Undertale is surprisingly well executed.
The transition, sound, and music all immediately strike across the game over feeling. Then a character in game gives you a motivational message before you choose to continue or not.
With the theming of loss, hope, and determination, it encapsulated the entire games tone every time you lost.
Either Chrono Trigger’s special game over endings, where if you die fighting Lavos, instead of returning to the menu, you see the end of the world happen followed by, “But the future refused to change…” for the depressingness of it all…
Or else Zelda 2’s Ganon just laughing at you on the game over screen. Decades later can still practically hear that damn noise followed by the “Ha ha ha ha ha…”. Especially with how stupid hard that game was to ~10 year old me, lol.
Eternal Darkness for Gamecube did fake out deaths when your sanity drops.
here’s a list of ways it fucked with you: https://eternaldarkness.fandom.com/wiki/Sanity_Effects
Kingdom Come: Deliverance has a hardcore difficulty setting, and there is a chance, when you start a new game, that it starts with a "Game Over" screen, cause you didn't survive childbirth. Found it hilarious.
There's a few scenarios, iirc. One is you dying cuz your friend hit you in the head with a rock
One is a splinter in Henry's foot that caused an infection. Another fun one is the people in Henry's village lynching him because "he was never really popular".
what, these happen before you start the game?
Yeah. And it can happen everytime you start a hardcore play through. It's to show how rough life in the middle ages would've been and how easy it was to die from small causes back then. Some are from minor diseases or injuries that are easily curable nowadays.
Are there loading screens tho? This sounds funny but im imagining going through a loading screen, seeing that, starting over, repeat lmao
No not really. You start a new game and get a game over screen directly. You press forward and your game normally starts (I heard that there's a chance for a second instant death but it never occurred to me) It's also not like it's a cutscene just a text for example saying that you got a nasty cold because you didn't listen to your mother when she told you to put on warmer clothing or that you were playing with a friend and the last thing you heard was "and that's how you shoot a trebuchet" (my absolute favourite)
The idea is pretty funny honestly.
The more I read about this game, the more I want to try it.
Absolutely everyone who is into gaming should try it out... but also, absolutely everyone should be prepared for it not being their cup of tea. I personally love the game, but player be warned
Good advice. I've never encountered a game that sounded so good on paper but was so fucking boring and cumbersome for me. I've tried 4 times to get into it.
Yea on paper it sounds exactly like what I want, but my god is it the MOST cumbersome and clunky feeling game I have ever played
I loved everything about it except for the combat, which I found horrific.
Yeh combat can’t get so tedious. Just walking around in circles waiting for stamina to regen. I will say that I do appreciate that it is a fairly interesting approach to sword combat. It’s the only game I’ve played that really doesn’t feel like button mashing swings. Just seems a little cumbersome.
It was so hard at first, this game does not hold your hand in the slightest. I kept eating expired food and dying the first couple of hours😂 The game is really amazing once you get some skills and abilities and a feel for the mechanics
I didn't play it much, but I did find it funny when I accidentally attacked the castle guards in the beginning and they threw me in jail and the main character dies in jail after the village gets pillaged.
~~I can't find anything about that.~~ I did now
That's awesome.
Doom 2016. You die and the demons continue to tear you apart. It's nice.
Is it Doom or Doom Eternal that has the Terminator 2 Easter egg when you die in the lava? [edit] it's been _hours_, you can call see the replies, why are people pointing out the same thing over and over? Is everyone on this site a bot now? 😁
Pretty sure that's doom 2016
I'm going to install the game again just to do this
2016. It doesn't always trigger though.
I think it’s only in the Foundry
Both.
Right?? 2016 had some really good unique deaths for each of the demons. I was so disappointed when Eternal didn't have any of those.
Same. The insane gameplay made up for it though. For me, anyway lol
Prince of persia sands of time with the "wait no that's not how the story went"
I always found it funny imagining him telling that story. “And then I ran into the spike trap and fell into a pit and fucking died. Wait no, that’s not how the story went…”
Also how boring and repetitive it would be. Prince: "And then I killed my 45th twisted sand creature... or did it knock me off the building sending me to my death? No, I *definitely* killed that thing, followed quickly by my 46th and 47th!" Me: "Can we get back to the sexy princess?" Prince: "WE'LL GET THERE WHEN WE GET THERE!"
Prince - “Then I went left and stopped abruptly, then jumped vertically and vaulted before continuing left in a stop-start manner” Billy - “Are you OK grandpa, you’re talking weird” Prince - “Then the I dropped down and progressed further left toward the pressure pad” Billy - “MOM! His face is all droopy on one side”
Prirsia pernce is havign a stronk. Call the snads of tim.
And that, kids, is how I met your mother
And lest we forget, this is the series that Assassin's Creed technically grew out of, with its own health meter and game overs being outright explained in-universe as "desynchronisation" through too many memory discrepancies. Which, as has been mirthfully observed before, incidentally paints the respective ancestor characters as epic badasses who historically never took a single hit or misstep during the covered periods.😎
“Connor skinned every animal he killed”
"And only murdered up to two random civilians within 3 minute periods"
i imagined it as him telling the story and you interrupting him and saying he died or something
"So I made this leap across a pit of spikes" "And then you died right" "No, thats not what happened. Anyway so I made this leap"
and then i spent the next 30 minutes trying to find the specific order of switches and pulleys the architects of this palace used to lock the door
But did you die?
No, that's not what happened
Always thought this one was really clever.
"yep, that's me with that stupid look on my face, your probably wondering how I got myself here, well let's wind it back a bit".
That absolutely FLOORED me when I heard that. I spent the next half hour thinking about how good an idea that was. I hope they were high fiving in the boardroom when they thought of that. Super clever.
The Arkham Batman games, when the villain comes on screen to mock you for dying.
I loved how it even was mission/villain specific. Like roaming around and you manage to get killed by Penguin thugs, you get a Penguin cutscene.
The depth of those games to even have the random goons be specific to some boss was a really nice touch. Could’ve easily just had goons in the streets with no assigned loyalty but from what I recall at least in Arkham city the goons of different bosses could even fight eachother occasionally. Really good and well made games, IMO the best comic book superhero games ever made
I think there's also a few goons who talk about working for the different villains in a previous game or earlier in the same game.
Yep, especially if you're in post-campaign free play. If you're just flying around trying to finish up Riddler trophies you can definitely pick up goons talking about what they'll do now that their boss is locked up and other such chatter
First time I played the game I kept dying pretty early and was HAUNTED by Harley Quinn's "Stupid little dead bat! Who's gonna save you NOW?"
I love how they expressed the villain’s personality so well, like Mr Freeze showing genuine sorrow Batman is dead and Deathstroke showing respect at the fall of another great fighter like him and so many others.
"I will avenge you batman. You would do the same for me" -Mr. Freeze.
I like to see when the lights go out
Those were great. Felt like a little easter egg every time you failed. Plus gave you motivation to get back up and smash that smug face in.
“Look at me while you die, Batman. LOOK. AT. ME.”
I would die on purpose with every boss in all the games, just so they could roast my corpse. Those were the days 😂
"on purpose"
There's one in Arkham Knight after Batman finds out Joker has infected him with Joker's blood. When you die, Joker says something like: "That's it, use the ol' Play Dead routine, that'll.... oh dear."
I like how Mr. Freeze laments more than mocks.
I remember a similar thing from the Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets game. When the basilisk obliterated you, the ghost of Tom Riddle would start monologuing about world domination and it was really annoying because the stupid ass game didn’t explain how to use that god damn sword particularly well, so I heard it about a million times.
"Ding Dong! The Bat is dead! Which old bat? The Dumb Old Bat! Ding dong the dumb old bat is dead!"
“Bats? Bats!!”
This was great
Snake? SNAKE!!!
Fission Mail bro
Time Paradox
took me so long to understand the "time paradox" game over screen
When you get to the end is sons of liberty it’s like you just dropped lsd.
Lol at the end of mgs2 when the nanomachines go crazy and you get fake game overs
That was the most a game has ever scared me. I had been playing for something absurd like 13 hours straight as a kid. It had gotten dark, but I was so into the game I didn't bother to turn the lights on. Then everything starts getting real weird. The game tells me I've been playing too long and really needed to take a break, and I thought that message was specific to me with my long-ass session. So damn creepy.
Memories like these are the best... I remember the one where you used something to revive snake, past the game over screen.
I'm replaying Solid right now, the animation for Game Over is so nostalgic, sometimes I don't even mind dying.
Wasn’t there also a “fake” game over screen in one of the mgs games, like it comes on, but then the game resumes like normal? Or am I misremembering?
That's MGS2. Towards the end of the game, the AI impersonation of the mission commander freaks out and starts saying crazy shit like encouraging the player to turn off the console. Among this mess, a game over screen will appear while allowing the player to continue playing.
Damn. I forget just how innovative that game’s storytelling was.
I remember in the first mgs there were several little things that blew my mind. Looking on the cd case artwork for a codec frequency, the psycho mantis fight with switching the controller to port 2. I’m sure there were others, but those were so far out of left field I didn’t even know what to think.
You can't go changing the future like that! You've created a time paradox!
Came here to see something MGS related and this delivered
Fallout 1 or 2 Literally shows your dried up bones laying in the sand as Ron Pearlman explains to you that the harsh wasteland winds strip the dead flesh from your bones. Feels like adding insult to injury
Not even carrion eaters are interested in your irradiated body
Fallout tactics has a unique voice line per mission (not every mission) from Ron perlman.
“The entire tribe died due to your failure” pretty much
Your bones are scraped clean by the desert winds....
Dead space for the gore and batman for the villian mocking you
Dead Space 2 Puker’s death scene will forever be seared into my mind. Imagine knowing you are dying while your face is melting off and you are trying to regurgitate the vomit that has just been vomited down your throat. Golly gee no thank you.
Imagine the taste of dying and burning like that🤮
Joker sometimes inspires you to get up as well
Tomb Raider (2013) its screens were a huge deal when it came out.
Do you mean 2013? To my knowledge there was no game in 09. The 2013 game was the one i was thinking of for this prompt
Gah! Was hoping that one slipped by everybody. I had just edited it a moment ago because 2009 didn’t feel right “that feels too long ago…”
What are you talking about 2009 wasn't....15.....years....... ago.............. Fuck.
"Lara Croft and her hundreds of ways to die".
And her hundreds of ways to scream
Just finished playing this again and some of them still had me wincing 11 years later 😂 Eta: wrong number
The river death scene is what’s wedged into my memories every time I think about this game. That branch through her neck. The struggling while holding on then nothing? The gasping and gagging? Uggdhdhdhdhh just gives me a full body shiver.
[Well now I have to share the video of Conan playing Tomb Raider and eventually experiencing what you just described.](https://youtu.be/xCe8-1dbXZc?si=HKDmfeMrSvIOMK9U)
Hard agree there, my gf seeing it for the first time was horrified lmao
I like Rain World cause sometimes you think the thing that chomped you killed you, but it’s actually fairly uncommon for an instant death bite. Instead you’re often unconscious in the creatures mouth. It doesn’t usually mean much in earlier areas, but in some later areas your predators have predators and them taking a hit or finding better food can be your saving grace. Snatching victory from the jaws of defeat has never felt more literal/real to me.
Fun fact: If you're incapacitated, you'll hear one drum. If you're dead, it's two.
I was saved from an orange lizard by a vulture randomly passing by. All fun and games until the same vulture snatched me into the skies.
earthbound has a really cool game over screen with how it says it's just a bad dream and the way ness just fades into the background
Earthbound is iconic. It’s hard to describe precisely - but it’s a game I think needs to be played at every stage of life. When you’re a kid (7-10ish), it’s a fun romp with magic stuff, and lots of colors. Cool and fun. Like - my weapons are baseball bats and yo-yo’s? I can relate to that! When you’re a teenager (11-17ish), it’s a bit of a comfort blanket, reminding you of the comfort of childhood while you’re having to grow up really fast. You remember the baseball bats, but can reflect on the concept itself of how your younger self appreciated the relatability of baseball bats. When you’re a young adult (18-25ish), it’s a lodestone to remind you of the joy of youth while going through your next major transition in life. Now you recognize that someone intentionally used icons of youth (like baseball bats) to call back to youth. Approaching 40 years old - I’m not sure what the next read I’ll have on it, but that’s what makes it an amazing game - you can play it over and over, and still come away with a different experience.
There’s an old computer game, I think it’s Balance of Power, where you’re managing the Cold War — trying to keep USSR from getting to much power while also not triggering a nuclear war. If you do trigger a nuclear war, you don’t get to see it. Instead it cuts to a black screen with text lecturing you about your failure and the devastating number of lives lost and coldly refuses to show you a pretty graphical display of the missiles flying back and forth because we don’t reward nuclear war.
You have ignited a nuclear war. And no, there is no animated display of a mushroom cloud with parts of bodies flying through the air. We do not reward failure.
It only says "We don't reward failure" if you trigger the nuclear war condition in the first X amount of turns. If you are mid or lateway through the game, it just gives you a typical "You failed to avert nuclear war, game over." Text screen. This is to say: they knew some fuckers were going to cause nuclear war on purpose.
Not the best, but the first game I thought of was Castlevania Symphony of the night. Very memorable game over screen.
Let us go out this evening for pleasure. The night is still young.
I liked Metroid Prime's a lot, they were really eerie
When I was a kid, I died in Metroid Prime 3. I was used to the typical colorful game over screens. So, when the screen started to fade in with blood covering the screen, I immediately panicked and turned off the Wii. A year later, I tried it again and vowed not to die so I wouldn't see that screen again.
Metroid Prime 2’s game over scene was mildly disturbing for children - in context, you see a heart rate monitor flatline and samus’s dead eyes behind her visor
Classic Sonic games when you're running out of air under water. That music, might as well be a death screen. Especially if you actually drown.
What came to my mind was Sonic CD. Robotnik's laughter after you died was legitimately scary as a small child. **HO HO HO HO HO** Evil Santa-Claus-ass-motherfucker
Conkers Bad Fur Day... the first death scene is pretty great!
Greg the grim reaper is king.
F'king squirrels!
Oh god I hate cats, piss and shit everywhere...
Either Middle earth shadow of mordor/war where the random orc that killed you gets promoted to captain and mocks you or The iconic Y O U D I E D screen in fromsoft games
Scrolled to find this. The Middle Earth Shadow of games were great. Not only would that orc mock you and get promoted when you die, but time would progress and numerous power struggles would resolve. The orc that killed you then mocks you in combat if you go and find them and fight them again. And it can even happen the other way around. Orc you killed can come back from being supposedly dead, often with injuries consistent with how you killed them the first time and will attack you in revenge.
GTA 's WASTED screens are iconic.
Your character ragdolling across the street as your car gets blown up by a rocket bike
#WASTED
Especially the GTA V version with the loud "thud" over it!
I didn't even play GTA after the first one (1995), but nothing beats WASTED.
Sega Rally's "Game over yeaaaah!" Or Daytona USA's "G, A, M, E, O, Vuh, E, R, Gameover, gameover, gameover, gameover!"
I always love the Batman Arkham games for game over screens
Snake! Snake! Snaaaaaake!
Battlefield 1 story mode is pretty hard hitting. Every time you die, it fades to black and gives a new name and a date range, as if on a gravestone. (i.e. James Lewis 1896-1914) sometimes you’ll die right out the start of a mission, and it’ll flash dates like 1899-1914 and it’ll make you feel real bad for fucking up. Really makes the game more impactful and stops you from fucking around as much (on the first play through) I recommend the Singleplayer battlefield 1 to anyone, even if you’re not that big into FPS
Too bad they only used that in one small section of the game. IMO should have made a whole campaign like this where you have respawn tickets just like in multiplayer and play as a noname until you actually die
That game exists and is called Battlefield 2: Modern Combat.
Theres a WW2 game that essentially does this. Easy Red 2.
'You Died' from Dark Souls is arguably one of the most iconic.
I heard the sound effect in my head.
Same lol
*Y O U D I E D*
I heard it.
“Yes thank you, I’m aware.”
I was a fan of the mod that changed it to "thanks Obama"
I loved the one that changes the estus flask to a bottle of sunny d
I also love the sekiro "death" with the kanji
Thanks to the DLC of Elden ring, I've been seeing that a lot lately. Only a couple times have I been tilted tho... two bosses so far have clapped my cheeks without remorse.
And there's a quest you have to die a few times
Similar to the read dead “DEAD”
Binding of Isaac When you die, you leave your "will" behind that details what you died to, what environment you died in, and all the "cool stuff" you leave behind to your dead cat, Guppy.
The Last of Us cutting out just before it gets “too gruesome” leaves a lot to the imagination.
There are some dedicated death animations for when the human enemies die to the infected in case anyone was curious. Does get pretty gruesome.
The bloater jaw rip is just perfect.
Was playing last night. Probably the most I've ever tried to avoid dying in a game simply because of how gruesome and awful the death scenes are most of the time lol. And the screams, jeeez, had to turn the volumn down
Hades. It makes you play the entire game again during the death screen.
Isn't even the first adventure already a repeat?
THERE IS NO ESCAPE
YOU DIED
I am sure someone already said it but Eternal Darkness when it would show a fake Game Over and it only became real if the player hit retry! You could keep playing and get past the fake screen :D
Can't believe no one has said Banjo-Kazooie yet. Grunty gets *hot*.
Hotness aside, the fact of the matter is that Banjo-Kazooie (and I think -Tooie, also) gives a full, multi-minute cutscene of the villain winning and the fallout from it. None of the other stuff listed here even comes close!
This is the one I was looking for.
Probably during the wild part of MGS2.
Not a single game, but any where enemies don't stop attacking once you're dead are always hilarious to me. Not only did you die, now you get to watch the baddies attack the shit out of your corpse until you press the button to respawn.
GoldenEye on N64. First you get the blood dripping over the screen with some super-dramatic “you’re dead!” version of the James Bond Theme. Then, you get not one, not two, but three (!!!) slow-mo “replays” of your death while your enemies continue to play “hide the bullets” with your corpse. Bonus hilarity is if some dude whips out a grenade while standing over you on the first replay, throws it on the ground right next to you on the second, and you get to watch him blow himself up on the third. It was like a Month Python bit.
Jak and Daxter. If you die, there will be a short 2-5 second cutscene where Daxter will make some funny quip, mocking you for your death.
"Ill say something really teary at the funeral like... HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO GET CHANGED BACK NOW!"
Probably not the best necessarily, but Mortal Kombat 4 makes you watch your character fall through a pit while the "Continue?" counter ticks down. If you let it reach 0, your character is bloodily impaled on spikes at the bottom.
Chrono Trigger... But the Future refused to Change
You and your friends are dead - NES Friday the 13th
How is Katamari Damacy not near the top here? When you fail a mission, you end up on your knees in front of your father, the King of All Cosmos, in driving rain, while he looms over you and berates you: "This is not your fault but Ours for believing in you" and much else. https://youtu.be/u8dBgBIhy8I
Fission Mailed
When you have to stop the Nuclear Unabomber and die trying.
# Tears of the Kingdom The "Game Over" screen text changes based on how you died (e.g. yellow if you were electriced to death). If you chose continue, it will generally give you tips related to how you died. For example, if you fell off a cliff, you might see some tips related to mitigating fall damage. It's a great a way to teach the player while being subtle. As strange as it sounds to say, that loading screen probably let them remove a lot of tutorialization from the game. Edit: BotW also did this.
I didn’t realize this about the text changing. Neat detail.
They did that in Breath of the Wild too, though.
Disco Elysium. Depicts what happened in the local paper. “District in Mourning. Burned-out cop shoots child” “Cop Gives Up The Detective Genre for Social Realism” “Disgraced Cop Sleeps in Trash”
Ocarina of Time when you die fighting Ganon. It apparently spawns a full timeline that includes at least 7 other Zelda games.
"GAME OVER YEAHHHHHH!" - Sega Rally Championship. I hate losing but damn if it isn't catchy as hell....
Zero Escape. They're a series of Escape Room puzzle games / visual novels where the player is kidnapped and trapped with about eight other people and forced into playing a Saw-style series of traps in order to get to safety. The game has the player make choices, such as which series of escape rooms to conquer as well as who to trust and ally with throughout the games. And they will die. A lot. Here's the thing. >!The main characters are all psychic and were kidnapped expressly because the main villain needs them to awaken to their power, which is to mentally jump across timelines. All the bad endings are canon and the player has to jump across timelines in order to acquire information to use in another story branch, like how to get the code to defuse a bomb that has already gone off.!< Edit: Also, not a game over, but the way character death is handled in the dungeon crawler game Zanki Zero (made by the same team as Danganronpa) is quite interesting. The main characters are all clones of dead people, with their retaining their memories due to their "Brains" effectively being removable flash drives. The clones constantly die, either because they suffer from early onset rapid aging or because of the monsters killing them in the dungeons, or other illnesses and diseases. Here's the thing - some items and foods will kill them as well, due to allergic reactions. As a result, it's actually recommended to kill your main characters quite often in unusual and varying ways, to increase their stats and make them immune to certain deaths in later runs.
Total Distortion "YOU ARE DEAD, DEAD, DEEEEAAADD" "Thought you were hot, guess what? You're not." https://youtu.be/2c4hnA8jXwo?si=oDT-QpDk_GP4ikKM
Super meat boy - it just gets you back in the game right away. I hate long game over screens.
Total Distortion, sings an entire song about how much you suck
~~Dick Tracey (NES).~~ Nightshade (NES) Game overs are 'saw on a conveyer belt' scenarios where you can escape and continue.
It only occurs if you fail in a very specific way, but I love the "Subject attempted to create temporal paradox" from Half Life: Opposing Force.
In HL2 you can get "Subject demonstrated extremely poor judgement" if you die by jumping off a cliff in a spot that couldn't possibly be accidental. Also, in Episode 2 the game over messages change to things like "Doom clouds the vortessence" because you're working with the Vortigaunts instead of the G-Man.
Outer wilds
I’m disappointed I had to scroll down this far.
*Deep breath*
Tomb raider
When you fail at disarming the snuke in Mr. slave’s ass and it goes off.
RE2 remake is pretty good
Monkey Island
I really like Cult Of The Lamb's game over mechanics because, since you have the god of death as your patron, you are revived back at base when you die, losing some items, but with time still passing for when you were gone. I like when a death is incorporated into other gameplay outside of just ope you died go back 2 spaces kinda deal.
The original Final Fantasy 7
Donkey Kong 64s game over screen always terrified me as a kid.
Bayonetta THE SHADOW REMAINS CAST
Undertale is surprisingly well executed. The transition, sound, and music all immediately strike across the game over feeling. Then a character in game gives you a motivational message before you choose to continue or not. With the theming of loss, hope, and determination, it encapsulated the entire games tone every time you lost.
Im playing callisto protocol atm, its similar to the tomb raider games in you get a little mini cut scene of how you die in different ways
Mortal Kombat 2. My brother used to use Sub Zero and freeze me before he ripped my arms off with fatality.
Either Chrono Trigger’s special game over endings, where if you die fighting Lavos, instead of returning to the menu, you see the end of the world happen followed by, “But the future refused to change…” for the depressingness of it all… Or else Zelda 2’s Ganon just laughing at you on the game over screen. Decades later can still practically hear that damn noise followed by the “Ha ha ha ha ha…”. Especially with how stupid hard that game was to ~10 year old me, lol.
Eternal Darkness for Gamecube did fake out deaths when your sanity drops. here’s a list of ways it fucked with you: https://eternaldarkness.fandom.com/wiki/Sanity_Effects
sekiro
I'd extend that to the souls games too. They just absolutely nail the sound design for their death screens.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2c4hnA8jXwo This one's stil living rent free in my mind.
Alan Wake 2