Dead men tell no tales, or at least that’s what so many video-games would coyly have us believe. ‘Tis the month of March already and gaming’s waving the grim reaper’s virtual sickle once again. As Titanfall rains in death by Titan and Dark Souls has us clawing its deathly hands into us from every corner, death is in the air. . . and only a few of our favorite games have let us live to tell about it.
No respawning, no level selects, no game overs, these were the very best and brightest characters of them all to make it out alive from the cold, dead grasp of permadeath. See what it means to live another day in only the most creative ways video-games can invent.
WARNING! Rated S for Some Spoilerific Content.
The following titles will be spoiled: Metal Gear Solid 2 & 4, Mass Effect 2, Final Fantasy X & X-2, Shadow of the Colossus, and the Force Unleashed.
Reader discretion is advised for reserving your right to blow your mind at your own pace.
Liquid’s Magic Arm Cure
“I was suck-punched off of a giant robot, got machine-gunned a hundred times, and I finally die catching an unlikely sci-fi disease, but I’m still alive thanks to this MAGIC ARM!” Thus, the usual logic of a Metal Gear Solid entry. Hideo Kojima’s plots always seemed to be a collage of whatever movies he happens to watch at the office, and I’ll bet you cash money one of those flicks was Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
Liquid Snake is smart lad alright. He’s got an I.Q. of 180, speaks seven different languages, shares the “superior genes” of the world’s legendary Big Boss, and like every know-it-all snob, is intent on taking over the world. So what happens when he kicks the bucket? Simple: his half-clone brother implants his living arm onto Revolver Ocelot, a gun-toting, bad-ass amputee in need of another kick-ass arm himself. Win-win, right? Well, turns out the two’s minds were controlling one another. Or were they? No one really knows because it’s too confounding to get straight in your head. If being the sweaty arm of a wannabe Hulk Hogan is a life worse than death, than maybe poor Liquid was never THAT bad after all.
Wii Zombie U to Death
Merry ‘ole England made just a bit less merry of a game for the Wii U’s launch once upon a time. While your little brother and sister were no doubt rocking it out in NintendoLand with the grandparents or trying to find that last Star coin with Mario and company, some of us (though not too many of us) had apocalyptic eyes on one exclusive, and one exclusive only: Zombie U. While so many games are finding their niche for permadeath, the survival horror thriller put a subtle twist on it that questions everything players ever thought about character identification.
When you die in Zombie U, you die forever. . . until you wake up in the body of another survivor entirely. Every death matters for the poor chap you get slaughtered and there’s only one life left to live in this soap opera of crazy conspiracies and undead pub brawlers. Then again, there’s always something to be argued for the reincarnation question. Maybe it really is “you” all along transcending all of these different bodies for every unpleasantly failed battle. Who’s to say it isn’t the power of one soul touristing through unlucky survivor bodies? What we do know is that we can’t ever look at another Buckingham palace guard again and not wet our pants.
Commander Shephard Gets An Extra Life
How do you start off one of the greatest sci-fi games of all time? By killing off your very own protagonist. The S.S. Normandy’s under attack and Commander Shepard is at the helm like the hero you expect him to be. Except he doesn’t save the day. Barely managing to escape from a soon burning wreck of a ship with his crew, an ejected Shephard is spliced between a very mean sandwich of ouch called Zero G suffocation and subzero temps. Dead is dead. Until it’s not.
Waking up to a conspiracy bigger than the two year headache he’s put in, Shephard awakens to a lab under attack, a six-trillion credit man put together stronger and faster than ever. How to top that? Throw in a mysterious terrorist group and a new galactic emergency and you have another web of intrigue taking up another entire game. Too bad it has to come with some nasty looking scars that get worse or better with your choices. We know about Paragon and Renegard points already, but is it the evil choice to not laugh at Joker’s lame one-liners?
Your Story Gets a Second Edition
Boy meets girl. Boy loses girl. Boy vanishes into a void and comes back as that same boy next-door you always knew. Well, okay, boy doesn’t really die, but you do see him fade into nothingness as good as any real death to fans of 2001’s Final Fantasy X.
Yuna’s beloved Tidus put the dream in dreaminess, or so we’d like to remember him. The dream vision of sorts of a Fayth, the clean-cut guy with big shoes wasn’t all that. Rather, Tidus never even was alive to begin with. For a dream, he sure dressed up like a Backstreet Boys’ zipped up, half-shorts-wearing nightmare though. Sprinkle a little fetch-questing and a bit more of hope and you have yourself Tidus 2.0 courtesy of the Fayth for all to cheer. Alas, still with those shorts.
Wandering into Darkness
If the Shadow of the Colossus taught us anything, it’s that when life gives you Colossi, a lot of crap goes down. You’ve lost the one you love. To resurrect her, you have to kill fourteen giant beasts one by one and lose your own soul in the process. Talk about one hell of a price-tag for love.
From the very beginning of Shadow of the Colossus, Wander is unwittingly on a path to destruction as he slays the world’s haunting creatures for the one he cares about. The consequence is as shocking as it is heartbreaking as he becomes the very monsters he aims to destroy. Worse, he was reborn as a little demon baby thing setting up events for Ico and finally revealing to fans what Shadow of the Colossus was all about. Sometimes death means another round of puberty and diaper-changing all for someone you love.
A Lakitu Pick-Me Up
The finish line is in sight. The crowd cheers with thunderous applause. Your friends are about to admit costly defeat at the hand of your mad skills. Your future is on the victor’s mat, your trophy popping up onscreen. You wipe out last minute when your mom mentions dinner’s ready and you shout five more minutes. Cue brain-freeze, cue spin-out, cue falling into the abyss. This is Mario Kart.
And so has the same story unfolded into our very own careers on the Nintendo track. An honorable death escapes the death-defying realms of Rainbow Road and Moonview Highway. Instead, a far more embarrassing one rears its ugly head for every kart rescue you see onscreen from one particular Lakitu with a fishing rod. Death is a misnomer is a Mario Kart, it’s a smug, four-eyed little turtle man fishing you from a graceful end. Perhaps we owe him our thanks, but could he be any slower about it! No–no! Sixth?! Aagh!
The Dark Side of Twists
In George Lucas’s Star Wars saga, a lightsaber to the chest usually means an epic piece of cinema worthy of top-ten lists and genuine dropped mouths from sci-fi fanboys everywhere. In The Force Unleashed, it means a quick, convoluted end to a nonsensical story-arc solved by the brute force of a weapon of a more civilized age.
The Secret Apprentice is tasked with hunting down the last of the Jedi knights in the galaxy courtesy of one Lord Darth Vader. Simple enough. Like the good Sith errand boy he is, The Apprentice does his Jedi-slaying homework and returns to base ready to rule the galaxy. Vader stabs him in the heart and throws him out a window as Palpatine cackles up a storm. Now you’re suddenly resurrected on a surgery table and told to form a Rebel Alliance to root out dissenters. Wot? Dying isn’t simply brain death in the Star Wars universe. It’s the death of script-writing.
Hocus, Pocus, My Sim
There’s no rest for anyone in the Sims, dead or otherwise. While some might put their loved ones six-feet under, your average Sim is just a frat-house spell away from divine intervention. Sound strange? That’s what families are for.
In the Sims world, in-game death typically means their character data gets transferred to their urn or tombstone. Call in the townies descended from the poor Sim you want to resurrect, and you can resurrect that Sim with a Resurrect-O-Nomitron through the Paranormal career track from that local college secret society just down the road. Poof! A la Sim lives! Scratch off death from the life certainties list that ‘ole Ben Franklin was so sure about. Now to cast a spell on your taxes. . .
Do Ya Fear Death?
What games have granted YOU the power over the grave? Tell us in your comments below! Have a deathly good day! *maniacal laughter*
