Do you feel that lives are an archaic concept?

[Rinzler]

I personally think so. What is the point of them? All they do is serve to add unneeded tension and when you run out it just force you to go through all the tedious menus again.

[Little T]

I agree. In this day an age there are save games, so lives are just pointlessly there and usually mean an unnecessary game over screen in the middle of a level you can just load back to , and that's always annoying in a game with checkpoints because you have to start over.

I can understand the use of lives today in games that are trying to be short and simple like a classic arcade game (and that's always fun), but in games such as Sonic Unleashed for example, it's just weird that they are still used.

[Nintendoga]

Lives are here because when I die in a sonic game, I don't want to be booted back to the main menu and restart the level again, I just want to continue from my last checkpoint.....

Though I do agree, we modern gamers have gotten....ahem a bit soft.

Edited October 29, 2011 by Nintendoga

[krazystitch]

They are pretty pointless nowadays because, like Little T said, we have save files now. They were precious back in the day when they determined whether or not we'd be continuing, but now they're really nothing more but a number on the screen in most cases. I mean, I know there are still games that use he life system rather than saves, but the majority has moved on to save files.

[Solly]

It's pointless when there isn't a real penalty for dying.

It makes sense when there are long/difficult stages with multiple checkpoints. Even if the game has a save function(as it most likely does) getting a Game Over and having to continue from outside the level rather than the checkpoint is a good way of punishing players who fail too much.

The idea of them adding pressure is a good thing to me. Game-players today are total wussies.

With that said, most games don't have a need for them. Only some.

[Conando]

They're only useless if they give you so many that you'll never get a Game Over, in my opinion.

[Solly]

They're only useless if they give you so many that you'll never get a Game Over, in my opinion.

Which was one of the things I liked about the Mario Galaxy games: if you quit, your lives were reset, so you were discouraged from hording them.

[Conando]

Most Nintendo games do that, save for DKCR. Which is a game where you actually needed all those damn lives, which was pretty awesome.

[Diogenes]

For the most part, yes. Unless they put some thought into the lives system, either to make it work with modern game design trends or for some other specific purpose, it's pointless. The only benefit I see in the standard lives system is that it forces you to take a break every once in a while if you're dying a lot, so you're not just throwing lives into the void until you get frustrated enough to throw your controller into the TV. But other systems can do it better.

I actually liked what Unleashed Wii did. Instead of having lives carry over from level to level, your life count is how many lives you have when you start a level. Rather than having weaker players never getting their lives into the double digits and stronger players amassing 90-some lives they'll probably never need, you always start out with a reasonable number of chances regardless of your skill. And if you do need more than that, the gaia gate side rooms have items that increase your maximum life count. You also never have to grind for lives, as they're "refilled" between levels. I would've added an infinite lives upgrade after finishing it, tho', so you're free to mess around as much as you want.

[Swiss]

Like HoF said, DKCR is the way to handle a lives system.

Sonic 4 on the other hand? Yeah, I'll just be over hear with the 999 lives I don't need.

[LoseR]

The "Lives" system was created for to pound the money out of you at the arcade, honestly though, I do LIKE it.

To me, dieing multiple times and NOT getting some kind of setback just seems odd... Maybe because I play a lot of old school games? I don't really know...

[Emmett L. Brown]

I can't think of a single game in the last ten years where Game Over actually meant the game was over and you had to start from the beginning again with no trace of your previous game.

In such a world lives are pretty pointless. It's really a question if you want to put a limit on how many times the player is allowed to be booted back to a checkpoint before they have to restart the whole level.

[Forest_GS]

I normally just break out the cheat searcher when I'm having trouble in a game. Infinite lives normally does the trick. Infinite rings/health, for example, is a tad overkill. Just search for the number of lives, die, search again, repeat 'till you have one variable left. Sometimes there's more than one, but rarely too many to handle. Just try all that's left and at least one of them should work.

Only game I've really had trouble with cheat searches is Phantasy Star Universe 1&2, PSP. Those skill points for learning new weapon grades were weird. Someone else has probably figured them out by now though.

I never use cheats Online, or go online with save files that have cheats. One of my codes of honor/internet.

(I have an unlocked PSP, and use Cheat Engine for PC games)

[Scott]

They're only useless if they give you so many that you'll never get a Game Over, like Sonic 4.

Fix'd

Other than that, I like the live system, sure having a save system is good and all, but it's one of those things that's been there for years, that's unfortunately dying out, same goes for bosses actually, though THAT's not as bad as the life system, though I encourage the life system for say, platformer games.

[Blacklightning]

I find that games just plain lack suspense when there isn't a condition for absolute failure. It's pretty much the equivalent of knowing almost exactly how every film you ever watch will ultimately turn out, because there's literally no chance of the villain winning out in the end. Granted, not every game strictly needs that kind of suspense to be effective, and I'm sure having to start a 10-30hr game completely from scratch for whatever reason would be an absolute pain, but all the same I just feel most games I play these days don't test skill anymore so much as persistence - less of a matter of getting any good at a game, and more about how many times you go through the same checkpoint before you start getting sick of it.

This is why I love the Rougelike approach, even if I'm not a particularly big fan of the genre itself. The game is short, but you only get one life to go through the entire thing - even if the game was maddeningly difficult (as Rougelikes usually are), it's still pretty compelling to try and get through as much of the game as you possibly can and amass lvl ups and perks like it amounts to some kind of high score. It's only then when genuinely beating a game comes off as genuinely thrilling to me - in a situation where victory is never guaranteed.

That all said, I don't expect the suspense of every game to be justified by a life count - just that the player be given a good punishment as incentive to avoid dying. Minecraft empties your entire inventory regardless of how long it took to fill it, Metroid spaces checkpoints out long distances and requires you to find and activate them manually, and if I'm not mistaken games like Bayonetta give pretty heavy score penalties for each death (which might not seem like much, but in a game that revolves around flashy, stylistic combat the last thing a player wants is a blow to their ego). It's extremely difficult to take a game seriously when death is treated as a slap on the wrist - otherwise it might as well be treated just as a story with a shooting mechanic.

[CoffeeGrunt]

Lives are a relic of the arcade days.

Lives plus cheap, one-shot-kills equals angry teenagers pouring money into machine to continue. They present no real challenge, just a method of farming money quick and easy. They stayed when we moved to home entertainment, but then better systems and ideas came about.

I still prefer health bars/health a la Half Life to regenerating Wolverine healing like CoD...

In Half Life, you run into a situation, you're stuck with being careful and dealing with your massacred health until you stumble on healthkits. Some of the best sequences in my FPS experience are moments where these are practically drip-fed to you, and it creates massive tension in trying to find and scour places for some more.

Meanwhile in CoD, I can just pop up from a barrel, eat lead, recharge health by the power of American patriotism, and repeat.

[Solly]

Lives are a relic of the arcade days.

Lives plus cheap, one-shot-kills equals angry teenagers pouring money into machine to continue. They present no real challenge, just a method of farming money quick and easy. They stayed when we moved to home entertainment, but then better systems and ideas came about.

[Candescence]

I can't think of a single game in the last ten years where Game Over actually meant the game was over and you had to start from the beginning again with no trace of your previous game.

Funny, Blacklightning beat me to mentioning Rougelikes first, because they still do this, two recent examples being Dungeons of Dredmor (which has a permadeath option, but who the hell wants to turn that off?), and The Binding Of Issac. The Mystery Dungeon games (Shiren the Wanderer and Pokemon) are an exception as far as Roguelikes go, and they're still pretty punishing, because you lose all/half of what you're carrying at the time if you die.

As previously stated, these days, lives are only good if they're implemented well. I also liked how Unleashed Wii handled lives.