Nobody likes to lose. We hardly ever set out to intentionally fail. But just because it wasn’t the goal doesn’t mean losing is always bad. Often seeing the dreaded “Game Over” screen a number of times makes finally winning all that much better. And on rare occasions losing is what makes a game so much fun to play.
Over the last few days I’ve been buried in They Are Billions. I’ve made terribly survivor camps and awesome ones. One time I even made it to the oil age with a slew of awesome upgrades and fancy looking buildings. Every time I’ve lost though. And yet despite my repeated failures I’ve never felt demoralized coming out of a play session. I think about my mistakes and what I could have done differently, but never the frustration of having to start all over again from scratch.
I never try to lose. In fact every new game I try to do everything in my power to win, and yet seeing the zombie hordes eventually crush my defences and flood my city with infected feels rewarding in its own way. Like seeing the waves wash up against a sand castle and slowly pull it back into the sea.
You can watch where the water breaks through first and which other parts last until well into the tide coming in. Once invisible design flaws are laid bare and for a few moments you get to see what you created unravel before you and in so doing learn from it, improve, and start all over again.
I thought I might tire of They Are Billions after a handful of matches. Since the object is simply to survive for a set number of in-game days, you spend the early parts doing a lot of the same stuff you did the last time, first building tents to grow your population, than adding more electricity and food to take care of them, and finally growing out production in mining and timber to generate resources for higher level defence and technologies.
Anyone who’s played a lot of Age of Empires or similar real-time strategy games will know the feeling.
The maps you start on are always somewhat different, however. As you begin building up a new city, the ways you grow and expand then end up changing too. Within an hour you realise that while it all felt familiar the small details, stacking houses more efficiently in one area and expanding toward more favourable choke points in another, have rendered your new playthrough unique.
And when death inevitably comes, as it always has for me (so far), the ways it comes end up being unique as well. Unlike missing a jump in a platformer like Donkey Kong Country or miss-timing your dodge and counter-attack in something Dark Souls, the graves you dig for yourself in They Are Billions are always different and never feel predictable until they’re revealed to be all but inevitable.
FTL: Faster Than Light achieved something similar, as do lots of games that toe the line between roguelikes and management sims. Whenever my ship started running out of fuel or oxygen or caught fire or got boarded I was never frustrated with myself or the game. Losing in FTL, like They Are Billions, was just another part of the adventure building on the litany of success and failures I’d engineered leading up to that point.
Of course, I did at some point beat FTL and it felt fucking amazing. I plan on beating They Are Billions as well. In fact, a not insignificant portion of all my waking hours over the past week have been preoccupied with it.
Fortunately, unlike some games that seem to revel in punishment for punishment’s sake and are happy to obliterate large portions of tedious progress just because you forgot to save when you had the chance or simply grind for a handful more healing potions, They Are Billions hasn’t made all of the failed attempts to get there feel like a waste.
So what’s your favourite game to lose in? Maybe you liked getting the chance to start fresh or found the game’s deeper layers only revealed themselves during your darkest hour. Or maybe you just got a kick out of seeing your avatar get chewed up like in Limbo and Super Meat Boy. Let us know.
Comments
22 responses to “What Are Your Favourite Games To Lose In?”
Flashback and and pretty much any of the Tomb Raider games, simply for the visuals.
Hearts of Iron and Crusader Kings. If I all my choices always ended in success there wouldn’t be a proper narrative for my nation.
Same applies to Warhammer Total War or any Total War game. Sometimes it feels good to just lose and start initiating a scorched earth policy razing the cities to the ground to try to slowdown the advancing enemy. Then have it all equate to your last army on the map doing a last stand. A one last hurrah for your empire in an act of defiance. Heroism at its finest.
RAGE? Fighting games.
Love to lose? TLOU. It’s like seeing the death scene of a character from walking dead. And they cut it perfectly.
Agreed. Except the bloaters. That just hurt my feelings 😉
They’re my favourite ones. Always cutting just before Joel gets his jaw ripped off. I love it!
Oh, I love it it in the worst way lol
About time I run through TLOU again, eh? Done your yearly run?
I stopped doing runs. Now I do a season every 6 months or so. Just re-did the university on the weekend actually. When you go down into the dorm, I just kept reloading so I could take them all out with weapons, then traps, etc etc.
Such a brilliant game.
Nice! I’m gonna just go through it all again on a more interesting difficulty, I think. I miss the little things. The joke book. Hunting in the snow. The little touches 🙂
You mean like an easier difficulty? I think that’s a good idea. I beat it on grounded but it was too stressful to be called fun.
Now I usually play on hard and keep forgetting that I have the listen ability. Still one of my top 3 games of all time. It’s just wonderful. I’ve never cried playing a game before, but when the thing happened to his daughter… I’ve never been affected by a game like this before. And you’re right, it’s the little things, the little touches. The people feel real. the situation feels real, their reactions to the horrors, it’s all completely plausible.
Bill’s Town. *drops mic*
Bill’s town is a fucking blast! Such a great series of moments. Great story telling.
My issue is I start on normal so I can have a laugh, and forget after like a dozen playthroughs that i’m Actually far better at this game than I remember. Crafting items pile up and I almost never get hurt. But I don’t enjoy myself as much on Survivor cause the listen ability makes like three sections of the game less frustrating.
Yeah… replaying it since my daughter was born. Man I used to tear up when she got shot. Now I just lose it :/
Top 3. Perfectly justified.
Did we just become best friends???
BAHAHAHAHA.
Also, yes
*fist bump*
I like how the villains taunt you in the Arkham games. Especially when you die in an embarrassing way.
Street Fighter II of course! TEN – NINE – EIGHT – SEVEN – SIFIFOTHRTWONE! OOOOHHHHHAAA.
Dead space, to see which way you were going to get finished off by the enemy.
Fallout 1 had such a great death screen. No music, somber voice waxing poetic about the gravity of your death… Heavy stuff.
Any of the old Sierra games… the Space Quest games had some of the funniest ways to die in an adventure game.
Monster Girl Quest ( ͡º ͜ʖ ͡º)
A-Train, because the way the game over screen tiled and fell to pieces was just endlessly amusing to me as a kid.
Street Fighter, Contra and any of the Souls games except for number 2 =)
Never understood the hate for Dark Souls 2. Its a brilliant game imo. So much content too!
Sure, it would be better if it wasn’t so technicolour/non-oppressive unlike the first one, but the gameplay is still there.
I still do runs several times a year.
Obligatory Dwarf Fortress mention. If you never lose, how are you meant to have fun?