What games do you like playing with permadeath?

[StaceyPowers]

Do you like games with permadeath at all? If so, which, and why?

[Shagger]

The only game I've played that features permadeath is Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice and that game handled it in it's own, unique way, so I'm not really the one to ask. Still, it's a brave choice for a developer to take because, as a developer, you have to get things like the difficulty balance, difficulty consistency, how the character upgrades and improves along with difficulty progression absolutely prefect. The margin for error for these things that exists for other games just isn't there if a developer chooses to include a permadeath. Another thing that needs to be perfect is the save function. Getting this wrong can literally break a game if's not not done right.

 

Going back to Hellblade, I believe this very thing happened to Jim Sterling when he first reviewed the game. He hissed something he had to do, the game autosaved after the point he could go back, and because he missed this thing he couldn't go forward. To accommodate the game's permadeath, the game only loads from a single save file. In short, he was fucked and couldn't finish the game. Because of it, he actually gave the game a 1/10 at first, but once he had calm down and realised he has given the score out of pure anger and was being unfair to the game, he eventually changed it. Can't say I blame him though. Just because you missed one torch a game should punish you with an inability to complete it, but it does go to show how important getting this right is in such a game.

 

Full scope on the Jim Sterling incident in this video.

 

 

[killamch89]

I've never really played Hellblade before - I've heard about it but haven't tried it but I have played with permadeath in Skyrim using mods and it makes every battle far more intense because you know you can't just restart the game if you die. That character's gone - it has its risk and rewards.