Cheap Death

I just read Gamespot’s review of The Legend of Kage, a platformer for the NES recently made available to the virtual console. They didn’t like it at all (it got a 3.0/10). One of the reviewer’s chief complaints was about the prevalence of “cheap deaths that you have no control over.”

It is human nature to try to wriggle free of blame when something goes wrong. I know that whenever I suffer some virtual humiliation, my first instinct is to ask, “why was this in no way my fault?” In good games, brief reflection reveals that I am entirely at fault. I should have been more careful, more quick, or more skilled. Most deaths in good games are downright expensive, but then there is the other kind of death.

A cheap death is a death that an extraordinarily good player could not be expected to avoid. A death that an average or even pretty good player can’t avoid isn’t necessarily cheap, or else every death would be a cheap death. A death is NOT cheap if the player had the resources available to detect the danger, but it isif it is theoretically impossible to intentionally avoid dying without prior knowledge of the danger. I say intentionally because, theoretically, anyone can input the commands of a speed run the first time they pick up a game. The death only avoids being cheap if someone can dodge on purpose.

For example, if entering a room causes an enemy with a one-shot weapon to spawn behind you, you are going to die a cheap death. However, if there is an enemy who hides in a corner and waits for you to go past, then sneaks up on you, it isn’t cheap even though I’ll probably wind up just as dead.

Developers can also be responsible for cheap deaths if they program a sub-optimal interface or other miscellaneous oddities. If button presses aren’t always registered (though I feel this problem is often cited without just cause), or the hit detection is poor, or there is a bug, the player cannot be expected to take blame for messing up.

The cheapness of a death is related to (or at least offset by) the games penalty for dying. If the player is sent back a long way or deprived of items because of death, cheapness will feel more harsh. However, many modern games have little to no penalty for dying, and are thus less likely to annoy players with cheap death. I’ve noticed that some games put autosave points soon before cheap deaths (though they also do this for perfectly legitimate hard parts, so this is isn’t necessarily an admission that the obstacle sucks).

I’ve been thinking of playing through a game and keeping a tally of my deaths in two columns. One column would be labeled LAME and the other LEGIT. This would require a great deal of honesty with myself, but the results could be interesting.