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Hmm... I remember that Jedi Knight II had a sequence like this, somewhere at around the end of the first third of the game. It had a fight that you couldn't win, but of course nobody told 'ya. I spend all my hard-earned healthcontainers on that one. It was extremely frustrating, especially because I always quit when I saw that I haven't had a chance. In the end, I had to refer to a guide to see that I couldn't win that one. The situation wasn't clear enough, thus it became frustrating (at least for me). The rest of the game was cool, don't get me wrong, but that part? Cool idea, bad execution.



You can't tell the player that it's okey to 'loose', because you can't win anyways. There's no real solution to your tactic in playing this game. I bet by far most people do not stop playing before they actually have been 'beaten'.

Nowadays, these kind of gameplay problems get solved by letting the player deal an x amount of damage to the opponent and thén there will be a cutscene with whatever alternate ending such a scene would have.

For example in Prince of Persia this technique is used to sort of show to the player the second round of fighting is going to start with an increased difficulty. I'd say that's fair enough without giving away anything. They could have even turned around the whole thing, which they should have done in Jedi Knight II, let the player deal up to an x amount of damage to the enemy and when that artificial limit is reached, show a cutscene in which the player get's defeated and go on from there.

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the average shooter: kill all to achieve your goals.
hitman series: you're a contract killer and earn money with the job. you even got to think a lot.

the average shooter gets usk 16. hitman has been on the german index for the concept, though you kill ~50 more people per level in an average shooter. thinking about this, i feel there is something wrong. who is good and who is evil?



In fact, ever since part 2 I believe in was, there's this 'ranking'. Only killing your targets and not any civilians or bodyguards will rate you as being 'hitman'. So you're actually encouraged to not kill much people, well unless you have no problems with the 'massmurder' rating, but I think most people will take the challenge trying to kill only their targets.

I agree that the USK rating is off there, however I think it's also the virtual social context in which the killing happens. Killing an orc or a vampire obviously is different then killing a human in a somewhat realistic environment. I think that's the USK logic, and personally I disagree with it. What makes killing an unrealistic elf different from killing an slightly less unrealistic but still 100% fake human?

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a space station is always a space station and a mage is a mage, true. but i've never seen a mage in a space station (star wars doesn't count as mages), so there are still stories to be told: the combination of elements counts.



Star Wars Jedi knights and Sith knights do look and act a bit like mages. They have this 'wise-wizard' thing to them and off course their 'force' magic.

However, I agree a real space mage fantasy game hasn't been done yet, would be interesting perhaps.

Cheers

PHeMoX, Innervision Software (c) 1995-2008

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