Lend Me a Hand...Current or Last Gen Games w/ Game Over....

[Luke]

Screens. That aren't Indie games. Or sports games.

Games that when you lose, you start from the beginning. No save points, no forgiveness. When you "die" you have to start from the very beginning of the game.

Please list as many as you know as I'm itching for a challenge from the 360 and PS3 era.

[dsheinem]

There's plenty of challenge in the era in many games that don't meet this criteria...the Souls series comes to mind, for example. At least a few games have a "hardcore" mode or similar that prompts what you seek, too.

That said, your best bet is likely shmups (both systems have a decent selection of retail shmups) or fighters.

[Damm64]

At least 90% of the game today have obligatory checkpoints so it's bit hard.

Think i read somewhere that in XCOM you can potentially reach a Game Over if you fail a time limit.

Even the soul's games have some sort of checkpoint but you can avoid those easyly.

If you want to try self imposed rules i played Dead Space on hard without buying ammo from the shops, you can limit your saves as well.

[MrPopo]

XCOM has two failure conditions: global panic rises too high or fail a particular mission (which, when you get to it, is obvious as a do or die point). Add in ironman mode and you have to accept when you lose a squad of veterans because you used poor tactics.

[Exhuminator]

Yeah Luke modern games don't use such archaic conventions for better or worse. At least none that are coming to mind for me at the moment. But there are still challenging modern era games out there.

Recently I played through and loved the hell outta Vanquish. Give that a shot on God Hard and you should have a fine time.

[isiolia]

Main thing that comes to mind for more modern designs are hardcore modes, as mentioned. For some (Diablo II/III, Torchlight 2, Minecraft, etc) it includes permadeath.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanent_death

'course, if you're not looking to have many hours of progress potentially at stake, and instead just want the 3 lives/3 continues type deal, I dunno. I think that tends to be more something to stick behind a trophy now than a strict requirement.

[Kidpanda]

Luke, I'm not sure if your into shmups, but any region free game for the 360 would be right up your alley. The games themselves have about 30-40 min full game span but can suck hours out of your life until you get to that point. 3 lives is all you get. As long as you don't credit feed of course. Great feeling of accomplishment when you do finally crack it.

[BoneSnapDeez]

Yeah this type of design has gone out of style. The fact of the matter is that most modern games are too long to support this type of system - it was perfect for the 30-60 minute arcade and console games of old.

As Dave #1 stated, the (Cave) shmups are the closest thing. They use arcade-style respawn continues (an unlimited amount) but you can choose to ignore them and attempt the game in one go.

Get DeathSmiles.

[Luke]

Thanks for your comments.

It's not about the difficulty of having a "Game Over" screen, it's the excitement of knowing that I could get to the final boss, die, and have to to through...the...entire...game...again.

[Ack]

Killing Floor and the Left 4 Dead games follow this criteria, though they are based on rounds or maps.

Left 4 Dead, you move as a 4-person team through a series of maps, but if your team wipes, you have to start all over.

Killing Floor, you fight off waves of enemies up until you face a boss, but if your team wipes, you have to restart the map. However you do gain experience towards jobs regardless of survival. Then again, you're supposed to counter this by pushing into higher difficulties over time. Killing Floor 2 is about to come out and does the same.