Look, we can all admit that games are typically better when you’re on the winning side of things. Nobody plays games because they want to get demolished, after all, so it’s no wonder people complain about skill-based matchmaking in multiplayer games when they can’t just stomp every single lobby they enter.
Still, losing is an inevitability in video games, whether we like it or not, so there’s something to be said about video games that attempt to turn losing into a more positive experience. With that in mind, let’s take a moment to appreciate those games that turn losing into something fun. If it is not fun, at least you’ll gain something valuable and informative.
Games about joining underground fight clubs aren’t exactly original, but for the most part, those games are about being the best of the best. Look at Def Jam, for instance, as Vendetta wants players to conquer everyone in sight, even if it’s three thugs at once during one legendarily hard fight.
The Con for the PSP isn’t about personal glory, though.
Launched for the PSP in 2005, The Con is about putting together a crew of fighters to work the underground circuit. While there’s money to be made from fighting and winning, The Con allows you to fix or throw fights, either by trying to make your opponent look good before demolishing them or by battering them in the early going before taking a dive. It’s an interesting mechanic and one that should be explored a lot more.
Wrestling games are a bit different from conventional sports games in that their career modesoften feature ludicrous storylinesthat keep with the actual tone and writing of the wrestling shows themselves. Well, mostly. We can’t speak for Samoa Joe’s bionic arm in WWE 2K20.
Anyway, like in real-life wrestling, a character’s story or arc doesn’t just end because of one loss, and the same is true in WWF No Mercy. The game’s Championship mode, where you compete for one of seven different championships, offers branching paths depending on the choices you make and, crucially, whether you win, lose, or get DQ’d during your matches.
WWF No Mercy isn’t the only game to offer these kinds of branching pathways, with WWE 2K14 allowing players to create their own stories with branching pathways. Hopefully, 2K will revisit this feature in upcoming games.
When you’re managing one of the most complex and intricate simulations in gaming history, you’re bound to slip somewhere along the way, and Dwarf Fortress practically bets on that. You play the overseer to a dwarf community, influencing their society however you can to keep them alive for as long as possible.
The beauty of Dwarf Fortress is that ‘as long as possible’ can either mean five months or five minutes. The unpredictability of your dwarves, each with their own ambitions, wants, and responsibilities, can lead to a beautiful calamity that’s just amazing to watch. Dwarf Fortress isn’t for everyone, but if you delight in disaster, it is worth a look.
When you start a new character inProject Zomboidwith the words “this is how you died,” that’s typically a pretty good indication that winning or ultimate survival isn’t going to be your inevitable outcome. Death can be swift in Project Zomboid, and while you can survive for a good while, you’re never too far from the Grim Reaper’s embrace.
The indie zombie survival hit, Project Zomboid, plonks you into a ruined urban area and says, ‘give it your best shot, champ.’ While you may scavenge for supplies, weapons, and even medicine to try and stave off any infection, the chances are high that you’ll slip up eventually. Still, that’s not going to stop you from booting up another character and going again because it’s all part of the fun.
Oftentimes, post-apocalypse games try to sell players the fantasy of being the all-conquering badass, taming the wasteland with a gun in each hand and a romantic interest in every major settlement. Kenshi beats that notion out of the player almost immediately. You’re not special here; you’re just another cog in a machine that’ll keep functioning with or without you.
An open-world survival game with its own autonomous factions that fight with each other outside the player’s involvement, Kenshi makes it hard for the player to win encounters outright. However, every fight or moment in Kenshi is an opportunity for growth, withsome players recommending that becoming a slaveand picking (losing) fights with the guards is actually a good way to start out your early game build, as it builds your stats without the fear of death because you’re more useful alive. Who knew that working for experience/exposure was actually a good idea?
Timeloop narratives naturally lend themselves to a trial-and-error approach to failure and success. Being given an infinite amount of time to solve the same looping problem means you get to try pretty much any idea you’ve got, and while there have been a few games to try this, none have really succeeded in the way Deathloop has.
Playing as Colt, you’re trapped in a time loop on an island with eight Visionaries trying to celebrate the best murder party in history. In order to break the loop, you need to kill all eight Visionaries before midnight, when the loop resets. The end result is a game of investigation and exploration as you uncover more about everyone’s patterns and habits and how to ultimately exploit them to create the one perfect loop.
Look, calling Pathologic fun is a fundamental misunderstanding of what the game is all about. Pathologic delights in the misery and misfortune of the player, as no matter what your choices are, it often feels like you’re stuck in a hopeless situation. Playing as a healer in a small town racked with illness and plague, you’re charged with keeping a set number of NPCs safe from pestilence, but there are only so many hours in a day, and the choices that need to be made start becoming impossible very quickly.
Again, fun isn’t a word that describes Pathologic, but memorable certainly is, thanks in no small part to its relationship with ‘losing,’ whether that’s via the loss of your NPCs or the misplacement of your moral compass when difficult decisions need to be made.
A lot of what losing means in single-player gaming is things not necessarily going your way, which could be considered the mantra for XCOM, honestly. There’s no such thing as a routine mission as far as XCOM is concerned, with alien ambushes, panicking soldiers, and shots that apparently have a 95 percent hit rate still whiffing all part and parcel of your regular XCOM operation.
XCOM players know that when they start playing though. This isn’t supposed to be a walk in the park, and when XCOM shines, players have their adaptability tested. Sure, something might have gone horribly wrong, but there’s no greater feeling than snatching victory from the jaws of that defeat.
The connection you can make to your squad also makes XCOM, unlike most other games, as losing a vital member of your team can really sting. It’s not a fun experience watching your best soldier die, but the threat of it definitely keeps you invested in the safety of a specific mass of polygons.
The success and popularity of Until Dawn has given way to the rise of interactive horror thrillers where players are able to control the outcome of their own B-movie horror flick. Granted,most of those games have also been made by Until Dawn’s Supermassive Games, but they certainly found a winning formula. Can’t blame them for getting their money’s worth out of it, especially when The Quarry was also a good bit of fun.
While the aim of Until Dawn and others is to ultimately survive, something that isn’t too taxing if you make the right choices and are moderately good at quick-time events, there’s a sense of morbid fun that comes from making the worst possible choices. There’s a reason why slasher movies are filled to the brim with gore, after all. Is it gruesome? Sure, but that’s still part of the fun.
There’s a reason why fighting games are considered a bit of a niche genre compared to other multiplayer games. Whether it’s shooters, MOBAs, or even squad-based battle royale games, you’re part of a team, meaning you’ve got people to blame when things go wrong. Fighting games don’t have that luxury. Success and failure are exclusively on your shoulders, and it takes no small amount of mental fortitude to deal with that.
A lot of modern fighting games have tried to tackle that problem head-on, with Street Fighter 6 being the best example. Aside from the usual suite of tutorials and lessons, there’s also the World Tour mode that drip-feeds mechanics and techniques to the player throughout its runtime. Ultimately, though, it’s all about the online experience, where Street Fighter 6’s Replay Feature allows you to study your own matches and even jump in to learn the ideal punishes for certain situations. Every match is a chance to learn.
While Street Fighter 6 is the game we’re focusing on, every fighting game offers value in losing, whether it’s through match-up knowledge or insight into your own habits. Remember: learning is fun, and there’s always more to learn where fighting games are concerned.
