Dead Again!?! That’s Like the Billionth Time Today!

Ever since the good ol’ days of Pac man and Super Mario, gamers have been growing more and more accustomed to dying.  It has gotten to the point where dying in video games really has nothing to do with real death, but is actually just an ingenious way that some dude came up with to tell us that we have succumbed to failure once again.  This day and age is, arguably, much worse than before, though, because the ways that death is achieved in new games like Modern Warfare 2 and many other war games out there is much more gruesome than before and are actually designed to make the gamer feel like it just happened to them.  Is the video game industry trying to teach us that there is no consequence for death?  Sure does seem like it to me, because dying is not so much punished, but almost rewarded with a fresh new life and a full clip of ammo.  Games nowadays even reward us with tips when we die like “If you see your grenade indicator pop up, you might want to move” and “If you’re getting shot at then get out of the way.”

Death, in some ways, even becomes a good thing because it gives gamers a chance to memorize locations, spawns, patterns of advance, and layout of the level in general.  Don’t know where that sniper is?  Well just let him kill you, then watch the KillCam to find out where he’s hiding.  Those poor CPU soldiers never even stand a chance the second time when there is a cooked grenade landing on them before they even get a shot off.  Although completely unrealistic in this day of unreal graphics and  amazing design, death has become almost as much of a strategy than a failure.