Imposing restrictions
Posted June 20th 2007
In fighting through a level, you can get new challenges and enjoy new experiences by imposing restrictions on yourself. I do a lot of this. You often have to find new ways of tackling areas, and it can make the level fascinating all over again. Here are the main restrictions I've got in mind:
No dying or reverting
No dying, nor reverting to a checkpoint. I do all my fighting like this. It adds to the realism and tension, and I consider it a baseline rule for any 'serious' play - as far as I'm concerned at least. There's no artificial time-rewind nonsense any more; your life is really on the line, and if you get killed it's game over! If you're not used to playing like this you'll soon notice the difference, particularly in a long level once you're deep into it with a lot to lose.
I personally feel that in any shooter game, this should be an essential requirement for deserving an achievement medal at the end of a level. I mean, if you get through only after dying multiple times, you can kid yourself that you succeeded if you want, but no you didn't; you got killed! Which is usually considered a sign of failure, in the military world.
Weapon restrictions
Limit your weapon use to certain weapons, once they become available. It's easy to get into a bit of a rut using the same old weapons in the same old places, but with weapon restrictions you'll have a lot of new and interesting experiences as you're forced to tackle things differently.
There's loads of potential with this. Limiting yourself to covie weapons can be interesting for example. Without the range of the pistol or sniper rifle, you generally have to get a lot closer, making things quite a bit harder. Mind you, the plasma pistol does have impressive long-range potential that can be exploited, with practice. I sometimes limit myself to a feeble AR to really bump up the challenge. Some other ideas: forbid yourself the long-distance luxury of a sniper rifle, or the vehicle-destroying power of the rocket launcher (vehicles can be tackled with small-arms fire and grenades).
Vehicle restrictions
Limit your use of vehicles in some way. You could forbid yourself vehicles entirely, or perhaps just forbid the use of certain vehicles. If you don't fancy having to do a lot of running about, another possibility is to allow yourself vehicles for personal transport only, forbidding passengers and offensive use (weaponry and squashing). I often forbid myself vehicles as I like to focus on foot-based soldiering.
Health restrictions
Forbid yourself any medkits. If you do this, you'll need to be far more careful in your battling (and once damaged, you'll need to be careful not to accidentally step over a medkit). At the same time things are a lot more realistic, because there's no longer any magical instant healing for you!
Even more severe than forbidding yourself medkits, you could go to the extreme and forbid yourself from ever losing a health bar. Not recommended if you lose your temper easily! See the perfection challenge for chat about this idea.