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Cycle of Hurting: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
The distressing scenario in a video game when you're caught in an inescapable [[Death Trap]] and have to watch your [[Life Meter]] gradually be reduced to
{{examples}}
== General ==
* Happens in flick screen games where you reappear at the edge of the screen you just entered. If you fell from the screen above, then you'll just keep reappearing at the top edge with no way to save yourself. See ''[[
* Many games with autosaves will sometimes trigger a savepoint just as you are about to be killed, resulting you being stuck in an [[Unwinnable]] cycle of dying and reloading.
* Generally games with [[Standard Status Effects]] such as “stun” which prevent you from acting can have problems where the condition triggers frequently enough (such as every time the opponent hits) that the character in question is “stunlocked,” unable to do anything until death's release.
** Even without special conditions, merely having a short [[Knockback]] or flinch animation when taking damage that prevents the victim from escaping or fighting back will have a similar effect if chained close enough together.
* Spawn-camping in multiplayer games can result in this. Given that most players need a moment to orientate themselves after spawning, this can be extremely frustrating. Especially in games with automated turrets that other players can build, as they can instantly lock onto targets and kill them before the spawning process is even done. Usually the only way to stop it is to either wait for the round ends, go invincible (if it's possible, and in many games it isn't) and kill them, or call in a moderator or GM to resolve it.
* Games where you're up against a horde of monsters can make this happen to you if, after some time, the monsters congregate around the respawn spot and keep killing you before you can substantially damage them.
== Platform Games ==
* There's a ridiculously deep spiked pit in Act 2 of Mystic Cave Zone in ''[[
** [[Sonic the Hedgehog (
** ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog (2006
*** [[It Got Worse|Even worse]], you can get stuck against a wall this way and [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MWEHwvcnyM#t=03m35s can't escape.]
* ''[[La-Mulana]]'' does this to you intentionally in several places (unless you have the teleport magic). Sacrificial Pit of Shu, for example.
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* ''[[Ninja Gaiden]]'' (NES): Owing to the lack of [[Mercy Invincibility]], in levels overloaded with [[Goddamned Bats]], such as the first game's [[That One Level|Stage 6-2]], they can [[Knockback|juggle you]] until you run out of HP or fall into a [[Bottomless Pit]].
* Yetis, Chieftains, and unarmed shopkeepers in ''[[Spelunky]]'' attack by throwing the player. Occasionally, they will toss the player against a wall only to rebound back into the enemy who then tosses the player into the wall again only for the player to rebound back into the enemy... you see where this is going. To add insult to injury, they'll continue doing this [[Beating a Dead Player|even after the player has died]], only stopping once the character has been gibbed or the player exits to menu.
* In ''[[Altered Beast]]'' there is no [[Mercy Invincibility]]. This is especially bad on the third level, which has [[Bottomless Pit
* In ''Atlantis no Nazo'', there is one door that leads to a "Black Hole" zone, basically a giant [[Bottomless Pit]] to fall into over and over again until you had no lives let.
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** In ''[[Doom]] 3'', some enemies such as Pinky Demons and Shotgun Z-Secs can stun-lock you, especially if you're trying to reload.
* In some levels of ''[[Descent]]'' on Insane difficulty, [[Demonic Spiders]] such as Red Hulks and Class 2 Missile Platforms can pin you in the starting area and blow you away every time you respawn, similar to multiplayer spawn-camping, or prevent you from reclaiming your lost weapons.
* In ''[[
* ''Jedi Knight: [[Star Wars: Dark Forces
* ''[[Glider]] PRO'' wasn't too smart about respawning gliders in safe spots. Respawning locations were either fixed or where the glider happened to enter the room. If the latter happened to be inside the floor, you would lose all your lives; this was a [[Game Breaking Bug]] on one house released on the Glider PRO CD.
* ''[[Call of Duty]] 2'' had a segment where you had to defend a town from a large group of German mortar teams. Your play area was confined to the small tower you have to snipe from. If you aren't able to take out the enemies fast enough, the game can sometimes autosave just before a mortar shell lands directly on top of your head.
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== Tabletop Games ==
* In multiple editions of ''[[Dungeons
** Not to mention the infinite tripping strategy, which involved tripping an enemy on your turn, then on their turn, when they stood up, taking an attack of opportunity to trip them again, leaving them lying on the ground unable to take many actions (they could still perform many actions from the ground but for a melee character being prone is not a good thing, and if the tripper had reach and you didn't they could put themselves outside of your range and continually trip you).
*** This technically doesn't work; you can't trip someone who's standing from prone, because he's still prone when your attack triggers. However, you can disarm them, trip them when they pick up the weapon, and then disarm them again when they stand up.
** In 4th edition, this is the main reason solo monsters suck compared to a group of enemies. They get surrounded, tagged with a bunch of different effects, and aren't able to spread their actions out like a group of monsters can, greatly reducing their effectiveness. Later monster books have given solos various counters to this; for example, dragons get an extra action each round on a different initiative count, plus the ability to quickly shrug off stun and daze effects.
* Anyone who plays ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh!]]'' who has dealt with anyone with Neo-Spacian Grand Mole knows that either you disable the little bugger or you'll watch your Life Points whittle away.
** Several combos that don't rely on dealing 8000 damage to your opponent in one turn ends up resorting to this. The most infamous of which is the Yata-Garasu + Chaos Emperor Dragon combo. Basically Chaos Emperor can wipe the field and your opponent's hand of anything useful, while combined with another card allows you to get Yata-Garasu onto the field. Yata's effect forbids your opponent from drawing in the next turn. Since your opponent has no cards, all he can do is watch his life points drains away (and very slowly at that, since Yata only has 200 attack points, which is pitifully low) or bow and surrender.
* Many deck designs in ''[[Magic:
* [[GURPS]] has this as a basic tenet of any combat. Being injured causes shock, which makes it difficult to defend against subsequent attacks. Since GURPS lies squarely in the Simulation corner of [[Player Archetypes|GNS theory]], this is perfectly intentional.
== Third Person Shooters ==
* Could happen in many of the early ''[[Tomb Raider]]'' games where saving in the wrong spot could get Lara killed at every reload, forcing you start the level all over again.
* In ''[[Warhawk (1995 video game)]]'', an incompetent, [[Jerkass]], or [[Griefer|worse]] teammate can drive a 4x4 out-of-bounds with you as a passenger, at which point you start taking damage. If you jump off and try to walk back in-bounds you almost certainly won't make it in time.
* In ''[[Twisted Metal]] 2'', each enemy vehicle AI used only a few specific weapons but used them [[Macross Missile Massacre|all the time]]. Two of them (Mr. Slam and Mr. Grimm) included the freeze missile in their rotation at a rate of fire well beyond what a player can achieve. If either one hits you with a freeze missile and you don't have enough initial speed and inertia to coast out of the danger zone while frozen, you'll find yourself trapped in place getting frozen over and over and over with no way to escape while having your life very slowly chipped away by machine gun fire.
** In ''[[Twisted Metal]] III'', the first boss's (Darkside) special is a flamethrower/freeze missile combo which he likes to spam and has seemingly infinite ammo. If you get unlucky, being hit by it is a guaranteed life-lose.
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* Being inescapably crushed by a car in the 3D ''[[Grand Theft Auto]]'' games drains your health to zero in about five seconds in order to keep the player from being [[Game Breaking Bug|indefinitely stuck]].
* This could happen in the early ''[[Syphon Filter]]'' games if you triggered a checkpoint in a bad situation (eg impending [[One-Hit Kill]]).
* In ''[[Mass Effect 1]]'', getting hit by biotic powers knocks Shepard down. If you're in a room full of biotics, [[You Get Knocked Down, You Get Back Up Again|you'll get knocked down, get up, get knocked down again, get up, get knocked down again]], and repeat ad infinitum until your squadmates either free you or you die.
== MMORPGs ==
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* Good luck living if you happen to get caught by the 11th or 14th colossi in ''[[Shadow of the Colossus]]''; they'll ram into you the second you start getting up again, and again, and again... it's fully possible the colossus will ram you ''through the wall of the arena you're fighting in'' if you happen to be cornered and if your game wants to glitch out.
* In ''[[Oddworld]]: Abe's Exoddus'', you could achieve this thanks to the quick save feature if you happened to quick save right before your inevitable death.
* The [[Spikes of Doom]] are not immediately lethal in ''[[Castlevania]]: [[Symphony of the Night]]'', but some spike pits are arranged so that you can end up bouncing from one spike to another until reduced to [[Ludicrous Gibs]]. This becomes less of a problem later in the game, as you can simply turn to mist, or pause the game and equip the [[Exactly What It Says
** The later games don't have this particular problem... but you're still likely to get petrified before landing in spikes, at which point you're pretty much boned. ''[[Portrait of Ruin]]'' actually codes spikes ''specifically'' to ensure that this happens.<ref>normally a character can be broken out of petrification by being hit by their partners attack. But spikes desummon your partner and make them unsummonable for several seconds. And you can't swap characters when petrified, either</ref>
* The Redeads in ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess]]'' are often accompanied by half a dozen [[Goddamned Bats|goddamned mini-skeletons]]; the skeletons knock you down, when you get up the Redead paralyzes and hits your with their BFS, then the skeletons hit you again, lather, rinse, repeat.
** They did this in all the games, really, even if it's just a redead. Oh, and then there's swarms of [[An Ice Person|ice keese]], which will flap over, freeze you, and then freeze you again the instant you thaw.
** If you exploit the screen-warp glitch in ''[[The Legend of Zelda:
* In ''[[Silent Hill 3]]'', there's a room containing nothing but a sink and a mirror on the wall. The door locks behind you and you can only watch as the tendrils of blood on the other side of the mirror seep into that side's sink and leak out of the sink on your side, eventually starting to smother you. Players of the console versions might not realize that the blood slowly sucks out your health because, unlike the PC version, your health is only displayed on the pause screen. Luckily the door unlocks and you can leave as soon as you start taking damage, but the game gives no indication of this, so most players die in this room, unless they're unaware that the door locked in the first place because they never tried to leave before.
** The Slurpers knock you down, rape you, knock you down as you get back up, repeat.
* ''[[Oregon Trail]] II'''s river-rafting minigame sometimes respawns you right behind a rock, causing you to repeatedly hit it until you drown. Remind you of a certain ''[[Action 52]]'' game?
* In the early ''[[Resident Evil]]'' games, you could find yourself being repeatedly attacked by an enemy while hopelessly trying to reload your weapon.
* In the "Eke Reloaded" pack (and its old precedessor, the Eke Pack) of ''[[
* In ''Dragon Ball Z: Buu's Fury'' if you return to Hercule City after beating the game you can still fight the enemies around the carnival area. There's also a golden tank in front of the tent. Even though any of the characters can destroy it in a few punches, if it pushes one against a wall they constantly take damage and can't move from being stuck in the flinch motion. Seeing how at this point in the game everyone's defense would be so high that the tank only does 1 point of damage on every touch. Plus most of the characters' hp is well over a thousand so watching them die could take a while. The only way the escape is to restart, and God forbid you have a Lazarus crystal...
* ''[[La-Mulana]]'' had a few spiked pits too deep to even [[Double Jump]] out of, most notably the Confusion Gate's 'Sacrificial Pit' and the Twin Labyrinth's passage pits. You could still use the Grail to teleport out.
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* In ''[[Jagged Alliance]] 2'', Mustard Gas grenades work like this. If your character is not wearing a gas mask, and walks into a Mustard Gas cloud (or, more commonly, a Mustard Gas grenade is lobbed at him), the character will likely suffer a lot of damage and pass out. At this point, the character cannot be moved (he's passed out) and his inventory cannot be accessed, so he cannot be told to wear his gas mask if he has one at all. Each turn, the gas will drain a large amount of health and breath points from the character, making sure that he cannot escape. To make matters worse, it is even impossible to move the body out of the cloud by having another mercenary drag or lift it, so the afflicted mercenary just lies there in the cloud, completely helpless, until death. If you're fortunate though, the gas may dissipate before the character actually dies.
* ''7.62 High Calibre'' has the adrenaline mechanic, where situations that increase your adrenaline (seeing a target, seeing ''lots'' of targets, being shot at, being ''shot'', etc.) make actions take less time to perform, but also makes your shots more likely to miss. If your adrenaline is maxed, you'll rarely hit an opponent more than ten feet away. On top of all this, anything that results in "shock" (see the previous list and subtract "being shot at" ''only'') makes your character freeze for a few seconds if they're in the middle of performing an action. Since those few seconds can make a big difference between getting shot and shooting first, generally speaking if you get hit with shock, your adrenaline will shoot up, which, if you're lucky enough to get a shot off, means you'll miss, and if you then get shot, well, that character is dead. It's just a matter of time, really.
* ''[[Star Control]] 2''. If you get stuck in Hyperspace between several hostile ships (especially common in Ur-Quan space), you'll end up fighting one, [[Hyperspeed Escape|wasting fuel on escaping]]/losing your [[Call a Hit Point
== Role Playing Games ==
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* The original ''[[Diablo]]'' has this in spades. Getting hit with enough damage will stun you (or an enemy) and you can get stunned ''repeatedly'' which leads to a stunlock. Avoiding stunlock is pretty much the basis of all warrior's strategies, and is important to ALL chars. If you do get stunlocked, all you can do is mash healing potions hoping for a chain of misses. Meanwhile, your equipment was taking damage along with you, could break completely in just a few seconds once the durability alarm appears, and once broken would vanish forever. But then this is the game where clicking the wrong shrine takes away mana permanently and some monsters cause permanent life damage, so it's fair.
** On the bright side, this makes even the boss fight against Diablo a cinch.
* In ''[[
* In ''[[Dragon Age]]: Origins'' the Ogre has an attack that grabs and holds a character, and beats it to death while you watch the [[Life Meter]] slowly decrease when you can only be bailed out by one of your party members doing something to make it let go. Sometimes it uses this technique twice in a row on the same character. They can also spam their headbutt attack, which does a lot of damage and knocks you down.
** Many enemies have such incapacitating moves from ordinary wolves to High Dragons. The best you can do is to try to stun them, while spamming Heal with your mage. There is also an Ogre-like demon in the Fade-level that will do two different stunning actions in a row, potentially putting you to a situation where you stand up only to be knocked down again repeatedly. Normal Ogres thankfully can't do this.
** Perhaps the single most irritating instance of this trope in the game stems from the spell “Crushing Prison.” This spell immobilizes the target and does significant spirit damage while allowing the caster's allies free hits throughout the spell's duration. The game has no end of enemies who just love to stack this with the aforementioned mortality spell and other effects to make absolutely certain that you lose members quickly.
** Blood Wound is the worst, though - a [[Demonic Spiders|blood]] [[Blood Magic|mage]] spell that incapacitates and wears down the HP of your ENTIRE PARTY at once. Always, always shoot the mage first.
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** And then of course there's being mobbed in the open by lightning-fast ants and bees.
* The Dreamcast adaptation of ''[[Record of Lodoss War]]'' notoriously has this; [http://www.flyingomelette.com Flying Omelette] calls it "''Record of Lodoss War'' Syndrome".
* In ''[[Oblivion]]'', its possible to be caught in a never ending cycle of being shot with an arrow, stumbling, and then being shot again, followed by stumbling. Its is painfully annoying.
** In its predecessor, ''[[Morrowind]]'', you can be knocked down by unarmed attacks and as soon as you get up, get knocked back down. Over and over again. Plus, [[Cherry Tapping|unarmed attacks do very little damage]], meaning it takes forever to die.
* In ''[[Final Fantasy X]]'', you can fight a monster known as the Malboro (there's also a tougher variant in the hidden Omega Ruins). His Bad Breath move hits the entire party with a wide variety of status ailments, including Darkness (can't hit physically), Berserk (you can't control the character and he must attack, deals extra damage), Poison (character loses 1/4 max HP every turn) and Confuse (character attacks self and party members at random). Needless to say, if these stack, you're forced to watch your entire party flail uselessly trying to kill themselves - then succeeding due to the poison.
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== Beat-Em-Up ==
* The [[Smashing Hallway Traps of Doom]] at the beginning of ''[[Double Dragon]]'''s (arcade) final mission kill you in two hits, and also [[Knockback|knock you backwards]]. Thus, you get hit once, knocked into the path of another moving block, lose a life, get hit again, repeat until [[Game Over]] (and you're probably on your last life by this time anyway). The same thing can happen with the [[Spikes of Doom|gargoyle spears]].
* The biggest danger in ''[[Dynasty Warriors]]'' games and their derivatives. An enemy officer on his own is usually no more than an annoyance, even if he has soldiers with him. A small group of officers, however, can lock you into an almost permanent juggle. Combine this with fire elemental weapons (which drain your health so long as you are in the air), and you can see your health go down surprisingly quickly, all while being able to do nothing.
* Completely possible in ''[[
== Fighting Games ==
* This is generally known in fighting games as "infinite combos". They are often difficult to do, much less win with from 100% vitality, so they are generally considered either [[Game Breaking Bug
* Until it was nerf'd, [[Guilty Gear|Sol Badguy's]] infamous Dust Loop was a textbook example of this. Now the ability belongs to Eddie's [[Memetic Mutation|corner screw potential]]
** In it's [[Spiritual Successor]] ''[[
* [[SNK Boss|Jinpachi]] in ''[[Tekken]] 5'', [[Luck
* "[[Virtua Fighter]] 2" has the Pai Loop...So called because a close-range high-kick from Pai, if repeated, is uncounterable by anyone except Akira (and even that requires frame-perfect timing). The good thing about this is that CPU opponents rarely if ever accomplish this loop...but a cheap player...
== Driving Games ==
* In ''[[Driver]]'', getting spun out leaves you a sitting duck to be rammed to death by the other cops chasing you. This rears its ugly head on the first game's final mission, [[Scrappy Level|The President's Run]], where your wanted meter starts at max, so the cops drive at maximum speed, while you're stuck with a slow limousine. On [[Slippy
== Other Games ==
* This is what happens in ''[[Soulcaster]]'' if you get surrounded by enemies and you have no [[Smart Bomb
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Video Game Difficulty Tropes]]
[[Category:Cycle
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