Timed Mission: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

[[File:SuperMetroid timer 7330.jpg|link=Super Metroid|frame|[[Forrest Gump|Run, Samus, run!]]]]

 

{{quote|"...I ran out of time, and the unit disappeared. 'We lost contact!' went a character. BULL. FUCKING. SHIT. All possible threats were dead! We didn't lose contact; I was looking at them! They were right fucking there! We were close enough to communicate by waggling our eyebrows at each other! What the fuck happens when the stupid arbitrary time limit runs out, their [[Battle Royale]] collars explode? They all lose honor and [[Driven to Suicide|disembowel themselves]], what?! And just to put the cherry on it, you know who they were? ABSOLUTELY BLOODY NO ONE! Generic faceless [[Mooks|pricks]] of the sort I'd vat grown about 50 of that day alone. But we didn't make it so they were going to have me do the whole fucking mission again! As the exasperated Chinese zookeeper said to the last male panda in the world, FUCK THAT!"|Yahtzee, [[Zero Punctuation]], on this trope causing him much frustration in [[Halo Wars]]}}

Timed gameplay sequences generally show their countdown onscreen, allowing the player to know their [[Exact Time to Failure]]. Exactly how stingy the time limit is varies; Turn-based games will usually measure time by the number of "rounds" or "turns", and even real-time games will generally pause the clock when the player is busy accessing their menu screens (instead of playing the actual level). However, in some cases the clock is implacable and continues to tick regardless; for example, online games typically measure time by the server's clock, rather than the player's, which can add a frustration if a network communications error breaks their connection (as even time spent attempting to reconnect and re-login is counted against the mission clock). There may even be [[Power-Up|Power Ups]] that extend the time limit a little.

 

 

Some games have to be completed in their entirety under a single time limit; typically in these games, you can continue if you die but the timer just keeps going. If time runs out, you might be able to keep playing to get a [[Multiple Endings|bad ending]] rather than have an immediate [[Game Over]].

** Metroid Prime 2 gives you 8 minutes to escape Dark Aether after defeating the [[Load-Bearing Boss]], but 99% of this time is spent fighting the [[Final Boss]].

** Metroid Prime 3 has ''four'' of these. The first one involves fighting Ridley in a [[Free Falling Battle]], to which you have around 4 minutes to kill him or die by slamming into the planet's core. The second timer comes after the Ridley fight where you have 5 minutes to activate the defense canon or the meteor strikes the planet. The timer here isn't displayed, but is announced on the loudspeakers on every minute. The next timer comes after assembling the bomb needed to destroy a shield below the clouds of the planet where Samus has 6 minutes to fix the release mechanism for the escape pod or die riding the bomb on impact. The final timed mission {{spoiler|is the entire finale on Phaaze. Samus has to vent all of her Energy Tanks to avoid being totally corrupted on the planet, so she has a limited amount of time to find and beat the [[Final Boss]] before the phazon corrupts her. How much time she gets depends on how many Energy Tanks the player has collected up to this point.}}

* After the intro sequence of ''[[Deus Ex: Human Revolution|Deus Ex Human Revolution]]'', protagonist Adam is called back to assist with a hostage situation. While there's no explicit timer displayed, if you take too long to get to the mission site, the hostages ''will'' be dead, and people will [[What the Hell, Hero?|chew you out about it]].

 

 

 

 

* ''[[City of Heroes]]'' has its share of Timed Missions - however, to be fair, it usually places them in enclosed zones or interior spaces to limit how much running about the hero or heroes have to do. It gets aggravating though when completing a mission immediately triggers a timed mission without the player being warned (even more annoying when the timed follow up mission involves defeating a foe that cannot be defeated without a large team). Fortunately the Devs have been removing or modifying these in ''City of Heroes'' and such mission combos are almost non-existent in ''City of Villains''. In any case, the timer is usually two or three times the length needed (provided you start straight away).

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Gameplay and Story Segregation]]

[[Category:Video Game Difficulty Tropes]]

[[Category:Tropes on a Deadline]]