Quote:For example, you're playing any of the Stiffvanias, and are playing the weave game no problem. Dodging all the projectiles and Medusa Heads or whatever coming at you. Then that one point happens when you jump, successfully dodge one or more projectiles and since you're stuck in that arc until you land, get hurt by something that just so happened to casually end up where your intended point of landing was.
I knew this would pop up here sooner or later
This is called 'reading' and you should've been able to dodge it had you been more careful. 80% of these are completely dodgeable if you wait and advance strategically, and the 20% is low enough for a pot roast to recover. It's certainly not easy to predict enemy patterns, but not impossible either
Also yeah - contact damage is not a bad mechanic at all. It does get aggravating when the game is poorly programmed and designed like some examples posted here, but it's totally acceptable immersion-wise. I've had fun with a shitton of 8-bit/16-bit games and I see no reason not to have nowadays
I was trying to think of some examples outside of Scrolling Shooters where it never got in the way in terms of immersion or frustration, but out of all the games I've played (a pretty extensive list) that use it, I think it was always present in some sort of frustrating and/or ridiculous fashion somewhere. La-Mulana, a game I greatly hold dear, both the original and remake, have this shit all over the place, especially with the bosses, where it's like you successfully dodge visible attacks and projectiles, but get hurt because you just happened to hit the bosses' six-pack, elbow or whatever on your way down. Sometimes it's not even the fact that you took damage that's jarring, but rather how much you took. A defining characteristic of this trope often means that doing so results in you taking just as much damage from touching these mundane body parts as you would have actually getting struck by an attack from the boss. So what does this mean in terms of the character's world? A six pack or stationary elbow is as deadly as a speeding train?
One of the other annoying things is when games, that use this damage system, make that one exception where you HAVE to touch the enemy in order to defeat it, way after the fact the player knows to not touch ANYTHING. Top of the head examples include Kaizack from Super Hydlide or Hydlide 3: The Space Memories (Jump into his mouth at the end, after clearly being shown throughout the whole game that touching anything is suicide), Sakit from La-Mulana (And this one is frustrating at times, because, Lemeza gets hurt from the arm retracting, where if he's using a whip and is in the middle of its swing, you won't be able to avoid taking that damage), Onox Final Form from Oracle of Seasons (Why would you get on the hands knowing that everything you touch kills Link in the past?).
re: Onox's hands: because the entire field of play changes dramatically and the player is now left to contend with gravity. Fortunately the game is peppered with similar segments, which include moving platforms that can take you up and down. Weak point is up - only one object in the room is moving up, thus...
That's the logical conclusion you come to from observation, but not the conclusion you come to from the past experiences in the game, is what I'm saying. Touching anything connected to an enemy throughout the whole game hurts you. There are several games where you take that logical route, and end up taking damage anyway, so it makes you question everything you know about life xD.
But no, because I played the game without knowing anything about the final boss other than scary dude in armor and I still knew to hop on his hands...
Maybe you can argue that this is because it's the exact same battle used in countless other games, but I don't know if that defeats or helps your argument.