Contact Damage

[Koh]

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?).