10 Video Games That Punish You For Dying

Iconic FPS games Wolfenstein 3D and Doom popularised an especially brutal punishment for death: taking away all your acquired weapons and leaving you with only the pathetic starter pistol.

While the purist argument is that both games were designed to be completed with the starter weapon, that's hardly the reality for the majority of players, who will rely on amassing an increasingly ridiculous arsenal in order to progress through each game.

In the case of Doom, the demoralising agony of picking up the BFG 9000 only to die a short time later and lose it is immeasurable. For all but the most committed of players, it might ultimately prevent them from ever reaching the end of the game.

This is admittedly a punishment that's largely absent from modern games - except those intentionally homaging the brutal difficulty of decades-old titles - but that makes it no less cruel a design choice in the first place.