Near Death Experiences

[Zkribbler]

A couple come to mind for me:

In my first game of Age of Wonders, my wizard-king is heading north with his pack of wolfriders, when I come across the elf king. I attack!

It's a really bad idea to attack an army with flying units when you have none. The elf king's three fairies surround my wizard-king and begin belting him. Luckily, he knows the healing water spell, so after taking heavy damage each turn, he can heal himself--as long as his mana holds out. My wolfriders sweep around the right flank and head for the elf-king. Two wolfriders are entangled in magical weeds cast by elf clerics, but the rest make it through and rip the elf-king to pieces just as my mana runs out and my wizard-king is down to his last bit of color on his health bar.

In Thief, I had the choices of two routes. Both well lit. I took the one on the right, but as I approached a corner, I could hear a guard moving around. I pulled out my trusty blackjack (hoping I could whap him from behind) and zipped around the corner.

--Okay, there's not one guard. There's three (3). And one is so near, that if I turn to run, he's gonna stab me in the back before I can get away. So I run forward, passed all three guards and out a corridor in the back of the room. The three (3) guards give chase. I rip passed a fourth guard, and he joins in.

As the race continues, I realize I have run in a complete circle and I'm now back in the original room where the three guards had been stationed. Visions of Bugs Bunny cartoons dance in my head, but there's no plateau when I can leap to and watch the four (4) guards run around in a circle. So as I head down the corridor where I first met the fourth guard, I turn left and burst into a now room--where there's two more guards. Great, I now have six (6) guards chasing me. I blast passed them, out a door and I'm back on my original path.

As I run, I notice a decrease in the sound of running feet behind me. I realize that I'm leaving some of the guard behind--which is not good news because I'm running in a circle, and in a matter of moments, I'm going to be running into them again. So I shoot back down the corridor which originally brought me into this mess. Only one (1) guard is following. I find a good place to ambush him, pull my sword and wait. He never shows. (Later, I sneak back up the corridor and complete my mission. )

[Pythagoras]

The last scenario of AoW I was fighting off enemy hordes left and right, I said screw it, I was sick of building and building just enough to fight off the enemy attacks. So I mustered all I could (like a handful of armies of leprechauns, unicorns, and those bad ass gold dwarven dudes) with my heros and set out on a quest to whoop some butt. I managed to just barely do it relying on carefully executed tactical combat.

Hey I never beat the evil campaign in AoW is it any good?

[Pythagoras]

Oh and if we want to talk about near-deaths, there are always the climactic underdog battles in Civ 1 to try and take that huge civs capital while Im barely fighting him off on all fronts. Those were exciting

[loinburger]

GTA III, I managed to get my hands on a Cheetah (best car in the game!) on the first map after a Vigilante mission. Trouble was that the Cheetah was so banged up that I was worried that it would explode before I got it back to my base. (All the doors were missing, as was the trunk, and black smoke was oozing out of every pore). Obviously I made it back to base, otherwise it wouldn't have counted as a "near-death" experience.

Finished the last mission of Thief on expert difficulty with only one health point left. Those damned insect-beasts and spider-beasts really tore me up.

Had one hit point left in Fallout II after a particularly nasty encounter with a Bozar. It was worth it, though--nothing beats a Bozar for everyday use (and nothing beats a Vindicator for the bosses).

[Skanky Burns]

Was playing Quake3 versus my brother. I killed him, but was down to 1% health.

[Kepler]

In Risk I was down to a single army in a single territory, defended successfully all the way from 7-to-1 against (meaning I fought off 3+3+3+3+2+1 = 15 consecutive D6 rolls at tie or better), then turned in cards for an ungodly number of armies and ran the entire board on the next turn.

Generally speaking, Risk is the best game for near death experiences.

In A&A, I took Moscow as Germany to steal all their production points, foolishly left Germany with a token force because it was protected (I thought) by a sea force, lost the sea force to the Brit air force, and then had to fight off a ferocious US amphibious assault before cashing in my points and going on to fortify the continent and win easily a few turns later.

[Zkribbler]

Originally posted by Kepler
In Risk I was down to a single army in a single territory, defended successfully all the way from 7-to-1 against (meaning I fought off 3+3+3+3+2+1 = 15 consecutive D6 rolls at tie or better), then turned in cards for an ungodly number of armies and ran the entire board on the next turn.

With luck like yours, you should move to Vegas.

[Mr. President]

In GoldenEye and Perfect Dark my strategy for storming a room packed with baddies is to charge through the door and through the middle of the guards, shooting at everything I see. It's made for its share of near death experiences. On the Pelagic II level of the latter game (a massive mazelike submarine crawling with guards) the final phase degenerated into a blood-soaked attrition match. Basically I stood in the open directly opposite from about twenty guards blasting at them with my pistol. I took them all down with mucho damage done to myself - it I had stubbed my toe it would have killed me. Fortunately my ally was right beyond the next door.