Back to main page.
- ANNO: Mutationem: If you use up most of your items during a difficult section or boss, getting a Game Over will return you to the previous checkpoint and all items previously used will be retained, preventing them from being entirely wasted. Also, if you're running low on credits, a fisherman at Harbor Town will offer a Fishing Minigame to capture as many fish you can, they can be sold for higher prices than the usual Shop Fodder.
- Assassin's Creed Series:
- Assassin's Creed II: The feathers side quest is treated as well as it possibly can without outright revealing where they are - the menu shows you how many feathers are still missing in each city as well as each individual district in order to help you narrow your search while you're looking for them. This is a far cry from how annoying the flags and Templars were in the original game.
- In Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, one of the Lairs of Romulus requires you to cut down counterweights with a projectile. The counterweight you find at the end of a long platforming sequence has a few chests nearby which infinitely replenishes your throwing knives, crossbow bolts and bullets in case you got all the way up there with no ammo left, or have really atrocious aim — they're the only such chests in the entire game!note
- In Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, if you have several hostile ships around you, they'll stop firing at you when you board one to take it as a prize. Same goes for forts if you initiate a ship boarding mini-event near a hostile fort.
- A series-wide example is that the final bit of health is valued more than the rest, allowing you to take more hits than you think you can when near-death.
- Aladdin (Virgin Games):
- The last two bosses can be killed only if you throw apples at them, and more apples appear every time you run out.
- If you fail the Rug Ride level enough times, the game will automatically skip to the next one, giving you a "Nice try" message.
- The Batman: Arkham Series has a few.
- Several times in predator encounters, enemies that should notice Batman don't, either because he's too far away, or in the middle of a special takedown.
- In combat encounters, enemies who pick up a gun off the floor will go through a lengthy reload animation before they can fire it. This happens even if another enemy had previously reloaded it and been knocked down before firing it.
- The Batman: Arkham Asylum auto-saving is particularly helpful in Killer Croc's lair, as it registers after each Anti-Venom spore Batman collects, as well as right before the final stretch of the chase sequence at the end.
- In Batman: Arkham City and Batman: Arkham Origins, after using a gadget to create a platform in the water, Batman will automatically aim straight for it if you glide at it.
- City featured Riddler informants that could tell Batman where Riddler trophies were hidden, as long as the informant was the last enemy taken out in any encounter. This made battles with the informants frustrating, since the player would have to avoid targeting them until they were done. Origins fixed this problem by making the informants surrender when beaten as opposed to being knocked out, so the player no longer has to beat them last. Also, informants in City would respawn later if you screwed up and didn't interrogate them.
- And since it's easy to lose track while battling a bunch of Mooks, the informant glows green to make him stand out.
- Typically, if Batman falls into any pool of water, he'll just grapple gun right back to a safe platform. In Batman: Arkham Knight, even if Batman is too far away for the grapple gun to work, he'll instantly reappear back on a platform anyway.
- There's a sequence in Knight where you have to analyze security footage for the correct number sequence to open a door. Fail enough times, and Batman will just punch the number pad, causing the door to open anyways.
- Batman: Arkham Origins (and likely others) will have the AI take pity on you if you're being beaten too badly in a fistfight. Jump into a huge crowd of enemies and quickly lose all your health by playing extremely poorly. When you're down to one hit left, the enemies will basically turn into punching bags, offering no threat whatsoever until you're down to about five enemies, at which point normal AI resumes. You might still lose, but at least you still beat a bunch of guys, right?
- The "Multiple Takedown" special move introduced in Batman: Arkham City will not break your combo if used with no valid targets. The special move will still be wasted, but you don't have to restart your combo from the beginning.
- Bayonetta Series:
- Bayonetta features mid-boss checkpoints so that the player doesn't have to fight the boss all over again if they die towards the end of the fight. It also puts a checkpoint right before every Press X to Not Die moment so that, even if you fail the quicktime event, you don't lose more than a few seconds of progress.
- Bayonetta 2 removes damage from falling in to pits, which is useful since it generally involves more platforming than its predecessor. Quicktime events that punish the player with death have also been removed, due to the complaints about how sudden they were in the first game and how penalizing failing one was.
- When you die in Beyond Good & Evil, you're usually sent back to a checkpoint near the start of the room or the area you're in. You'll have half your regular health, and any items you may have used in the interim will be gone. There are two exceptions, however: The Looter's Caverns and the Final Boss. When you lose a Looter's Cavern, you're sent back to the start with whatever health you had when you entered (full, if you're smart) and any items you used during the challenge are returned to your inventory. Since the Looter's Caverns are... annoying, this is quite a boon. The Final Boss has a checkpoint halfway that's the same way.
- The first Boktai game had a "Loser Button" in a room with a particularly difficult ice block puzzle. Pushing it instantly solved the puzzle for you, at the cost of changing the button to a hint panel that read "Here forever engraved is the name of the LOSER Django (Or whatever name you inputted)."
- Normally in Brave Fencer Musashi when you die you're given the option to either reload your last save or, if you used a Memory Box, pay half of your Drans to continue from there. During any of the mini-games like the rafting sequence or the gondola ride however, you get to continue from the beginning of it for free. The gondola ride even adds checkpoints of its own along the way.
- If you die to a boss in Cave Story, retrying that same boss will have the pre-fight cutscene's dialogue boxes scroll by instantly so you can get back to the fight faster. Also, the the exposition dialogue of the Brutal Bonus Level occurs only once when you pass it for the first time, so you don't have to hear the same thing every time you die.
- Clash at Demonhead
- If you need to buy some items but use up your stock of Shop Calls, you can go to the "WELCOME" sign on Route 5 to have the shop appear for free.
- The shop's stock rotates depending on how many times you visit it, but the Password Save-granting Microrecorder items are always in stock.
- Cuphead has the Marathon Battle against King Dice, where you're forced to battle at least three out of nine mini-bosses in the King's Court, and then the King himself, all on one life. It's notably the only time in the game where you can replenish health mid-stage: certain boss battles grant a "Health Up" when you land on them and give you an extra hit, labelled as heart icons on the roulette board. A patch released for the game
now ensures that if a player dies during each battle with one of the mini-bosses in co-op mode, they will automatically return to life at the King Dice board with 1 HP once their surviving partner has defeated the mini-boss. Oh, and the "Start Over" square will now trigger only once per attempt. - Darksiders II has an item that resets your skill trees, allowing you to reassign skill points if you want to try out different abilities, or if you are having difficulty with certain enemies that are strong against whatever abilities you currently have.
- Death's Door:
- One of the quests of the post game is to gather all 50 life seeds in the game and plant them in all 50 seed pots. A massive task, as these are spread all over the world and a player unaware of this may not have used all their seeds to save them as needed (they're the healing item of the game). If the player finds the secret garden in the Estate of the Urn Witch, he can gather the Rusty Garden Trowel, which will glow at night showcasing which areas still have seeds to collect, while Pothead in the same garden will tell you which areas have pots that the player not used yet (the player still has to look for them, but this massively reduces the search area).
- Jefferson at the Stranded Sailor will give you hints where to find each of the remaining health/magic shrines.
- When fighting a boss or miniboss the game gives you the option to try again when you die rather than booting you back to the last door you used.
- After defeating the Last Lord of Doors, areas that still have secrets to be found will have their door in the Hall of Doors glowing red.
- Dungeons and Dragons: Tower of Doom has a boss fight against a troll. As per D&D rules, the troll has a Healing Factor; if you don't use an oil flask to burn its corpse after you empty its health bar, it regains a quarter of its health and stands back up. Empty this health bar, however, and a cadre of guards arrive and throw several oil flasks at it, putting it down for good. They also mention that trolls need to be killed with fire, letting you know what needs to be done the next time you play.
- In The Emperor's New Groove video game, the Catacombs levels have stages where you ride Yzma and Kronk's rollercoaster into their lab. The developers seemed to have anticipated that the levels would be difficult due to the high speed, frequently reversing your controls, and lack of checkpoints, so the level doesn't have a health bar or count any falls into the Bottomless Pit as deaths and take you from the top.
- Freedom Planet
- In Final Dreadnought 2, Milla will occasionally pop in and give Lilac or Carol a bubble shield to prevent them from suffocating after Brevon shuts down the oxygen supply. When playing as Milla herself, Brevon won't even shut the oxygen down. As of the later updates, there have also been bubbles as seen in underwater areas.
- Milla also doesn't have to fight the end boss of Final Dreadnought 2, though there is a very good reason for that.
- The boss of Pangu Lagoon requires you to destroy a very large number of orbs scattered across its back, at which point its eye becomes vulnerable and you can finish it off. Due to the sheer size and speed of the boss, destroying every last orb would be a nightmare, but thankfully the game lets you off if there's just a few left.
- The game compensates for Milla's lack of any kind of quick or multi-hit attacks by toning down the number of hits certain bosses take. For example, Serpentine's second phase in Jade Creek starts with its windshield already partially cracked, and the "defeat 99 ninjas" challenge in Trap Hideout is cut down to 15 ninjas instead.
- If for any reason pushing the gem at the end of the mid-boss for Relic Maze doesn't progress the game by braking the truck's engine, it can easily be destroyed with an attack.
- In the final boss with Lord Brevon, if you die after a phase of the three-phase boss, the game puts you back at the beginning of the current phase, recognizing just how hard this guy is. Also after defeating each form, a full bar's worth of health will drop, letting you refill your HP before moving on to the next.
- In the second game, if you die at any point, you can mash the jump button to regain a sliver of health that brings you back. You'll die in one hit and this only applies if there's actually an intact body to revive, but it can be tremendously helpful if you're close to finishing a boss and get killed at the last second.
- Ghostwire: Tokyo:
- You lose your magic powers near the end of the second chapter, and have to rely on your bow. You will find plenty of arrows lying around.
- You get a small increase in maximum HP every time that you use a healing item. If you aren't very good at combat you'll probably be healing a lot, and will gain HP faster.
- Do you hate Timed Missions? There is an option to "Disable Time Limits."Disables the time limits for events that would normally have a clock ticking down.
- Don't want to search every street and alley in a sector for the small shrines that increase your attack? Just put 500 coins into the collection box at a full shrine (this rapidly becomes a trivial sum), pray to find a shrine, and you will receive a map marker.
- In Goof Troop, if you get a Game Over, the Password Save system will remember the last password you obtained, allowing for a quick continue.
- Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone can be very frustrating due to its large amounts of Permanently Missable Content in the form of Famous Wizard Cards. Its sequel, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets heavily improves on this aspect, as many areas can now be revisited allowing you to find potentially missed Wizard Cards and cards you may have missed in areas you can't revisit are purchasable at certain ingame vendors. Another nice feature is that the second game tracks how many secrets you've found.
- Horizon Zero Dawn will have Aloy muse that she could use her Focus, if the player doesn't catch on right away to do this in order to accomplish a mission objective.
- Iji gives you a pre-made Resonance Reflector for your tennis date with the final boss, just in case you didn't have one yet. More acceptable than usual, since otherwise it would be impossible to win on the hardest difficulty level.
- L.A. Noire gives the player the option to skip the car chases after failing the third attempt each time.
- The Last of Us
- During sneaking sections, enemies will only notice the player character, not any AI escorts or party members. Appropriately, the AI sneaks around corners as well as a player can, but if you're careful, you may notice a few times when the bad guys ought to be noticing the escorts but don't.
- Whenever you've killed the last enemy in a combat section, Joel will say something along the lines of "Alright, that's all of them," preventing players from wandering around an empty level looking for enemies that aren't there.
- Similarly, when you're navigating through large areas, the characters will occasionally say things like, "Let's go through here," or "Can't go this way," to let the player know when they're on the right track or when they should turn around.
- Despite the emphasis on survival and limited provisions, specific scenes where you're required to use a specific gun, the game will quietly give you unlimited ammunition for it to ensure the segment isn't Unintentionally Unwinnable.
- The Last of Us Part II
- When playing with a companion (which is most of the game), they will always stand up straight and say something like, "We're clear" to tell you that you don't have to sneak around anymore. When playing without one, Ellie and Abby both will also give verbal conformation that the room is clear of enemies.
- The litany of accessibility features and the easiest difficulty make it possible to pretty much walk through the entire game without any combat. There are also no difficulty related trophies so if you’re not a gamer and just want experience the story, the game is accessible to you.
- When cracking the safes, you don't have to follow the clockwise and counter-clockwise turns and don't have to turn directly to the number on the first try like you would in real life so you're not there forever if your finger slips.
- Ellie has an unbreakable switchblade so she can always defend herself from clickers which stops you from worrying about keeping shivs on you at all times like you did in the first game. Although, you do have to worry about it when playing as Abby.
- Breakable glass and trap mines always have several bottles and bricks around them for easy destruction.
- Metroid:
- Most games in general tend to bias Random Drops items in favor of items that you need. If you're low on health, you'll see more health pickups. In some of them (such as Super Metroid), if you are full on a certain item such as missiles, it will no longer appear at all, allowing other items to fill its place.
- Metroid:
- Both Kraid and Ridley give you 75 missiles upon killing them, which cuts down on the time spent searching for missile tanks, and both of their rooms have a hidden energy tank, which will refill your health even if you have six already.
- Any Zebetite barriers destroyed by the player will remain destroyed, even if the player dies or has to reload the game with a password. Since the act of destroying Zebetite consumes a lot of missiles and leaves the player vulnerable to a constant onslaught of turrets and Rinkas, it is very merciful of the game developers to not force players to repeat the process every time they die to Mother Brain.
- If you're playing the game on the original hardware and have two controllers, you can press start on Controller one, then press Up and A on Controller two at the same time to end your game and go to the password screen without dying.note
- Metroid Prime 2: Echoes has the Light, Dark, and Annihilator beams that require ammo to use. Some enemies are only vulnerable to certain beam weapons, and some doors only open with those weapons, too. Thus, you gain Dark ammo from enemies killed with the Light Beam, Light ammo from enemies killed with the Dark Beam, and both types from Annihilator. Even if you run out of ammo, you can still fire the beams by charging them up, but they shoot normal shots instead. And if you happen to run out of ammo while fighting the third form of the final boss Emperor Ing, he'll gracefully summon a bunch of cannon fodder mooks that drop health and ammo when killed.
- In Metroid Fusion, missiles are required to kill a Core-X (everything else will go down to the Charge Beam eventually). Fortunately, just shooting a Core-X with a beam weapon will cause both health and missile X's to fly out of it like candy. This is near-essential in a 1% Run, as you only get one missile expansion. Making this even better is it is actually justified In-Universe. The X's are actually deadly fatal and infectious to anything except for Metroids and Samus (who has Metroid DNA) and throwing them out at an attacking enemy is actually a defense tactic of the Core-X.
- Metroid: Samus Returns:
- A map function is added to the bottom screen that allows you to track where exactly you've been and where you haven't gone yet. You can also mark the map with a variety of pins to keep track of important areas.
- The World Map indicates the percentage of items collected for each area, helping to narrow down where that last remaining item is.
- One of the most famous features of the Metroid series is hidden breakable blocks. In most games, players typically find them by just shooting every wall they come across, but Samus Returns adds the Scan Pulse Aeion ability, which not only automatically reveals portions of the map but also identifies breakable blocks for you, taking a power granted by the power bombs in previous games. However, the Scan Pulse does not show you how to break the blocks, and the effect only lasts for a short time; if you want a more permanent option that'll also reveal their weakness, you'll need to hit them with an explosive weapon.
- Health and ammo drops automatically move towards Samus so she doesn't have to waste time moving over or charging her beam to pick them up. Should the pickups be too far away, they can still be drawn towards her with a charged beam no matter where they're located.
- Superheated rooms, which will roast Samus crispy without the Varia Suit, are now indicated by a glowing orange heat haze shrouding the door leading into the room. They also appear on the map as red instead of the standard blue.
- As a holdover from later games in the series, Samus now gets to keep all of the beam upgrades she acquires instead of losing the old one when she gets a new beam; with the exception of the Ice Beam and Grapple Beam, they even stack.
- If Samus dies during a battle against a Metroid or a boss, choosing "Continue" will respawn her right in front of the door leading into the Metroid's or boss's room. Likewise, dying during the Diggernaut chase sequence will respawn Samus at the last checkpoint. Also, killing a Metroid triggers a checkpoint, meaning if Samus dies before reaching a save station she will respawn in the room in the state she was just after the kill. However, dying at any other time will send her back to the last save station.
- If you find yourself in a dire situation or simply went the wrong way, you can reload your last save or checkpoint from the pause menu instead of having to quit the game or soft-reset to reload.
- Since the doors leading out of a Metroid room are locked, Samus can use the Ice Beam to hurt them should she run out of Missiles.
- The Metroid DNA statues provide hints as to the general location of the Metroids in the level that you haven't killed yet.
- If you aim at a grapple block or point with Free Aim, the laser sight will turn blue and automatically switch to Grapple Beam when you fire it, saving you the trouble of having to switch to and from it manually before and after using it.
- If you run out of Super Missiles, the game will automatically switch you back to normal missiles.
- If you execute a Melee Counter while on the ground, Samus automatically returns to her normal standing position, provided she has room. This way, you don't have to do it manually if an enemy rushes you while you're kneeling or morphed.
- If you encounter a wall with a Morph Ball passage 1-3 blocks above ground level, push into the wall and press B. Samus will climb into the tunnel and morph, so you don't have to waste time trying to bomb or Ball Jump into it.
- Metroid Dread:
- The first proper E.M.M.I. encounter doesn't immediately hunt down Samus until you break the ceiling separating it from you. So those that need a second to get their wits together have it.
- If Samus is caught and killed by the E.M.M.I., she'll respawn at the entrance she entered the E.M.M.I.'s patrol area from, so as to not waste a lot of time/progress if the player hasn't saved in a while. The same applies to boss rooms.
- The Phantom Cloak won't kill you, but leave you with one point of energy. So if you absolutely have to use every single second of cloak, you won't die when it drops, though your chances aren't great if it's come to that.
- The Phase Shift ability recovers the fastest of all the Aeion abilities in only a few seconds. It's very useful in boss battles and E.M.M.I. zones so you aren't deprived of it when you most need it.
- E.M.M.I.-05IM's zone is frosted over but isn't cold enough to make Samus take damage constantly. It is found well before the Gravity Suit that protects from cold so you aren't rushed getting through its area.
- Power Bombs are the last piece of equipment you get, yet Power Bomb Tanks can still be found and acquired before you gain the ability, so you don't have to backtrack just for them after you unlock it.
- If there's a hidden item around, the map will show a pulsing grey square giving a general idea of where to look.
- Missiles and bombs will uncover any special blocks they hit. These are also added to the map, making backtrack exploration a lot less memory-based.
- Like Fusion before it, Super Missiles act as simply an upgrade to the regular Missiles and consume just one standard Missile per use, rather than being a separate weapon (a) that uses its own ammo (like in Super Metroid, Zero Mission and Samus Returns) or (b) consumes 5 regular Missile ammo (like the Prime games).
- Items that you can see are added to your map, and the ones you have obtained stay on the map but are faded/transparent and are labeled as acquired. This helps prevent searching areas for items you already have or think are missing.
- Doors, blocks or barriers that require a special ability to get through will be marked on your map after you encounter them, and you are able to highlight every one that you've found in the current area to make it easier to figure out where to go next. The harder ones to deal with, such as Speed Booster and Power Bomb blocks, permanently disappear once broken so they don't need to be dealt with repeatedly.
- Discovering enough Teleportals late into the game will change them from two-way warps to a full warp system, making it easier to backtrack through ZDR for any remaining items.
- Mickey Mania:
- Similarly to the Rug Ride level in Aladdin (Virgin Games), losing all your lives to the inexplicable buzz-saws and acid pits (and the floor itself, if you fall off the trolley) in the level based on The Mad Doctor will not earn you a Game Over, as the game will Hand Wave you to the next area with a message to the effect of "Mickey has broken all the trolleys so he walked instead". Why didn't he just walk to begin with? It had the apple thing too, but with marbles.
- The same level also has another one of these, though it can actually happen anywhere in the game; the trolley level is the easiest to perform it in. Throw a marble at a certain row of buzz saws causes a "Level Warp" screen to pop up, letting you go one level forward or backwards, whichever you choose. So why does this example fit this trope? The "Level Warp" is a very cleverly disguised Crash Handler. Whenever a Game-Breaking Bug is triggered, the game boots up a level warp as the crash screen, which is much more attractive to the players than the game simply freezing, or getting a screen about the game crashing. The trolley level is only an example of how to crash the game consistently: it can be done by accident elsewhereanother . Sonic 3D Blast by the same developer also disguised its crash handler as a secret level warp.
- NieR: Automata has a pretty unique one: You can buy achievements with in-game currency late in the game, which unlocks them without requiring you to actually do them. This doubles as both an Anti-Frustration Feature (since the final, true ending requires you to delete your save file, preventing you from getting any missing achievements without starting over) and also a Take That! towards the pointlessness of achievement systems.
- Fail enough times at any of the Oni Island races in Ōkami and the game will start going easier on you. This can include changing the timing of the obstacles, slowing your opponent, or putting platforms over spikes. There is a reduction in the reward for winning each time, but it does help those that are less proficient at this sort of thing.
- The Time Travel powers in the Prince of Persia Sands trilogy include Rewind, which allows the player to rewind time just enough to reverse a fatal mistake. It's also designed to prevent abuse, though, with the use of sand tanks and a timer that needs to recharged in-between time power usage.
- Marvel's Spider-Man allows the player to set the game's QTEs to "Auto-Complete", essentially turning them into cutscenes.
- Starlink: Battle for Atlas is a "toys to life" game in a similar vein to Skylanders, but had the misfortune of being released around the time such games were falling out of popularity. To that end, the developers made additional ships and pilots available as DLC, so players don't need to buy the toys to get additional content.
- In the original Dreamcast release of Sonic Adventure, the Egg Carrier Chao Garden had a very deep pool of water that Chao liked to drown in. The water was so deep that it completely submerged all player characters, making it impossible to reach the flailing Chao when they swam out too far. The Updated Re-release rectified this by lowering the water level so it was shallow enough to rescue them.
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge is a love letter to the Konami beat-em-ups of old (Turtles in Time, particularly), but implements new features that make the game far more forgiving than its arcade predecessors:
- Super Attacks run off of their own meter, so you no longer have to worry about sacrificing health if you get surrounded. Filling the meter requires completing uninterrupted combos, but you can use a Taunt Button to top it off quickly.
- A new dodge button provides new defensive options, giving players a means to avoid damage and counterattack.
- The Party Pizza item gives all players an instant health refill: say goodbye to the days of fighting with your friends over who gets a health-restoring pizza!
- If you repeatedly die in ToeJam & Earl, the game will eventually give you a random beneficial present upon respawning.
- Tomb Raider I:
- Lara cannot die in the air. Her health will reach zero, but she can continue to fight and act until she touches the ground and drops dead. Since jumping is the go-to way to engage enemies in combat but it's so difficult to control, this gives you a split-second last chance to whip open your inventory and use a medipack if your health is completely emptied in midair.
- Picking up items and interacting with switches can be finicky as you often need to be in a fairly particular space to make it happen. Since the underwater mechanics lack the finesse and ability to move slowly that would be needed to get into this sweet spot, holding the action button anywhere near near a switch or collectable will make Lara slowly gravitate in the right direction until she's the right place to interact with it.
- If you save at a crystal, then find a secret, and then die and continue from the save crystal, the secret will remain marked as "found". You'll have to refind the secret if you want to keep the ammo or items you found within, but finding it once is all you need for the end-level tally. This can be handy for some of the trickier late-game secrets, since if the items weren't worth the effort you can simply move on and still get 100% Completion. Note that if you actually shut off the machine or quit to the main menu you'll have to refind the secret; this only applies if you choose the "restart the level" option upon death.
- In the No-Gear Level you must refind your weapons one-by-one, finding the pistols hidden on the ground and then killing each of the three members of the Quirky Miniboss Squad to recover the rest. However, it is entirely possible, though certainly not easy, to get through the level without killing any of them or finding your pistols. If you do this, not only will you start the next level with pistols in your inventory but you'll also find the uzis right in the starting corridor of the level to prevent the Very Definitely Final Dungeon from being Unintentionally Unwinnable.
- Tomb Raider II:
- This game is vastly more difficult than the previous game, with even the first level containing traps and platforming that were found in the late-game of Tomb Raider I. To compensate, save crystals were removed and Lara was given the ability to save as many times as she wants wherever she wants, allowing you to Save Scum your way past some of the trickier moments and traps.
- There is a level featuring Mooks and monks battling each other. However, the monks only become enemies if you fire on them, and are content to leave you in peace so long as you don't shoot at them. However, if you're aiming at a Mook and a monk goes between you and them and is hit by a bullet, they won't react to this: they only turn on you if you lock on to them and then fire.
- Trover Saves the Universe: Whenever Trover jumps, a marker will appear beneath him, showing where he'll land.
- If the player bounces the ball too many times off the paddle in DX-Ball 2 without hitting a destructible block, all indestructible blocks on the field are changed into destructible blocks (since this is usually caused by indestructible blocks being a huge pain in the ass and keeping you from making the shot.)
- If the player still can't hit the last few blocks in a level, a lightning will strike them and destroy the blocks instantly.
- Likewise, WizOrb gives the player free MP if they bounce the ball off the paddle too many times without hitting a destructible block or enemy, so they can use a spell to progress further.
- Another breakout clone, Hyperballoid, allows the player to skip the last three destructable blocks in a level by dropping a "level skip" bonus once that point is reached. Ending the level the good old-fashioned way is rewarded with extra points, but if you just can't get the ball in that accursed corner with the tiny little block, then you have an easy way out.
- The Wonderful 101: If the player seemingly ends up stuck at some point, P-Star will generate a hologram of either an arrow indicating where to go or the shape of the Unite Morph needed to progress. For instance, in Operation 004-A, it might not be immediately obvious that forming Unite Hammer will make you sink under water. P-Star will make an image of a yellow hammer should the player spend too much time on the surface, not knowing what to do.
- Yoku's Island Express: The Slug Vacuum and Sootling On A Leash tools, which are often required to be used while flying through the air at high speed, both cause time to slow down when an airborne Yoku passes within range of a target, giving the player a better chance of completing the action successfully.
