Maintaining a sense of power scaling in a narrative can be difficult, more so in an interactive medium like video games.
Sometimes, to keep the story interesting, the game needs to take you down a peg or two.
10 Most Iconic Video Game Power-Ups
Power-ups like the Super Mushroom and Power Pellet maintain places of honor in the halls of gaming history.
This can happen at just about any time – you might be temporarily stripped of abilities in the middle of the story, or you might lose weapons and powers at the start of a sequel game to reset things.
The precise reasons for these de-powering can vary wildly, ranging from dumb accidents and deliberate villain intervention to the mere passage of time.
10Pinched By The Sierra Madre
Fallout: New Vegas
In the first major DLC forFallout: New Vegas,Dead Money, you’re whisked away to the mysterious Sierra Madre by the mad Father Elijah for an impromptu heist.
Unfortunately, the Sierra Madre is armed with a multitude of bleeding-edge pre-war security systems.
One of these is a discrete teleporter that automatically relieves visitors of any dangerous or contaminated objects, which happens to include literally all of your gear and weapons.
You’ll have to survive the Sierra Madre and unravel its mysteries exclusively by scavenging gear from the area and fabricating weaponry at the vending machines.
Thankfully, all your stuff is returned at the end of it all, and subsequent DLCs make a point of telling you that you won’t have your inventory wiped again.
9Ten Years In The Slammer
Yakuza Kiwami
At the beginning ofYakuza Kiwami, Kiryu is in the prime of his life. Not only does he have all of his fighting styles maxed out, he’s got access to his strongest Dragon style.
Unfortunately, after he takes the fall for Nishiki and gets sent to prison for ten years, he doesn’t get much opportunity to stay in shape.
Upon returning to Kamurocho, Kiryu finds that street fighting just isn’t coming as easily to him anymore, with his strength and repertoire severely diminished.
Majima is the first to notice this, which is part of why he starts stalking Kiryu everywhere: to pick fights with him and get him back up to snuff.
8Dipped In The Styx
God Of War 3
God of War III
God of War 3picks up immediately afterthe previous game’s cliffhanger, with Kratos ascending Olympus atop Gaia’s back to take a swing at Zeus.
However, the one getting swung at is Kratos, with Zeus making short work of him and casting him all the way down to the Underworld.
Kratos lands in River Styx, where the floating souls of the dead begin to gnaw at him, draining away his health and magic meters.
As an extra insult, Kratos drops the Blade of Olympus and the Blades of Athena are severely powered down.
7Switching To Super Heroes
South Park: The Fractured But Whole
At the end ofSouth Park: The Stick of Truth, the New Kid successfully saves the town from the zombie menace and is crowned king for their efforts.
The Fractured But Wholeshows the kids still playing their sword and sorcery game, with the New Kid successfully slaying a “dragon.”
Suddenly, Cartman shows up in his superhero persona, The Coon, informing his friends that they need to form a superhero team to find a lost cat for a monetary reward.
He then informs you and everyone else that they’re playing superheroes now and fantasy stuff is dumb.
If you want to jointhe new game, you have to roll up a new superhero persona and start from zero.
6Nuked In Orbit
Destroy All Humans 2
Destroy All Humans! 2 Reprobed
Thanks to Pox’s research in the firstDestroy All Humans, Crypto had managed to amass an impressive array of dangerous alien weaponry.
During an outing to Bay City, though, Crypto left all but his Zap-O-Matic behind on the mothership so they wouldn’t weigh him down.
This was a poor decision, as while Crypto was partying, a Russian nuke destroys the mothership and kills Pox.
Pox manages to back up a digital copy of his mind, but all of Crypto’s weapons and their relevant research are completely wiped out, forcing him to rebuild them from scratch.
5Power Suit Destroyed
Metroid: Zero Mission
Metroid: Zero Missionis an expanded version of the original NES Metroid game.
It follows the original’s plot right up until after Mother Brain is defeated under the surface of Zebes.
As Samus tries to escape from the planet in her ship, a fleet of Space Pirate ships shoots her down, causing her to crash-land back on Zebes.
Metroid Dread - Samus Final Suit in the Ending Mission Explained
Gaining the raw Metroid power.
In the process, her Power Suit is destroyed, leaving Samus with nothing but her Zero Suit and an emergency stun pistol.
The gameswitches to a stealth missionfor a time, forcing you to evade enemies until Samus can get a fresh Power Suit from the nearby Chozo ruins.
4Luminary Lost
Dragon Quest XI
Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age
At the midpoint ofDragon Quest XI’s story, the Luminary and company attempt to claim the Sword of Light from the heart of the World Tree, Yggdrasil.
However, they’reoverpowered by the dark sorcerer Mordegonand his minion, Jasper.
With the Luminary at his mercy, Mordegon forcibly steals the ancient power from the Hero’s heart to take the sword for himself.
As a side effect of this, the entire Luminary section of the Hero’s skill tree is completely sealed off.
This means you’re able to’t useuseful skills like the Zap line or Omnihealuntil you get the power back.
3No More Keyblade
Kingdom Hearts
Late in the story ofKingdom Hearts, Sora, Donald, and Goofy arrive at the ruins of Hollow Bastion, where they’re confronted by Riku.
As it turns out,Riku was the one who was originally supposed to have the Keyblade, but it latched onto Sora after it couldn’t find him.
Riku uses his connection to the Keyblade to take it from Sora, with Donald and Goofy obligated to follow him.
Sora is left with just a toy wooden sword, which is just as useless against the Heartless as it was at the start of the game.
The protagonist can still use his magic, and he does have the Beast helping him, so he’s not completely defenseless, but melee combat is off the table.
2Parasite Injection
InPrototype, every time Alex absorbs a person with relevant memories, he experiences a debilitating headache while he assimilates their knowledge.
During a fight with Blacklight Captain Cross, Alex is consumed by one of these flashback headaches.
This gives Cross the opportunity to inject Alex with a parasitic serum, which begins slowly consuming him from within.
While under the effects of the parasite, most of Alex’s offensive abilities like his claws and blade arm are locked down, leaving him just his baseline enhanced strength, disguises, and traversal abilities.
Alex needed to hunt down a genetically compatible Hunter creature to obtain the necessary antibodies to quell the Parasite.
1Two Months On The Couch
River City Girls 2
By the end of the firstRiver City Girlsgame, the duo of Kyoko and Misako had accrued quite a bit of XP and new moves.
Unfortunately, at the start ofRiver City Girls 2, they’re expelled from their school by a sucker punch from yakuza enforcers.
Mostly unbothered, the two decide to go to Kyoko’s house and play video games, where they remained for two straight months.
It’s only on a suggestion from Kyoko’s mom that they finally leave the house, whereupon they discover their months of slacking have robbed them of most of their combat prowess.
Every Power in Astro Bot, Ranked
Level design and power-ups go hand in hand, and Astro Bot is great at both.
