5 Unrealistic Realisms in Video Games

Video games are getting more and more realistic. While this brings us amazing things like high-res graphics that actually look like people instead of an assortment of brightly colored blocks, it also brings with it a lot of technical problems. I can understand most of these things and I believe most people are willing to look past certain shortcomings with just a little chuckle. But for some reason it's also brought about some new forms of logic that feel like they came from an alternate dimension. I can forgive many of them, but some of them have become a staple of video game design and they really piss me off. Well, that's an exaggeration. Really it's more of an annoyed sigh when I see them and then I just move on. Uhhh, any way... here's five of whatever I was just talking about!

5. Gun Cocking

Not as inappropriate as it sounds, sorry.

It used to be that in a shooter a gun would never need to be reloaded. In Doom, you just magically attached your pistol to a 300 bullet chain and could just keep adding to that string with no worries. At some point someone realized "Hey... guns don't work like that" and games started acknowledging the existence of magazines and therefore guns needed to be reloaded.

This was a pretty good change. It meant that games could both be more realistic while also giving the player a flaw that he or she would have to manage properly in order to be successful against hordes of bad guys. We all were content to look the other way on how exactly it was that every clip was fully loaded and other ammunition management details, but one of those details creeped back in.

Cutting to the chase, if you pick up the latest Call of Duty game right now, this is how reloading works: if you reload before the magazine is empty (active reload) you will not need to cock the gun but if you fire all the bullets then you will. That... makes sense because there needs to be a bullet in the chamber for it to fire. But... what about everything else? Why bother wasting time making two reload animations on this? I mean, it's not like you lose the bullets that were remaining in that clip when you did that active reload. Yeah, buddy. You just teleported those bullets into your stash of infinite clips. To put it more clearly: you have limited bullets but infinite clips to load them into. It makes no sense! Numbers! AGHAA!

4. Fall Damage

At some point I was willing to accept this concept. That a fall could hurt you without killing you. Sure, fine. Makes enough sense. But not anymore!

In the Assassin's Creed series, they make it a point of having the main character jump off of insanely high objects only to break his fall PERFECTLY with nothing but a bundle of hay. Yet if you jump off a roof that's just a little too high it's like getting punched in the legs. For a game with no health regen, these chip off your total health just nag at you. Should you waste a healing item to fix it? And how exactly does this damage work, anyway? Does breaking your legs only hurt real bad but doesn't incapacitate you?

Ultimately I came to the conclusion that this is a waste of programming. It serves only to offer the player annoyance and brings either a groan or laughter with it. My solution? Have the fall kill the player if he or she isn't supposed to be falling there. Otherwise, no damage!

3. Being Locked in a Taunt Animation

If you've seen this South Park episode, this scene captures how this concept makes me feel.

I do love taunt buttons, and I know it's my fault for pressing them, but don't just stand there, man! Taunting should be risky, sure, because you leave yourself open. But... move! For God's sake! I'm pressing every button!

2. Driving a Car

Take just about any video game. The main character can shrug off getting shot and beat up to hell. He can headshot a dozen people from a mile away with just a pistol in a matter of seconds. He can perform a flawless 50 hit combo and juggle several large men in the air with his unstoppable strikes. But how well can he drive a car?

Pretty damn poorly. How many car crashes do you, the reader, generally get into in a span of two hours? I'm going to boldly estimate that the number is between zero and 0.00001. How about in a game like Grand Theft Auto? Probably anywhere from a dozen to a hundred!

Why can't I be awesome at driving a car? I do this better in real life! So stupid!

1. Delay in Shield Regen

I'm actually very proud of this question: why is there a delay between damage ending and shields coming back? Hm? This is both a game design question and a question of the ideas behind the technology in your game's world.

From a game design stand point, do you want players to constantly wait behind cover? Why can't they just continually fight? I'm not saying the character should be invincible. No one would suggest that. Find out just how fast it needs to be so that the player can properly take a beating but still has to be careful. Less downtime is good (unless you're milking players for gameplay hours' sake).

And from a technology stand point, what in real life works in a way to suggest this would work this way? I've never touched an electric fence before, but I would assume that overloading it would make it stop working altogether. This is because most powered things try to work as constantly as possible. My laptop has energy conservation methods for when power is low, none of which include turning off for 4 seconds before coming back on. Maybe if the battery is sputtering and dead. Are all video game heroes walking around using dead batteries?

Think about it! Think about all of these things!