The Top 7... Totally unrealistic things games do all the time

Shoot off the screen to reload

Words: Hollander Cooper on October 19, 2012

Back to Article

94 comments

View as:
Newest first
Oldest first

garnsr - October 15, 2012 2:29 p.m.

Changing pretty much any of these things leads to games being more annoying usually, though. These things have become standard because they usually make games more livable (than life, actually.)
- Reply
- Report
leonel19888 - October 15, 2012 2:18 p.m.

I think there was only one game i played that if you dropped your magazine still with bullets he didnt discard it but actually he stack it back so you eventually find yourself putting in a magazine with only 3 bullets scariest sh@t ever !!!! i not sure but i think it was in a rainbow six 3 for the original xbox or in the first ghost recon...i was amazed in that time for that detail but never saw it coming back....dont get me wrong i love BF3 and im a really good sniper (ladm88 for ps3)..but there are little to none games that can actually be considered "realistic".
- Reply
- Report
slimjim441 - October 15, 2012 1:25 p.m.

Don't forget the obvious: checkpoints and restarts.
- Reply
- Report
BladedFalcon - October 15, 2012 1:42 p.m.

...This is actually very true. It might not be an accounted for thing when someone thinks about "gameplay" but the fact of the matter is that almost all video-games rely on something that is completely impossible in real life: Start over again. Heck, EVEN if you take into account games that simply do not allow save points or checkpoints, (Such as roguelikes) Those games STILL allow you to restart the game from scratch and apply some experience that you gained from a previous play-trough. If a game was to be akin to real life in this respect, once the main player died even once in the game, the game would be over, for good, as in, it becomes blank data that you can't ever play again. Of course, that would make for the crappiest game ever... Now think about that this makes of real life, and start getting depressed :P
- Reply
- Report
slimjim441 - October 15, 2012 1:48 p.m.

Pretty much. :[
- Reply
- Report
Rambo 11 - October 16, 2012 3:40 a.m.

XCOM on ironman, no checkpoints or restarts. Which is awesome until you're halfway through and you realize that all of your mistakes have accumulated into a black hole that's sucked away all chances of you succeeding.
- Reply
- Report
BladedFalcon - October 16, 2012 2:07 p.m.

Yep, but again, even XCOM on that mode allows you to restart the game, and try all over again, even if you have to do it all from the beginning. Good luck trying to pull that off in the real life! :D
- Reply
- Report
Rambo 11 - October 16, 2012 9:26 p.m.

Hmm... Well since no one has really returned from the dead to talk about it, it's not impossible to ask an extremely stretched What If? and propose that once you die your mind is reborn in another reality at a later point in life, say after finishing school, with all previous memories and thoughts intact? I'm sorry if this is far fetched but I've been watching some anime recently and it's been messing with my head :D
- Reply
- Report
BladedFalcon - October 16, 2012 10:11 p.m.

*Laughs* Yeah, anime can have that effect on you XD Thing is, if that mind reincarnation thing was true... Well there's no real difference being seen in all the thousands of years Humans have roamed the earth, because if that was true, then humanity wouldn't making the same dumb shit mistakes over and over again... But I digress. even that theory would make it work like games do. Games don't go trough reincarnation, they let you restart on the exact same spot, same characters, same events about to unfold. It's essentially a rewind button that simply doesn't exist in real life, in any form :P
- Reply
- Report
Rambo 11 - October 16, 2012 11:37 p.m.

True but if I were to strip away the whole previous memories thing it would be just like video game characters, forced to go through the same timeframe from the instant they are introduced until they either die or their part in the story ends repeatedly over countless play throughs. If you've seen the anime Higurashi When They Cry I could describe this a lot easier. And to counter your counter all I have to say is that our current reality is the original with all reincarnations taking part in alternate realities so as not to disrupt our timeline.
- Reply
- Report
BladedFalcon - October 17, 2012 1:10 a.m.

"And to counter your counter all I have to say is that our current reality is the original with all reincarnations taking part in alternate realities so as not to disrupt our timeline." ...So does this mean that all of our ancestors never actually existed in this reality? :P Or that the reincarnations go to timeliness we aren't aware of? Because if that's the case, then what differences does it make? we're not aware of it either way. And again, it's NOT the same as videogames, because while it's true the characters in the game start again without actual in game memory of what happened before, we as players do and can correct all of that because we have previous knowledge of what happened before. And if you suggest this is the case IRL... then you're basically saying we're devoid of actual free will, because that would mean someone's acting for us :P
- Reply
- Report
Rambo 11 - October 17, 2012 2:02 a.m.

Thus starts the creeping paranoia that you are a game character.
- Reply
- Report
FemJesse - October 15, 2012 1:21 p.m.

What about the double jump? I jump and then when I'm in air I jump again! I guess that's like jumping in water...
- Reply
- Report
Ronnie-_- - October 15, 2012 2:26 p.m.

Me and my friends at school were just trying to do this same thing today.
- Reply
- Report
profile0000 - October 15, 2012 1:21 p.m.

Number 4 spoke to me. Many times in my youth I would try to jump out of water from just treading like you would see in videogames... Yeah, I wasn't the brightest kid back in those days.
- Reply
- Report
Zeos - October 15, 2012 1:13 p.m.

All funny and true but if we removed some of these or fixed them, the games would probably be less fun and too realistic. Like life. Life needs to be more like video games. :/
- Reply
- Report
blackbeltbap15 - October 15, 2012 1:13 p.m.

my idea of reloading in games is always think they dont throw away the clip they put it away and put in a full clip, they dont just throw it away, which in real life is a total waste of time becausewhat is 5 extra bullets gonna do, all you gotta do is hide behind cover and then you can just throw away the empty clip and get a new one. the un reality part comes up when in reality you dont have a full clip anymore at all, but if you reload you still have a full clip. say you have 3 magazines of 30 rounds each, and you fire out a bullet in each clip the you reload, well when you reload on the 3rd clip, the next clip should have only 29 bullets becasue you already fired from that clip, but i believe it just gives you a full clip
- Reply
- Report
Lurkero - October 15, 2012 1:11 p.m.

This article pretty much gets the most relevant issues. I would say that many games allow players to jump from great heights without being incapacitated by leg damage. In regards to the regenerating health issue: It's not that the player "actually" gets shot or damaged. I think regenerating health can be interpreted as a "danger" meter. The more potential harm that comes your way in quick succession, the more likely you are to die. Consider it as the player was getting "shot at" and not "shot". What happens during gameplay is not canon.
- Reply
- Report
Child Of Death - October 15, 2012 1:36 p.m.

I always thought that way too.
- Reply
- Report
Icehearted - October 15, 2012 12:57 p.m.

I remember one game a long time ago that punished clip wasting called Project IGI. Also pretty cool that bullets could pass through wood and injure the player but bounced off metal.
- Reply
- Report