Artificial Reality? REALLY?

We gamers are told that we will be whisked away to distant lands and be able to enjoy a true artificial reality. But is it actually anything close to reality? Below I discuss what aspects are far from reality but why we do not really mind.

We All Drive the General Lee

Now before we start I am not talking about cars jumping in Rally Games and the like. These cars are built to take this sort of punishment with specialised suspension. But take a game like Driver San Francisco or GTA where you get 10 metres of air or more and you land and speed off into the sunset, Would this really be possible? 

A car is not designed to take its weight suddenly hitting its suspension and would crumple into a heap. 

But do we care when we play our games? Not really, it adds to the fun, makes car chases more exciting and if all things relating to driving were kept real in a game a crash would write off your car, you would get stuck behind a tractor and would run out of fuel just as it got interesting.

Bionic Woman

Recently while playing Tomb Raider I got to thinking. How is her body connected together. Lara cannot fall from great heights onto the floor, but she can fall almost an unlimited distance from a cliff as long as there is a zip line in her path for her to grapple to and slide down. Play it and see what I mean. she uses her climbing pick and no matter how far you fall, she will be able to survive and slide to safety with all limbs attached.

What would actually happen in these moments would be that her arms would likely be ripped from the socket or at least dislocated and she would be in terrible pain and needing serious medical assistance.

We let this go as it adds excitement to an escape scene as our hero runs and swings to safety. It would be a long slow slog down the mountain if we kept to the reality of the situation

I Am Invincible

Whether you are in a fire fight taking bullets to the face, get hit by a moving car or take machete blows to the torso, you will survive. Are you the Hulk? Are you Wolverine? No. In most cases you are an archiologist or a immigrant or a normal, red blooded soldier with basic protective clothing. So how come you are able to take that level of punishment? 

In reality you would be like the guy from Goldeneye who thinks nothing can touch him, until he gets frozen to death.

You have to give games some artistic licence. Otherwise you go to the extreme where ever single hit is instant death. Imagine a game like Call of Duty where every single time you too a hit you had to restart. You would have to creep round every single inch of the game and never come out of cover. It would sap the life and enjoyment from the game. 

Yes it is completely false but its the only way to keep things fun.

The Good, The Bad and the Ugly

Nice guys finish last.... unless you are playing computer games. In which case it is almost inevitable that the good guy will win the day. You very rarely get to play the bad guy. To do some nasty crap and still make it to the end alive. 

The game will have a young boy against an army of trained killers and you will still come out on top. I think this is mainly down to morals. Games do not want to be shown for glamorising evil and saying that being cruel is ok.

I guess the reason behind this may also roll back to the fact games are often blamed for bad things in the world. A killer is often stated as being 'Into graphic video games' and being a 'social outcast' as a result. I know this to be rubbish as I have been playing since I was about 5 or 6 and I have only once thought about going on a gun rampage around my office (The gun would be filled with water before anyone calls the police).

The Future is Waist High

Look at the back of the box. Do you see the characters from a third person perspective? Well if you do be prepared for lots of random structures which are waist high.

All modern games with cover mechanics seem to love the waist high wall. Gears of War is the main example where buildings have been destroyed to leave strategically places waist high walls that are perfect for cover and to flank your enemies. There will even be some of these walls in the middle of a park. there would be nothing else. no reason for them to be there, but walls a plenty!. It may be that they have been built specifically as cover points but who has the time to build strategic defences unless you have months to prepare for war.

Yes we are talking about games and so they have artistic licence but can they not think of a better solution than this? there must be some way of explaining them or make them out of some special military material which shows they can just be thrown up quickly. Halo did this with the shield walls which obviously have been put in place by the enemy. You can make a gun with a chainsaw attached to the end but you cannot make military cover?