If you decide that you might want to leave the comfort of your gaming chair/sofa/bean bag for some "exercise" you might choose to do a real world version of your games. For instance, it is possible to participate in Fifa/Pro Evo inspired games of "Football". This will involve re-enacting onscreen movements, but to a much more basic and clumsy degree whilst in an open space. Whilst participating in one of these "sports" you might find that you experience pain, which a doctor will tell you is a physical version of the injuries experienced by your onscreen counterparts.
Despite your initial joy at the realism of "pulling a hamstring" you will probably soon tire of the injury and inevitably realise that re-enacting computer games is a bad idea. Whilst your onscreen player might be injured for "three weeks" this normally equates to around 20mins in "real time" but if your doctor tells you three weeks he means REAL weeks.
Additionally, your onscreen athletes don't have the inconvenience of 6hrs waiting in the hospital Emergency Room for the diagnosis, surrounded by screaming children and people carelessly passing out and spreading their blood liberally on the furniture.
GavinoX took his Nintendo DS along but was unhappy to be disturbed by a nurse at a key moment.
GavinoX would like to issue the following warning: Telling a nurse that you will "be there in a minute" is frowned upon in the Emergency Room environment. Despite the fact you have waited 6hrs the nurse will expect you to immediately follow her to a room without giving you any time to Save your game first. (Incredible in this modern day and age that people still think like that...)
Pain in gaming is traditionally represented by a health/energy bar or a percentage figure. As discussed in a previous entry this "pain" can easily be eliminated by eating food or pulling on some new body armour (probably found in a conveniently close location). Modern games have begun to display pain in new ways. Examples include blurring and red haze around the outside of the screen (see Call of Duty, Gears of War etc). In these instances however the pain (from a gunshot wound for instance) will simply subside within a few seconds. Farcry 2 has an innovative pain relief system requiring a button command to halt the healthbar decline which then triggers a random animation (cue bullet being poked out of a wound, dislocated limb reset etc).
After snapping his achilles tendon GavinoX found himself resorting to the pain relief methods learned from years of hard-core gaming:
- find an apple/joint of meat
- put on some body armour
- wait and recover
- cast a healing spell
Having procured an apple almose immediately I can reveal that Apples are ineffective pain relievers. Searching the local area failed to locate any body armour and waiting for some to respawn seemed to be taking ages so this idea will have to remain untested. Sitting and waiting for the pain to subside in 30seconds time had minimal effect on the pain levels. In desperation I turned to a healing spell, but having never uncovered a scroll in my lifetime I was forced to make one up. Quickly issuing an on-the-spot spell GavinoX made the following incantation: "Ouch ouch my ankle hurts, ouch ouch you men in shirts, save me from this pain, before my language becomes more profane and I end up lame!"
The spell had no effect.
With the pain reaching intolerable levels (more painful even than the RSI incurred from a 24hour race on Gran Turismo) an incredible thing happened, adrenalin kicked in and the pain slowly dribbled away.
Now how can someone put that into a game?
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