A touch too realistic!

[major_clanger]

I've been taking advantage of having access to bugshaw's PC whilst she's away to play the copy of Half Life 2 that I bought over a year ago but which our laptop turned out not to be quite up to running. It certainly lives up to the hype, and in one area its realism is almost too effective: it's actually given me vertigo.

Now, I've known people to complain of motion sickness playing some games, although it's not something I've ever suffered from. But there's one section in HL2 where you're climbing through the girders of a massive bridge, buffeted by the wind and with the sea visible far beneath you.



It didn't matter how much I told myself it was all a computer generated simulation; there was part of my brain screaming you're going to fall...

Comments

[blue-condition.livejournal.com]

Pretty.

It needs to be the cover for a new edition of Iain Banks' The Bridge.

[waistcoatmark.livejournal.com]

I remember that bit. It wasn't quite as bad as one of the Jedi Knight / Dark Forces games years ago, where you were on a similar but substantially more precarious bridge, with bird things flying at you. And then the level after that involved swimming through dark flooded corridors with many a drown-and-reload sequence.

Severe acrophobia and claustrophobia all in the space of an hour.

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

I'd just about suppressed memories of that section. Argh!

[handslive.livejournal.com]

I'm replaying the game lately and passed this section a while ago. Still one of my favourite bits.

My brain tells me "simulation" when I see the elaborate construction and all the little telltale signs that say "no real bridge has these features".

And then the train passed overhead. With the quad speakers and sub rattling away and the whole bridge vibrating, brain gave it up to the glands.

I usually get vertigo in game, but unlike reality it doesn't usually bother me. Except this little bit in game. Oof.

[andrewducker]

You should have seen how my arachnophobia reacted to Ravenholme:

Eyes: Something moved. Maybe. Could have been a leaf though.
Brain: Empty every piece of ammo we have into it!!!!!!
Fire-button finger: I have cramp.
Brain: Shut up and keep firing!!!!!!