Top 20 Ways Video Game Logic Makes NO SENSE
#20: Crouching Makes You Quieter
Stealth in video games has one big, go-to move - crouching down. While this certainly makes you less visible, particularly if there’s a chest high wall involved, most games also combine this action with a reduction in the noise you make. But, in the real world, crouching doesn’t really make you any quieter than you would be if you just walked slowly. Plus, it’s got to be bad for your knees to go around like that all the time! If the bad guys don’t get them first, the player characters are still going to have some killer hospital bills!
#19: Video Game Romances
Yet Another Top 10 Video Game Logic That Make No Sense!
Love is a complex thing. So, it’s no wonder why video games have so much trouble expressing it in the confines of their stories and gameplay. Although scripted romances are generally okay, as soon as the player has options to choose from, that’s when things get dicey. Most of the time, romances are part of side-content that you do in-between the plot-important bits of the game. Maybe its “development” consists of a few conversations you have with your character’s love interest, until suddenly, you’re married! Even games ostensibly devoted to romance, like dating sims, have their own bizarre conventions that make no sense when applied to actual love. Harem endings never happen in real life!
#18: Regenerating Objects
The status quo is often maintained in video games, despite overall progress in a story. One aspect of this is various destructible objects in a game. Although many games these days allow you to destroy nearly anything and everything, most of them have a set layout that doesn’t change. Maybe you break open some pots, leave the room, and when you come back, there they are again! Or maybe you throw something that blows up, only for you to find that same thing inexplicably reconstituted so you can throw it again! If only real-world objects were so easily repaired.
#17: Rubber Banding
This video game convention doesn’t involve literal rubber bands - not unless programmers are vastly overcomplicating their art. No, rubber-banding in video games refers to an all-too-common phenomenon. You’re doing well in a competition within the game, usually in a race - there’s no question you’re going to win! When suddenly, that computer-controlled player who was in last place is suddenly right behind you! Almost like they were shot forward with a…rubber band. Ostensibly, rubber-banding lends more challenge to these competitions, at the expense of realism. In reality, that last place contestant would never be able to catch up to you!
#16: Weapon Durability
The Greatest Video Game Weapon of All Time
Nothing lasts forever, even in video games. But it’s still downright illogical that weapons in games often have a set limit on the number of times they can be used. You’ll be smacking your foe with something durable and deadly, like steel or some mythic fantasy metal, when suddenly it shatters in your hands, and you’re left panicking! From a game design perspective, we get that switching things up constantly can lead players to experiment more. But, when legendary weapons forged in fire break as easily as the branch in your yard in real life, it does break the immersion somewhat.
#15: Invisible Walls
3D games can sometimes feel like they go on forever - but they don’t. At some point, gamers reach an obstacle they can’t overcome. Sometimes it’s something in-universe, like an unbreakable door or a chest-high wall or bush that you somehow can’t go past. But of all the ridiculous ways games limit your movement, none of them make as little sense as invisible walls. You’re on your adventure, exploring this cool fictional world, when you run smack dab into - nothing. Like an animal encountering transparent surfaces for the first time, you’re confused. But unlike cats and clear wrap, there’s no satisfying explanation within the world of the game. And it’s way less cute.
#14: Fighting Tournament Standards
Top 10 Tournament Fighting Game Franchises
Fighting games have eclectic casts of characters. While this is a strength of the genre, it also doesn’t make a lot of sense when you think about it logically. Like sure, most fighting games have powerful skilled fighters who look like they’ve been training all their lives. And then there’ll be a few…odd…choices - schoolchildren, robots, or just a bear! And sure, they can back it up in the games, but fighting tournaments don’t work like that in our world! You try to pit a teenager against a professional fighter or a professional fighter against a wild animal, and someone’s gonna’ die!
#13: Turn-Based Combat
Video Game Characters We Secretly Wish Would Turn Evil
Everyone loves a good RPG. You get into a fight with some monsters or villains, and they attack you - except they don’t! First, they’re going to politely wait for you to go first, then they go, then you go, and so on, until one side is dead. And sure, back before firearms had easier loading, firing lines were kind of like turn-based combat, but nowadays, the other side isn’t going to just sit around twiddling their thumbs as they wait for you to make your move.
#12: Inventory Space
Video game characters carry around a lot of heavy things. And while we’d also love to discuss how they get around in heavy armor with no reduction in speed, there’s a larger issue at play - inventory space. In shooters and RPGs especially, characters carry around a lot of stuff - armor, weapons, spare outfits, shiny rocks, money - the list goes on. And while sometimes restrictions are put on how much a character can carry at once, even slimmed down inventories are usually more than someone can realistically carry at once. Most of them don’t even wear backpacks! How deep do their pockets go?!
#11: “I Guess He’s Gone!”
Another Top 10 Video Game Logics That Don't Make Sense
Video game enemies will attack you if you enter their area of perception. However, that stretches the limits of logic when you just…go away. One moment, your foes are bearing down on you, or suspiciously investigating a sound. Then, once you go a few yards away or hide behind something, not only will the enemy stop attacking you, but they’ll forget you exist! If security guards in the real world had brains like this, we guarantee that there would be a lot more break-ins! And fistfights would easily resolve themselves once one combatant got far enough away from the other, thanks to selective amnesia and poor observational skills.
#10: Convenient Glowing Parts
Boss villains and creatures are usually some of the toughest enemies in their respective games. However, they often have glaring weaknesses - literally glaring, in some cases. Bosses frequently have blatantly labeled parts of their bodies that glow or are different colors than the rest of their bodies, where you can “attack these weak points for massive damage.” Within the context of these games though, why would these animals evolve to have obvious weak spots like this? And for those who were designed, like robots or spaceships, it’s even more egregious, since it’s a very noticeable design flaw to highlight! It’s like if the Death Star had a big sign over that one exhaust port!
#9: You’re Either Healthy - or Dead
Top 10 Video Game Logics That Don't Make Sense
Health bars are downright illogical in video games. Although they ostensibly show how healthy your character is, a lot of times being near death looks the same on screen as being at full health, particularly in fighting games. Sometimes a noise will sound when you’re near death or your character will be slightly winded or slower, but generally, the line between life and death is much wider than it should realistically be. Most people near death can’t perform the kinds of feats game characters can do in the same state. That sliver of HP certainly does a lot.
#8: Time Heals All Wounds
Top 20 Greatest Video Game Endings of All Time
Speaking of health, video game characters regain it in several ways. One of these is through regenerating health. This is popularly achieved in FPS games particularly, usually by ducking out of sight or by leaving combat. If real people who had been shot or otherwise injured could just wait for their bodies to magically heal themselves in a few seconds, combat would either be a lot easier or a lot harder! And trauma wards in hospitals would basically be obsolete! “You sprained your wrist? Take 30 seconds and call me never.”
#7: Magazine Reloading
Reloading your weapon is such a common experience in games that you don’t really think about the logistics of something so simple. But here’s something that doesn’t make sense - when you fire a few bullets from your gun, and then reload, despite visibly ejecting your magazine and putting in a new one, you still keep your old bullets! Of course, manually sorting through your magazines and putting in exactly the number of rounds you need doesn’t make for good gameplay, so streamlining it for the game makes sense, even if the magic bullets don’t.
#6: Rich Wildlife
Top 10 Video Games That Can MAKE YOU RICH!
“Kill enemies, get loot” is the cornerstone of many video games. But the details of this system can be rather puzzling. How do your enemies have the specific ammo for your gun? What do woodland creatures and monsters need with gold they can never spend? And how are they carrying armor or weapons that are bigger than they are? Does every living thing in these game worlds have a pocket dimension they store things in? If every wild animal you hunted in the real world spilled gold like a piñata after they died, there wouldn’t be any left!
#5: Respawning Enemies
Death is rarely permanent in video games. While this is most obvious with player characters, it also holds true for your enemies. Nothing is quite so disheartening as discovering your foes are no longer dead and after your blood once again! Usually, they have the courtesy to wait until you’ve left the area and then returned. Some games even have an in-game explanation. But there are also some games that just have enemies continuously reappear after they’re dead or even if they’ve left the screen! Of course, one wonders why these lower-level mobs are following the big bad’s orders if they’re seemingly immortal!
#4: Healing With Food
Food can have some medicinal qualities in real life, no question. But the effects of your diet are usually felt over time, not instantaneously! In video games, scarfing down an apple or some chicken you found in a wall is enough to heal whatever ails you and bring you back to tip-top shape! And sure, an apple a day keeps the doctor away, but it doesn’t make physicians obsolete! If a nice curry were all it took to recover from a head wound, mealtimes would be a lot more interesting! And messy.
#3: Instant Death
Top 10 Times Streamers Got Instant Karma
It’s possible to die instantly in real life - but that’s not what we’re talking about here. In video games, characters frequently die in just one or a few hits. And by hits, we don’t even necessarily mean a punch or a kick. Simply touching an enemy is enough for them to keel over. If you bump into someone, it’s not generally going to put your life in danger! What kind of body would something or someone have to have for a single touch to kill or at least injure them? What are all these game heroes made of tissue paper that’s allergic to surprise contact?
#2: Water is Deadly
Top 10 Video Game Water Levels
Video game characters have many superhuman abilities, as we’ve discussed. Which is why one of their common weaknesses is so baffling. For some reason, despite all their strengths, plenty of game heroes can’t swim. Actually, not being able to swim would be one thing - most of the time, they just die instantly if they fall into water deeper than a shallow puddle! Many of these heroes would be indestructible in the real world, and yet they could be easily defeated by tossing them in a swimming pool or a creek!
#1: The Double Jump
Top 10 Huge Video Game Plot Holes That Make No Sense
Isn’t it neat how after you leap into the air you can push off of nothing and jump again? Oh wait, that’s just video games! The double jump is one of the most bizarre conventions in gaming. Sure, some games justify it by giving the protagonist a jetpack or rocket boots, but most of the time, they’re just gaining an extra few feet of vertical clearance for no discernable reason! Don’t get us wrong, we love the extra airtime, but if you doubled the sense the double jump makes, it’d still be zero!
