5 Times Video Games Took Realism Too Far

What does an online video game mean to you? It’s a virtual world you escape into, that breaks the monotony of your everyday grind. The keyword being, virtual! However, developers have time and again tried to drill the hard reality into gaming elements, so their players encounter quirky and thrilling little moments in their adventure. But how far is too far? Check out this list of hilarious video game features where the lines between reality and escapism are blurred to the point where it hurts your vision.

From painfully exaggerated skin pores in Project Makeover to beads of sweat dripping off the character’s forehead in Death Stranding, these are the top 5 most photorealistic games that played it a notch too cheeky for 2021.

The Darkness

This is a weird case of a game scene turning into a movie premiere. In The Darkness, you play the role of a dude named Jackie Estacado, who goes all gaga after being possessed by an evil force and pretty much wreaks havoc in the lives of his loved ones. 

Somewhere along the lines, you hang out to Netflix and chill with your girlfriend named Jenny Romano, and by that, you actually sit down to watch movies – so calm down, this is headed somewhere else. The girlfriend puts on a movie from the 1960s – To Kill a Mockingbird, and that’s pretty much the next two hours in the game. Instead of blacking out to a smart transition like any other sane game, The Darkness takes it a notch higher into the spectrum of realism by literally playing the full movie on the tiny TV screen. Of course, you can skip that part which I’m sure everyone other than the QC team did. It’s baffling to have this two-hour monologue of a black-and-white movie ramble on with no real twist in the game. The developer must be a true fan of To Kill a Mockingbird (more like to kill the fun)! 

Days Gone

In the zombie-infested and post-apocalyptic junkyard of Days Gone, riding bikes is the ultimate dream, although cars would be much safer considering there are flesh-eating former humans sniffing and hunting you down. Anyhow, the game quickly escalates to a point where riding the two-wheeler is pretty much the center of the gameplay. 

And while riding your motorbike on an open road amidst an aesthetic landscape seems like the dream, you’ll need to refuel your bike literally every god damned minute in the course of your journey. Yes, it’s realistic for an automobile to want fuel, but having to constantly look over your shoulders for exponentially depleting fuel is not my idea of a fun ride. 

This puts unnecessary brakes on the otherwise bearable plot where you could have raced like a rogue running over zombies with your motorbike. Instead, you end up stranded and out of fuel and need to drag your bottom to the nearest fuel canister or fuel station – sometimes to even find empty and drained out bunks – after which I didn’t stick around to find out what happens.

Far Cry 2

Far Cry does really seem like a cry for help from developers who’ve gone astray in the swallowing web of making realistic games. One of the major game obstacles here is repetitive and random attacks of Malaria. Our body would probably develop an inbuilt immune mechanism with the number of times this game thinks a functioning human can contact malaria and still survive. 

So, there is a yucky yellow tint that takes over the frame when you catch malaria and prevents you from frolicking around performing game functions like jump, run, attack, and dodge. You got to pop a pill every so frequently to recover and play the game – how fun! 

My take is the gameplay takes place against the backdrop of a dingy set up which in reality can potentially have malaria lurking in its corner, but it’s just over the top how many times the anopheles kisses you forcefully in the game. 

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

What are the odds of this iconic title landing up on this list, right? Hear me out, I play this game a lot which speaks for itself about how much I like it. But...but..but… my irritability is with Zelda’s weapon durability. 

Pretty much all the weapons in the game can take only so many hits before they give up and break apart. Now, the argument here is that it’s immersive and it encourages players to try out different weapons from the inventory. If the game really did offer an interesting range of weapons, players would try it regardless. There is a reason why most games allow infinite life to weapons one accumulates with quite some hardship in the first place. After all, in which world do swords shatter and break if you use them one too many times? If anything, they get blunt overtime and don’t explode like they’re on a ticking timed bomb. Oh wait, a timed bomb would be a nice perishable weapon addition, won’t it? 

Alone in the Dark

Observing Alone in the Dark is like watching a good idea destroy itself. On one side, there are impressive features like mixing up objects to make an impactful combating weapon – like a bottle combined with tape makes Molotov. 

While on the other side, there is pointless eye blinking needed to freaking look at what is going on around you.

At the very beginning of the game, there is a mechanic that forces you to incessantly click on the ‘Blink Eyes to Clear Vision’ button upon which the frame starts clearing up for better visibility. I mean…what is that even? Which real-world is Alone in the Dark referring to where your blinking can scare a five-year-old off. For starters, the blinking literally goes on and on and on. And at some point, you also got to wipe off blood and toxins by blinking all over again. 

I would like to know what the devs were on when they collectively sat around a meeting table and thought they hit euphoria while coming up with the breakthrough mechanic of BLINKING! I just realized I haven’t blinked once during the whole course of writing this piece, ugh it’s that infuriating. 

While most of the above features were incorporated to get in touch with reality in games, they come off as silly and obtrusive to the gameplay. I think these games would’ve been much better without their forced attempt at realism. So, do you know any games that took realism to a whole new (completely avoidable) level? Let me know down in the comments below.