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Trigger Happy
108
order to render visible a web of security beams that will
set off alarms if he breaks them; and if he smokes while
using the sniper rifle, his aim is steadier. In this way,
with its alluring mix of peril and desirability, smoking
in Metal Gear Solid, as in life, is sublime.
19
In a more
general sense, it is an example of how health can be
traded for other benefits concerning the game objective.
The idea of health sacrifice is a relatively new one; it
appears in a much cruder fashion in the Tomb Raider
games, where if Lara is in a recessed pit filled with
spikes or barbed wire, she can avoid injury by walking
carefully, but to get out of the pit she is forced to jump
and therefore lacerate her legs.
Most games featuring a health bar also provide
some means for the player to restore her health, rather
than face an inexorable slide toward loss of life. Pick
up a mystical “medikit” and bullet wounds are healed,
all injuries forgotten, stamina replenished. Medikits and
other health-restoring devices are further examples of a
class of items in the gameworld that usually obey none
of the gameworld’s normal physical rules: power-ups.
They can be items on the floor to be picked
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19 See the intoxicating Richard Klein, Cigarettes Are Sublime (Durham,
N.C.: Duke University Press, 1995).