Ladder Physics: Difference between revisions

Another frequent trope is when a ladder with free space from both sides is only climbable from ''one'' side. This is done to avoid frustration (you don't want to climb a long ladder for ten seconds only to find out at the top that you climbed the wrong side and can't get up on the platform), though it can be annoying if you want to quickly latch onto a ladder to escape something on the ground. Besides, you'd think your character could just move to the other side of the ladder... Maybe they're too afraid to do something that risky?

== [[Action Adventure]] ==

* The Game Boy Advance game based on ''[[Futari wa Pretty Cure]] Max Heart'' uses an especially lazy implementation. Grabbing onto ladders is ''automatic'' if you're in position to do so and not still moving up from a jump, and there's no way to let go other than jumping or reaching one end. On the positive (if unrealistic) side, you can jump at full height on ladders, so you can move up super-quickly by mashing the jump button.

* ''[[Half-Life]]'' - Freeman's HEV suit evidently has magnetic feet, because even during earth-shattering explosions, he's able to stick perfectly to the ladder without even taking his hands off the weapon. It's even possible to reload while on a ladder.

** This looks ridiculously stupid in multi-player games, watching players ''walk'' up ladders - even siller if they're crouching, because the player appears to be levitating up the ladder from a kneeling position. Egregious in supposedly realistic settings like Counter-Strike.

* In ''[[Metal Gear Solid 3]]'', Naked Snake has to climb a [[Memetic Mutation|looooooooooooooooooooooooong]][http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24yIQD3k8wc ladder]. The only exhaustion experienced is on the part of the player.

** Though the climb may well eat into your rations.

== [[Wide Open Sandbox]] ==

* ''[[Shadow Complex]]'' averts this by treating ladders fairly realistically. You can climb ladders as normal, you can climb them quickly up to the limits of your stamina (which quickly increases as you level), you can slide down them (friction burns are ignored, but later on you get armor, so then it's okay), shoot from them by holding on to the ladder with one hand (but you're not climbing up or down while you do this, and it takes a moment as you stop and pull out your firearm and put it away, and this doesn't address the issues of recoil while holding an AK-47 with one hand), ''reload'' with one hand (again, you're stuck on the ladder in one spot while you reload, with a lead-in and lead-out time), and once you get the jet pack, you can even slide ''up'' the ladder. Which looks kind of awesome.

* ''[[God Hand]]'' has a few ladders sprinkled throughout the game, but Gene never actually climbs them, he instead just jumps up and down to where they begin and end.

** What makes the ladders even weirder is if you create a move ending in a Backstabber in Create-a-Finisher, the ladder ''will actually pop up into the air.''

* ''[[Project IGI]]'', a FPS, did third-person, unarmed ladder climbing back in 2000.

* Any of the [[Tom Clancy]] games, especially ''[[Rainbow Six]]'', have rather realistic ladder behavior: all limbs are required for operation, and you often can't look any further than 90 degrees left or right while climbing. Since the person on the ladder is essentially a sitting duck, it's usually a good idea to have the rest of the squad cover the top and bottom of the ladder.

* In ''[[Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles The Crystal Bearers]]'', you climb ladders without even touching them, instead using Layle's powers to pull yourself up to the top of the ladder instantly, making you wonder why you can only do this when a ladder is present.

* ''[[Gears of War]]'' averts this trope in the most badass way possible. Players climb ladders with one arm, leaping from rung to rung with pull-ups, and climb down ladders by leaping off the top, grabbing the ladder half way down to slow their fall and flip back upright, then drop the rest of the way to the ground. You can't do anything else during these scripted climbing sequences, but since ladders are extremely rare, never very long and you climb them ridiculously fast it doesn't really matter.