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{{trope}}
[[File:Mario_airmeter_6170.jpg|link=Super Mario Galaxy
Somewhere inbetween [[Super Drowning Skills]] and [[Super Not-Drowning Skills]] lies the [[Oxygen Meter]], which indicates the [[Player Character]]'s capacity to hold his breath. If the [[Oxygen Meter]] depletes, one of two things will happen: instant death by asphyxiation, or the player character's actual [[Life Meter|health]] will begin to drain.
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An occasional alternative to the Oxygen Meter is to allow only for a finite amount of time underwater before the player character automatically floats back to the surface unharmed -- however this also places a restriction on level design, to avoid the player getting stuck should their "swim timer" run out in the middle of, say, an underwater tunnel or cavern with no air on the surface.
A third way, of course, is to just prohibit underwater travel entirely -- either by limiting swimming mechanics to the water's surface (such as in ''[[Bully (
Characters with [[Super Not-Drowning Skills]], by definition, rarely have need of an [[Oxygen Meter]].
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{{examples}}
* ''[[The Elder Scrolls]]'' series games ''Morrowind'' and ''Oblivion'' have "Breath" meters; if the breath meter empties, the player's health begins to drain rapidly. Can be circumvented using a Water Breathing spell or playing as the [[Petting Zoo People|Argonian]] race.
** [[Fallout 3]] and [[Fallout: New Vegas]], which use the same engine, inherit this effect from Oblivion as well. It drains worryingly quickly, followed by massive health loss. Although a character in New Vegas can gain [[Super Not-Drowning Skills]] with {{spoiler|the unique rebreather}}, again based on the very same effect as Water Breathing in Oblivion.
** An interesting variation on this is that the meter is more and more forgiving as you increase your Endurance attribute.
* The more recent 3D ''[[Super Mario Bros.]]'' games. The original ''[[
** The ''[[Ty the Tasmanian Tiger]]'' games use the Mario 64 variant, with exactly the same consequences.
** The oxygen meters in [[
* ''[[Grand Theft Auto San Andreas]]''. This was a departure from the rest of the series, as previous games gave the player [[Super Drowning Skills]].
** The game after this, ''[[Grand Theft Auto IV]]'', kept the ability to swim but restricts it to the surface, so there's no meter.
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** ''[[The Wind Waker]]'' did not have any underwater breathing, but did have a stamina bar to prevent you from swimming from island to island.
** ''[[Skyward Sword]]'' has an oxygen meter as well, which is barely of note until you get the Water Dragon's Scale (Link automatically floats upward when he's not focused on swimming). Staying underwater depletes it, using your spinning attack depletes it faster, and whatever you do, don't inhale the colorful bubbles! There is a potion that slows the rate Link consumes oxygen, however.
* ''[[Duke Nukem]] Time To Kill'' deviated from the [[Duke Nukem 3D
* The first ''[[Ratchet and Clank]]'' game.
** Fortunately, Ratchet gains an oxygen mask about halfway through the first game-and unlike [[Bag of Spilling|most of his weapons and items]] the mask makes it to every subsequent game, making it a non-issue for the rest of the series.
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** In Tales of Monkey Island, Guybrush can intentionally go underwater, and if you spend a little less than ten minutes of gameplay underwater, Guybrush will remember his limit and go back to dry land. Thankfully, there's only really one or two areas where you need to be underwater, they're incredibly straightforward to navigate, and like it's been said before, ten minutes is a generous amount of time.
* The remake of ''[[Ninja Gaiden]]'' has one of this, but it ceases to be an issue once Ryu acquires an oxygen tank and draws on it from his [[Hyperspace Arsenal]].
* In ''[[Banjo-Kazooie]]'', when the [[Oxygen Meter]] runs out, you immediately drown. [[That One Level|Rusty Bucket Bay]] had oily water that not only drained the meter twice as fast when submerged, but drained it at the regular speed ''when on the surface''. This is rectified slightly in ''[[Oddly
** It's not really needed in ''Banjo-Tooie'', either, seeing as the major underwater level gives you unlimited oxygen.
*** However, it does have another use in ''Banjo-Tooie'': not only does it affect Banjo's ability to hold his breath under water, it also affects his ability to hold his breath in the presence of poisonous gas which Gruntilda uses against him in the final battle.
* In ''[[
* Bungie's ''[[Marathon
** It's rare to have trouble with Oxygen underwater (or sewage, or lava), but the back-to-back vacuum levels (three in a row, if you visit a secret level) in ''Marathon Infinity'' have a nasty reputation. The one vacuum level in ''Marathon'' was also infamous.
** Compare this with the ''[[Halo]]'' series' Master Chief/playable Elites, who can apparently stand around forever without anything to breathe.
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*** They can't seem to decide on how long the oxygen meter should be, before the ''burning crusade'' expansion, and shortly into ''wrath'', it was one minute long, halfway through wrath, they increased it to roughly five minutes, and as of ''cataclysm'', it's back down to roughly two minutes.
* ''[[Ecco the Dolphin]]''. [[Justified]] of course, since the whole game was set underwater and dolphins can hold their breath for quite a while. When the oxygen meter runs out, health begins to drain.
* In addition to being a certified death incarnate, Rico Rodriguez in ''[[Just Cause (
* ''[[Tomb Raider]]'' uses a couple of variations on this; while most of the games use a standard oxygen meter, ''[[Tomb Raider]]: Chronicles'' used a special diving suit on one level that had confusing ([[Guide Dang It|since they never told you]]) additional mechanics: the suit had near infinite air, but as you bumped into walls and rocks Lara audibly becomes stressed and begins breathing heavily, at which point you begin to lose oxygen quickly, meaning you had to avoid hitting things. ''[[Tomb Raider]] 3'' also has an underwater propulsion vehicle that makes you move faster, but it's argubly less useful than just swimming as it decreases your general mobility and must be got off of to use switches and other items. Water in arctic levels also had a hypothermia bar that went down faster than the oxygen bar, but functioned much the same way. In ''Legend'' and ''Anniversary'', oddly, Lara is much slower underwater and has a much shorter air meter. ''Underworld'' changes things up again, with Lara going back to being almost as fast as in the original games, and having such a long oxygen bar it borders on [[Super Not-Drowning Skills]] (that is in the rare instances where she swims without scuba gear, where it is that trope).
** Decrease in health also functions differently depending on the game. Prior to ''[[Tomb Raider]] Legend'', health usually decreases at a fixed steady rate. During and after ''Legend'', the decrease in health rate is usually a slash of a quarter of the health bar every two seconds, or an eighth, depending on the difficulty level setting.
* ''[[
* ''[[Turok (
* ''[[
** Well, it is a bubble around the player, so the systems don't get flooded with water.
* Swimming underwater in ''[[Gothic]]'' adds an oxygen meter in addition to the player's health and mana meters. When the Nameless Hero runs out of oxygen, the health starts draining instead, until he runs out of health and drowns. Notable because surfacing will make the meter invisible again, but will ''not'' instantly refill it--the player must stay on the surface for at least a few seconds, or will find on diving again that the meter isn't completely full.
* ''[[
* ''[[
* ''Radical Rex'' plays this entirely straight. Not only do you get a bar, but you have to either surface to refill it, or (ugh) lock lips with a big fat fish that is somehow able to maintain neutral buoyancy despite apparently being full of air. Oh, and if you touch the un-inflated fish (which this type will become upon giving up its payload), you'll lose a big chunk of air. There are also "bubble" powerups good for about half a deep breath. And if you get caught in the anemone's tentacles, the meter drains almost immediately to zero (though whether it's this or some kind of poison in them that kills you is debatable).
* The ''[[Thief]]'' games have an oxygen meter that looks like a line of bubbles across the bottom of the screen. If you knock someone unconscious and dump him in water, he will die in about the same span of time you would (so don't dump unconscious guards in swimming pools if you're running a no-kill mission).
** Averted in ''Thief: Deadly Shadows'', where Garrett has learnt [[Super Drowning Skills]]
* In ''[[
** By the DS version, it was back up to four, which made for a rather annoying playthrough using a FAQ from [[Game FAQs]], since one of the only really good ones was done by an editor [[Author Filibuster|ranting and raving throughout said FAQ about how they 'treated American gamers like babies' and went on and on about the Japanese version of the GBA release]], instead of say, actual useful information about the game... Especially since, y'know, someone reading his walkthrough was likely to be playing the US version, or a version close enough that it didn't much matter.
* When travelling on the ocean floor to Tane-Tane Island in ''[[
** You get them [[Ho Yay|kissed by big-lipped mermen]].
* Non-underwater example: the ''[[Mr. Driller]]'' series has an Oxygen meter that slowly depletes as you play, with the oxygen loss accelerating once you make it deeper underground. To stay alive, you need to pick up air capsules scattered throughout the mine.
* ''[[Jungle Hunt
* ''[[Alpha Prime]]'' uses an [[Oxygen Meter]] on the asteroid's surface, refillable through the use of oxygen dispensers, or simply by walking back into an airlock.
* In ''[[Final Fantasy VII]]'', the party has twenty minutes to defeat [[Bonus Boss|Emerald]] [[Underwater Boss Battle|WEAPON]], unless a party member is carrying the "Underwater" Materia, which replaces the timer with [[Super Not-Drowning Skills]].
* In ''[[Dead Space (
* There's an optional underwater dungeon in ''[[Final Fantasy V]]'' that gives you a timer. The boss is a [[Puzzle Boss]], just to make things more "fun". (It's Gogo the Mimic. How do you win? {{spoiler|Do nothing. He's testing to see if you can be a good mimic - so mimic him mimicking you doing nothing.}} The faster you catch on, the more time you have to get out.)
** Though really you need to get down there with long enough for the battle, and still have enough time to spare to either return to the submarine, or teleprot right back to it. It helps that there is a chest that wasn't in the area the first time you went there {{spoiler|(before it sank back in world 1)}} that resets the timer.
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** And since there's no HUD, you have to check your wristwatch constantly to see how much time you have before you have to change filters. And just because you're required to wear the gas mask doesn't mean it can't be damaged either, making any surface expedition a tense journey to avoid any serious conflict.
* All three ''[[Disneys Magical Quest]]'' games have them, but the meter is only visible in the third.
* In ''[[
* While you don't get a visible oxygen meter in [[
** Oddly enough, Medics and Dispensers can heal players faster than drowning can kill them.
** Amusingly, some creatures in New Vegas will follow you underwater, despite having their own oxygen meter.
* ''[[Doom (
* ''[[Minecraft]]'' gives you small air bubbles underwater. Once used up you lose health and have a hard time moving around (or just up).
* ''[[
* The ''[[Rayman]]'' series plays with this a bit. The first game has [[Super Drowning Skills]], the second has an Oxygen Meter which can be refilled by collecting blue lums, and the third let's you breathe underwater indefinitely.
* ''[[Fisher-Diver]]'' has an oxygen meter. In addition to time, it also goes down when attacking the fish. This is one of the things to encourage using the harpoon sparingly.
* ''[[
* ''[[
* ''[[Terraria]]'' has an air meter that appears and depletes gradually when your character enters water (or lava, but if you're swimming around in that you generally have [[Man On Fire|other problems]]). It allows you a decent amount of time, and if you're doing a long stint of underwater mining, you can always dig into a wall to create your own air pockets. Certain pieces of equipment like the Diving Helmet or the Breathing Reed make the meter deplete more slowly (the Breathing Reed also allows breathing if the end is still above the surface). The game also provides the Gills Potion, which makes you start drowning in air instead of water, and Neptune's Shell, which turns you into a [[Fish Person]] and allows you to swim and breathe.
** Amusingly, if you attempt to equip a Fish Bowl as a helmet, you start drowning as if you were underwater. Which you kind of are, as far as breathing is concerned.
* ''[[Endless Ocean]]'' essentially averts; it *does* have an oxygen meter for your air tanks, but it's a rather long one and most tasks get completed without running out of air ever being a factor. When it does run out, you get warped back to the boat. The sequel does tweak things a bit; dangerous fish attacking you knock your air out faster. Certain equipment upgrades up your air supply in both games.
* ''[[
{{reflist}}
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