Super Drowning Skills/Video Games: Difference between revisions

* ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog]]'', like his fellow platforming compatriot Mario, tends to play with this trope depending on the game.

** Sonic's inability to swim is [[Lampshaded]] in ''Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games'' where Sonic dons a lifejacket in order to compete in the swimming events.

* While [[Kirby]] can swim just fine underwater (though he wears a snorkel in more recent installments), if a non-aquatic enemy touches the water, they'll sink like a rock and die.

* In the first two ''[[Thief]]'' games the anti-hero Garrett could swim, and used this skill to infiltrate buildings through sewers and reach a lost underground city. In the third game, he [[Bag of Spilling|lacks this skill]] and will in fact drown on contact with water. This is probably a consequence of the developers having added a ability to switch between a first- and third-person perspective and not bothering to make swimming animations for the latter.

** [[Castlevania: Chronicles of Sorrow|Soma]] can not only swim but also walk ON water and UNDER water, if he has the right Souls equipped.

** Averted in the later two games on the DS: Charlotte and Jonathan in ''[[Portrait of Ruin]]'' can't drown in the one bit of deep water they encounter, and Shanoa in ''[[Order of Ecclesia]]'' gets an item that lets her breathe underwater early on.

*** In ''[[Castlevania III]]'' he swims about as well as everyone else - which is to say he sinks like a rock.

* When ''[[Hitman]]: Blood Money'' added shoving to Mr. 47's repertoire of attacks, it was the NPCs that gained super drowning skills. You can kill people instantly just by pushing them into a ''fountain'' or a ''swimming pool''. Granted, one person in the entire game can actually swim and thus survive a fall into a tank of water. Unfortunately, that tank also houses a [[Shark Pool|very hungry shark]]. [[Hilarity Ensues]].

* ''[[Commander Keen]] 4'' features a boy genius with an IQ of 314 who built his own laser gun, spacecraft, and intergalactic translator but never bothered to learn how to swim. Once you acquire scuba gear, he can then doggy paddle on the world map and stay underwater indefinitely in the game's one water level.

* In the ''[[Dizzy (series)|Dizzy]]'' series, which were a fairly harsh series of platform-puzzle games, the protagonist was an egg. Since he was a good egg, he sank rather than floated. In most of the games, water was instantly fatal (and in the first three games, so were [[One-Hit-Point Wonder|any other hazards]]). A couple of games featured an aqualung (or similar equipment) which allowed you to breathe underwater indefinitely.

** ''Spellbound Dizzy'' has an aqualung, and falling into water without it caused Dizzy to gradually lose energy instead of immediately dying. A similar system was used in ''Crystal Kingdom Dizzy''.

** In the PC game ''Fantastic Adventures of Dizzy'', a homage to the original 8-bit series, water is handled inconsistently: in some areas falling into water was handled as in ''Spellbound'' (you gradually lose energy, unless you have an aqualung); in others, water is instantly fatal, even ''with'' an aqualung.

** While not deadly, in the game verison of ''[[Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen]]'' only one level has water, a flier only level, and the game will not let you touch it. If you let yourself fall into it, you automaticly start hovering.

* In the MMORPG [[Aion]], you play an immortal angelic being who, despite being able to fly, apparently never learned how to swim. Most "lakes" are knee-high pools that you can run through, but you start to drown as soon as the water goes over your head.

* The [[Kings Field]] games have a non-submergeable hero - made that much worse by his tendency to travel about the world in a first-person viewpoint and the world's equally obnoxious tendency to have open wells and rivers just lying about with no thought given to safety fences. Jumping into the ocean doesn't do you any better. What's more fun is that there are often paths you must take in the shallow water, where the only way to make sure that you don't step off the trail and instantly drown is to practically watch your own feet, leaving you exposed to enemies coming at you from other directions to knock you off your narrow, partially submerged path.

* Played straight in the original ''[[Pitfall]]'', but in the second game, Harry has [[Super Not-Drowning Skills]].

* ''[[SpongeBob SquarePants]]'': ''Battle for Bikini Bottom'' and ''The Movie'' games both give us this. If Spongebob or Patrick so much as ''touch'' water or any liquid that [[Under the Sea|isn't the water that everybody lives in]], they jump out for a quick second back to land (or as close to land as possible). If they make contact with the liquid again... they drown. This can take effect in fountains as well.

** Somewhat justified, since most real aquatic creatures have adapted to the salinity of their natural habitat. That's why there's a difference between salt-water and fresh-water crocodiles.

* In ''Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Action Game'', Indy has to cross pools of inexplicably deadly water by jumping between overhanging ropes.

{{quote|'''[[The Angry Video Game Nerd]]''': How is Indiana Jones such a wimp that he can't set foot in water more shallow than a kiddie pool?}}

** However, when Lok's wearing the Lobster Suit, he can walk around underwater [[Super Not-Drowning Skills|indefinitely]].

* ''[[Adventures of Dino Riki]]'' has river crossings that serve as deathtraps if Dino Riki botches a jump.

[[Category:Super Drowning Skills]]