Super Drowning Skills/Video Games: Difference between revisions

* ''[[Steel Battalion]]'': Your VT can wade through shallow water, but take one step into deep water and your VT will sink, with the cockpit flooding in the process. If you don't eject, the pilot drowns and your save file gets erased!

* The little child from ''[[Limbo]]'' will automatically drown if he submerges his head in water for more than a second. This may have something to do with the water in Limbo-world, but given how little backstory you get, who knows?

** CJ, ironically, claims at one point to suffer from [[Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?|Hydrophobia.]]

** CJ's girlfriends can -also- swim, which makes it hard to dispose of them once all their benefits/the player's patience are used up. Everyone else in the game drowns in -seconds-. Cops are not smart enough to avoid leaping in after the player.

*** ''[[Game/True Crime|True Crime]]'' [[Take That|made light of Vercetti's problem by having little Tommy dolls in the ocean wearing water wings]].

*** And ''Drive3r'' featured "Tommy Vermicelli", a garishly clad guido wearing water wings...

* Having managed to averting the trope in all of the recent GTA installments, it feels like kind of a bummer that Rockstar's western hero, [[Red Dead Redemption|John Marston]], instantly dies the very moment any water touches his neck.

* In ''[[Psychonauts]]'', it was actually written into the story that Raz and all his family were cursed by a psychic to die in water. Getting too close to water causes a giant watery hand to reach out, grab Raz, and pull him under to his death. One world even includes a cardboard hand coming out of an equally cardboard "ocean" during a stage play, drowning Raz in ''fake water''.

** The first game, however, didn't make him drown in deep water. He just ''disappears''.

* In the original ''[[Super Mario Bros. (video game)|Super Mario Bros]]'', Mario generally has [[Super Not-Drowning Skills]] in water levels and can stay underwater forever ([[Timed Mission|level timer]] permitting). In regular levels, though, water-filled pits are still [[Bottomless Pits]]. Particularly perplexing were the "island" levels in ''[[Super Mario Bros 3]]'' and ''[[Super Mario World (video game)|Super Mario World]]'' where he ''could'' swim in the water... but if he went too deep (below the bottom of the screen) he automatically died.

** In ''[[Super Mario Sunshine]]'', Mario uses an [[Oxygen Meter]], but his dinosaur steed Yoshi is made of paint and will ''dissolve'' if he attempts to swim.

** ''[[Super Mario Galaxy]]'' featured a non-lethal variation of this: If Bee Mario falls into any body of water (even a raindrop), he'll lose that powerup. The exact same is true with the Cloud Flower from ''[[Super Mario Galaxy 2]]''.

* In Predator: Concrete Jungle, if you fall/jump/lean in the water you instantly die, only to reappear seconds later a few feet away from where you descended to a watery doom.

** Possibly [[Justified]], since with his armor and all the predator weighs about half a ton.

* The title character of ''[[Voodoo Vince]]'' has this, with justification; the main character is a burlap voodoo doll, and burlap really '''does''' sink quite rapidly.

* The eponymous protagonists of the comedy turn-based ''[[Worms]]'' series can survive grenades, dynamite and point-blank shotgun blasts, but die instantly when contacting water. Most projectiles succumb as well, but a fast-moving bazooka shell can skip across the water.

* Apparently city planners in ''[[Castlevania II]]'' thought it would be a great idea to punctuate their streets with bottomless pits of water. This has the unfortunate side effect of preventing villagers from walking through town unfettered, unless they take several flights of stairs from building to building (stair-climbing is unfortunately not a skill the peasantry has developed by this point.) Meanwhile, Simon Belmont, allegedly one of the greatest Vampire Hunters who ever lived -- killing Dracula more than once, a rare feat for [[Castlevania]] heroes -- will die horribly and instantaneously when he missteps into one of the many water hazards that are part of Transylvanian architecture. Forget about [[Edge Gravity]]; The controls are so flighty and the [[Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence|width between edges so unforgiving]] that it almost feels like the water's actively trying to suck you in right in the middle of a routine cross-town walk. Maybe Dracula's curse turned the water evil and extra-drowny?

** And these are still present in most fan remakes, meaning the very victims of these watery deathtraps wish to visit thier childhood miseries upon us to this day. Dracula's Shadow deserves special mention for managing to have water that insta-kills you, and water that you can wade through, with no clues given as to which is which. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QouE-JHDq0 "Death puddles... Not acid, not lava, not a giant toothy maw... But H20?"]

** ''[[Castlevania (Nintendo 64)]]'' and ''[[Castlevania (Nintendo 64)]]'' [[Hand Wave]] the inability to swim by having the protagonists remark that the water has been 'poisoned' by the evil of the castle. The steam that rises whenever you fall in seems to suggest a more malicious chemical at work, though...

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

** Also justified in that the water is most definitely toxic. It deals "chemical"-type damage when you fall in.

* In the ''[[Legacy of Kain]]'' series, both protagonists at first can be destoyed by water not due to fear but due to [[Our Vampires Are Different|their nature]]. Later Raziel lost this vulnerability after consuming the soul of his vampire brother Rahab.

** In the original ''Legacy of Kain: Blood Omen'', Kain eventually gained a Mist form that would allow him to at least cross bodies of water.

* ''[[Little Big Adventure]]''. It's amazing how the hero doesn't drown when stepping into small patches of water that can be found in caves, or when walking in the rain without an umbrella. Then again, not being able to swim did not prevent him from stopping the [[Big Bad]] and saving his home planet. Perhaps he just doesn't have enough time for practicing swimming.

* In ''[[Giants: Citizen Kabuto]]'' the Meccaryns would be eaten by piranhas if they fell in the water (though it was possible to escape), while Delphi (a mer-woman) would heal while swimming. Kabuto meanwhile sank and died.

* The goblin-like Minions of the titular ''[[Overlord]]'' have this one. The Overlord himself can wade through any water he comes across and will not enter anything deeper, but his Minions are much shorter and flail around amusingly before drowning. Only the Blue Minions can cross water, and they can also save their brethren, if managed correctly.

* ''[[The Lion King (Video Game)|The Lion King]]'' video game, from the same publisher, had a scene early into the second level. It featured Simba jumping on giraffes' heads instead of Aladdin jumping on flamingos, but the premise is the same--giraffes stand on bottom, Simba dies instantly if he touches the water. If it helps, it can be justified that you're trying to recreate many of the stunts from the musical number on which this level is based, and falling in the water means you fail at being awesome.

* Arthur of ''[[Ghosts 'n Goblins|Ghosts N Goblins]]'' sinks like a rock in tiny streams and puddles.

** [[Fridge Logic|Why doesn't he just freeze the water?]]

** That entire game was full of [[Scrappy Level|Scrappy Levels]]. And when you fell into water (or off a bottomless pit), you were often treated to a hilariously bad FMV sequence showing your ice ninja sinking or falling.

*** Unless the water had piranhas living in it, as was the case in the level "Spooky Swamp" in Spyro 3.

*** A lot of the liquid in Spyro 1 was arguably not water, however, he lost health just the same in levels where water was clearly an obstacle.

*** In one level Spyro could swim, and even dive, in toxic water while under the effects of an invincibility power-up. But if said power-up ran out while you were still in there... you can pretty much guess what happens.

** Unfortunately, the Super Drowning Skills return in ''[[The Legend of Spyro Trilogy|The Legend of Spyro]]'' [[Continuity Reboot]]. All water in the first two games is the dreaded toxic ooze, except for a few shallow streams. Avoided in ''Dawn of the Dragon'' where Spyro or Cynder will just hover above water until you fly them over to dry land.

* There are some flooded areas in ''[[MDK2]]''. The water is deep, and if you fall in, you will drown.

** ''[[Populous]]'' did the same, followers and enemies drown in any form of water. Some levels either used fatal water, but others simply made it harmful (making the flood ability less powerful since the AI would almost instantly recover.) Swamps were always instant kill.

** ''All'' water in the SNES [[Populous]] game was harmful, and never fatal except Swamps (which aren't technically "water"). Water gradually reduces a unit's population (all of those guys on the screen repesent groups of people). When population = zero, the "guy" disappears. If a very-low population unit drops in the water for whatever reason, it merely ''looks'' like the water is fatal. Obviously, in some map types, the environment (and water) kills quicker than in other maps (namely the Snow and Ice maps vs Grassy Plains).

* [[Buffy the Vampire Slayer|Buffy]] is the freaking Vampire Slayer, yet if the water's more than ankle deep, she drowns in both of her console games.

* Thankfully, totally avoided in ''[[Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines|Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines]]'', for the simple reason that, as a vampire, you don't need to breathe.

* In the 1994 ''[[The Jungle Book (film)|The Jungle Book]]'' video game adaptations, specifically, the Genesis and Super NES versions, Mowgli can't swim. Falling into water results in a watery grave for him.

* In the [[Sailor Moon]] R [[The Problem with Licensed Games|video game]], falling into the water in the raft stage meant you lost 25% of your total health. [[Adaptation Decay|Even Sailor Mercury can drown in water]].