Hello again, and
welcome to The Fixer,
a monthly column in
which I – the most
uniquely qualified
games critic working in
Britain today – turn my
unfathomable expertise towards the very
worst gaming clichés, like a Death Star
focusing its big green laser on a planet
full of dumb Ewoks.
My long career spent fixing games has
remedied some of the industry’s most
insidious tropes. For example, before
I came along it was commonplace for
every first-person shooter to feature an
in-game background check before you
could have a gun. Games would simulate
in gruelling real-time the two-week
cooling-off period required to purchase a
firearm, while outside the invading alien
forces razed cities to the ground, as
the fastidiously law-abiding protagonist
stared helplessly from his living room
window. It was a rubbish idea, and it’s
frankly hard to believe it ever existed.
Today, however, I’m focusing my Fixer
beams on what must surely be the most
persistent cliché of all time, an object
so ubiquitous that a game without one
could hardly be considered a game
at all. I’m talking about the cylindrical
bad boy, that hot red explosion in a
tin, that waist-high tube of flammable
juice around which Nazis and demons
inexplicably choose to congregate. Can
you tell what it is yet? Reader, it is time
we fixed the exploding barrel.The problem
The oil barrel has been a staple of
videogames ever since it was possible
to get enough pixels together on-screen
to render one, but in their early years
these proto-barrels were disappointingly
inert and resolutely unexplosive. Sure,
burly henchmen in beat-’em-ups would
occasionally chuck them at you from
the back of a moving van, but the risk
they posed could be easily mitigated byand an opportunity to set off huge
chain reactions that would result in an
inattentive demon getting exploded into
guts. Years later, once ragdoll physics
came along, designers couldn’t resist
programming enemies to huddle around
exploding barrels, like they were in some
kamikaze knitting circle, so players could
send their charred corpses cartwheeling
into the rafters time and time again.
And that’s pretty much where the
barrel’s evolution rolled to a halt.
Exploding barrels have infested every
game, including Half-Life, Resident Evil,
Tomb Raider, Borderlands, Far Cry and
Just Cause – it would almost be faster
to list the games that don’t feature
them), but besides when they’re used
as makeshift tables in pop-up hipster
Kombucha bars, you simply never
encounter them out in the real world.The solution
The role of an exploding barrel is simply
to provide something colourful to aim
at, besides the bad guys, and that also
causes some degree of harm to anyone
nearby. What could we replace it with
that would still fulfil those criteria? How
about literally anything else, like water
balloons full of hot egg whites, pinatas
full of bad smells, or a resealable freezer
bag with a single angry wasp inside.
For the remaining exploding barrels
we can’t get rid of, games should make
it more believable that anyone in their
right mind would wilfully stand next
to something so dangerous. Audio
designers could record snippets of
expository dialogue for the player to
overhear, such as “I’m only two weeks
away from earning my barrel inspector
certificate”, or “this barrel brings me
great comfort, as it reminds me of my
dead husband, who died by standing too
near to an exploding barrel”. Then, at
last, we could give exploding barrels the
elbow. Just not too forcefully. QSteve also writes for City A.M.stepping a few feet to the left or right as
they bounced harmlessly overhead.
Their evolution into the big league
bangers we know and love today
can be traced back to their breakout
appearance in 1993’s Doom, where they
presented both a danger to the playerINSIDER OPINION
Steve fires a shot at a flammable cliché: Exploding Barrels
The Fixer
Steve Hogarty is...
“Proto-barrels
were inert
and resolutely
unexplosive”
020 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE