10 Times Video Game Realism Went Too Far
3. Manual Blinking (Alone In The Dark)
2008's Alone In The Dark is a frustrating game to play through, because for every solid idea it has, there's a terrible one right around the corner.
On the positive side, there's its item combination system, which allows you to mix different objects together to create more powerful weapons and items - for example, a glass bottle and some sticky tape will get you an adhesive molotov. Nice.
But on the negative side... there's its manual blinking feature.
At the start of the game, a prompt will instruct you to "blink to clear your vision", leading to a sequence where you have to repeatedly hit the blink button so you can see what the hell is going on around you. Then, later on, you have to blink to clear blood and toxins out of your eyes, depending on which enemies are attacking you.
While blinking to combat enemy attacks isn't all that annoying, that initial blinking sequence is an absolute drag to play through. For one thing, it goes on forever, but more importantly, manual blinking isn't a compelling mechanic in the slightest - it's basically a dull QTE that you have to do over and over and over again.
The devs clearly intended this to increase the immersion and realism, but since Alone In The Dark is otherwise a pretty bog-standard and underwhelming horror game, its manual blinking feature just comes off as a cheap gimmick.