7 ms·

As someone who remembers the first Tomb Raider, it was a weird time in gaming^. I'd sum it up as everything was either 'the epitome of 2D gaming' or the first s

by ethbro 10y ago

As someone who remembers the first Tomb Raider, it was a weird time in gaming^. I'd sum it up as everything was either 'the epitome of 2D gaming' or the first steps into 'a 3D version of {insert game concept here}'. Laura Croft was a 3D version of James Bond and Indiana Jones' love child. The hook was that it was one of the first 3D games were things looked kind-of, sort-of, maybe-if-you-squinted-at-them realistic. And also the first 3D game that I saw with realistic translations between animation states. It's probably a lost cause trying to explain it to people who have grown up with high fidelity graphics, but there's a certain magic to "Wow, that hedge looks like a hedge!" PS: So much hate for TR2's canal level https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dA0r_Wp-EtU&t=8m30s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dA0r_Wp-EtU&t=8m30s ^For reference, 1996 was Duke Nukem 3D, Civ 2, Time Crisis, Super Mario RPG, Resident Evil, Metal Slug, Pokemon, Quake, Super Mario 64, NiGHTS, TES II: Daggerfall, Pilotwings 64, Wipeout 2097/XL, Marathon Infinity, MoO2, C&C:RA, DoA, and Diablo ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_in_video_gaming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_in_video_gaming )

unwind 10y ago
It's awesome that you can see through the bottom of the power boat, in that video. I wonder if it's an engine limitation, developers thinking "fsck it, we have other problems", or an oversight (that seems unlikely if I could spot it in ten seconds). I never did play Lara a lot, but am quite nostalgic for the era. Still waiting for all this VR hype to deliver a Time Crisis to my PS4.
- pluma 10y ago
  I highly doubt that's intentional. The water surface is a static, solid, flat, textured plane. The water appears in the boat whenever the boat dips below the waterline because the water texture then overlays the bottom of the boat. I'm not even sure there were any games around that time that wouldn't have behaved this way for dynamic objects.
elcapitan 10y ago
> it was a weird time in gaming^. I'd sum it up as everything was either 'the epitome of 2D gaming' or the first steps into 'a 3D version > For reference, 1996 was Duke Nukem 3D, Civ 2, Time Crisis, Super Mario RPG, Resident Evil, Metal Slug, Pokemon, Quake, Super Mario 64, NiGHTS, TES II: Daggerfall, Pilotwings 64, Wipeout 2097/XL, Marathon Infinity, MoO2, C&C:RA, DoA, and Diablo That's a really good observation, haven't thought about that. In retrospect, many of the first 3D games don't look that bad actually, I have to say. Maybe it's because when doing it for the first time, people were more aware of the technical limits of the medium (in the same way as many 80s 2D games are often making clever use of the limitations). That kind of constraint creates a lot of creativity. To me much what happened inbetween those early years and today's photorealistic graphics just didn't age that well, for some reason.
- geon 10y ago
  The pc game Ignition from 97 looked great in its non-perspective-corrected 3d. https://youtu.be/f2lajsZt4Hg https://youtu.be/f2lajsZt4Hg
  - elcapitan 10y ago
    Remember playing that, that was great. Pretty hard to race when you don't know the track, though ;) Recently discovered this old NES game with similar racing, which looks pretty impressive for the time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHMWuBV8lUI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHMWuBV8lUI
- ethbro 10y ago
  I'd probably sum up your observation with one my guitarist friend made about early electronic music. It was better, he said, because the first experimenters in the medium were all experts in analog music -- at that point, they had to be. One of my favorite early-3D games was Interstate 76 (1997), apparently built on the MW2 engine. Vehicle games were oddly popular in that period (Twisted Metal?). Maybe lower-poly no-animation cars were easier to render?
  - 10y ago
croon 10y ago
I remember it very well myself, I was in my teens in -96. The animations in Tomb Raider were indeed amazing, even if the textures weren't. Going on to play Quake (World) extensively, what was the most impressive (at least to me) when it first came out was the lighting and immersive/ambient sound, as well as proper 3D as opposed to Duke3D. Red Alert had some of the earliest video cut scenes in a game I remember seeing, even if it was terribly interlaced and the acting was atrocious. Diablo is still my favorite Diablo and Blizzard game. The music, the gameplay, the gothic design to me only got watered down in later iterations. Thanks for reminding me of the classics. The leaps in technology back then was staggering. I always notice something here and there nowadays too, but I feel I haven't seen a leap since Half-Life 2 back in 2004. This (1996) was a pivotal time for me as a gamer, even if we had Ataris and a Sinclair at home before that. It makes me very nostalgic.
- oarsinsync 10y ago
  > Red Alert had some of the earliest video cut scenes in a game I remember seeing, even if it was terribly interlaced and the acting was atrocious. "From God, to Kane, to Seth, I am his right hand man" ~ Seth, Brotherhood of Nod, Command & Conquer, 1995 (People always give C&C:RA too much credit IMO, the original C&C was overlooked. But then I imagine Dune 2 players saying the same about C&C!)
  - pluma 10y ago
    I loved the original C&C and while I understand the appeal of RA because of Cold War nostalgia it always felt like more of a spin-off going in a completely different direction than a spiritual successor (or predecessor). C&C was at times corny but felt very much inspired by 1980s/1990s action movies in a way, RA was often bordering on satire. There were some attempts to make RA1 an actual prequel in the C&C timeline but its success resulted in the timelines diverging too much. I actually also kinda liked C&C Generals despite it having no relation to C&C other than the branding but sadly that series was pretty much doomed from the start.
    - k__ 10y ago
agumonkey 10y ago
Few months ago I did a quick youtube run to watch all TR games. And, nostalgia aside, there's a weird charm of the first game's emptiness. It's mysterious; ugly but mysterious. Sequels had better everything, including mainstream hardware support for 3D but it lost .. that 'lost' feeling. ps: Youtube scanned my HN comments and suggested this to me; felt almost on point https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbjYkPKRm-8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbjYkPKRm-8
- elcapitan 10y ago
  > Sequels had better everything Apparently a lot of the game controls changed to become easier and more mainstream, I just watched this video a while ago which (among other games) contrasts game controls and movement in early and more recent TR games: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQRr3pXxsGo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQRr3pXxsGo
Shivetya 10y ago
The Descent franchise was also during this period. Around this time we also got to experience some novel controllers, my favorite being the SpaceOrb
mstade 10y ago
Is it just me or do the animations of the original TR hold up pretty well? In this video of comparing movement mechanics[1] across the various games, I can't help but feel the modern variants are too exaggerated in the character animations. I don't know, it's hard to put a finger on it. I'm not saying the original animations are better in every way, but there's something there that's missing in the more modern variants. The video is pretty on point otherwise with regards to how dumbed down controls are these days. It seems to me that games with good movement controls are few and far between. The one game I play these days that has excellent controls is NHL (16 and 17) – you really do feel in control, even if you play with beginner controls where the assist is ramped up. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQRr3pXxsGo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQRr3pXxsGo
- Bartweiss 10y ago
  What comes to mind for me is Assassin's Creed. The character animations in it are so detailed that they completely gave up on realism - every single motion is a flashy, flailing leap that may or may not conform to terrain. At a certain point, I think TR (and a lot of other old games) benefitted from the requirement that a game get at least one thing right. If your animations are shoddy, you need realistic motion because exaggeration will just look deranged. If your graphics are ugly, you need good storytelling because visuals won't get players invested. And so on. If your textures and context sensitivity are lacking, you need tight controls so characters don't commit suicide. SO I guess I'm part of the crowd arguing older games were better in those ways. Not because the past was better, but because they had fewer ways to ensure success in at least one aspect of control, or immersion, or realism.
  - bitwize 10y ago
    For detail and realism I recommend the Uncharted series. The things they did with character animation are NUTS. Get Drake moving in one direction and then make him turn or reverse sharply in another direction and you will see his momentum and observe him shifting his weight from his former lead foot to his new lead foot. It's like watching a Pixar film: the flashy bits aren't what impress you, it's the subtle, little things. They pre-baked all these animation states based on the angle Drake was moving to (or the difference in angles between his former and current trajectories; I;m not sure) and used the game engine to look them up and interpolate between them. In Uncharted 4 things get even more nuts: move to the edge of a ledge or crevice and you can use the left analog stick to make Drake's hand reach at any angle; if he finds a handhold there will be a smooth realistic transition as he climbs to the new handhold -- no jump button necessary. I would say that the series is getting tired but they keep doing new and better things with each game. And they even gave Drake a satisfying ending without killing him off. Quite unlike the rerun city that Eidos made those poor Tomb Raider devs crank out.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
twelvechairs 10y ago
> The hook was that it was one of the first 3D games were things looked kind-of, sort-of, maybe-if-you-squinted-at-them realistic. The graphics in general were not ground breaking (for me earlier games like Quake, Magic Carpet, Heretic, Descent, Tie Fighter, etc. were just as good if not better - Duke Nukem 3d was far behind the 8 ball), it was the movement mechanics which really sold it - definitely the first 3d character who moved with a degree of realism. I don't think even today movement is always handled quite so well - too many glitches where you suddenly zip through a movement at lightning speed.
- ethbro 10y ago
  My thinking was that none of the other games I could think of from that time period (including your mentions) were intended to take place in a real-world setting. There's a certain artistic license you can bank on when you're working in a fantasy setting.
- Florin_Andrei 10y ago
  It was really fluid at the time - and, as you point out, even now it's good. Sure, the resolution is junk by today's standards, but that's expected. I'd like to also point out that, from an artistic perspective, the game had a coherent atmosphere and story. It was the first game I've seen where you could see the beginnings of games borrowing a little from movies. Visuals, story, and music told the same message and expressed the same spirit. It was an early preview of a concept that would be pushed further by later game series such as Uncharted and Mass Effect. I think it was the very beginning of the big eventual merger between games and movies that's still a ways ahead in the future.
  - yareally 10y ago
    > "I'd like to also point out that, from an artistic perspective, the game had a coherent atmosphere and story. It was the first game I've seen where you could see the beginnings of games borrowing a little from movies. Visuals, story, and music told the same message and expressed the same spirit." Maybe one of the first 3D games in its genre, but not the only game that had such things. There were other games at the time or before that had similar aspects: - Diablo (1996) - Resident Evil (1996) - The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall (1996) - Warcraft II (1995) - Command & Conquer (1995) - Star Wars: Dark Forces (1995) - X-COM (1994) - Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis (1992)
RHSeeger 10y ago
> PS: So much hate for TR2's canal level To this day, my wife and I still talk about that level, and trying to solve it together so many years ago.
- JoeAltmaier 10y ago
  Was that the one where you got a rocket launcher at the very last moment, only to have it taken away from you at the beginning of the next level?
- GrantSolar 10y ago
  I remember playing through TR2 with my brother as youngsters. I don't think he's forgiven me for 'progressing' in the level by killing a couple of enemies, using all the medkits, and overwriting the only save with low health at this point [1] - just before you have to climb a ladder into a small room with two enemies [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dA0r_Wp-EtU&t=9m15s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dA0r_Wp-EtU&t=9m15s
- dkersten 10y ago
  So.. am I the only person that loved that level? (although, it might be that it was the first bit of any TR game I ever played)
- nsxwolf 10y ago
  That's the one with all the time limits and the speed boat jumps? I was never fast enough to beat it.
thirdsun 10y ago
Plus, if I remember correctly it was one of the early games that made use of 3D acceleration and it used to be bundled with those 3DFX Voodoo GPU which you used in addition to your weak 2D graphics card. Good times.
MrBuddyCasino 10y ago
Not only that, but it was the beginning of accelerated 3D graphics in consumer PCs. There was never another leap as big as the one provided by getting a 3DFX Voodoo. I remember it fondly.
- orbitingpluto 10y ago
  I use to dump video from a TV Tuner card into the linear frame buffer of the 3DFX Voodoo card. Instead of using the pass through cable I used two monitors. It was my first multi-monitor setup.
nsxwolf 10y ago
The game is just Prince of Persia extruded into a third dimension. All the basic moves are the same - running, stepping, standing jump, running jump, straight up jump, ledge grab, ledge hang, not letting you fall off a ledge if you're walking. Yet it's never given credit as being an inspiration.
petetnt 10y ago
One semi-interesting factoid regarding the 3D part is that Tomb Raider (despite being a flagship title of Playstation later) launched first on Sega Saturn, a console with relatively weak 3D capabilities (and was a game that was first designed against those weaknesses).
draw_down 10y ago
I remember it being quite frustrating to play, you had to line up the character exactly with a ledge to jump up onto it, etc. It could be very clumsy. But that continues to this day in games like the GTA games; you'll be right next to a ladder but can't climb it because the character is rotated 1º farther than they should be to grab it or whatever.

by ethbro 10y ago

unwind 10y ago

It's awesome that you can see through the bottom of the power boat, in that video. I wonder if it's an engine limitation, developers thinking "fsck it, we have other problems", or an oversight (that seems unlikely if I could spot it in ten seconds). I never did play Lara a lot, but am quite nostalgic for the era. Still waiting for all this VR hype to deliver a Time Crisis to my PS4.

pluma 10y ago
I highly doubt that's intentional. The water surface is a static, solid, flat, textured plane. The water appears in the boat whenever the boat dips below the waterline because the water texture then overlays the bottom of the boat. I'm not even sure there were any games around that time that wouldn't have behaved this way for dynamic objects.

elcapitan 10y ago

> it was a weird time in gaming^. I'd sum it up as everything was either 'the epitome of 2D gaming' or the first steps into 'a 3D version > For reference, 1996 was Duke Nukem 3D, Civ 2, Time Crisis, Super Mario RPG, Resident Evil, Metal Slug, Pokemon, Quake, Super Mario 64, NiGHTS, TES II: Daggerfall, Pilotwings 64, Wipeout 2097/XL, Marathon Infinity, MoO2, C&C:RA, DoA, and Diablo That's a really good observation, haven't thought about that. In retrospect, many of the first 3D games don't look that bad actually, I have to say. Maybe it's because when doing it for the first time, people were more aware of the technical limits of the medium (in the same way as many 80s 2D games are often making clever use of the limitations). That kind of constraint creates a lot of creativity. To me much what happened inbetween those early years and today's photorealistic graphics just didn't age that well, for some reason.

geon 10y ago
The pc game Ignition from 97 looked great in its non-perspective-corrected 3d. https://youtu.be/f2lajsZt4Hg https://youtu.be/f2lajsZt4Hg
- elcapitan 10y ago
  Remember playing that, that was great. Pretty hard to race when you don't know the track, though ;) Recently discovered this old NES game with similar racing, which looks pretty impressive for the time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHMWuBV8lUI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHMWuBV8lUI
ethbro 10y ago
I'd probably sum up your observation with one my guitarist friend made about early electronic music. It was better, he said, because the first experimenters in the medium were all experts in analog music -- at that point, they had to be. One of my favorite early-3D games was Interstate 76 (1997), apparently built on the MW2 engine. Vehicle games were oddly popular in that period (Twisted Metal?). Maybe lower-poly no-animation cars were easier to render?
- 10y ago

croon 10y ago

I remember it very well myself, I was in my teens in -96. The animations in Tomb Raider were indeed amazing, even if the textures weren't. Going on to play Quake (World) extensively, what was the most impressive (at least to me) when it first came out was the lighting and immersive/ambient sound, as well as proper 3D as opposed to Duke3D. Red Alert had some of the earliest video cut scenes in a game I remember seeing, even if it was terribly interlaced and the acting was atrocious. Diablo is still my favorite Diablo and Blizzard game. The music, the gameplay, the gothic design to me only got watered down in later iterations. Thanks for reminding me of the classics. The leaps in technology back then was staggering. I always notice something here and there nowadays too, but I feel I haven't seen a leap since Half-Life 2 back in 2004. This (1996) was a pivotal time for me as a gamer, even if we had Ataris and a Sinclair at home before that. It makes me very nostalgic.

oarsinsync 10y ago
> Red Alert had some of the earliest video cut scenes in a game I remember seeing, even if it was terribly interlaced and the acting was atrocious. "From God, to Kane, to Seth, I am his right hand man" ~ Seth, Brotherhood of Nod, Command & Conquer, 1995 (People always give C&C:RA too much credit IMO, the original C&C was overlooked. But then I imagine Dune 2 players saying the same about C&C!)
- pluma 10y ago
  I loved the original C&C and while I understand the appeal of RA because of Cold War nostalgia it always felt like more of a spin-off going in a completely different direction than a spiritual successor (or predecessor). C&C was at times corny but felt very much inspired by 1980s/1990s action movies in a way, RA was often bordering on satire. There were some attempts to make RA1 an actual prequel in the C&C timeline but its success resulted in the timelines diverging too much. I actually also kinda liked C&C Generals despite it having no relation to C&C other than the branding but sadly that series was pretty much doomed from the start.
  - k__ 10y ago

agumonkey 10y ago

Few months ago I did a quick youtube run to watch all TR games. And, nostalgia aside, there's a weird charm of the first game's emptiness. It's mysterious; ugly but mysterious. Sequels had better everything, including mainstream hardware support for 3D but it lost .. that 'lost' feeling. ps: Youtube scanned my HN comments and suggested this to me; felt almost on point https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbjYkPKRm-8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbjYkPKRm-8

elcapitan 10y ago
> Sequels had better everything Apparently a lot of the game controls changed to become easier and more mainstream, I just watched this video a while ago which (among other games) contrasts game controls and movement in early and more recent TR games: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQRr3pXxsGo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQRr3pXxsGo

Shivetya 10y ago

The Descent franchise was also during this period. Around this time we also got to experience some novel controllers, my favorite being the SpaceOrb

mstade 10y ago

Is it just me or do the animations of the original TR hold up pretty well? In this video of comparing movement mechanics[1] across the various games, I can't help but feel the modern variants are too exaggerated in the character animations. I don't know, it's hard to put a finger on it. I'm not saying the original animations are better in every way, but there's something there that's missing in the more modern variants. The video is pretty on point otherwise with regards to how dumbed down controls are these days. It seems to me that games with good movement controls are few and far between. The one game I play these days that has excellent controls is NHL (16 and 17) – you really do feel in control, even if you play with beginner controls where the assist is ramped up. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQRr3pXxsGo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQRr3pXxsGo

Bartweiss 10y ago
What comes to mind for me is Assassin's Creed. The character animations in it are so detailed that they completely gave up on realism - every single motion is a flashy, flailing leap that may or may not conform to terrain. At a certain point, I think TR (and a lot of other old games) benefitted from the requirement that a game get at least one thing right. If your animations are shoddy, you need realistic motion because exaggeration will just look deranged. If your graphics are ugly, you need good storytelling because visuals won't get players invested. And so on. If your textures and context sensitivity are lacking, you need tight controls so characters don't commit suicide. SO I guess I'm part of the crowd arguing older games were better in those ways. Not because the past was better, but because they had fewer ways to ensure success in at least one aspect of control, or immersion, or realism.
- bitwize 10y ago
  For detail and realism I recommend the Uncharted series. The things they did with character animation are NUTS. Get Drake moving in one direction and then make him turn or reverse sharply in another direction and you will see his momentum and observe him shifting his weight from his former lead foot to his new lead foot. It's like watching a Pixar film: the flashy bits aren't what impress you, it's the subtle, little things. They pre-baked all these animation states based on the angle Drake was moving to (or the difference in angles between his former and current trajectories; I;m not sure) and used the game engine to look them up and interpolate between them. In Uncharted 4 things get even more nuts: move to the edge of a ledge or crevice and you can use the left analog stick to make Drake's hand reach at any angle; if he finds a handhold there will be a smooth realistic transition as he climbs to the new handhold -- no jump button necessary. I would say that the series is getting tired but they keep doing new and better things with each game. And they even gave Drake a satisfying ending without killing him off. Quite unlike the rerun city that Eidos made those poor Tomb Raider devs crank out.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

twelvechairs 10y ago

> The hook was that it was one of the first 3D games were things looked kind-of, sort-of, maybe-if-you-squinted-at-them realistic. The graphics in general were not ground breaking (for me earlier games like Quake, Magic Carpet, Heretic, Descent, Tie Fighter, etc. were just as good if not better - Duke Nukem 3d was far behind the 8 ball), it was the movement mechanics which really sold it - definitely the first 3d character who moved with a degree of realism. I don't think even today movement is always handled quite so well - too many glitches where you suddenly zip through a movement at lightning speed.

ethbro 10y ago
My thinking was that none of the other games I could think of from that time period (including your mentions) were intended to take place in a real-world setting. There's a certain artistic license you can bank on when you're working in a fantasy setting.
Florin_Andrei 10y ago
It was really fluid at the time - and, as you point out, even now it's good. Sure, the resolution is junk by today's standards, but that's expected. I'd like to also point out that, from an artistic perspective, the game had a coherent atmosphere and story. It was the first game I've seen where you could see the beginnings of games borrowing a little from movies. Visuals, story, and music told the same message and expressed the same spirit. It was an early preview of a concept that would be pushed further by later game series such as Uncharted and Mass Effect. I think it was the very beginning of the big eventual merger between games and movies that's still a ways ahead in the future.
- yareally 10y ago
  > "I'd like to also point out that, from an artistic perspective, the game had a coherent atmosphere and story. It was the first game I've seen where you could see the beginnings of games borrowing a little from movies. Visuals, story, and music told the same message and expressed the same spirit." Maybe one of the first 3D games in its genre, but not the only game that had such things. There were other games at the time or before that had similar aspects: - Diablo (1996) - Resident Evil (1996) - The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall (1996) - Warcraft II (1995) - Command & Conquer (1995) - Star Wars: Dark Forces (1995) - X-COM (1994) - Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis (1992)

RHSeeger 10y ago

> PS: So much hate for TR2's canal level To this day, my wife and I still talk about that level, and trying to solve it together so many years ago.

JoeAltmaier 10y ago
Was that the one where you got a rocket launcher at the very last moment, only to have it taken away from you at the beginning of the next level?
GrantSolar 10y ago
I remember playing through TR2 with my brother as youngsters. I don't think he's forgiven me for 'progressing' in the level by killing a couple of enemies, using all the medkits, and overwriting the only save with low health at this point [1] - just before you have to climb a ladder into a small room with two enemies [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dA0r_Wp-EtU&t=9m15s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dA0r_Wp-EtU&t=9m15s
dkersten 10y ago
So.. am I the only person that loved that level? (although, it might be that it was the first bit of any TR game I ever played)
nsxwolf 10y ago
That's the one with all the time limits and the speed boat jumps? I was never fast enough to beat it.

thirdsun 10y ago

Plus, if I remember correctly it was one of the early games that made use of 3D acceleration and it used to be bundled with those 3DFX Voodoo GPU which you used in addition to your weak 2D graphics card. Good times.

MrBuddyCasino 10y ago

Not only that, but it was the beginning of accelerated 3D graphics in consumer PCs. There was never another leap as big as the one provided by getting a 3DFX Voodoo. I remember it fondly.

orbitingpluto 10y ago
I use to dump video from a TV Tuner card into the linear frame buffer of the 3DFX Voodoo card. Instead of using the pass through cable I used two monitors. It was my first multi-monitor setup.

nsxwolf 10y ago

The game is just Prince of Persia extruded into a third dimension. All the basic moves are the same - running, stepping, standing jump, running jump, straight up jump, ledge grab, ledge hang, not letting you fall off a ledge if you're walking. Yet it's never given credit as being an inspiration.

petetnt 10y ago

One semi-interesting factoid regarding the 3D part is that Tomb Raider (despite being a flagship title of Playstation later) launched first on Sega Saturn, a console with relatively weak 3D capabilities (and was a game that was first designed against those weaknesses).

draw_down 10y ago

I remember it being quite frustrating to play, you had to line up the character exactly with a ledge to jump up onto it, etc. It could be very clumsy. But that continues to this day in games like the GTA games; you'll be right next to a ladder but can't climb it because the character is rotated 1º farther than they should be to grab it or whatever.