Trigger Happy
order to render visible a web of security beams that will set off alarms if he breaks them; and if he smokes while using the sniper rifle, his aim is steadier. In this way, with its alluring mix of peril and desirability, smoking in Metal Gear Solid, as in life, is sublime.19 In a more general sense, it is an example of how health can be traded for other benefits concerning the game objective. The idea of health sacrifice is a relatively new one; it appears in a much cruder fashion in the Tomb Raider games, where if Lara is in a recessed pit filled with spikes or barbed wire, she can avoid injury by walking carefully, but to get out of the pit she is forced to jump and therefore lacerate her legs.
Most games featuring a health bar also provide some means for the player to restore her health, rather than face an inexorable slide toward loss of life. Pick up a mystical “medikit” and bullet wounds are healed, all injuries forgotten, stamina replenished. Medikits and other
_________________
19 See the intoxicating Richard Klein, Cigarettes Are Sublime (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1995).
