History Main / LadderPhysics

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[[folder: Action Game ]]

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* ''VideoGame/HalfLife'' - Freeman's HEV suit evidently has magnetic feet, because even during earth-shattering explosions, he's able to stick perfectly to the ladder without even taking his hands off the weapon. It's even possible to reload while on a ladder.

* The ladders in ''VideoGame/QuakeII'' are like glue: once you're attached to them, there's no way in Hell you're going to get off unless you've reached the top or bottom. Need to jump off? Not bloody likely. Source ports usually make ladder physics more flexible, similar to the ''Half-Life'' example.
* In games like ''VideoGame/QuakeIIIArena'' that lack actual ladder behavior, some maps attempt to get around this by just launching the player upwards when they approach the ladder.

* In ''Battlefield Heroes'', you can use an emote while climbing a ladder, which will cause your character to let go of the ladder and perform the emote (e.g. waving, making airplane motions, and other hilarious things).

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* ''VideoGame/Hitman2SilentAssassin'' takes this to ludicrous extremes: Climbing a ladder forces the camera in to 3rd person perspective, and it doesn't restrict your firing capabilities at all, meaning you can and are ''forced'' to watch Agent 47 run up a ladder in third person while contorting his body so much that he can fire a shotgun directly below and behind him.
* ''Videogame/HitmanContracts'': Agent 47 has forgotten his ladder skills. Try and descend a ladder in a rush and the skilled assassin leaps off in grand suicidal swan dive.

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* Having your head spasm like a spastic shoggoth is apparently how goats climb ladders in Videogame/GoatSimulator.

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[[folder: Action Adventure ]]

* There are some really long ladders in ''Franchise/TheLegendOfZelda'' that can take an annoyingly long time to climb, especially in ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaOcarinaOfTime''. ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTwilightPrincess'' speeds Link up a bit, while ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaSkywardSword'', ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaBreathOfTheWild'', and ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTearsOfTheKingdom'' let you jump up them even more quickly while depleting the stamina meter.

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** What makes the ladders even weirder is if you create a move ending in a Backstabber in Create-a-Finisher, the ladder ''will actually pop up into the air.''

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* ''VideoGame/ProjectIGI'', a FPS, did third-person, unarmed ladder climbing back in 2000.

* ''VideoGame/MedalOfHonor: Allied Assault'' works about the same way as above, with the added bonus that it's possible to climb up ladders on the wrong side and have to climb back down to get on the correct side. Even better yet, the use key allows you to grab onto ladders reliably from any angle, no more suicide mounts!

* ''VideoGame/TimeSplittersFuturePerfect'' would zoom out to a 3D view of Cortez climbing the ladder realistically, during which you couldn't really do anything except go up or down. You never really need to fire and climb at the same time anyway, so it's more a neat little graphical trick than an attempt at realistic gameplay (this is ''[=TimeSplitters=]'', after all).
* In ''VideoGame/CallOfDuty4ModernWarfare'' and onward, you cannot fire weapons or do anything else that requires the use of your hands (except throw grenades) while climbing a ladder. You can't see your hands, but you only have hands during one cutscene and while you're actually holding a weapon. ''VideoGame/CallOfDutyModernWarfare2019'' goes further with an actual animation of your character climbing the ladder, with their sidearm still in their right hand so if there are any enemies at the top you can quickly take care of them before climbing all the way up.

* Likewise ''VideoGame/{{Crysis}}'', which is actually pretty good at showing your own limbs, including if you look down. Feet!

* In the ''VideoGame/{{Battlefield}}'' series, you can't use weapons and you only have up and down motion for the duration of climbing the ladder. You can even switch to third person view and watch your character climb the ladder.
** A heavy downside in ''Battlefield 2'' and ''2142'' is that a soldier who gets killed while holding on to a ladder is always instantly eliminated without any hope of being revived by a medic.

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* The recent ''Franchise/TombRaider'' games have pretty good ladder physics, probably because the game's about 80% LeParkour and 20% gunplay.
** The original games also have relatively realistic ladder physics, although graphic limitations meant that Lara generally climbed on flat surfaces and therefore did not always hold on the "rung" aspects of the textures.

* Oh, dear sweet ''VideoGame/DonkeyKong''. You're quite vulnerable to a barrel to the brainpan if you forget to finish climbing not only the ladder, but getting up once you're on the higher platform. And no grabbing the ladder as you run by and jump, either. Granted, you've also got the broken ladders hanging out (though they may just be missing rungs).
* The ''VideoGame/RatchetAndClank'' series has the "jump up the ladder" variant.
* Though ostensibly a bug rather than a deliberate aversion, the original ''VideoGame/MegaMan1'' deserves a mention for making your one-armed hero fall off of a ladder whenever the game is paused.
** Also deserving of mention: in the first two games of the series, attaching Rock/Mega Man to a ladder reversed his direction (so if facing right when initiating a climb on a latter, the character would face left when reaching the top, when reaching the bottom or when jumping off. This can make for an amusing effect if the ladder is just above ground level, but still reachable when standing on the ground (one such ladder exists in Elec Man's stage): hold "down" and Mega Man will continually switch direction rapidly.

* Climbing up a ladder in ''VideoGame/Jak3Wastelander'' works pretty much exactly like in real life. If you walk up to one you automatically put your weapon away to grip the sides with both hands.

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* Averted in ''VideoGame/DirgeOfCerberus''; the player cannot take any actions while on a ladder, both arms and legs are required, and there is no automatic climbing, although being a third-person shooter, the camera can be rotated almost all the way around Vincent.
* In ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyCrystalChroniclesTheCrystalBearers'', you climb ladders without even touching them, instead using Layle's powers to pull yourself up to the top of the ladder instantly, making you wonder why you can only do this when a ladder is present.
* Similar to the ''Jak 3'' example above, whenever Sora (and his friends) climb up a ladder in ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsI'', it's realistic.

[[folder: Third Person Shooter ]]

[[folder: Wide Open Sandbox ]]

* Averted in the ''Franchise/AssassinsCreed'' series, where free running is one of the main mode of getting around.
** Even better is that climbing up the wrong side of the ladder doesn't mean you have to drop down; just hit left or right on the joystick and you swing around to the correct side.

[[caption-width-right:349:Guess this makes it a [[LiteralMinded stepladder]].]]

* There are some really long ladders in ''Franchise/TheLegendOfZelda'' that can take an annoyingly long time to climb, especially in ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaOcarinaOfTime''. ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTwilightPrincess'' speeds Link up a bit, while ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaSkywardSword'' and ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaBreathOfTheWild'' let you jump up them even more quickly while depleting the stamina meter.

* The ladders in ''VideoGame/QuakeII'' are like glue: once you're attached to them, there's no way in Hell you're going to get off unless you've reached the top or bottom. Need to jump off? Not bloody likely unless you're playing on a source port.

* ''VideoGame/{{Doom}}'' lacks actual ladder behavior. A common trick used by modders to get around this is to create a set of stairs with extremely narrow steps, forming a nearly vertical ramp that can be ascended like a ladder (the issues of getting on them from the top without splattering yourself are avoided by the game completely lacking falling damage). Later source ports allow map creators to designate the area in front of a ladder as being underwater, allowing players to "swim" up the ladder, though with the caveat that, since drowning in underwater sectors is determined on a per-map basis rather than per-sector, using this trick together with actual underwater segments results in either ladders that you can somehow drown on or the Doomguy having SuperNotDrowningSkills.

* In the original ''VideoGame/FarCry1'', you couldn't use weapons on ladders, but the controls on the ladder are relative to how you got on the ladder. So it was possible to go down a ladder facing away from it, which also made it possible to run ''off'' the ladder to varying degrees of pain or death depending from how high you fell off.
* In ''VideoGame/DeusEx'' trying to look in any direction other than straight up while climbing a ladder may result in the main character launching himself off at truly impressive velocities and breaking his legs and climbing down a ladder without a very, very careful approach is more dangerous than throwing TNT at enemy soldiers.

* ''VideoGame/{{STALKER}}'' is a funny one: you can't use anything that isn't a pistol or a knife while climbing, but if you do equip a pistol (sometimes it's necessary to deal with whatever nasties may be at the top), you hold it in a two-handed grip. [[MemeticMutation Such is life in the Zone.]]
* One of the many, many things that made ''VideoGame/{{Daikatana}}'' so infamous was the wonky ladder physics. Trying to climb down without dropping off a ledge entirely was almost as difficult as trying not to kill yourself by self-inflicted friendly fire - and predictably, much like the self-inflicted friendly fire, [[EarlyGameHell the worst of it was in the first episode]].

* ''VideoGame/FirstEncounterAssaultRecon'' goes for a mostly realistic approach to the ladders in its thirst for averting FirstPersonGhost: your character is shown mounting the ladder from either up or down, you can see your arms and legs gripping it as you climb. As you might expect, even looking any further than 60º away from the ladder's vertical axis is essentially impossible. Additionally, ladders are not "magnetic", as in you do not engage them just by getting glose enough -- you explicitly have to hit "interact" to grab ahold of the rungs. The only bizarre part of the ladder physics is that you can break a fall from any height and negate FallingDamage by grabbing on to one in mid-air: your character will simply place himself on it just like if you'd grabbed it while standing on the ground.

* In ''VideoGame/ShadowWarrior'', while climbing a ladder you cannot use weapons, or even look around.

* ''VideoGame/FirstEncounterAssaultRecon'' goes for a mostly realistic approach to the ladders in its thirst for averting FirstPersonGhost: your character is shown mounting the ladder from either up or down, you can see your arms and legs gripping it as you climb. As you might expect, even looking any further than 60º away from the ladder's vertical axis is essentially impossible. However, you can harmlessly break a fall from any height by grabbing on to one in mid-air, and your character will simply place himself on it just like if you'd grabbed it while standing on the ground - this is rarely noticeable aside from a certain bit at the end of ''Extraction Point'', the first game's first expansion pack.

* In ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid3SnakeEater'', Naked Snake has to climb a [[MemeticMutation really, really, really long ladder]] to get to the top of a mountain. The only exhaustion experienced is on the part of the player.
** Though the climb may well eat into your rations.
*** The ladder is so long, about a quarter up, the game starts playing the theme song to kill time.

[[Quoteright:349:Guess this makes it a [[LiteralMinded stepladder]].]]

* An interesting example/lampshade in ''VideoGame/{{Psychonauts}}'': ladders work properly for the most of the game execept for one that twists after you start sliding down, making you slide upwards. [[JustifiedTrope Justified]] since it's a ladder inside the mind of a circus acrobat currently experiencing serious... problems.

* ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBrosBrawl'' uses and averts this. Obviously, every character has limbs--but you'd think Ivysaur (the only true quadruped) would have a bit of a tough time getting up each rung. Avoiding spikes and long pits in the Swamp stage requires jumping from ladder to ladder.
** Ladder jumping isn't so much of an issue for characters that don't suffer fall damage.
** In addition, because ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBros'' has jumping, {{double jump}}ing, and triple jumping being such an integral part of the game, they have to provide a reason why you'd climb a ladder instead of simply jumping right up: Characters climb up and down ladders ''really, really fast'', faster than if you had leaped all the way to the top, assuming the ladder isn't leading to a platform out of your jump range. This quirk was carried over into ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBrosForNintendo3DSAndWiiU'' and is a key way to quickly travel across the Wrecking Crew stage, which is vertically-oriented and heavy on ladders.

* ''VideoGame/{{Vanquish}}'' takes the same approach to ladders as ''VideoGame/GodHand'' (incidentally, the two games were developed by [[Creator/PlatinumGames the same company]] by having Sam Gideon leap to the top of ladders rather than climb them.

* The developers of ''VideoGame/TeamFortress2'' specifically avoided having ladders ''at all'' both because of the stupidity of physics involved and because having spots where people have their movement slowed down is just asking for people to camp.

* ''VideoGame/DarkSouls'': You and your enemies (if they can climb them) can't do much of anything on a ladder other than move up and down or jump off. You ''can'' do some swiping/kicking attacks if there's an enemy on the same ladder, but they are weak and their purpose is more to make the other guy fall off than to kill them. Its predecessor ''VideoGame/DemonsSouls'' is even more restrictive: you can use certain items while climbing ladders, but can't attack at all, slide down it, jump off, or even be ''knocked'' off.

* ''VideoGame/DarkSouls'': You and your enemies (if they can climb them) can't do much of anything on a ladder other than move up and down. You ''can'' do some swiping/kicking attacks if there's an enemy on the same ladder, but they are weak and their purpose is more to make the other guy fall off than to kill them. Its predecessor ''VideoGame/DemonsSouls'' is even more restrictive: you can use certain items while climbing ladders, but can't attack at all, slide down it, jump off, or even be ''knocked'' off.

* The guards in ''VideoGame/ThiefDeadlyShadows'' are completely incapable of dealing with ladders. If you ascend one, any guards chasing you will stand at the bottom, shaking their fists at you and shouting "[[WhatAnIdiot How did you get up there?]]". Unless they're armed with a bow, in which case you're in ([[AnnoyingArrows minor]]) trouble.

* ''VideoGame/FirstEncounterAssaultRecon'' takes the most realistic approach to the ladders in its thirst for averting FirstPersonGhost: your character is shown mounting the ladder from either up or down, you can see your arms and legs gripping it as you climb. As you might expect, even looking any further than 60º away from the ladder's vertical axis is essentially impossible. However, you can harmlessly break a fall by grabbing on to one, and your character will simply place himself on it just like if you'd grabbed it while standing on the ground - this is rarely noticeable aside from a certain bit at the end of ''Extraction Point'', the first game's first expansion pack.

* ''VideoGame/Left4Dead'' averts any kind of ladder related weapon using nonsense despite running on a newer version of the Source engine that powered ''Half-Life 2'' and its ladder weirdness. The fact that a survivor character can still hold onto a ladder with a couple dozen common infected standing on their head is another story.
** Ladders are still major deathtraps in ''Left 4 Dead'' anyway, though - especially when you have to do anything beyond reach the top of the "ladder," which is common when playing as the Infected.
** The new ladder behavior only applies to the Survivors. Infected players in Versus mode, in addition to being able to climb up damn near ''anything'' like it's a ladder, can still take advantage of the old diagonal speed boost nonsense.

* Averted in ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoIV'': the gun goes away, and you climb the ladder slowly (though you can speed it up by pressing A).
** However, it should be noted that Niko simply slides down ladders - even on the ladder of a 200ft tall construction crane, which should rightly burn his hands clean off.

* ''VideoGame/DarkSouls'': You and your enemies (if they can climb them) can't do much of anything on a ladder other than move up and down. You ''can'' do some swiping/kicking attacks if there's an enemy on the same ladder, but they are weak and their purpose is more to make the other guy fall off than to kill them.

* ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBros Brawl'' uses and averts this. Obviously, every character has limbs--but you'd think Ivysaur (the only true quadruped) would have a bit of a tough time getting up each rung. Avoiding spikes and long pits in the Swamp stage requires jumping from ladder to ladder.

** In addition, because the Smash Bros. series has jumping, double jumping, and triple jumping being such an integral part of the game, they have to provide a reason why you'd climb a ladder instead of simply jumping right up: Characters climb up and down ladders ''really, really fast'', faster than if you had leaped all the way to the top. This quirk was carried over into ''Super Smash Bros. for Wii U'' and ''3DS'' and is a key way to quickly travel across the Wrecking Crew stage, which is vertically-oriented and heavy on ladders.

** It's notoriously hard to grab ladders on the way down in this game. Most players have learned to quick-save before even trying to descend a ladder, because of the sheer number of ways it can go wrong. That or players approach the top of the ladder while holding down the use key, the crouch key, the walk key, or a combination.
** Also, in ''VideoGame/HalfLife1: Opposing Force'', the ladder physics become even more absurd when they get applied to rope climbing. Cpl Adrian Shepard must be one hell of an acrobat.
** Even better, you can [[DiagonalSpeedBoost walk and strafe up ladders simultaneously]] for a healthy speed boost.

* ''VideoGame/{{Doom}}'' lacks actual ladder behavior. A common trick used by modders to get around this is to create a set of stairs with extremely narrow steps, forming a nearly vertical ramp that can be ascended like a ladder. Later source ports allow map creators to designate the area in front of a ladder as being underwater, allowing players to "swim" up the ladder.

* One of the many, many things that made ''VideoGame/{{Daikatana}}'' so infamous was the wonky ladder physics. Trying to climb down without dropping off a ledge entirely was almost as difficult as trying not to kill yourself by self-inflicted friendly fire. Predictably, the worst of it was in the EarlyGameHell.

* ''VideoGame/BioMenace'', due to using the same engine, as ''VideoGame/CommanderKeen'', allows you to hold the "up" key and repeatedly hit jump to climb ladders really fast. Some players nickname this "ladder flying".

* In ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid3SnakeEater'', Naked Snake has to climb a [[MemeticMutation looooooooooooooooooooooooong ladder]]. The only exhaustion experienced is on the part of the player.

* Having your head spasm like a spastic shoggoth is apparently how goats climb ladders in [[Videogame/GoatSimulator Goat Simulator]].

* In ''[[VideoGame/ModernWarfare Call of Duty 4]]'', you cannot fire weapons or do anything else that requires the use of your hands (except throw grenades) while climbing a ladder. You can't see your hands, but you only have hands during one cutscene and while you're actually holding a weapon.

* ''VideoGame/FarCry2'' doesn't have very many ladders, but yes, you climb them pretty realistically and can see your arms grabbing the rungs.

* ''VideoGame/Left4Dead'' averts any kind of ladder related weapon using nonsense despite running on the newest version of the Source engine. The fact that a survivor character can still hold onto a ladder with a couple dozen common infected standing on their head is another story.