Trapped doesn’t have to suck, you know.  If you happen to be a Chilean miner, or a miner anywhere, this post excludes you – lo siento.  Trapped in a mine?  Yes, that would blow eagle testicles.  Trapped in the Playboy Mansion?  Where do I sign?  Just recently I saw a hilarious, thought-provoking television commercial for the latest Sims game, Sims 3 (watch it here, boss), which is slated to hit consoles tomorrow, and will surely sell well like all of its predecessors.  The question this commercial raised, is what if you were trapped in a video game?  How would you be able to tell, and maybe most importantly, how the fuck would you get out?  Click that tantalizing link below to find out the answers in Glitchoris’ latest gaming lifestyle guide.

1. You walk outside and see everyone running around, breaking shit.

If you wake up one morning to find your neighbors beating the piss out of your Camry, you might want to check your Miley Cyrus calendar and see what the date is.  Did the NBA Finals or World Series just end?  For my Los Angeles viewers, it’s not 1992 is it?  If you answered “no” to all of those questions, chances are you either shouldn’t have ran over your neighbor’s dog last night, or you’re trapped in a video game.

More specifically, you’re likely trapped in an MMO, and that folks, would be a fucking nightmare.  Quick!  Run upstairs and grab some binoculars.  Is the dead pooch you ran over still in the middle of the street?  What?  It’s just a pool of blood with a large pile of change?  Ruh roh, that sounds like a loot drop.  Yup, your ass is definitely stuck in an MMO, and a suburban one too – those are the worst.

So how do you get out?  Since it’s an MMO, the only chance you’ve got is hoping the game doesn’t get too popular.  If you’re stuck in WoW, well, you’re fucked.  Option two is to run into the nearest forest, drop to one knee, and punch yourself in the face five times, as hard as humanly possible.  It won’t get you out, but chances are it will at least knock you out for a while so you won’t go insane.  The choice is yours.

(On a random side note, how weird is it that animals drop loot?  I mean, I could understand Kangaroos, because they have pouches, but wolves dropping swords and rats dropping boots?  What the fuck have game developers been smoking?)

2. You find an armory’s worth of weapons in your closet.

Unless you’re Charlton Heston, or one of his surviving grandchildren that inherited that insane collection above, the chances of you opening your closet and finding more firepower than a Marine Corps armory are slim to none.  In the rare event that you stub your toe on a MK-19 automatic grenade launcher while you try to slip on your “Crocs” in the morning, you could very well have slipped into a video game realm, more specifically the first person shooter / action genre.

Maybe your girlfriend is a closet gun nut (get it?), or maybe you’re being framed; we here at Glitchoris do have a quick solution if you find yourself in this predicament.  If you’ve truly slipped into an action or first person video game and find an armory in your closet, then you damn well should be able to know how to operate, and use every fuckin gun in your closet with a blindfold on.  That makes logical sense, right?  So that’s the test: pick up the .50 cal, and check to see if you can load it, or try and disassemble your AK.  If you can do it faster than Forrest Gump, then congratulations, your ass is stuck in a first person shooter.

FML, right?  Yeah, you’re pretty much f’ed, there’s no doubt about that.  The good news however, is that there is an endstate here.  You see MMO’s have no ending, so your only hope is waiting the bitch out.  If you’re trapped in a first person shooter, all you have to do is simply shoot your way to the finish line.  But then again, that’s if you’re stuck in single player mode.  If it’s multiplayer, well, then you’re screwed.

But hey, at least you get to shoot guns and blow shit up, right?

3. People you talk to keep repeating the same thing to you.

And smoking the reefer!  Did you say, “yeah, sure”, or, “yeah, sir”?  Well, I said “yeah, sure”, but what I mean to say was, “yeah, sir”.  Okay, enough with the Super Troopers quotes.  Our third sign that you may be trapped inside a video game is if everyone you talk to starts repeating themselves, over and over again.  It sounds creepy when you think about it, doesn’t it?  Chances are you could be stuck in a horror film, and if that’s the case, then I hope you still have a closet full of firepower, because you’re definitely gonna need it.  Do not answer your front door, don’t investigate any weird sounds, and don’t go downstairs.

But what if it’s not a horror movie?  You see puppies running through the grass, and kids selling lemonade on the street, so slasher movie is ruled out.  What if everyone you talk to one day just had one or two lines that they repeated, over, and over, and over again?  If that’s the case, it sounds like you’re in NPC heaven, and more specifically, it sounds like you’re stuck in an RPG.

Now by this point you should know damn well what to do if you’re stuck in an RPG.  If you can’t find anyone but NPC’s, then take a sigh of relief, because you’re not stuck in an MMO, which means there’s an end to this nightmare.  In that case all you have to do is slay a big ass dragon, or take down some giant-ass boss after years, and years of gaining experience and better weapons.

Easy day, right?

4. Shit starts appearing over people’s heads.

This is an easy tell.  Much like the Sims 3 commercial, if you see shit start appearing over people’s heads there’s only one reason: you’re stuck in a video game.  If you see a diamond, then you can breathe easy, because you’re likely only stuck in The Sims.  Granted, you’re likely stuck in some cracked out kid’s crazy world, but at least your life isn’t in danger.  Hell, you still have a chance of getting laid, so can you really complain?

Now if exclamation points are appearing over everyone’s heads, that’s an entirely different story.  Are they carrying Soviet-era small arms?  What?  They are?  Yeah, I would start running, preferably in a serpentine pattern until you can find some cover.  And then I’d run some more.

If you’re not seeing punctuation marks, but long, elaborate Medieval names, then start freaking out because you’re stuck in an MMO.  Sucks to be you!

If you see Halos, well, you’re sadly no longer alive and have reached the afterlife.  But hey, at least you’re not in Hell.

5. Random objects and people are glowing or flickering.

If you wake up tomorrow and random shit around your apartment is glowing, or “flickering” like it’s on fire, then it’s time to get a little concerned.  Unless your cat was drinking Uranium last night, chances are your stuck yet again in a video game.  So let’s apply some logic here: if something is glowing or flickering in a video game, that means you need to apply some action to it in order to move on, right?  If you wake up and your toaster is glowing, fuckin make some toast and move on to the next level.  If your cat is glowing, well, I’m not going to comment on that because I don’t feel like getting sued.

Pretty much every game out these days utilizes the glowing/flickering system, so it’s hard to say exactly what type of video game you’re trapped in.  Your best bet is to look for the other signs, and go from there.

I swear on my mother that will be the only time I ever post a icanhazcheezeburger cat on Glitchoris. Promise.

6. You run into an invisible wall.

The last major sign that you’re trapped in a video game is hitting the invisible wall.  Only mimes truly know how it feels to be trapped by one, but in video games everyone’s experienced how fun hitting one can be.  When you hit one in a video game, you run alongside it until you get around the glitch or obstacle, so in our opinion that’s the best advice we can give you if it happens fo real.

Just like the glowing objects sign above, invisible walls are fucking everywhere in video games, sparing no genre along the way.  Your best bet is to remain calm, and keep running until you can get around it.  Oh, and pray to your favorite deity that you’re not trapped in an MMO.

Game Over

Depending on the genre, getting trapped in a video game doesn’t necessarily have to suck.  More than likely though, it will, because that virtual world you love hanging out in just got real, and that means your ass is probably on the line.  But hey, at least you’ll probably get some super powers or get to blow shit up.  That’s not a bad deal.

Let’s just hope they put in the Contra code.