Aliens.

No, not creatures from outer-space, but the movie. I experienced something similar to one of the scenes in the film the other night.

For the past month or so I've playing World of Warcraft. A large, multi-user game where people from all over Europe (in my case) interact in a virtual world with each other.

Five of us had banded together to tackle one of the dungeons in the game, and like the marines in the film, we jumped into it with an air of indestructible gusto.

The character I was controlling a hippy, sorry druid, and it is the druids main role in such situations to keep the other players alive whilst they battle the bad guys. On my screen, as well as seeing all the action in front of me I get a series of images representing each of the group. Rather like the marine commander monitoring the marines in battle. At one point, the group got jumped on by a lot of respawning bad guys, and having considerably less battle skills than the others, and very little in the way of armour, I was the first to die.

Now in Wow, if you die, you don't die die, as where would the fun be in that. You get turned into a ghost at the nearest cemetery and you have to travel back to your body to resurrect yourself. Whilst doing this, I was still able to view the life signs of the rest of my group. It was at this point that reminded me of Aliens, for as I made my way back to the dungeon, I could nothing to help my team as one by one their life bar drained and their pictures greyed out as they fell to the slaughter. In a way it was quite a moment, sitting there, watching my friends die.

Ok, so they didn't really die, and yes I am aware it's only a game, and yes if it happened for real it would be so much more harrowing, but that's not the point. It's still an experience, and to be honest, about as close to the real thing as I wish to get.

I hope no one has to witness it for real.