There's something to be said for death animations. The physics revolution has changed the way gamers think about murdering everything from limo drivers to alien shock troops to giant robots. It wasn't so long ago, though, that teams of artists and animators painstakingly handcrafted individual death animations for every foe, so that players could marvel as heads exploded, innards spilled out onto floors, and, in one famous example from Goldeneye, a guard writhed around for close to a minute, clutching his injured groin.