Maybe I do play too many video games...

This dream, as suggested by the title was very much like a video game. In fact, to be more specific, it was somewhere between Resident Evil 4 and a first person shooter. Some of the details are a little murky, but what I present is the basic gist of the dream. Interestingly, throughout the dream, I was conscious of the fact that it was a game even though I was actually participating.

I was an agent or soldier of some description, and the dream began with me being given the choice of either going to help the president who was on board a plane and in danger or of saving a little girl (between 5-7 years) who'd been taken hostage. The girl's kidnappers wanted some kind of ransom and threatened to slit her throat at the hint of ANY non-compliance. Either way, I chose to help the poor child and set off to her rescue.

I was running through what looked like some kind of construction site and eventually came to a school building. I fought my way in and found myself in a prime spot from which I could see the girl; she was locked in a room with a guy who had his arm around her neck. He was also brandishing a knife. I aimed my sniper rifle and fired. Headshot. However, in doing this, I had now alerted the attention of his cronies who both came after me as well as heading for the room where the girl was held captive.

At this point, I realised that from my position, I could not reach the room without going back downstairs and making a journey on foot to the parallel building, so I ran back down the stairs and made my way across as quickly as I could. As I was doing this, the kidnappers were shooting at me, but, like myself in order to get to the girl, they had to journey across to the other building, which they did by gathering into a large armoured vehicle and driving off. I lobbed a grenade which rolled under the truck, but they drove off before it detonated, so I chased on foot, firing as I ran. After a while, the truck was moving too fast, so I gave up the chase and decided upon trying to head it off in the other direction, reasoning that I'd not be able to get to the girl on time. Consequently, I ran back the way I came and turned down another street which also lead to the same building where the child was held.

My recollection is a little murky here, but I somehow managed to stop the advancing kidnappers and made my way into the building. However, when I got to the classroom and opened the door, the girl was now bound with her hands behind her back, up against a wall. The "game" then transitioned into what seemed like a lightgun shooter. I remained stationary and shot hordes of lumbering zombies as they crept up on the girl. I downed about 8 or 9 zombies and was graced with a cut scene where a zombie approached the child and its flesh started to wrap itself, tendril-like around her body. I then had a few decisive seconds to aim and shoot this last zombie before it consumed her, which I was able to do. I approached the girl, untied her and grabbed her hand, saying that we had to leave, but it was not over yet.

Suddenly, from out of the wall furthest away, a large creature smashed its way into the room and started to give chase. As it did, it picked up the felled zombies and threw their corpses at us. The "game" then went into QTE mode. (For the non gamers, QTE means Quick Time Event and refers to sections of a game where the player has to quickly react to on-screen events by pushing buttons when prompted to progress the game). I ran with this girl and QTE prompts appeared to dodge the corpses and jump over obstacles in our path. At one point, the creature almost gained on us and I had to do a QTE manoeuvre to knock steel poles stacked against a wall into its path to slow it down. The dream ended with the child and I running to safety, cut short by my alarm clock waking me up.