A Very Violent Post

Video games have taught me that bad guys tend to leave plates of perfectly good food laying around on the floor

Video games have also apparently taught you that the line between "good guys" and "bad guys" is very distinct and noticeable.  This is not always the case.

Very true.  Historically, most of the non-hockey video games I've played have taken the form of shooter games, be they scrollers like River Raid or Contra, or First/Third person shooters such as Halo or Mercenaries.  It's a pretty well-renowned genre of video games.  They all have a couple critical things in common.  As LIR eluded to, the bad guys are easily distinguished so they can be targets for your wrath, the bad guys tend to be much worse at their job than you are since they have you hopelessly outnumbered, yet you tend to prevail more often than not, and should you receive any damage, you can instantly be returned to full health by either obtaining a first aid kit that happens to be laying around, or by eating something.  

First and Third person shooters do tend to have a couple drawbacks when it comes to believability, though.  Sorry as I am to say it, it's true.  

First of all, ammunition.  Not only is it found strewn randomly about the enemy base, but it all is apparently perfectly suited to whatever weapon you're carrying.  Having suffered through reading some of the Survivalist Series of truly awful books, I was repeatedly made excruciatingly aware that not all guns and ammunition are the same.  Also, I was told never to use the word "clip" to describe a "magazine," but I was never told why.  Either way, when you're running around an FPS (common acronym for First Person Shooter), you just pick up ammo, and you're ready to go.  No hassle of leading the bullets into a clip...sorry..."magazine"...or any nonsense like that.  Just a half-second reload, and fire away!  

Second, Where does the hero put all of this crap he's carrying?  In Doom II, our hero is capable of carrying a pistol, two different shotguns, a small gatling gun, a rocket launcher, a plasma gun, and a large plasma cannon (known as a BFG-9000), in addition to 400 bullets, 100 shotgun shells, and 600 plasma cells.  All of this, seemingly in a backpack.  Some games take things even farther.  Blake Stone, for example, strolls the hallways of the bad guy's lair collecting bags of gold coins and piles of gold bars.  Not only is this stuff just laying around on the floor, but now our hero collects it all somehow and carries it with him for the remainder of the game.  That must get heavy.

Thirdly, bad guys don't tend to have alarms or radios in video games.  I like to think that if I had an evil headquarters, my henchmen would be able to communicate with each other through cell phones or walkie talkies.  That way, when one of them sees an intruder carrying guns and ammunition, they tell other people that there is an intruder, and other people are dispatched to that location.  In video games, the first reaction is apparently to loudly and distinctly announce your presence so you can be shot by the hero.  Also, I have no idea why the Nazis are guarding empty rooms as often as they seem to do in Wolfenstein.  

And finally, health.  Let's ignore the med kits that are placed strategically around every bad guy's liar, presumably for insurance purposes, and talk about food.  It's a bit of a stretch to believe that putting a bandaid on will heal a bullet or shrapnel wound quickly like it seem to work in Duke Nukem.  It's a complete leap of faith to think that eating a piece of chicken accomplishes the same thing.  In most of these games, food is equal to health.  This makes no sense.  I've been living a lie all this time.