Games With Realistic Damage

One of the main things that has me interested in The Last of Us is its use of realistic damage. Health doesn't regenerate, and Joel doesn't seem especially durable (especially if one were to play on a high difficulty) so actual, realistic thought must be used in combat. One of the biggest immersion-breakers in games and movies is when the guy using a pistol is pinned down by three or four men with machine guns only to just pop out of cover and gun all of them down without breaking a sweat. In movies, the enemies just can't hit for crap, but in games, you can take a seemingly infinite amount of bullets, and then crouch for a minute to become perfectly fine. At its worst, this can lead to a complete rift between story in gameplay, like how a bullet while playing Uncharted does nothing, but in a cutscene it means the end of the world. If, perhaps, on a higher difficulty the player can be killed by just a couple hits, then the enemies soak up a seemingly infinite amount of damage. While I guess most survival-horror games take a semi-realistic approach to health (although the extent of zombie damage and the speed at which medpacs and be used are at times dubious), shooters, hacks and slashes, and RPGs rarely give reason as to why a protagonist or monster can withstand hundreds of hits from a spear. Even if an RPG uses damage in a semi-realistic way, much like with an Uncharted gunshot, if a character dies in battle, it's cured by a phoenix down. In a cutscene, it's permanent. It's a cliche games seldom bypass, and it annoys the hell out of me. While I understand fun gameplay takes precedence over immersion, I don't see why the two have to be exclusive. Are there any games you can think of that approach death and damage with realism?

I can think of a couple examples. One could argue some Mass Effect and Halo games employ it with regenerating shields and first-aid kits when those are done with. Even though Shepard can take quite a few shots after his shields are down, considering the heavy armor he usually wears, one could expect he can withstand a few hits without some sort of barrier.

The only RPG I could think of is the Fire Emblem series. Weaker characters go down in two or three hits from a spear or arrow (reasonable), and those that can withstand any more wear bulky armor. A greater emphasis is placed on dodging than withstanding hits, which, again, is akin to actual combat. The way Fire Emblem approaches damage is actually one of the most interesting things about it, creating moral dilemmas for the player, literally asking who you feel can live or die. While it does make things frustrating at times (NEVER leave your clerics unguarded. Never), it also makes the game damned rewarding, and the bond created between player and characters is much stronger, knowing any of them can die at any moment.

Arma 2 with ACE mod is pretty close. It takes into account what kind of ammo was used (like the calibre), when grenades go off you actually hear the individual shrapnel whizzing past your head, you will get heavy ear ringing using heavy weaponry or if someone fires a weapon near you if you don't have earplugs in, when you've been shot you'll eventually just pass out regaining consciousness every now and again until you are healed or bleed out.

There's nothing wrong with a touch of a realism every once in a while. But to be honest, most of the time, realism just isn't fun. Even to the extent that something like Battlefield 3 takes it with the awful post processing effects like the flashlight, red dot and sun. It's not fun, it's not impressive, it's just flat out annoying.

Games With Realistic Damage

...don't actually exist, unless a bullet in the leg makes that leg completely unusable, one in the arm makes that arm nearly unusable, etc., and you start to bleed out. Especially if it hits an artery.

@believer258 said:

Games With Realistic Damage

...don't actually exist, unless a bullet in the leg makes that leg completely unusable, one in the arm makes that arm nearly unusable, etc., and you start to bleed out. Especially if it hits an artery.

Dwarf Fortress. You can also do that to enemies in mgs 2-3 but it does not happen to you.

Bushido Blade?

@kashif1 said:

@believer258 said:

Games With Realistic Damage

...don't actually exist, unless a bullet in the leg makes that leg completely unusable, one in the arm makes that arm nearly unusable, etc., and you start to bleed out. Especially if it hits an artery.

Dwarf Fortress. You can also do that to enemies in mgs 2-3 but it does not happen to you.

Yeah, but is that character still useful without a few (in game) hour's worth of surgery and a few day's worth of healing at least?

A bullet doesn't always kill someone but if it doesn't then the person is incredibly limited physically and will most likely die if not treated. I just don't think that a game like that would be anything like "fun". More like "frustrating and stupidly designed".

@believer258 said:

Games With Realistic Damage

...don't actually exist, unless a bullet in the leg makes that leg completely unusable, one in the arm makes that arm nearly unusable, etc., and you start to bleed out. Especially if it hits an artery.

Actually that's very untrue depending on the caliber of weapon used. Actually this leads into the interesting story of how the Colt M1911 ended up being the standard-issue sidearm for every branch of the military for over a century. Basically, in WWII the government was looking to implement smaller caliber weapons, but were finding that soldiers needed the M1911 to deal with Japanese bayonet charges. Basically, the .45 round is actually powerful enough to knock over the person it hits, which added a very literal and very necessary angle to the phrase "stopping power".

And in fact, a similar problem was run into in Iraq and Afghanistan, where smaller-caliber weapons would pass right through insurgents without actually disabling them, so many times people shot would end up actually not even noticing the wound due to adrenaline. A small hole in the leg from the bullet passing through, unless it hit a major artery, would be completely ignored, at least as far as taking the enemy out of the fight is concerned.

Tropico 3

Also obviously a .50 caliber weapon disables limbs in one shot, but to be honest a .50 caliber sniper rifle can come really damn close to shooting someone in half, and will guaranteed blow off a limb, so that's pretty irrelevant to a conversation about general weapon damage.

In The Last of Us demo from E3, the guy gets shot and it barely fazes him. Damage to the enemies seems to be on a realistic scale though.

Judging by the E3 stage demo, I wouldn't say that The Last of Us has realistic damage. Not when Joel can shrug off a bullet and it just depletes a portion of a health bar.

Bushido Blade comes close, though. One kit kills, and damage to limbs that hamper limb use? It's more realistic than most games.

@Example1013 said:

@believer258 said:

Games With Realistic Damage

...don't actually exist, unless a bullet in the leg makes that leg completely unusable, one in the arm makes that arm nearly unusable, etc., and you start to bleed out. Especially if it hits an artery.

Actually that's very untrue depending on the caliber of weapon used. Actually this leads into the interesting story of how the Colt M1911 ended up being the standard-issue sidearm for every branch of the military for over a century. Basically, in WWII the government was looking to implement smaller caliber weapons, but were finding that soldiers needed the M1911 to deal with Japanese bayonet charges. Basically, the .45 round is actually powerful enough to knock over the person it hits, which added a very literal and very necessary angle to the phrase "stopping power".

And in fact, a similar problem was run into in Iraq and Afghanistan, where smaller-caliber weapons would pass right through insurgents without actually disabling them, so many times people shot would end up actually not even noticing the wound due to adrenaline. A small hole in the leg from the bullet passing through, unless it hit a major artery, would be completely ignored, at least as far as taking the enemy out of the fight is concerned.

All right. Say a fellow gets shot in the leg and it passes through without hitting a major artery or shattering a bone. Surely the pain will take very soon? Either way, he's not going to be fighting in that condition for an extended period of time.

Anyway, my point was really that the last thing games need is a higher concentration on fucking realism for the sake of more realism or "immersion". That word is so improperly used, it's about how engaged and interested you are and if an element of the game like a health bar takes you out of it, then you weren't properly immersed in the first place.

@WilltheMagicAsian said:

Arma 2 with ACE mod is pretty close. It takes into account what kind of ammo was used, when grenades go off you actually hear the individual shrapnel whizzing past your head, you will get heavy ear ringing using heavy weaponry or if someone fires a weapon near you if you don't have earplugs in, when you've been shot you'll eventually just pass out regaining consciousness every now and again until you are healed or bleed out. Stuff comes close, but in reality 100% realism isn't that fun.

As far as I know though, where you get shot isn't terribly detailed. There are certainly different zones, but it's not very detailed. And do they keep the awful reaction types that vanilla ArmA 2 uses? Basically just going prone when you're hurt, other than to stand? I don't know much about how ACE handles things, but I can't see it going far enough considering the AWFUL starting point that is Arma 2's damage model.

Realistic damage doesn't exist in games. Because bodies are so complex. One square inch of your shoulder being shot means good-bye using that arm. The square inch next to it and all you need is some bandaging and you can get back in the fight. Body armor is rarely taken into account, and that has many a time saved the lives of soldiers. But when a bullet it stopped by a helmet, it's not like that individual can just fire right on back. They are likely to be knocked unconscious for a short period, and suffer neck and potentially brain damage. They will be disoriented ineffective in combat.

Plus, damage from different sources differs so extremely. The worst offender would be explosions, which games treat as damage orbs, despite not being that at all. Shrapenel can be as little as getting rocks stuck in your knee after you fell off of your bike, to enough to make you hobble and be essentially useless to the equivilant of multiple gunshot wounds, though with differing characteristics.

Watch Mythbusters shooting their gelatin dummy in slow motion. Watch how the flesh balloons out and creates a massive cavity when it strikes the abdomen, where very little structure exists to hold things together. Especially something like an 7.76 round will make a fucking mess of your insides. But a round to the leg if it avoids the bone and arteries (granted bullets are rarely so considerate) will require tending but that can often be done by the individual. From that point they would be capable of firing from a stable position, but moving would require assistance or be incredibly slow.

Honestly I'd be more interested in seeing more realistic reactions rather than damage. Truth of the matter is most injuries sustained in the field are not fatal. Where hundreds die, tens of thousands are injured. I'd say there's more room to going beyond damage for injury models, and giving the player much more natural control over their character (ie being able to use anything in the environment to stabilize shots, more than two or three static positions, etc).

The only RPG I could think of is the Fire Emblem series. Weaker characters go down in two or three hits from a spear or arrow (reasonable), and those that can withstand any more wear bulky armor. A greater emphasis is placed on dodging than withstanding hits, which, again, is akin to actual combat.

@MordeaniisChaos said:

@WilltheMagicAsian said:

Arma 2 with ACE mod is pretty close. It takes into account what kind of ammo was used, when grenades go off you actually hear the individual shrapnel whizzing past your head, you will get heavy ear ringing using heavy weaponry or if someone fires a weapon near you if you don't have earplugs in, when you've been shot you'll eventually just pass out regaining consciousness every now and again until you are healed or bleed out. Stuff comes close, but in reality 100% realism isn't that fun.

As far as I know though, where you get shot isn't terribly detailed. There are certainly different zones, but it's not very detailed. And do they keep the awful reaction types that vanilla ArmA 2 uses? Basically just going prone when you're hurt, other than to stand? I don't know much about how ACE handles things, but I can't see it going far enough considering the AWFUL starting point that is Arma 2's damage model.

Instead of going prone, you lay on your back while going in and out of consciousness.

I always found the stalker games on PC to be a fairly realistic version of gunfighting while still being fun. Against human opponents, fights generally happen at long range and you have to account for bullet drop and weapon calibur. The absolute most "realistic" I have seen is in the simulation arma 2.

As far as realistic hit reactions I think RAGE is the best I have seen. They really did a bang up job on the animation system of that game. Enemies react nicely to bullet impacts and you rarely see the same animation twice. They even impact with environmental objects.

@WilltheMagicAsian: Yeah, that sounds about the same with a few spins thrown on.

@believer258: Adrenaline can last for up to 5 minutes, which is more than enough time to shoot back. In short, no. Also, "fighting" is an odd term, because it's not like a shot to the leg in any way disables you from popping out to shoot someone from cover.

Anyways, really this is more about the product the developer wants to represent and how they balance that with what they can accomplish than just "games should be more realistic" or "games shouldn't sacrifice immersion for the sake of realism", since those two things are really talking to different audiences.

Really the only way to implement a realistic damage model into a video game (no stupid health packs) and still keep the game fun has to basically be a Battlefront or Battlefield style game, where you're just a faceless ticket in an army, and when you die, you respawn as another faceless ticket, to create a huge force with a small number of players and without unique characters.

Basically, I'm saying Star Wars Battlefront is the most realistic combat game ever made.

@Red: Actually, I gotta bug you on the Uncharted point. You literally never get shot until you die. Your health is essentially a luck meter, when Nate gets shot, he's either dead, or it's a significant part of the story.

So at least Naughty Dog looks like they know what they're doing.

I think Hitman on Pro was pretty realistic. I remember being able to take like 3-4 bullets and like 2 if it was a desert eagle/shotgun. + ENemies would would all die in about 1-2 bullets unless you get a headshot. But that only works for Hitman because you don't get shot very often so its okay to make it VERY punishing.

@mitsuko_souma said:

In The Last of Us demo from E3, the guy gets shot and it barely fazes him. Damage to the enemies seems to be on a realistic scale though.

This on max difficulty could be close though.

@MikkaQ: Is it ever really said that it's a luck meter? Regardless, that's just taking the video game "withstands a lot of bullets" and turning it into the more cinematic "dodges a lot of bullets", which is just about as bad.

Don't get me wrong, I think the Uncharted series is fantastic, but the whole health situation is just a little bit odd.

The original Ghost Recon had it so if you got hit you would be slowed down and your aim would take longer to set in, it got worse depending how bad you got hit, orange or red were your low life.

You could only take like 3 shots before dead to begin with. God damn that game was great, series has been ass since the second game. It's not really realistic but at least it impaired you for being shot, that shit didn't regenerate back.

For everyone talking about more realistic bullet damage (not being able to use your arm if you got shot there), how would the player ever really know that s/he got shot in the arm? Unless the shot was at close quarters (which should probably result in death anyways), it's hard to tell what's shooting you at any given moment, not to mention where. I think a game can assume every shot is in the shoulder or stomach without really breaking immersion.

@believer258: ArmA series has that. If you get hit in the leg you have to crawl until you're bandaged, and the bandage process takes a while.

@Red: Dark Souls, from what I've seen, has a decent damage model. But for FPS try SWAT 4, Rainbow6 3, and ArmA 2

That's one of the things that bummed me about LA Noire, I really wish that they made that game have realistic damage so if you got shot a couple of times you would go down. It would make the lesser moments of action have more danger and actually be more entertaining then they are, I thought it was a missed opportunity personally.

Anyway for realistic damage, project reality does that pretty well. It's a mod for battlefield 2 that makes the game more realistic, its basically the kind of game where you can run 1 kilometer to meet the enemy then get shot once and die, that has a pretty good damage model. Of course arma 2 fps wise is probably the most realistic with damage.

@Sooty:

Totally forgot about ghost recon! That was pretty great... I remember being terrified

@Red: Actually, I gotta bug you on the Uncharted point. You literally never get shot until you die. Your health is essentially a luck meter, when Nate gets shot, he's either dead, or it's a significant part of the story.

So at least Naughty Dog looks like they know what they're doing.

@Example1013 said:

Basically, I'm saying Star Wars Battlefront is the most realistic combat game ever made.

No arguments here

Didn't Solider of Fortune track blood levels in enemies?

I usually enjoy trial and error in video games. I think the Tom Clancy games of old as well as SWAT 4 had cool damage models. I liked when you got shot in a particular body part in SWAT how it could seriously crap up your aim and/or movement speed.

@Example1013 said:

Basically, I'm saying Star Wars Battlefront is the most realistic combat game ever made.

Red Orchestra 2. One shot and you're dead. Pretty realistic aiming and weapon differences also.