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What are your thoughts on insta-kill attacks?

A

Albino_Yeti

Member
A lot of bosses and enemies in games have that one attack that can one-shot you, even if you have full health. Sometimes these attacks are easy to dodge, such as the Watchdog's charge in Bloodborne, and sometimes they are pretty damn hard to avoid, such as the tonberrys in Final Fantasy.

Do you consider these insta-kill attacks fair? Or not?

Personally, I think as long as you have a reasonable opportunity to avoid them, then they aren't too bad. But if its a really fast attack, or one that's super hard to avoid, then those can fuck right off. Nothing makes me more mad than when I'm fighting an enemy in a long battle, and they instantly end the fight with a bullshit, uncounterable insta-kill move.
 
K

KZXcellent

Member
So long as the game gives me ample tools to avoid them. Shin Megami Tensei and Persona throw insta-kill attacks at you but it's fine because you can easily bring in Demon/Persona that resists it.

I absolutely hated FFXIII's final boss though which employs an insta-kill attack and as far as I know there's no piece of equipment that fully nullifies it.
 
B

Brian_FETO

Banned
It depends how easy it is to see it coming (and avoid it) and how far it sets you back when you die

It can be fun to get nailed the first time and have to keep on your toes. But not to the point where it's frustrating/unfair

The Evil Within had a lot of shit like that and I honestly enjoyed it, like the game was just having fun and laughing at you. I may have a higher tolerance for it though
 
LordKasual

LordKasual

Banned
godlike

1CHkgS.gif

maxresdefault.jpg
Click to expand...

Oh, not those?


They suck, if there's no adequate build up or way to see them coming.


FFXIII's Doom was just really lazy boss design.
 
V

Van Bur3n

Member
If it's going to instantly kill me, it needs a long wind up animation or sound effect that indicates it's going to do such an attack. Thus when you somehow get hit by an attack you're punished severely for something you should have seen coming. Instant kill attacks out of nowhere without warning they're about to happen from a sound effect or animation are bullshit. This mostly in regards to something long and drawn out like a boss fight.

The only exception I have with it being with shooters, such as when facing a (Jackal) sniper. It doesn't bother me too much there.
 
S

Syril

Member
I think they're really stupid. If a game has health, then full health should always be a buffer for at least one mistake.
 
woopWOOP

woopWOOP

Member
For RPGs, as long as it's not party-wide and the enemy doesn't spam that move I'm alright with it. Usually there are ways to revive/protect your party against that stuff.

I didn't really like it in Turok 2's multiplayer where a shot to the head with the basic crossbow killed you instantly. I guess it's skill, but back then we all found it kind of cheap. We even made a no headshot rule in our group, lol

I never liked it in Guilty Gear because I sucked and I had no real idea what I was doing. Finally beat the AI in one round only for it to DESTROY me in the next and instantly win the game. So lame.
 
K

Kuro Madoushi

Unconfirmed Member
KZXcellent said:
So long as the game gives me ample tools to avoid them. Shin Megami Tensei and Persona throw insta-kill attacks at you but it's fine because you can easily bring in Demon/Persona that resists it.

I absolutely hated FFXIII's final boss though which employs an insta-kill attack and as far as I know there's no piece of equipment that fully nullifies it.
Click to expand...
Not if you didn't know that demon had that ability in that area ahead of time. Always hated OHKs in Persona/SMT.
 
N

Neoleo2143

Member
Insta Kill Attacks are valid as any other if they are able to either be worked around (usually by moving) or able to be reacted to.
 
Rhazer Fusion

Rhazer Fusion

Member
Honestly, I do not like them at all. If the game gives me ample time to avoid the attack and the checkpoints aren't too bad, then I can normally deal with them, but overall I rather them be left out.
 
B

Belker

Member
It's not the same thing, but Super Meat Boy's instant death was tolerable because it was quick to respawn and levels were short.

If a game gives me the tools to avoid them (as mentioned earlier) and minimises the loading time and the time to re-try the encounter, I think I could live with it.

But that time to re-try the encounter means minimal time to get back to the point I died.

If I'm fighting a three-stage boss and die at stage two, it's no good respawning quickly for stage one if I have to slog through it again.

I'm looking at you, Teslagrad.
 
D

David H Wong

Banned
Syril said:
I think they're really stupid. If a game has health, then full health should always be a buffer for at least one mistake.
Click to expand...

Breath of the Wild was awful about this, with the guardians. So much fun free-roaming the environment when you can get one-hit killed from a laser off-screen that you can't run from or defend against.
 
Shifty

Shifty

Member
The final boss from Ninja Gaiden Black had one of these. It was well-telegraphed, but jeez did the game's checkpoint handling (or lack thereof) make it sting when you got hit by it.

David H Wong said:
Breath of the Wild was awful about this, with the guardians. So much fun free-roaming the environment when you can get one-hit killed from a laser off-screen that you can't run from or defend against.
Click to expand...

Having to find a piece of geometry to cheese-block the laser or die was dumb.
 
S

sjay1994

Member
Depends on execution (by which I mean is it fair)

Example: I think Clickers from TLOU and the chainsaw guys in RE are fair because they are slow, lumbering and you know you need to keep your distance.

Where as something like Evil Within is fucking obnoxious with them where they aren't telegraphed, feels like 80% of the enemies have an insta kill move, and to top it all of have a difficulty mode where any damage = instant death and decided to scatter bear traps and explosives all over the map because "fuck you" especially with the games terrible load times and performance issues.

Fuck the evil within 1
 
T

Toxi

Banned
Depends on the context.

In a game where health is low or damage is high, insta-kills feel more natural. In a game where you're a tank, they feel like bullshit.

Enjoyment is also dependent on the amount of time you have to invest to get to that point again. Insta-kills are super frustrating in Monster Hunter because hunts last so long, even if you have the buffer of three karts.
 
Danjin44

Danjin44

The nicest person on this forum
sjay1994 said:
Depends on execution (by which I mean is it fair)

Example: I think Clickers from TLOU and the chainsaw guys in RE are fair because they are slow, lumbering and you know you need to keep your distance.

Where as something like Evil Within is fucking obnoxious with them where they aren't telegraphed, feels like 80% of the enemies have on and to top it all of have a difficulty mode where any damage = instant death and decided to scatter bear traps and explosives all over the map because "fuck you" especially with the games terrible load times and performance issues.

Fuck the evil within 1
Click to expand...

I personally don't mind in Evil Within, I feel like I have enough tool and weapons to prevent that from happening. I like to struggle and even die few times, to me thats survival horror is all about.
 
D

DataBased

Member
As so many people are saying, context matters so much.

In games like shooters it is a good way to make slow firing sniper rifles viable.

In action games they can be used to add tension and threat to an enemy, assuming they are behind big tells that allow the player to dodge.

In mobas they can be infuriating and a sure sign that your opponents have snowballed out of control.
 
S

Sir Ilpalazzo

Member
They're cool.

David H Wong said:
Breath of the Wild was awful about this, with the guardians. So much fun free-roaming the environment when you can get one-hit killed from a laser off-screen that you can't run from or defend against.
Click to expand...

You can dodge the laser manually. It isn't always easy to, but it is always possible.
 
H

HeatBoost

Member
They're hilarious in Guilty Gear

In anything else, they can be okay as long as they're balanced right. That kind of high reward requires an equally high gamble.
 
W

Waxy

Member
David H Wong said:
Breath of the Wild was awful about this, with the guardians. So much fun free-roaming the environment when you can get one-hit killed from a laser off-screen that you can't run from or defend against.
Click to expand...
I actually never had a problem with guardians when roaming around. They paint you with a giant laser and makes a lot of noise and the laser stops tracking for a second before it shoots so you can easily run away.
 
Strangelove77

Strangelove77

Member
It's the Evil Within's biggest flaw - you don't see shit coming til it happens. The game deliberately wants you to get killed so you can avoid it next time. So you end up dying a lot until you have all the traps and enemy placements memorized. It's why the game is as long as it is. You do so many sections over and over and over.
It has no wiggle room whatsoever. There's no time or opportunity to adapt in any way,

I can't believe the guy that worked on RE4 worked on this. RE4 avoids all this bullshit and it's better for it.
 
S

sjay1994

Member
Danjin44 said:
I personally don't mind in Evil Within, I feel like I have enough tool and weapons to prevent that from happening. I like to struggle and even die few times, to me thats survival horror is all about.
Click to expand...

I'm probably skewed because I played Akumu mode, but to me it showed how frustrating and irritating the game was designed to be.

All enemies have priority in their movements over yours, and while that might sound not so bad, in a mode where any damage kills its incredibly bullshit.

I enjoy aspects and themes of horror, and I can accept one hit kill moves when they are telegraphed and feel fair. But in TEW, when every enemy seems to possess some form of killing you instantly the game no longer becomes enjoyable, but an excercise in frustration

Didn't help at launch the game had myriad performance issues making each death obnoxious to sit through.

Also the games complete tonal dissonance with action scenes like that turret sequence, castle and final boss make the game fail as a "horror" title, especially since it played itself incredibly straight and not tongue and cheek like RE4 and 7.
 
P

PataHikari

Banned
KZXcellent said:
I absolutely hated FFXIII's final boss though which employs an insta-kill attack and as far as I know there's no piece of equipment that fully nullifies it.
Click to expand...

FFXIII's final boss only starts throwing out instant death attacks if the fight takes too long, so kill it faster.
 
U

UncleSporky

Member
Personal use insta-kill spells in RPGs are always useless. You can cast something with 10-50% chance of success, on an enemy that may or may not totally resist it and there's usually no way to know at all, or you can just cast a big fire spell and deal guaranteed damage that either gets you the desired effect of killing them or sets them up to be finished off by someone else in the party.

I mean even if it has a higher chance of success, you could still get unlucky and go 5 rounds without it ever taking effect, when a damage spell would've definitely ended it in 2 rounds.

I have never intentionally gone around slinging death spells except from curiosity if it would actually work, and if it was worth it...it never is.
 
P

PataHikari

Banned
UncleSporky said:
Personal use insta-kill spells in RPGs are always useless. You can cast something with 10-50% chance of success, on an enemy that may or may not totally resist it and there's usually no way to know at all, or you can just cast a big fire spell and deal guaranteed damage that either gets you the desired effect of killing them or sets them up to be finished off by someone else in the party.
Click to expand...

This isn't true at all.

In Final Fantasy XII Death is insanely reliable and a great way to handle tons of enemies.

Final Fantasy V has tons of way to inflict it and can bypass a ton of tough bosses that way.

You'll desperately, desperately need instant death skills for any Megaten game (as well as to defend yourself from them)
 
S

Syril

Member
UncleSporky said:
Personal use insta-kill spells in RPGs are always useless. You can cast something with 10-50% chance of success, on an enemy that may or may not totally resist it and there's usually no way to know at all, or you can just cast a big fire spell and deal guaranteed damage that either gets you the desired effect of killing them or sets them up to be finished off by someone else in the party.

I mean even if it has a higher chance of success, you could still get unlucky and go 5 rounds without it ever taking effect, when a damage spell would've definitely ended it in 2 rounds.

I have never intentionally gone around slinging death spells except from curiosity if it would actually work, and if it was worth it...it never is.
Click to expand...

FFX was actually a rare exception, where if an enemy didn't explicitly resist Death (or any status), it always worked.
 
K

KatamariOnTheRocks

Member
Doomfist is the definition of bullshit.

You can turn a corner into an accidental one hit kill that's impossible to counter and the whole game turns in their favor thanks to something the person performing the punch didn't even mean to do.
 
D

Deleted member 325805

Unconfirmed Member
Absolutely fucking hate them, anything that one shots is just annoying, especially when it's a long set piece. I recently had this a few times with Dead Space and it did nothing but make me want to switch the game off.
 
P

Papercuts

fired zero bullets in the orphanage.
Generally fine but it depends on how often it's used, the wind up, etc. RE4 is good at sparingly having them, but making the enemies capable of it seem intimidating. Evil Within felt like it overdid it and had one shots all over the place.
 
Jawmuncher

Jawmuncher

Member
It really depends. Some cases I think it's fair. Others are there to just hide bad game design.

Mass Effect Andromeda being the most recent example. The larger enemies all have a one hit kill if you eat too close. This is to prevent Vanguard rushing and such. Which was a weak way to balance things, since dying means starting a whole battle from the beginning.

There's no reason to even have them as one hit kills. They should've been attacks that out you in a danger status or offer a QTE move to counter react to the one hit kill.
 
T

The ๖ۜBronx

Member
As long as the game doesn't fuck me on the dodges, have all the 1HKO moves you like. I've got no issue with learning patterns and maintaining awareness, even if it's awhile to get it down.

Then again if the game wasn't responsive or honest in its dodging I wouldn't care what amount of damage enemies did, it wouldn't be fun either way.
 
C

Crossing Eden

Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
Only when the hitboxes are broken, for instance fuck the following:
id397272.jpg
in the cursed dungeon where you only have half health. Has a charge attack with barely a telegraph and a broken hitbox.

24964022183_8a7e1eb10f_b.jpg

from Furi. Can one shot you through walls sometimes.
 
F

flatearthpandas

Member
I usually don't mind it but stuff like this:

Jawmuncher said:
It really depends. Some cases I think it's fair. Others are there to just hide bad game design.

Mass Effect Andromeda being the most recent example. The larger enemies all have a one hit kill if you eat too close. This is to prevent Vanguard rushing and such. Which was a weak way to balance things, since dying means starting a whole battle from the beginning.

There's no reason to even have them as one hit kills. They should've been attacks that out you in a danger status or offer a QTE move to counter react to the one hit kill.
Click to expand...
does bother me. Don't really come across it too often but I remember being annoyed by it in TLOU. Get too close to an enemy and get an animation of it grabbing and killing you? Just seems super lame. Kind of like invisible walls and unmovable NPCs in open world games.
 
D

DreamedLint

Member
What bothers me about them us that they run counter to the whole point of a health bar. Yes, they are usually easy to dodge, but the entire reason people know they are instant kills is because they got hit by them. Instead of getting hit by a punishing attack and learning what it does and how it hits before moving on with the fight, it makes you retry the whole thing for one (albeit a big) mistake instead of a series of mistakes.

For specific examples, I always had trouble with the black hole attack Jubileas does in Bayonetta even with the panther run. The fight itself is pretty long and tedius so restarting it always bugged me. The worst in recent memory is Umi Bozu from Nioh. That fight is built around having a tanky enemy that just waits for you to make that one fatal mistake. (Mitigated by doing fire damage) Either a bad dodge into the drink, or getting caught by its Godzilla laser.
 
U

UncleSporky

Member
PataHikari said:
This isn't true at all.

In Final Fantasy XII Death is insanely reliable and a great way to handle tons of enemies.

Final Fantasy V has tons of way to inflict it and can bypass a ton of tough bosses that way.

You'll desperately, desperately need instant death skills for any Megaten game (as well as to defend yourself from them)
Click to expand...

There may be rare exceptions.

I can't get over situations like Dragon Warrior 4 on NES, where in the last chapter you only control the actions of your main hero and everyone else is played by a rudimentary learning AI that figures out what spells do and do not work on every monster in the game. Cristo casts Beat constantly on every enemy, always learning no, this is completely ineffective and you should've saved that MP for healing.

It needs to be consistent. There's a reason the only death spells most people remember are FF's L5 Death and equivalents, for cheesing specific encounters for high XP.
 
Fbh

Fbh

Member
I'm single player games as long as it's telegraphed and not super hard to avoid I don't mind.

In multiplayer games it all depends on the gameplay and balance.
I loved Destiny PVP but one of my main issues with it were the abundance of instskills. Shotguns were instskill up close, fusion rifles weren instskill from mid range, every class had at least 1 instskill super,etc. Nothing wrong with either for those things on their own but with supers charging fast and instskill weapons as part of your standard loadout it was as if everyone was constantly instakilling.
 
P

PataHikari

Banned
UncleSporky said:
I can't get over situations like Dragon Warrior 4 on NES, where in the last chapter you only control the actions of your main hero and everyone else is played by a rudimentary learning AI that figures out what spells do and do not work on every monster in the game. Cristo casts Beat constantly on every enemy, always learning no, this is completely ineffective and you should've saved that MP for healing.
Click to expand...
Thanks for reminding me that Instant Death spells are pretty good in DQ games too.

That was just bad AI
 
F

Fahzgoolin

Banned
I don't mind instant kill attacks as long as I have an opportunity to get right back into the battle and reattempt it really quickly. Some Dark Souls bosses were just super frustrating because you didn't have much time to learn from it, but had to do the long slog and fight enemies along the way to try it again.
 
Danjin44

Danjin44

The nicest person on this forum
sjay1994 said:
I'm probably skewed because I played Akumu mode, but to me it showed how frustrating and irritating the game was designed to be.

All enemies have priority in their movements over yours, and while that might sound not so bad, in a mode where any damage kills its incredibly bullshit.

I enjoy aspects and themes of horror, and I can accept one hit kill moves when they are telegraphed and feel fair. But in TEW, when every enemy seems to possess some form of killing you instantly the game no longer becomes enjoyable, but an excercise in frustration

Didn't help at launch the game had myriad performance issues making each death obnoxious to sit through.

Also the games complete tonal dissonance with action scenes like that turret sequence, castle and final boss make the game fail as a "horror" title, especially since it played itself incredibly straight and not tongue and cheek like RE4 and 7.
Click to expand...
Akumu mode was just like very hard mode in Dead Space 2 and personally loved it. it forced me to use weapons that I ignored on my pervious playthrough. But I do agree Evil Within had performance issue. I hope in the sequel its better since they don't have make it for PS3/360 anymore.
 
P

PSqueak

Banned
Depends the game.

Don't mind in Bloodborne since for most of the game enemies can down you in 1 or 2 hits if you're not careful.

other games? They shouldn't be.
 
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