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Best Nukes In Video Games?

DaciaJC

Gold Member
In Mercenaries 2, the main villain launches a nuke at one of the faction HQs (either that of the Allied Nations or the Chinese) and levels it. The mushroom cloud stays visible for the remainder of your playthrough, interestingly.

But you also had a pocket nuke at your own disposal, the "tactical bunker buster."

mercenaries-2-world-in-flames-20080827021545529-2534388_640w.jpg
 

LowerLevel

Member
Although not as cinematic as CoD, Frontlines gave me some feels. I think I was the only person to actually like the game..
 

Aurongel

Member
Modern Warfare is one of the best depictions of a nuclear detonation in any medium. Most examples even in this thread have a very romantic and detached depiction of nuclear warfare but COD4 brought that down to the human level in a way that made you experience their horror from the perspective of the victim. For a series all about machismo power fantasy, that scene had remained one of the most humanizing depictions of nuclear weapons.
 

Ravelle

Member
For whatever reason, the first game I thought of when I read nuke was Scorched Earth. You had to not allow them when playing against friends because they were so powerful.

Man, I played so much Scorched Earth with friends and kids from the neighbourhood. The funky bomb destroyed everything.

I loved nuking that town in Fallout 3.
 
Probably Fallout 3. I don't know if I saw any in 4, so that might look better idk.

There's just a ton of impact. Plus
when you blow up Megaton from Tenpenny Tower, it's beautiful in its own terrible way. Bass goes hard too.
Launching mini nukes is cool as fuck.

One and done. Still the best ever.
 
I thought Terranigma featured one, but looking back at let's plays it's more thematic than literal, with the city Neotokio before and after still being the same (no destruction), except the music and color palette, and lack of people.
At the time, I really thought it was a reference due to the game's overall themes and revisiting of humanity's big historical events in chronological order.
 

Budi

Member
Obviously Nuclear War, on Amiga and MS-DOS. Not only the game is all about nukes, but it has great set of wacky and goofy characters! Rivaling Overwatch in personality and design.

nuclear-war_1.jpg


nuclear-war_6.png
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Maedre

Banned
Guys, guys, guys Operation Flashpoint has/had the best Nuke. I got once hit by a M1A1 Tank. The shock wave was extreme.
 
None of them are done right. An accurate view of a nuke blast would be this:
1040x693_94_1_c_FFFFFF_f76e839a9189a0c37114dee6d861c332.jpg

. . . and that'd be the last thing you saw before it literally melted your eyeballs.

Stop using nukes in fiction like they're OP conventional explosives; it's normalizing the wrong concept.
 
None of them are done right. An accurate view of a nuke blast would be this:
1040x693_94_1_c_FFFFFF_f76e839a9189a0c37114dee6d861c332.jpg

. . . and that'd be the last thing you saw before it literally melted your eyeballs.

Stop using nukes in fiction like they're OP conventional explosives; it's normalizing the wrong concept.

nukes in games are normalizing... nuclear warfare?
 
None of them are done right. An accurate view of a nuke blast would be this:
1040x693_94_1_c_FFFFFF_f76e839a9189a0c37114dee6d861c332.jpg

. . . and that'd be the last thing you saw before it literally melted your eyeballs.

Stop using nukes in fiction like they're OP conventional explosives; it's normalizing the wrong concept.

Doesn't Dragonball have planets exploding?

Stop normalizing insane power levels.
 
nukes in games are normalizing... nuclear warfare?
In terms of perception, yes, to a terrifying extent. Most people think of nukes as really big incendiary grenades that happen to make mushroom clouds because science(?). That includes elected officials these days. They may not think they're underestimating nukes, but that's Dunning-Kruger for you. I'd rather we not learn how wrong we are the hard way, but I think the more Hollywood and video games nerf the perception of nukes, the easier it will get for elected imbeciles to use them.

Not to derail the thread, but I can't recall an instance where any video game gave me the impression the designer knew the slightest fucking thing about nukes. There's room in the world for absurdity, OK, so I'm not talking about Worms or Dragonball per se. If the story's taking itself seriously at all though, these things are fucking horrifying. An earnest portrayal of nukes should be causing GAFers to post things like, "After seeing that I couldn't sleep for three days," or, "Which more scary: the best survival-horror EVAR or a mediocre nuke sequence?" And if you can't pull that off. . . for the love of pants, don't try. Or just stick to making DB episodes.
 
Getting that first 25 killstreak in Modern Warfare 2.

As far as scenes go, the one from the first Modern Warfare was an insane experience.
 

nekkid

It doesn't matter who we are, what matters is our plan.
In terms of perception, yes, to a terrifying extent. Most people think of nukes as really big, really hot grenades that happen to make mushroom clouds because science(?). That includes elected officials these days. They may not think they're underestimating nukes, but that's Dunning-Kruger for you. I'd rather we not learn how wrong we are the hard way, but I think the more Hollywood and video games nerf the perception of nukes, the easier it will get for elected imbeciles to use them.

Not to derail the thread, but I can't recall an instance where any video game gave me the impression the designer knew the slightest fucking thing about nukes. There's room in the world for absurdity, OK, so I'm not talking about Worms or Dragonball per se. If the story's taking itself seriously at all though, these things are fucking horrifying. An earnest portrayal of nukes should be causing GAFers to post things like, "After seeing that I couldn't sleep for three days," or, "Which more scary: the best survival-horror EVAR or a mediocre nuke sequence?" And if you can't pull that off. . . for the love of pants, don't try. Or just stick to making DB episodes.

You can say this about literally any violence whatsoever in games, movies, TV.
 

Foffy

Banned
I quite liked ArmA II's Eagle Wing campaign. It's a three mission campaign, but the end of the first mission involves the detonation of a nuke, and the rest of the campaign is about escaping the island.

All of the game's factions break tribalism and turns into a fend for oneself thing. Pretty cool stuff.
 

Neiteio

Member
One of my favorite aspects of MGS: Peace Walker was its in-depth discussion on nuclear deterrence. Makes me wonder what Kojima thinks of current world events.
 

PKrockin

Member
In terms of perception, yes, to a terrifying extent. Most people think of nukes as really big, really hot grenades that happen to make mushroom clouds because science(?). That includes elected officials these days. They may not think they're underestimating nukes, but that's Dunning-Kruger for you. I'd rather we not learn how wrong we are the hard way, but I think the more Hollywood and video games nerf the perception of nukes, the easier it will get for elected imbeciles to use them.

Not to derail the thread, but I can't recall an instance where any video game gave me the impression the designer knew the slightest fucking thing about nukes. There's room in the world for absurdity, OK, so I'm not talking about Worms or Dragonball per se. If the story's taking itself seriously at all though, these things are fucking horrifying. An earnest portrayal of nukes should be causing GAFers to post things like, "After seeing that I couldn't sleep for three days," or, "Which more scary: the best survival-horror EVAR or a mediocre nuke sequence?" And if you can't pull that off. . . for the love of pants, don't try. Or just stick to making DB episodes.
If you can't horrify players so much that they can't sleep for three days afterward, don't even try? That sounds like an outrageously high bar. I don't know of any horror game that was able to scare gaffers nearly that much.
 
If you can't horrify players so much that they can't sleep for three days afterward, don't even try? That sounds like an outrageously high bar. I don't know of any horror game that was able to scare gaffers nearly that much.

Yeah dude's kinda being ridiculous, shooting multiple people with firearms should make people not sleep for days either.
 
It isn't as visually spectacular as most the suggestions here, but I have a real fondness for the nuclear grenades from Syndicate Wars. The idea of a hand thrown mini-nuke is so ridiculous and I love it.
 

Neptonic

Member
None of them are done right. An accurate view of a nuke blast would be this:
1040x693_94_1_c_FFFFFF_f76e839a9189a0c37114dee6d861c332.jpg

. . . and that'd be the last thing you saw before it literally melted your eyeballs.

Stop using nukes in fiction like they're OP conventional explosives; it's normalizing the wrong concept.
Stop appropriating nuke culture
 

Eblo

Member
I really liked the one in Infamous 2 because of its proximity to the protagonists and the resulting effects. It was the first time I had seen something like it in a video game or any fiction.
 

KDR_11k

Member
The most powerful (to an absurd degree) are the nukes in AI War. The Mark I destroys a planet, the Mark II also destroys all planets within 1 wormhole jump and the Mark III destroys the entire galaxy. The latter two are just too stupid to ever use.

I see no one pointed out the actual game with the best nukes, Supreme Commander.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kelb7XVh4cU

And of course its predecessor, Total Annihilation. Probably the most powerful nukes in gameplay of any game. Which of course shows more how underpowered nukes are in videgoames, usually...

Of course some of that can be attributed to scaling, RTSes especially scale down distances like crazy (some of the units would have ranges of multiple kilometers IRL but get limited to about a screen's worth) because it just gets too awkward to see anything at realistic scales. So of course nukes have to be downscaled as well.
 
Much smaller scale, but I'm a big fan of Nuclear Ejections in the Titanfall games. Overload that core, bail out into the sky, and quickly look down and watch every enemy in the immediate area scramble for cover or struggle to back out of the explosion, all while the blinding light from the core overheating goes off.

HomelyUnlinedAddax-size_restricted.gif
 
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