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Bullet Sponges - Which Games Are the Worst Offenders?

Huggy said:
Final boss in Stranglehold. One old geezer who can have 20 more special slo-mo sniper shots to the head than his goons.

That was pretty ridiculous, especially after you take out a helicopter with less bullets 5 minutes before that.
 
Resistance 1 (havent played 2)
Even head shots didint work you had to spend a magazine to killl a chimera it was so annoying
 
Guevara said:
Does this diminish your enjoyment of a game or am I’m crazy?

That doesn't diminish my enjoyment of a game. I guess you're just crazy. :p

Seriously, I'm all about 'cinematic realism' in games, where the starter handgun you spawn with is about as effective as a pocketknife and a 'man-stopper' is a monster bazooka, not a .44 Magnum. The fact that a popgun doesn't put down enemies in one or two hits isn't a problem if there are more powerful weapons higher up on the food chain that will. And yes, headshots should be deadly, even with weaker weapons. It's a good mechanic that rewards player skill.
 
Revolutionary said:
Halo (Brutes) and Gears of War (everything) come to mind.


...and those listing Uncharted realize that almost every "bullet sponge" enemy can be taken down with 1 headshot... right?
The only exceptions are the supernatural enemies in each game.

Headshots are not as assured as in other games. And the minigun guys don't go down in one headshot unless you use a sniper rifle (and even then it requires more than one shot)
 
Far Cry 2 - you can sink multiple AR bullets into someone before he goes down... then he gets back up again! argh

Just Cause 2 - not sure if it's more to do with the insane bullet spray, but it takes far too many bullets to kill one person.
 
Fallout 3 actually has headshot sponges, which is even worse than your standard bullet sponges.

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I shoot a guy in the head, and yet he keeps running at me like nothing happened. So I shoot him again, right between the eyes. This time I get a message stating that his head is "disabled". Cool. Yet he keeps on running at me...

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

Even with that major gripe I still love the game to death.
 
i still don't buy the "because they are an alien race" thing. if they have tough skins that require 10x more bullets to kill than humans, you'd think the humans would come up with a weapon that exploits their weakness, ie: fire or poison gas or something. sure, sometimes aliens just APPEAR and we are all fucked but when it's a big organized military situation then we've had enough time to come up with something.

if the devs use that line for games that it applies to then are they admitting to going out of their way to make the gameplay dull? :lol
 
MjFrancis said:
Gears of War gets a pass because the enemies aren't human. Humanoid, sure, but I'll grant the locust a bullet-resistant hide.

Well that and Gears isn't a run and gun game, so the bullet sponge effect actually *works* for the game. You don't want the enemies to go down too quickly because you need the player to stop and pop and make moves to get into better position. 3-4 shot kills would break the single player.

Now, multiplayer needs to be toned down a bit.
 
Also, stop saying games like Fallout 3 or Stalker are bullet sponge games.. even the first ME1 are all dice roll based.

The enemies may take too much damage or whatever, but they aren't really shooters. Probably part of the reason a lot of games don't like the games, they don't get the dice roll effect going on in combat situations.
 
J-Rzez said:

Uncharted 2 was an improvement over the first one, and yes, in Gears Horde mode, the large enemies were incredibly dumb and were worse than anything in U2. I agree there. That's part of the design though along with the slow movement. If they made the lancer any stronger, people wouldn't even be able to get close. If you played MP, you'd understand. There's already a ton of other weapons that can one shot kill at distance.

To say that Halo is bullet sponge heavy is ridiculous. Most of the enemies can be taken out in a couple shots max. Play firefight and figure it out.
 
SalsaShark said:
ITT: People dont understand Fallout 3.

Its not a fuckin shooter people.
That's some nitpicky shit right there. I do understand the mechanics of the game.

But ANY game that lets me fire high powered weaponry into somebody's face without killing them is stupid. Its stupid whether its the result of a die roll, or something fully animated in 3D, or both.

If I'm fighting a giant super mutant or zombie I'd let it slide to a certain extent. But the game left a bad taste in my mouth from the very first humanoid guards able to take half a clip to their brainpan and still manage to run up and swing their batons at me.
 
NullPointer said:
That's some nitpicky shit right there. I do understand the mechanics of the game.

But ANY game that lets me fire high powered weaponry into somebody's face without killing them is stupid. Its stupid whether its the result of a die roll, or something fully animated in 3D, or both.

If I'm fighting a giant super mutant or zombie I'd let it slide to a certain extent. But the game left a bad taste in my mouth from the very first humanoid guards able to take half a clip to their brainpan and still manage to run up and swing their batons at me.

Even if you are shooting without VATS, there´s still a dice roll for your accuracy, same for damage.

If its fun then i dont see whats wrong, i certainly didnt found it frustrating, and i wouldnt like for every game that haves guns to work on the same mechanics (like some of you seem to be implying :/). Its just the way the game is and im glad it stayed (at some extent) on its roots. I remember when it was first announced and i was like "Fallout 3 a shooter ? FUCK THAT", glad it wasnt the case.

The game´s just not for everyone, and certainly not for those expecting usual shooter mechanics. You still said you loved it, so i take it wasnt really that big of an issue. Do you really think it would stand out as much as it does in current-gen games if it had common shooter mechanics ?

Im gonna go on a limb and say that you havent played Fallout 1 & 2. Do it! now! i know you cant un-play fallout 3, but if you were coming from those games on to fallout 3, you´d be glad for the way the game plays in this aspect.

Btw iron sights and more shooter-like mechanics in New Vegas sound weird, but i have faith in Avellone.
 
I like the instant deaths of enemies in Call of Duty, but I wouldn't want every game to be like that. I love Halo's enemy reactions to being shot, they run, they hide, they dodge they return fire, throw grenades. It's a real dynamic that makes every battle play out differently, in campaign/firefight or regular multi.

If someone gets the jump on me in Halo, I still have options to survive or retaliate, or have a team mate save me.
 
I love love love Fallout 3, but that ancient dice roll bullshit needs to GTFO. I'm not playing D&D for christsakes.
 
SalsaShark said:
It has a dice roll system. Even if you are shooting without VATS, there´s still a dice roll for your accuracy, same for damage.

If its fun then i dont see why its stupid. Its just the way the game is and im glad it stayed (at some extent) on its roots. I remember when it was first announced and i was like "Fallout 3 a shooter ? FUCK THAT", glad it wasnt the case.

The game´s just not for everyone, and certainly not for those expecting usual shooter mechanics. You still said you loved it, so i take it wasnt really that big of an issue. Do you really think it would stand out as much as it does in current-gen games if it had common shooter mechanics ?

Im gonna go on a limb and say that you havent played Fallout 1 & 2. Do it! now! i know you cant un-play fallout 3, but if you were coming from those games on to fallout 3, you´ll be glad for the way the game plays in this aspect.

Btw iron sights and more shooter-like mechanics in New Vegas sound weird, but i have faith in Avellone.
OK, let me give you an example in full-on-geek. Say I was DM for some pen and paper RPG.

How the hell would I be able to explain to the players, with a straight face, why their first two pistol shots to some guy's face doesn't drop him?

Dice rolls don't excuse wildly counter-intuitive results. The fact that Fallout wraps the die rolls on top of a fully realized 3D world exacerbates the problem, as your expectations are even more out of whack with the end result you see in-game.

Lastly, after "disabling" somebody's head they shouldn't be able to sprint up to me and whack me with their baton or metal pipe. It just doesn't make a lick of sense, not on a mechanics level, and not on a fiction level.
 
Kabuki Waq said:
does not mean it cant have good shooting mechanics.

I reckon the point is that saying FO3 should have good shooting mechanics is like saying Dragon Age should have good fighting mechanics. It's an RPG with dice-roll elements (player stats, gun condition, et al) that just happens to play a lot like a shooter. Does not count in this context, imo.
 
I agree with Uncharted. The game is great and I love it, but those enemies take forever to shoot down unless you head shot them.

It's kind of odd when a hand gun is more effective than gunning them down with a assault rifle.

Also, the difference between hardcore and normal team deathmatch in MW2 is also huge. I can't go back to playing normal anymore because playing hardcore threw me off now.
 
gdt5016 said:
I love love love Fallout 3, but that ancient dice roll bullshit needs to GTFO. I'm not playing D&D for christsakes.

Oh, God. No. Just...no.

It's an RPG. There is nothing ancient about RPGs. Stop that. You're the reason we're getting the DA2 we're getting. That's on your head, pal.
 
WanderingWind said:
Oh, God. No. Just...no.

It's an RPG. There is nothing ancient about RPGs. Stop that. You're the reason we're getting the DA2 we're getting. That's on your head, pal.

RPG doesn't have to be synonymous with dice roll mechanics. And it isn't.

And I haven't played DA:O yet (having sitting on my shelf, it's next), but all the changes sound better to me.

Except the iso view. I personally hate it, but I don't see why they'd remove features for no reason.

I gues.
 
gdt5016 said:
RPG doesn't have to be synonymous with dice roll mechanics. And it isn't.

Yes it is. And yes it is. If you think otherwise, then you don't really like RPGs.

EDIT: After your edit, I've decided to just not discuss this particular topic with you. I'd only get needlessly angry. :lol
 
NullPointer said:
OK, let me give you an example in full-on-geek. Say I was DM for some pen and paper RPG.

How the hell would I be able to explain to the players, with a straight face, why their first two pistol shots to some guy's face doesn't drop him?

Thats part of the fun of pen & paper RPG man, stuff like that can happen :lol . If the game´s setting had a rule about damage related to the repair status of your weapon, or the enemy´s strenght/defense (like fallout 3 does) then it would be understandable.

NullPointer said:
Dice rolls don't excuse wildly counter-intuitive results. The fact that Fallout wraps the die rolls on top of a fully realized 3D world exacerbates the problem, as your expectations are even more out of whack with the end result you see in-game.

This i can understand. Its certainly among the first of its kind to put such strong pen and paper RPG elements in a full 3D world, and it even disguises itself too much (IMO) as a common shooter, this could have been worked, as i think a lot of people got the wrong idea, or it was just hard to believe/comprehend on a first person perspective instead of your usual dungeon crawler-style POV.

NullPointer said:
Lastly, after "disabling" somebody's head they shouldn't be able to sprint up to me and whack me with their baton or metal pipe. It just doesn't make a lick of sense, not on a mechanics level, and not on a fiction level.

When you shoot a part of the enemy´s body and it becomes crippled it just has the same effect that it has when it happens to you. If its your head then you become sort of sick, start seeing blurry, kinda like if you were drunk. If you cripple his leg, then he walks slower/cant run, if its the arm, then he drops its weapon, etc.

The head part may sound kind of silly, but like you said, you are "disabling" his head, not destroying it, and the effect it has within the game its the one i described.
 
And die rolls still don't excuse enemies that take multiple gunshots to the face. It would be just as funky in a pen/paper RPG as it is in-game.

EDIT: And hey, when I *did* GM RPGs back in the day, if we rolled the dice and got some crazy ass result like that I'd ignore it or spin it a different way to where it actually made sense. That's one of the benefits of having an actual human playing the role of GM/DM instead of a calculator. We can ignore the rules as needed to keep the tone of the game going.

In fact, its just that level of weirdness that could result from slavish attention to die rolls that led our group to move to RPGs that depended less and less on dice, until we got rid of them altogether in the name of a good story and a good time.

SalsaShark said:
When you shoot a part of the enemy´s body and it becomes crippled it just has the same effect that it has when it happens to you. If its your head then you become sort of sick, start seeing blurry, kinda like if you were drunk. If you cripple his leg, then he walks slower/cant run, if its the arm, then he drops its weapon, etc.

The head part may sound kind of silly, but like you said, you are "disabling" his head, not destroying it, and the effect it has within the game its the one i described.
So when I shoot an enemy AI and disable their head I am making their vision blurry? Whats the point?

WanderingWind said:
Now, you could fix this and make us all happy by making headshots be super effective, but also very, very hard to hit. Making it a gamble every time you decide to aim for the head, rather than center mass.
Agreed entirely. And add true feedback. Enemies shot in the face should drop their weapon, stagger back in shock, grabbing their face and howling in rage and pain. That is, if you don't just flat out drop them in one hit.
 
HL2 - It seemed the bullet sponge damage model was design to compensate for the moronic ai combine that stand still while you fight them.

Battlefield bad company 1 - For games like hl2 and halo its reasonable because of the shields and sci-fi motifs but a modern day military shooter should not have the bullet sponge damage model.
 
NullPointer said:
And die rolls still don't excuse enemies that take multiple gunshots to the face. It would be just as funky in a pen/paper RPG as it is in-game.

Yes it does. Because if a headshot was "realistic" in this sense, then it would have to be removed from the dice roll system. The very nature of a dice roll means that you'd have a crappy roll every so often. Remove that, and it's no longer an RPG. It's a shooter with RPG elements.

Now, you could fix this and make us all happy by making headshots be super effective, but also very, very hard to hit. Making it a gamble every time you decide to aim for the head, rather than center mass.
 
NullPointer said:
So when I shoot an enemy AI and disable their head I am making their vision blurry? Whats the point?

They do change their attack pattern, it IS barely noticeable though, what you do notice is the fact that they´re accuracy drops, a lot. It just isnt really worth it if he´s meleeing you with a sledgehammer, ill give you that. But the biggest reward is them stopping for a few seconds to shake their heads, thats when you go for the big blow.

In the previous games you crippled his eyes, they changed it to head and created a confusion, i guess.
 
I don't have anything to add to the list of spongy games (Hope Metro's not too bad... I'm playing it right now. I have some other issues with it... namely it doesn't feel quite at home on 360... but annoying levels of sponginess would do me in).

But what this topic reminded me was how pleasantly surprised I've been by Red Dead Redemption (which I also started just recently)... maybe I just misremember GTA, but it seems easier to down an enemy in Red Dead. Hope it stays that way.

I much prefer more flimsy enemies (or an equal number of smarter enemies) to bullet sponges. When I start questioning how lame it is that an enemy isn't dead or apparently hurt yet by my barrage of bullets, a game has gone too far.
 
WanderingWind said:
Now, you could fix this and make us all happy by making headshots be super effective, but also very, very hard to hit. Making it a gamble every time you decide to aim for the head, rather than center mass.
Alpha Protocol had something like this. You could either blast away hoping to hit a guy in the face and/or other areas, or you could wait a while, focus your aim and your reticule would shrink and you'd get a guaranteed critical hit that landed where you were aiming. You could pull it off regardless of your weapon skill (though more points would make the reticule shrink faster), but you had to take the time to pull it off. If you put points into the weapon you'd do more damage and get more accurate, along with a few special abilities.

A lot of people still hated it though ("whaaaa I can't hit stuff with no skillpoints waaah"), I thought it was a pretty nifty idea.
 
SalsaShark said:
They do change their attack pattern, it IS barely noticeable though, what you do notice is the fact that they´re accuracy drops, a lot. It just isnt really worth it if he´s meleeing you with a sledgehammer, ill give you that. But the biggest reward is them stopping for a few seconds to shake their heads, thats when you go for the big blow.

In the previous games you crippled his eyes, they changed it to head and created a confusion, i guess.
Yep. Count me in as one of the confused. ;P

Luckily though, if you get farther into the game and get your hands on more powerful weaponry this becomes less and less an issue. Regardless I'm still a huge fan of Fallout 3, but I'd expect them to change their shooting mechanics in a true sequel.

I think it comes down to what alr1ghtstart said on the previous page. If the enemies react in the right way it can be OK. The games that manage to give awesome reaction animations that communicate that yes, you are kicking their ass, and no, they still aren't dead, are just a lot more enjoyable, realistic or not.
 
Danne-Danger said:
Alpha Protocol had something like this. You could either blast away hoping to hit a guy in the face and/or other areas, or you could wait a while, focus your aim and your reticule would shrink and you'd get a guaranteed critical hit that landed where you were aiming. You could pull it off regardless of your weapon skill (though more points would make the reticule shrink faster), but you had to take the time to pull it off. If you put points into the weapon you'd do more damage and get more accurate, along with a few special abilities.

A lot of people still hated it though ("whaaaa I can't hit stuff with no skillpoints waaah"), I thought it was a pretty nifty idea.

Yeah, but AP also had magic invisibility. Still loved it though. :D
 
Stumpokapow said:
Both Resistance games are sort of bad for this; it's not so much the number of bullets enemies take, it's the way that they don't react at all to being shot until they fall over dead.


Yes, it's just man...doing cover and shooting action for about five minutes is ridiculous.
 
NullPointer said:
Regardless I'm still a huge fan of Fallout 3, but I'd expect them to change their shooting mechanics in a true sequel.

Well they are doing just that with New Vegas, even adding iron sights as i mentioned before.

Im guessing the outcome will be you being happy and me being sad :lol

Still pumped as hell for the game, dont really see that as a game breaker.
 
NullPointer said:
That's some nitpicky shit right there. I do understand the mechanics of the game.

But ANY game that lets me fire high powered weaponry into somebody's face without killing them is stupid. Its stupid whether its the result of a die roll, or something fully animated in 3D, or both.

If I'm fighting a giant super mutant or zombie I'd let it slide to a certain extent. But the game left a bad taste in my mouth from the very first humanoid guards able to take half a clip to their brainpan and still manage to run up and swing their batons at me.
Sneak + Hunting Rifle non-VATS to the head took care of anything other than Brutes and up. A second headshot in VATS took care of most anything else. And you can get the Hunting Rifle extremely early in the game. The Sneak Critical Bonus is a godsend.
 
Coxswain said:
I think the opposite issue is way worse of a problem. Any interesting gameplay mechanics you might have in your game are useless if every enemy dies to a single burst from any old weapon. It's especially bad in multiplayer; if there isn't enough time between getting shot and dying for you to turn to face the enemy, fire back, and try to move out of the way, then you can't even really call it a competitive shooter so much as a glorified game of two-way hide-and-seek.

I don't agree with this at all. If you're getting shot in the back then it means your in game spacial awareness is shit and you deserve to die. The player who managed to catch you with your pants down should be rewarded for out manoeuvring you, not the other way around.

The problem is these games often have crazy autoaim/aim assist(lol) without any recoil and so I believe dev's try to balance that out by giving the player on the receiving end a fighting chance when they really should be twiddling their thumbs waiting to respawn.

Instead it often leads to a lot of nonsense jumping around in close combat. I'm a firm believer than if you leave the ground you shouldn't be landing alive and the game should be trying to ensure that happens.

Probably why the assault rifle in no longer automatic in Halo but i'm not going to hate on it too much because I did quite enjoy CE multi 16 player lans.
 
Almost every Medal of Honor ever made, ever. Personally I found Airborne to be the shittiest in this department. Liked the game overall, but the
MG42-wielding Super Nazis
towards the end took fucking ludicrous amounts of firepower to take down.

Agreed entirely. And add true feedback. Enemies shot in the face should drop their weapon, stagger back in shock, grabbing their face and howling in rage and pain. That is, if you don't just flat out drop them in one hit.

This is precisely why I love Euphoria, it made RDR's gunplay so awesome, one shot to the head and dudes are fucking done (as they should be, given the gaping exit wounds). Their reactions to bullet impacts are unrivaled right now, more (see --> all) shooters need to use it from now on :D Apparently Max Payne 3 is using Euphoria, which is great.
 
Wthermans said:
The Sneak Critical Bonus is a godsend.

Man, so rewarding. I felt like a total badass killing a bunch of Super Mutants without knowing wtf just hit them.

Silent runner + Ninja + Sniper + Better Criticals FTW, best perks combo ever.
 
People mentioning RE5? Maybe if you're playing it as a pure shooter. Melee attacks are a core part of the gameplay, and when you have headshot > melee > ground finisher (stomp the head for a sure kill), there really isn't much of a bullet sponge problem. The last few chapters are an exception, but those sections were practically made for the rifle, and it only takes a single well-placed rifle shot to the head to drop the standard enemy.

EDIT: Another general option is using the Beretta 92F. Once you fully upgrade its special property, it has a 50% decap rate. Great for the standard Majini.
 
Goldeneye 00 Agent mode was terrible for this, anything other than (2) headshots was pretty much useless, especially on the later guys.

Yeah also first Gears, even the lowest locusts took about 10 headshots before they went down.
 
SpacLock said:
Goldeneye and Perfect Dark, now those are some serious offenders.

2 Minutes Turkish said:
edit: Goldeneye and Perfect Dark in earlier gens as well. Was beaten to it though.

Neither of you guys have played Perfect Dark. This was one of the few fundamental changes between the two games. In multiplayer nearly any weapon could result in a one to two second kill without headshots.
 
flak57 said:
Neither of you guys have played Perfect Dark. This was one of the few fundamental changes between the two games. In multiplayer nearly any weapon could result in a one to two second kill without headshots.

Yeah headshots were pretty effective, anywhere else though = bullet sponge.
 
onken said:
Yeah headshots were pretty effective, anywhere else though = bullet sponge.
Read again, I said without head shots. And it's closer to one than two.
Goldeneye and Perfect Dark are vastly different in this aspect.

Edit: I was wrong, most weapons are well under a second for a kill, actually closer to 0 than to 1. So yeah, Calling it a bullet sponge game is laughable.
 
SlipperySlope said:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JYlNrwSyRA&feature=search

This is what I'm talking about. He had Fawkes, and I had Charon. And this is just one Reaver, I was fighting multiple. He also had the Sentry Bots helping. On my play through, the sentry bots were destroyed right away.

If this isn't a bullet sponge, I don't know what is :) His bullets weren't doing anything to its health. Or at least nothing noticeable.

And here's a video of a non-glitched Reaver.
http://www.youtube.com/watch#!v=IbyUpufPCRw&feature=related

So it WAS a bug after all. The non-glitch one is actually beatable mano-a-mano.

The one I fought... (in the video I'm quoting)... was the supertank of all supertanks. And there were like three of them at once in the Presidential Metro. All glitched.

This game needed a little more beta testing.
 
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