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What are the most Bullet/Damage Sponge-y Games?

TimeSplitters 2, but I don't recall if the other two were as bad in this regard. The animation of the enemy recoiling back when shot is just burned into memory, because it's the only thing you see over and over and over as they take shot after shot. The game's combat was a massive step down from GE/PD.
 
I recall FFXII bosses and some rare enemies having way too much HP.
With the gambit system, you could literally step away from the game and just come back every 5 minutes to see if your guys won yet.
 
Devil May Cry 3's original US Normal feels like a plodding afterthought of a mode due to the amount of damage enemies and bosses soak up.
 
Uncharted was the worst. Gears was bad, but they were alien looking bug creatures from inside the planet. Uncharted had Random Red Shirt Guy #67 taking half a clip to go down. It made no sense in the context of the game. I realize most non-realistic games do this, but Uncharted was the worst offender.
 
Uncharted is one of the worst offenders. Also Saints Row 3 more recently.

But really, this thing doesn't bother me with non-protected non-human ennemies or protected humans (wearing a bullet-proof vest or in armour in futuristic settings for example) and aliens. But with a shirtless human ? Fuck that shit. I don't believe in men and women eating their weight in lead like it's nothing.
 
Dragonzord said:
Uncharted. All of them but especially 1.
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What? The first Uncharted? Every enemy in the game died of a single headshot. 3-4 body shots. The only dumb thing was the little dodge they would do sometimes. Unless we're talking about multiplayer...Uncharted is absolutely awful in that regard.

Gears is the worst offender in my book.
 
BigBoss said:
They also die with 3 pistol shots to the chest in Uncharted 1 and the enemies react to every single shot, how is that spongy? In Gears 1 you have to empty 3/4 of a Lancer magazine to bring down a grub and he doesn't react to any of your bullets, I'm convinced most people don't even know what bullet sponges are.
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Yeah, I'm really confused. As far as bullet sponging goes, Uncharted 1 is one of the least offensive. It's pretty similar to Counter-Strike as far as damage goes. Enemies don't take more shots to kill on higher difficulties which is great as well.
 
The first Battlefield: Bad Company. The most powerful assault rifle in the game only did 10 percent damage per shot in multiplayer.
 
Tain said:
Devil May Cry 3's original US Normal feels like a plodding afterthought of a mode due to the amount of damage enemies and bosses soak up.
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Outside of shooters is a neat direction to take this thread.

Probably SoR3 US version is the most obvious beat-em-up example.
 
I love Uncharted but man normal human beings should not have to be shot so many damn times... breaks immersion for me big time. Don't care if I'm playing on Hard or Crushing that shit is annoying.
 
How no one has mentioned Halo is beyond me. It's especially terrible in multiplayer and why I generally hate the series.
 
Black too. The enemies had invulnerable frames between each shot you could take... So no point of shooting 15 bullets because they won't receive more than one per second
 
Surprised no one has said Half Life.

The soldiers in that took like 30 bullets to take down when using the rifle. I spent the second half of that game using the alien gun with unlimited ammo because of how spongy everyone is.
 
BioShock 1 @ 2, IMO, does it right. You can't just shoot shoot shoot enemies, unless you are ready to constantly be low on ammo. There is a way to fight those enemies with weapons and Plasmids without having the need to spam or use everything on one enemy.

Uncharted, on the other hand, does it wrong. Metro, of all those games, is easily the worst offender.
 
I'm just wondering why people feel the bullet sponge is a bad thing. Does every game have to have insta-kill bullet mechanics or even realistic bullet mechanics? Why can't a shooting game revolve around prolonged focused-fire enemies?
 
N2NOther said:
How no one has mentioned Halo is beyond me. It's especially terrible in multiplayer and why I generally hate the series.
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Decent health pool plus a shield... yep I agree with you, forgot about Halo. Don't play much of it myself for those very reasons.
 
I seem to remember one version of splinter cell were the enemies suddenly got metal skulls once you had been detected.
 
I always thought bullet sponge, by definition, means that there is no reaction/animation in response to getting hit in addition to the enemy taking way too many bullets to kill.

Seems like several games mentioned don't fit with that.

Infinite Ammo said:
Decent health pool plus a shield... yep I agree with you, forgot about Halo. Don't play much of it myself for those very reasons.
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The shield is a pretty good explanation though inst it? The shield IS effectively a bullet sponge.
 
Can we please get some clarification from those saying Uncharted? Enemies never take more than a headshot or 3-4 bodyshots. If you're inaccurate and not managing recoil, then that's one thing, but enemies were definitely not bullet sponges. The sequels added in bullet sponges, but the first game is pretty great for not inflating enemy health pools, regardless of the difficulty.
 
Gears of War is by far the worst offender

Uncharted at least has enemies that seem to notice being shot even if it doesn't slow them down

Standing there in Gears of War and unloading more than a full clip into an enemy to take them down is mind-bogglingly

Maybe just maybe we should have an assault rifle that uses a little larger bullets with half the clip-size???

Seriously that was so dumb
 
I love uncharted but what I didn't like so much was that in order to take someone down with body shots you had to time them to hit one after every shot animation (shot 1, flinch, wait, shot 2, etc), instead of just quickly popping 3 shots to the chest and call it a deal, this applies to the standard pistol/ak-47 combo, somewhat remedied with headshots.

HOWEVER the developers included shotguns and one shot pistols like the magnum .44 and the sniper rifle (with fewer ammo) so the risk/reward was there and I had a lot of fun once I stopped worrying about having a makarov/ak-47 stuffed all the time.

[Late game spoilers]
Running around screaming and firing from the hip with the MP40 became my strategy against the german mutants, I was so scared and couldn't aim for shit, lol
.
 
Borderlands 2 in UVHM.

For a game with however many bazillion guns, its shocking that endgame focusses on select weapons.
(example: ZERO: love thumper, rubi, rapier)

While it can be played with any weapon, if you dont, its bullet sponge to the point of tedium.

∞
 
Parallacs said:
Surprised no one has said Half Life.

The soldiers in that took like 30 bullets to take down when using the rifle. I spent the second half of that game using the alien gun with unlimited ammo because of how spongy everyone is.
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Depends on the gun you used, the M5 is a shitty weapon outside of its alt-fire.

But those aliens that shoot bees out of their hands were ridiculous.
 
raziel said:
I'll break the monotony of responses; Metroid Prime 2.
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I came into this thread to mention this. Enemies and bosses have so much health in this game, and it makes things really tedious sometimes. The first Metroid Prime kind of has this problem too.

Retro_ said:
Outside of shooters is a neat direction to take this thread.

Probably SoR3 US version is the most obvious beat-em-up example.
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This too. The standard enemies in the last stage having multiple life bars is hilarious.
 
Blacksite: Area 51... For the player. You could survive a ridiculous amount of punishment in that game, even on the harder difficulties. Considering that you're just supposed to be a normal soldier, I found it pretty hilarious that you can tank anything including a rocket launcher to the face.

Sir Ilpalazzo said:
I came into this thread to mention this. Enemies and bosses have so much health in this game, and it makes things really tedious sometimes. The first Metroid Prime kind of has this problem too.
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The first Metroid Prime wasn't bad with this other than the Beam Troopers.

Metroid Prime 2 was bloody awful about it, especially with the bosses. Emperor Ing's final form can easily take 20 minutes.
 
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