Realistic Shooting Video Games?

[joffeloff]

I remember a lot of shooters had no life bar or a percentage of health.. You'd either be injured, which meant you'd be gimpy and easier to kill for the rest of the round, or dead at once.

I tried playing a mod for half-life 2 the other day that had almost the rainbow six type of health system. It adds a certain tension because you know you only get one chance to screw up, no picking up a health pack or jumping behind cover (silly console shooters started with that stupidity). I had almost forgotten how much fun such games were until then.

[LoneSniperJim]

Project reality has a pretty realistic damage system that also works, if you get injured and loses beyond 30% of your health, you slowly bleed out unless you get to a medic

[Gunmaster45]

In Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway your dead after one round. The longer you stand out in the open without cover, the more dangerous it becomes until you likely are hit by a round.

But such realism takes a bit of the fun out of games, since you spend most time retrying stuff fifty times, and that alone is not realistic either.

[AdAstra2009]

I love how in operation flashpoint if you had no medics with you and later you are shot in the leg you are basically stuck crawling on the ground for the rest of the mission.

[MattyDienhoff]

Originally Posted by Excalibur

My views on shooters now is the same as comparing to real life gun battles to movies. Games are for entertainment. If the damage for every rifle is bang bang to the chest and you're dead, than that's no fun. The point of playing shooters however realistic or unrealistic is to get away from real life. Some games try to put more so called realism, but they tend to fall back on the usual trends of gameplay

That kind of realism isn't always a 'get killed 12 times in a row' fun killer. Whether it is or not depends on what kind of game the subject in question is, i.e. the way the game world, the AI, and the ballistics work, and perhaps most of all, what kind of situations the player is placed in. As we all know, in the average FPS you will get shot at least a few times in the course of a typical game, no matter what you do or how good you are, because you're almost always outnumbered, you're perpetually in close combat (unless you're sniping), and you're often forced into extremely dangerous situations (such as clearing hallways packed with a dozen enemies or some crazy shit like that) with no strategic alternatives.

There are exceptions to some of those, but I'd say the traits I listed above describe the typical shooter perfectly, even those based in real-world war settings. (Any Call of Duty game makes a good example) Anyway, it's obvious that to make it possible for the player in such a game to die from one hit, or even two or three, would make it painfully difficult.

But, with all that said, 'one shot kill' gameplay can work, can be fun (if you have the least bit of patience) and, if it's done right, it can be just as intense as a typical action-packed FPS. The problem is, to do it right, a game has to be built from the ground-up with this concept in mind, and few developers are willing to do this (since by doing so they're appealing to a different and decidedly smaller crowd), and even fewer manage to do it right.

Games like Call of Duty 4 are well known for their intensity. CoD4 is intense, mostly due to the fact that, in that game, you're being shot at almost constantly. You're always in the thick of it. That's also the main reason it would be so insanely hard if the player could die in one shot -- it's impossible to avoid being shot at least occasionally in that game.

For contrast, take my favorite tactical shooter, Operation Flashpoint, as an example. Firstly, in that game, even as a rifleman in a large battle, you won't get shot at nearly as much as you would be in most FPSs, partially because battles are usually at longer ranges, not all inside buildings or on city streets, but also because in a game like this, the mechanics of battle are just different. You learn to move in a manner that precludes being targeted (moving rapidly from cover to cover, staying low whenever possible).

You're not constantly outnumbered, and you almost always have options how to go about fulfilling your objectives. In other words, you're rarely forced into a situation where you have no options and you're in deep shit no matter what you do, many sections in Call of Duty: World at War, were like this. There's only one way forward blocked by swarms of endlessly respawning enemies and the only way to proceed is to slog forward, time your advance right and pray fate doesn't dump one of the hundreds of random grenades right next to your only piece of cover.

The point is, more often than not, in a game like Call of Duty you frequently die out of sheer bad luck, whereas in a game like OFP, most of the time death is avoidable if you use a little strategy in the way you go about things. It's still entirely possible to get hit in the head by a random rifle bullet and die instantly, but it's unlikely, especially if you know what you're doing. Further, despite the fact that you're shot at less frequently in a game like this, it's actually more intense in the end, both because you don't always expect it, and also because the consequences of being shot are far more dire.

In Call of Duty you're almost always being shot at, and you know that if you do get hit two or three times, you just have to go and hide in the corner until you get better and you're back in the fray (unless you're playing on 'Veteran' difficulty, or 'masochist mode' as I like to call it). Even if you do die the nearest checkpoint is rarely more than a couple minutes back. Requires some suspension of disbelief, but that's alright for that kind of gameplay, it doesn't work very well any other way. But in OFP, you're not always being shot at, but when you are it's particularly harrowing (especially so if you don't know where the fire is coming from) because every time a bullet misses you by inches, you know that if it had hit you, you would, at best, be wounded and unable to aim properly and/or walk (depending on which limbs are hit), or, at worst, be stone cold dead. You're not ambushed at every corner, so you don't usually expect to be, and you're not constantly being shot, so when you are it's appropriately shocking.

This two part gameplay video of Flashpoint does a pretty good job of illustrating everything I just said. In it, the player (me) is shot at a fair bit and has quite a few close calls, but in the end makes it to the end entirely unscathed.

War Cry - 1
War Cry - 2

P.S. If you take one look at this massive post and think 'tl;dr', I won't blame you. Obviously, tactical shooters (and OFP in particular) are one of my passions, but hey, at least I paragraphed it!

[Rockwolf66]

Nice video Matty, Reminds me of Joint Operations. When I played it it was a fun game with realistic bullet physics so you had to adjust your sniper scope corectly for the range or learn how to use the mildots.

Man it was fun snipeing the pilots of flying helocopters with a barret.

[Orca1_9904]

My experience with FPS games based on modern military combat is somewhat limited, but I would suggest the America's Army series (the PC versions; can't speak for the console spin-offs). With the exception of the heavy recruiting material filling the game, it's actually quite realistic; you take a burst from an enemy's AK and you're in a world of hurt, if not dead outright, with no respawn until the round is over (your character can also die from their wounds if not promptly treated by a medic). America's Army 3 seems to be the most realistic thus far as far as weapon performance, once you get past all the glitches. My only complaint with the gun handling in America's Army 3 is how the weapon bobs & weaves all over the place when looking down the sights, like the player's character was intoxicated or something even when in perfect health. The earlier version has a rather impressive weapon assortment, though it's quite starkly limited thus far in the latest version (the U.S. arsenal is limited to the M16A4, M16A4 with M320 grenade launcher, M14A4 Designated Marksman Rifle, M4A1, and M249 SAW, in addition to Frag, Smoke, Stun, and Incendiary grenades). Hope that helps, and happy gaming.

[Chaosut27]

A game that i'm trying to get my hands on is VSB1 which is aparently based on OFP. So i'll report back when i get the chance to play it .

Also, Operation Flashpoint: Dragoon Rising is out in the US i believe. Though it probably wouldn't work on my medium end PC, so i probably won't get to play it for a while .

Originally Posted by Kinzer

For some people, that's true. Games like Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4 are fine with them. However, there are a considerable amount of people out there who would like to a have a more realistic shooter. Yes, games are there to get you away from real life, but they do that by letting you experience something that you probably never will. For instance, most of us aren't going to be on an Elite Counter-Terrorist team, doesn't mean we wouldn't like to pretend we are in a game. And the realism just makes it more believable and essentially more fun.

I feel the same way. I find realistic shooting game's to be far more interesting. Just personally, i get more easily immersed in a atmosphere of a realistic game. Also, I think you make a good point in saying that even the more realistic shooter's provide something that the player is unlikely to experience in real life.

Originally Posted by Orca1_9904

My experience with FPS games based on modern military combat is somewhat limited, but I would suggest the America's Army series (the PC versions; can't speak for the console spin-offs). With the exception of the heavy recruiting material filling the game, it's actually quite realistic; you take a burst from an enemy's AK and you're in a world of hurt, if not dead outright, with no respawn until the round is over (your character can also die from their wounds if not promptly treated by a medic). America's Army 3 seems to be the most realistic thus far as far as weapon performance, once you get past all the glitches...

I haven't actually played America's Army before. Sound pretty cool, so I think i'll download it from steam when my download limit recharges.