Extra Punctuation: A Hard Weapon Is Good to Find

[Deadcyde]

i prefer some of the world war two games because of this... even hamstringing myself with bolt action rifles against sub machine gun users. and COD:world at war has a headshot mechanic that causes a "plunk" of your bullet penetrating the enemy helmet and ending their brain pan that is just tasty combined with the satisfying CRACK (semi intended pun) of the bolt action.

 

[Azo Galvat]

Quake II's rocket launcher, the BFG 10k, the M60 in Blops, all good sounds.

also, the revolver in the original Half-Life, the SPAS-12 from the sane game, most of those guns had great sounds.

 

[TheRealCJ]

You er... wanna box of tissues there big fella?

 

[Elf Defiler Korgan]

Yes the details. After years of gaming, I went shooting as a boy. The double shotty I liked, the boom, the sound of destruction of ant-hills, the clack opening and closing, the slide of the shells. It had a satisfying feel in the flesh. My favourite though, was a Mauser long rifle, heavy shells, bolt action. An authentic weapon from WWI. There was a bit to do between each shot, and it sure was loud and powerful. Games do need to remember what using weapons involves, to convey the feel and the sounds. I also do a bit of fencing, and that sport has so many small satisfying sounds in a bout. The tang of a beat, the scrape of a parry, the screech of locked swords, the thud of contact, the swipe of a missed cut, the whirr of a feinting blade. Good judges can even determine what happened in a bout purely by sound. This is a part of reality, and an essential part of excitement in games.

 

[Strazdas]

very good article as always.
i had a close encounter with such changes lately. Started playing World of tanks, however it being mostly flash-based the shooting animation lags my slow graphic card a lot. So i found a solution - removing the smoke and spark of a turret when firing removes the lag. result is you only see the shot hit the enemy and there is no animation of your gun shooting. and now it feels so much less fun shooting at enemies. and yet spot on you write article about it. your a mindreader

 

[Lightningnitro]

So glad you put the Doom II super shotgun in there, that thing was meaty even through the PC speaker!! Personally I think Rise of the Triad deserves at least a mention, Firebomb, Excalibat, Drunk Missile, Flamewall, shit, even dog mode's sneeze attack had more oomph than half the shit they release now days.

 

[Fenn]

Why was Killing Floor not mentioned here? Every weapon in that game has a great feeling of weight and impact, probably the best I've ever felt in a game.

 

[WaReloaded]

Bad Company 2 has the sounds down, naturally. Especially the Barrett. It's like you can hear the tubular metal.

And for damage feedback, nothing I've seen has beaten the first F.E.A.R.

EDIT: Also, swords in Oblivion feel terrible. There's no force behind those swings and enemies usually have no reaction. The only thing that makes heavier weapon better is the impact sound. Bows on the other hand, one-shotting someone with an arrow feels amazing. It would be better if the physics sucked less.

The F.E.A.R. shotgun is incredible, I remember using it as a sniper rifle. That's how good it was/is.

 

[Rack]

This is my biggest problem with MMORPGs, you make your attack and go through an animation but the enemies never flinch. Whenever there's an ability that has a tangible impact on the battlefield such as Death Knights Death Grip in WoW or the amazing Wormhole in City of Heroes I end up over-using them just from being starved of impact.

 

[Puggeh]

As far as "feeling" and "sound" to a gun without it being anything out of the ordinary, I always thought highly of Killing Floor's pump shotgun. It wasn't very powerful, but sounded like a cannon, felt like there was actual effort into pumping it each time (based on animation), and still gave enemies a strong kick-back when it did finally punch through their health.
Not much I can say on that game's overall positives, but some design choices like that have gotten me to look back on it somewhat fondly.

 

[Mr Companion]

Demons Souls, every weapon is satisfying as hell. Even the smallest blade sounds like its tearing into your opponent and thats only slashing, getting a backstab or a counter in sees your character jamming the given weapon right into the victim and kicking him/her away violently.

 

[Joshroom]

For me some of weapons in Fallout 3 were the best. Especially the hunting rifle and the Fat Boy. The Hunting Rifle had a beautiful shot sound and I loved the reload; while the Fat Boy made a very satisfying 'phoot' noise as you launched the nuke.

 

[Stein Inge]

Where can I get the "Game Maker" Yahtzee was using?

Sounds like fun..

EDIT:
OT: The Metal Gear series have some of my favorite guns: from the SOCOM to the PSG1. They were all great.

 

[Num1d1um]

First thing anybody making a fps swords-and-bows game needs to do is make the swords affect the enemy. This is what ruined oblivion for me. Basically the entire appeal of mellee weapons is that, unlike bullets, you're beating them with a heavy, solid object, and they need to react accordingly. This was always what I liked about Condemned. They make beating somebody to death with a drive shaft FEEL like you're beating somebody to death with a drive shaft.

Dark Messiah of Might and Magic.

 

[PsiMatrix]

There's been so many wonderful weapons I've wielded in games.

One of my favourites was from Resident Evil 2 - the upgraded shotgun. If ever there was a gun that was equal to the Doom 2 double-barrelled, that was it. It sounded awesome and turned the zombies into wonderful splatter marks against the wall (figuratively since the game had bitmap backdrops). EDIT - oh and the recoil really did give you a sense of 'fuck me'. I once cheated by giving it umlimited ammo and navigated the entire police station using the recoil alone.

Turok 2 has another 'pick up the pieces' weapon in the form of the Fusion Cannon (aka Nuke). Long wind up noise, released the plasma and then KABOOM!, everything was gone. One of its other more satisfying weapons was the Cerebral Bore. A small homing shell that attached to the victim's skull and literally bore out their brains in a lovely visceral blood fountain and then they dropped dead. Very satisfying.

 

[Et3rnalLegend64]

First thing anybody making a fps swords-and-bows game needs to do is make the swords affect the enemy. This is what ruined oblivion for me. Basically the entire appeal of mellee weapons is that, unlike bullets, you're beating them with a heavy, solid object, and they need to react accordingly.

And there goes my line. Yeah, I eventually fell out of love with Oblivion partially for that reason.

You just swing your weapon over and over again until the target falls dead. Even if you use a power attack with a hammer, it doesn't exactly send them flying. If you shoot fireballs at a charging enemy, they just take it and keep coming at you unphased. Arrows have no feeling of impact behind them. If you're fighting a powerful enemy, it could have arrows sticking out of its face and not flinch.

I love my Borderlands Burning Revolver. The sound from pulling the trigger is really satisfying, as is being able to see your enemy flinch as they get impacted by a burning slug and later burn to ashes. Unless I find a good Repeater with X3+ Shock or Corrosion, I might never stop using Revolvers. I also love my uber high capacity rapid fire shotgun when I just have to tear something apart really quickly (or one-shot a bunch of smaller enemies in quick succession).

 

[Thamian]

As far as viscerally pleasing guns are concerned, a fair few of the guns in HL2 were awesome (shotgun, pulse rifle, assault rifle's secondary fire, crossbow... even the super grav gun was great fun on the grounds that you could grab enemies with it and then take out entire platoons with their corpse), the nuke launcher in ME2 was amazing even if it was generally bloody useless (and the widow... Oh gods the widow), and I'm really running out of memorable guns at this point...

Ah well, the real point is detail and sound design (the latter of which is so often overlooked in favour of the music and graphical design), and some of the best examples of both I've yet seen were RTSs. Specifically Ground Control (which even had the sound of stray rounds wizzing past the camera and the sounds and sights of spent cases being ejected from the autoloaders on the tanks), C&C3 (anyone else remember the awesomeness of a massed Mammoth tank charge from before they emasculated the things?) and just about everything Relic's ever made (Homeworld series (i'll include cataclysm in this), DoW1 and DoW2, and I haven't played the other one or two games).

EDIT: Upon further reflection I realised that othe genres have turned out some doozies as well such as System Shock 2, the first two Dungeon Siege games (I haven't played the third yet, but considering Square Enix was behind it I'm not hopeful), and Half Life I've already mentioned.

 

[puffy786]

A hard weapon is good to find? Is that a typo or something?
Well I love awesome weapons and I expect different awesome weapons from different games. They usually only appear in Sci-Fi games while you'll be damned if you can be a above average gun in a "realistic" brown FPS where awesomeness is somehow the polar opposite of being hardcore. One awesome weapon that I can think of right now is the lightning gun from Dark Corners of the Earth. It has spinning bolts that is visibly electrified with the electricity flowing in between each bolt. Upon charging the gun, the bolts bends out and a loop of electricity starts flowing around the bolts quickly with a "chew" sound being played. Upon firing, the screen turns part white, Jack gets a visible kickback, and then the gun than emits a cloud of electricity that blurs the screen upon detonation. What I didn't like was the charging time, and the lack of visible effect upon the enemy, and it gets dull after a while since the only other weapons, the tommy and rifle, is useless against the monsters so spamming lightning losses its touch by the end of the game.

 

[puffy786]

Theres also a list on Cool Weapons
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ImpossiblyCoolWeapon

 

[Saelune]

Ah, never did I truly understand this idea until Call of Duty 3. Having mastered the Kar 98k Bolt Action Rifle in CoD2, I immediatly used it in CoD3...but it wasnt the same. It felt like some pea shooter. Sure it worked the same, but it did not feel as satisfactory to pop your head from across the map (sans scope).