Extra Punctuation: A Hard Weapon Is Good to Find

[Shoggoth2588]

Ever played Whacked? That game has a gun which is basically a chicken. Well, it's shaped like a chicken. Anyway, it's a rapid-fire weapon that makes all sorts of chicken noises, firing eggs from what would be the chicken's ass. Really, the sound kind of gets lost in the visceral play but, the weapon was one of the most powerful in the game.

This story has no point. It's just an excellent weapon which has probably been overlooked.

 

[Singularly Datarific]

Goodness, I just went on a tirade about this yesterday! Excellent article, btw.
The whole thing about guns is the sense of empowerment. Empowerment is much more than ingame effectiveness, and so on. You know what? I'll just bring up what I wrote.

I want my guns to have impact when you shoot them. Some huge reaction somehow that shows it's power much better than hit-point changes. If you shoot a rocket launcher, there'd better be a crater where it hits, or at least some sort of godly noise to make up for it.
I think the worst example here is GTA4's guns: they seem insignificant or otherwise underpowered. You fire an automatic weapon only to hear some "clackclackclack" atrocity.
I was at a military reenactment just last Saturday, the thing I was reminded of there is that guns are damn loud. They have impacts on every sense. The shot itself isn't that visually outstanding (only a small muzzle flash and a bit of smoke), but the impact of the noise hitting to you almost feels as if you were shot anyways. Firing a gun should make you feel like a god of thunder, empowering you, because that is exactly what a gun should do. If it sounds like a stapler, it fails to give you that sense of power you need to win.

TL;DR: Guns need to be loud and thundery, like Thor playing on an electric guitar.

If I AM honest, I think I've watched too many of your videos, cos I'm starting to use similar analogies.

 

[MetroidNut]

Love it. See, I've long been a champion of the weapons-that-feel-deadly cause. More specifically, I've long ranted against Star Wars: Battlefront II for having weapons that feel like squirt guns. They didn't sound intimidating, the projectiles moved slowly and boringly, the rate-of-fire was pathetic...etc. Nice to see someone out there drawing attention to these important details!

And possibly giving me an excuse to resume my ranting.

 

[Green Ninja]

Never played Painkiller, but I really enjoyed the guns in Bulletstorm. That had a similar feel, when it came to nailing the enemies to the wall etc.

 

[JUSTINtimeforalaugh]

People don't always appreciate all the little things, but it's worse when the developers don't. You have to really study everything about a game to get the full effect. I wanna be a game developer, but so far it's been daunting. Right now I'm a crew of one man doing the programming, graphics, and sound all together. Not easy....

We should totally team up. Except that I'm as useless a programmer as a carpenter with no thumbs.

I can program in Game Maker. At least, I think I can. Lol. Nothing too fancy. I am just not good at making sprites and people.

 

[Zorpheus]

This is exactly why the first F.E.A.R. game rocks my socks and every game in the franchise after that was distinctively lackluster. In the first game, you got the big bangs, the guys staggering and falling realistically and at times being split in half by a shotgun to the chest. Every game after that has airgun sound effects and people barely registering hits or just exploding in a cloud of generic gore.

I still play the first game, and affectionately call it Action Porn. Whereas F.E.A.R. 3 went out of style after the second playthrough.

 

[Kahunaburger]

Totally explains why everyone in Bad Company 2 goes sniper - just listen to those beautiful gun sounds!

Also, this was a big reason why I liked the Double Anarchy in Borderlands so much, or the fuel rod from Halo. And honorable mention goes to the mingun from tf2.


Also goes a long way towards explaining why everything but the shotgun in Bioshock feels like a toy.

 

[Vicarious Reality]

I'm not sure why, but i fucking love the TOZ-34 in Stalker.
It doesn't sound that impressive but it handles like a thousand dollar metaphor.
One thing i noticed is that while the sawed off shotgun in Shadow of Chernobyl had recoil that swung your entire view up in agony, in the following game it has the recoil of a fucking airgun.
I love how the AK-74 feels in Call of Pripyat, despite probably being one of the worst guns.

Also this.


At 1:10

 

[Dfskelleton]

I agree. The Super Shotgun (along with most of the other Doom weapons) was just really fun to fire. The fact that it tore most smaller, fleshy enemies to bits when it hit them just made it so much more fun.
Remember the Particle Cannon from Wolfenstein? That fits this perfectly. There's a distinctive, high pitched whine, followed by a beam of pure destruction spewing from the front of the gun, literally vaporizing any Nazi who gets in the way.
Someone mentioned the Portal Gun as well and I must agree. Just that sound...
Also, who says it has to even be guns? Who doesn't love the brutal, mighty uppercut move from Mortal Kombat?

 

[Sidereal]

Magicka is a perfect example of a game with supremely satisfying combat effects (no matter their target, intended or otherwise).

 

[Evil Teddie]

This reminds me of Shadows of the Damned and all of its 'Johnson@ dick jokes. On a side note, the DA: O paralysis explosion combo spell was very satisfying and a huge exploit.

 

[Mr. Google]

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.

Me and my brother always make jokes about how it sounds like you're shooting a truck out of the Barrett in BFBC2. I love that gun for that reason even though the M24 would probably be a better choice at this point it is nowhere near as satisfying to shoot

 

[UNHchabo]

I'd like to put in a vote for guns not needing to be powerful in order to be viscerally satisfying: Half-Life 2's pistol is a good example. It has a nice, crisp sound that's still satisfying despite not even killing a Civil Protection officer with a single headshot.

I'd like to give special attention to the mod "Firearms: Source". It seems like nearly all of the attention in this game has been paid to making the weapons feel and sound excellent. One of my favorites is the SR25, which gives a good approximation of what a real rifle sounds like with a suppressor. For pistols, the Glock 20 is one of the best in terms of noise and feel.

 

[LobsterFeng]

RE4 is such a good example. I love the reload animations in that game so much.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Amazing how much goes into less than a second of animation, isn't it. I know I was amazed when I started to try rotoscoping, and that was only at 12 frames per second. yeeeeeeeesh.

 

[Num1d1um]

Yahtzee mentioned that in his review, but Bulletstorm did this incredibly well too. It made me replay the game several times just to use the flailgun and the shotgun, simply because they feel so awesome.

 

[Num1d1um]

Oh, and Dark Messiah had the best melee combat ever, the power behind the earthfire sword was ridiculous, and you could feel it in every single strike.

And the enemies reacted too.

 

[Samus Aaron]

This reminds me of the first two metroid prime games. I always marveled at the little but significant details that made the power beam differ from the wave beam, which differed from the ice beam and so on. It was just little things like amount of recoil, the actual change in form of the arm cannon, and the impact of the beam when fired, but it seemed to give the combat system depth in a way that different colored guns in Halo can't convey.