Should enemies be able to get head shots?

WaterDancer

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It's a nice feature that I would like in some games when it comes to harder difficulties. In war games it would add to the immersion that you can't just stand up wand mow down enemies all day. In the first mission of Vietcong, you were attacked by a sniper and had to maneuver your way to the sniper to kill him as he was far away that is not even the end of the first mission.
Syphon Filter 2 and 3 had enemies that would do head shots. You got a warning but they would also be placed among other enemies and the danger meter before your shot would rise fast.
 

Zetatrain

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w9496 said:
Depends.

Arcade-y style shooters? Probably not. Games like RainbowSix that try for a bit of realism? Yeah.

I still like RainbowSix Vegas 2 with its insta-death headshots, even if I do get a little cautious when the terrorists shout "AIM FOR THE HEAD!!!".
If you think R6 Vegas was hard then you'll despise the original Rainbow Six and Rainbow 6 3: Raven Shield and its expansion Athena's Sword. Even with the heaviest armor the max amount of hits you can take is 2 and that's if you're lucky (also no regenerating health). Chances are you'll die from the first shot regardless of where it hits. There are also no checkpoints or save features so you have complete the entire mission in one go. While the levels aren't as long as the ones in Vegas, this is only a small blessing. Last night I got stuck on a level for nearly four hours. If you're teammates die then they are dead for good and their replacements have crappy stats. And lowering the difficultly only slightly delays the enemy's reaction time and nothing more. The first Ghost Recon is also the same with the exception that you can save during the mission.

That being said, for actual realistic games (ARMA, Flashpoint, Rainbow Six 3, Ghost Recon 1, etc) one hit kills, be they head shots or not, are totally legit.

As games such as Max Payne...no unless its optional or an attack you can see coming

This reminds me of the "007 the World is Not Enough" game in which the enemies could not head shot you in the single player campaign, but in multiplier the AI bots could head shot you with ease.
 

BrionJames

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TrevHead said:
BrionJames said:
Absolutely. I find most shooters' to be too easy nowadays. You remember Contra right? BOOM, one hit and your dead. Gradius? Boom one hit and your dead. The whole infinite health/ infinite lives thing gets pretty boring. Not that I'm saying there shouldn't be some sort of password or lives system, games are just too easy.
In Contra and Gradius the bullets are slow moving so you have time to dodge them, sure many oldschool games have instant deaths with no chance to evade like the closing door at the end of Gradius, but those are easily avoidable in the next playthough.

In a modern FPS with bullets it would be just a case of your head exploding in random intervals.

True, and yet there has been a pretty successful franchise that I've found to be a lot of fun. That franchise being Tom Clancy's rainbow six series. One shot kills were abound in those games, but everyone still found them to be very fun. I like the idea of realistic damage in games.
 

Dogstile

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Zaik said:
It's really hard for me to say.

I'll be using Metro 2033 for this example, but you could substitute Max Payne 3 in and it's similar.

I usually don't have much trouble with the human enemies, pretty much steamrolling it on normal. Though occasionally I'll get in a weird spot, usually where enemies are directly above me, and get dropped in half a second(i guess due to headshots). In most cases there has been a way to get up to their level, but there was on place in particular where you're on the surface about 5 seconds and you run directly into like 20 freaking nazis or whatever they are and they're all over the damn place above you and there's no way up except through them. I spent about two hours on this one spot before giving up and turning it down to easy, then another 30 minutes to actually move on.

It's made extra hilarious because said nazis wear helmets that provide 100% protection against head shots and take like 2-5 shots to knock off. The gas masks they have to wear to survive are a weaker target and ensure they'll die(2-3 shots), but they're very hard to hit and actually have it register on the mask and not helmet.

Tbh it seems to me like going from steamrolling on normal to barely being able to progress on easy, then going right back to steamrolling on normal again would be a design issue(headshots, in this case). Obviously on harder difficulties, you would want to leave it in, but it just seems really weird on easier ones.
I'm gonna be that guy again, but its possible to sneak past those guys, if we're talking about that car graveyard place. Its a ***** to do, but you can do it.

OP: Yes, enemies should in games where it makes sense. You should rarely expose your head in max payne, slow motion is awesome like that.
 

laggyteabag

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I generally don't think that insta kill enemies are fair unless it has a visual/ audio warning, like on Halo 3, on the first level, if you play the game on legendary there are a group of jackal snipers that can kill you in one shot, and there is no warning if they are going to shoot you or not.

INB4 "shoot them then"

They are so far away, that maybe 1 in every 10 bullets will hit with a Battlerifle