Bullet Sponges - Which Games Are the Worst Offenders?

[Igo]

Day of Defeat had that for a while (don't know if it made it into retail). Very low health and you'd have to bandage yourself if you managed to survive. I think Firearms (another HL mod) did the same, but you could take a bit more punishment in that one.

Red Orchestra: Heroes of Stalingrad will also use a bleed/bandage system.

There was a CS Mod that had players bleed out slowly too but I haven't seen it for years.

 

[Seraphis Cain]

Just Cause 2 has this, to a point.

If you don't go for a headshot on every single enemy, they'll take a ridiculous amount of bullets to put down. Hell, even with a 3* shotgun, normal enemies take TWO shots at close range to take down. And still about half a clip from a 4* SMG. Headshotting is about the only way to make the enemies in JC2 not ridiculously annoying.

 

[bobs...onGaf]

Hmm, I think this is a problem in games like Army of Two which go for a realistic route. But I actually like this in games like Halo or Gears. With Army of Two, the game sort of revolves around playing realistically, and as such you try and avoid death and stay in cover a lot, so its kind of stupid that the enemies take so many bullets to kill. Your not going to move around so your sort of stuck in position shooting at dudes waiting for them to die.

I actually think that a lot of health works for Gears or Halo because it adds a lot of depth to the games. In Halo you have a weapon which will kill in 4 shots and so you end up having pretty epic battles against eachother to see who lands the 4 shots while strafing/ dodging/ escaping. Same with Gears, the extra health adds a lot of teamwork, which quite frankly isnt required in games like CoD. So yeah while the friends of mine who play CoD cant understand for the life of them why people arent dieing in Halo, I actually think Halo has better combat for that reason.

To be fair I think the problem most people have with Halo is that they NEVER touch the precision weapons, try the BR over the AR and go for headshots, you will be suprised how quick people go down.

You know what, Army of Two wasnt even that bad when it came to bullet sponges there are far worse games but non come to mind.

I know a lot of people complained about the amount of damage you (and everyone else) could take in Section 8, but that was balanced between shields and armor and was a big part of the game's strategy.

This.

It blows my mind that realistic shooter games have bullet ***** enemies, but when a game sets up shields and extra health to add tactics then thats always a plus for me. One shot kills arent as fun as battles.

 

[WanderingWind]

Black was the single worst offender. It would take two head shots, at close range, with a shotgun to kill basic enemies. This and the unskippable craptastic cutscenes ruined an otherwise fantastic game.

 

[LongDongJunon]

Bad Company 1 (Mulitplayer)

For god's sake...

It's annoying but you eventually get used to it somewhat. Never really diminished my enjoyment of it.

 

[SappYoda]

I thought this was about the main character taking hundreds of bullets and not diying.

 

[YoungHav]

I was hyped for Resistance 2... then I got into the Beta. The bullet sponge mess turned me off to the game completely and I never purchased.

 

[victreeb3l]

Halo multiplayer. Ho. Ly. Shit.

 

[practice02]

My question is: How wany shoots are appropriate in a game? Also Halo: ODST.

 

[Diablohead]

I don't find that gears 1 or 2 have bullet sponge fodder if you shoot them in the right way, aka aim for the head, use active reloads, don't spray and prey at them, in gears 2 you can pop heads with the locust rifle so it turns into a BR of sorts.

Also halo is fine, if you died in 1 or 2 headshots in that game then why the fuck is master chief wearing all that expensive armour??? it doesn't take much to pop a shield in halo.

 

[Nakazato]

MGO

 

[anonymousAversa]

KZ2 Singleplayer is SO ANNOYING with this. Towards the end it's just plain frustrating.

 

[Shake Appeal]

Halo multiplayer. Ho. Ly. Shit.

There are a lot of you.

 

[Proelite]

There are a lot of you.

Seriously, you can kill someone really, really fast in Halo. Any one complaining about it must be some tard who can't catch on to basic mechanics of a new game.

 

[Nemesis_]

Not really "bullet" but the boss battles in Onimusha 4 were atrocious (PAL Version)

 

[Not a Jellyfish]

I am sorry but a lot of people who are listening the multiplayer aspect of games (Halo and I would said Gears 1) and doing it wrong. :lol

I admit I love Halo as a franchise but its single player campaigns appear to be full of bullet sponge enemies...if you are using the AR. Same for Gears if you are using the Lancer and not the shotty or a good headshot weapon.

 

[Zeliard]

I am sorry but a lot of people who are listening the multiplayer aspect of games (Halo and I would said Gears 1) and doing it wrong. :lol

Well, I assure you that for Quake Live, it holds. They've nerfed nearly every weapon relative to Q3, with the exception of making the SSG super-powerful with silly range. It's fairly ridiculous and clearly an attempt to appease to newbies.

 

[bobs...onGaf]

Seriously, you can kill someone really, really fast in Halo. Any one complaining about it must be some tard who can't catch on to basic mechanics of a new game.

Hmm thats not really fair, theres no real tutorial mode with Halo, so you can complete the single player quite easily using the Covenant weapons and Human Assualt Rifles. Ill be honest, first few times I played Halo, I was more attracted to the cool alien guns than the boring looking Pistol. Infact if I had to choose I would always trade out the Pistol for the Assualt Rifle.

It took me a long time to realize that the precision weapons were actually so much more powerful, and a dude just dipping into multiplayer to try it out would NEVER know that. I had a friend who told me, but if I had just randomly gone into matchmaking, odds are that I would have kept getting matched up against other players who are new like me and would never have tried those weapons out.

 

[SlipperySlope]

I'm currently replaying Fallout 3 for the GOTY material.

In Point Lookout the swamp people's health scales to far beyond ridiculous.
Seriously - these are hillbillies wearing a t-shirts and jeans and they literally take dozens of facefulls of plasma rifle shots to kill.

Pretty much all the post 20 scaled enemies are that way.
Super Mutant Overlords and Feral Ghoul Reavers are amazingly annoying to fight as well.

I agree with Fallout 3. Especially early game, it can take like 5 headshots from your pistol to take somebody down. And this was against Raiders It isn't until later that you get the level upgrades and better weapons where you can take somebody down with a single shot to the head. My most-used gun in the game was the Hunting Rifle.

But the Reavers with the expansion... my god. How about in Broken Steel where you're in the subway heading towards the air field? There's at least two Reavers in there, in ONE area, plus about 20 other Ghouls. If you don't have a bullet sponge like Fawkes or Charon taking 100% of the damage, you are doomed.

I spent 10 MINUTES being just a bystander. Didn't fire a single shot. Let my helper dish out all the damage since he has infinite bullets and is taking all of the damage. Just prayed that they didn't attack me.

I didn't jump in until I was fearing the death of my assistant. And I mean literally 10 minutes. You guys know the section I'm taking about. I think they're the only Reavers in the entire Broken Steel main quest, and it's near the end of the expansion.

So yeah, I think Reavers are the biggest bullet sponges in the entirety of first-person games. I think it takes like 100 headshots to take one down. Total waste of ammo.

Is there something about these enemies that I missed? If you don't have an assistant acting as a tank, you are completely fucked. It almost feels broken. Like the developers accidentally put the wrong number in the HP column for this enemy. Without an assistant, all you can really do is just run past them. If you engage, you will run out of ammo and die.


Edit - It's the section in the Presidental Metro Tunnel, where you're helping M.A.R.Go.T and the sentry bots try to help, but are doomed at the beginning. And I think there's 3 of them.

Edit 2 - It's the Reavers that look like they're having a seizure.

Edit 3 - I guess Fawkes should be pretty good against them. But there's no guarantee that you can get him. I didn't know where Fawkes was at the beginning of the expansion, so all I had was Charon. Plus if you're not Good you can't get Fawkes anyway.

 

[Curufinwe]

Imagine how the enemy AI feels! "Dammit we shot the player a hundred times why isn't he dead!!" "Wait, wtf is his health regenerating??! Why doesn't ours do that!"

:lol Good point.

 

[Burli]

BLACK was so bad for this.

 

[Syril]

Imagine how the enemy AI feels! "Dammit we shot the player a hundred times why isn't he dead!!" "Wait, wtf is his health regenerating??! Why doesn't ours do that!"

Fuck them, they have infinite ammo.

 

[Quixzlizx]

I agree that it's annoying that Uncharted 2 enemies take so many body shots to kill, but all of the people saying they couldn't make it through the game because of it must be terrible at shooters, considering how easy it is to headshot people in that game.

 

[Talon]

...and those listing Uncharted realize that almost every "bullet sponge" enemy can be taken down with 1 headshot... right?
The only exceptions are the supernatural enemies in each game.

Those blue things are the worst.

And Halo's really only the case if you aren't changing up your weapons. Even a pack of Brutes on Heroic or higher can be dispatched quickly.

That said, the Flood are the 2nd worst thing ever. Ugh.

 

[Arozay]

Uncharted and Dark Void, faster to melee everything down.

 

[KevinCow]

Someone should make a game where you literally fight giant sponges and if they touch you they steal your bullets.

 

[Neuromancer]

I agree that it's annoying that Uncharted 2 enemies take so many body shots to kill, but all of the people saying they couldn't make it through the game because of it must be terrible at shooters, considering how easy it is to headshot people in that game.

I disagree, I play a lot if games but I thought UC2 was pretty tough, mostly because of the sheer quantity of enemies. I wouldn't be surprised if many casual players couldn't beat it.

 

[SlipperySlope]

Do the amount of Reavers in that section change depending on difficulty? I was playing on Very Hard. Don't remember how many there were exactly.

 

[SpacLock]

Mentioning any of the Halo's is just wrong. After taking down an opponents shields it only takes 1 shot to the head or 2 shots to the body. There's plenty of bullet feedback also, especially in Reach.

Goldeneye and Perfect Dark, now those are some serious offenders.

 

[kodt]

Mentioning any of the Halo's is just wrong. After taking down an opponents shields it only takes 1 shot to the head or 2 shots to the body. There's plenty of bullet feedback also, especially in Reach.

Goldeneye and Perfect Dark, now those are some serious offenders.

See for me Goldeneye and Perfect Dark are the opposite of bullet sponges because as soon as you shoot someone you see the effects immediately.

Those were some of the first games to have animations based on where you shot an enemy, almost every shot could make them go into a wound animation. I hate when you shoot an enemy and they don't even flinch, just keep on running and shooting. You always knew when you hit in Goldeneye.

I guess for multiplayer though everyone is bullet sponges, that is true. We should probably specify MP or SP. I figured this was a SP only thread.

 

[Shake Appeal]

Far Cry 2 is sort of like Uncharted in that headshots kill instantly, but otherwise you're going to watch a guy in a thin shirt shrug off bursts of assault rifle fire to the chest.

 

[Shambles]

Came in here to post Resistance. Multiplayer got pretty lame/awesome since it was such a gongshow. Made the sniper rifle a lot more valuable though because it would actually give you one shot kills.

 

[Neuromancer]

Far Cry 2 is sort of like Uncharted in that headshots kill instantly, but otherwise you're going to watch a guy in a thin shirt shrug off bursts of assault rifle fire to the chest.

To make matters worse, half the time he's looking (and pointing his gun) away from you and hitting you anyway. :lol

 

[The Blue Jihad]

Which is why I had a 'Licence to Kill' only policy whenever I played.

Eh, my friends and I were/are more a -3 handicap kind of crowd. Maybe even -4. Keeps things tight, fast, and still gave you a bit of incentive to grab body armor.

 

[Pimpbaa]

I remember Black and Fear being bad for this, which is why I liked neither. Also that boss on the train in Uncharted 2 was really fucking lame.

 

[Ninja Scooter]

I replayed Uncharted 2 a bit last night and definitely noticed this, moreso than when I first played it. Still absolutely love the game but something I hope they fix for Uncharted 3 is the impact of the bullets and the bullet sponging of the enemies.

 

[eshwaaz]

Black was the single worst offender. It would take two head shots, at close range, with a shotgun to kill basic enemies. This and the unskippable craptastic cutscenes ruined an otherwise fantastic game.

It was doubly frustrating in Black since it completely flew in the face of the rest of the design. All Criterion talked about leading up to release was that they really wanted to communicate the power of the bullets, gun porn, etc. All of that was negated by the bullet sponge enemies. Automatic weapons were practically useless since the most effective way to progress was crouch behind cover, pop up, line up headshot, squeeze off a single round, crouch again. It killed all satisfaction of taking out enemies, and wasted the amazing destructibility and debris effects of the environments since it was never a good idea to charge in, guns blazing.

 

[Snuggles]

Uncharted: Drakes Fortune. There were a few times I felt like I had shot a guy about 10 times or so and he still wouldn't go down.

Bad Company 1. Just Cause 2. Resistance.

Halo has some enemies that take a lot of shots to go down, but I think it's a liiittle different when you're fighting a fierce, armored alien warrior instead of a human solider.

 

[Ramirez]

Uh... I'm going through Elite right now (only achievement left for 1000gs/Platinum for me), and minus the HUD they die just as quickly as they did recruit/one below Elite.

Don't get where you're thinking they're sponges.



Can't care. If I empty an entire assault rifle clip into you from medium range, at your chest. Your shield's should've popped and you should be halfway dead. I shouldn't have to "SPRINT->BLAMBLAMBLAMBLAMBLAMBLAMBLAMRELOADWARNING->MELEE->MELEE! (WIN BATTLE!)"

Halo's multiplayer is THE definition of bullet sponge gameplay.

Sure, you have means to strip shields (Plasma Pistol) but it's still goddamn annoying at the start of the match to kill people.

edit: And assault->melee/melee is practically THE definition of default "double melee" deaths in Halo 3 as that's pretty much what every player does. Here's hoping Halo Reach at least gives the assault rifle a chance to kill someone without having to rush/melee beat them down after shield pop.

Only if you're really bad at the game. Threads like this remind me how clueless people are to a games mechanics.

 

[mclaren777]

I've never understood why people complain about Uncharted so much.

Anyway, my vote goes to Black. The weak weapons ruined the rest of the game.

 

[AwRy108]

I've never understood why people complain about Uncharted so much.

Anyway, my vote goes to Black. The weak weapons ruined the rest of the game.

+1 for this.

 

[XiaNaphryz]

Are there games where there are no bullet sponges at all?

I mean, when you shoot someone through the chest, two times, maybe even once, eventually they will die from blood loss or whatever. Are there games where this actually happens?

Tom Clancy shooters back when they were still realistic PC affairs.

There were quite a bit of realistic tactical shooter games on the PC for a little while. Like the SWAT series, Delta Force, etc.

 

[Dai101]

The Special OP's in the Overtime in DEAD RISING, those assholes absorb bullets like hell, they are inmune to a goddamn shotgun blast in the face and yet they die in a couple of slashes with the hunting knife

 

[revolverjgw]

Gears, it doesn't even feel like the enemies realize you're shooting them, then they eventually just drop dead. It makes the guns feel as impactful as supersoakers

Uncharted dudes take a lot of bullets, but at least they act like it hurts and are incapacitated for a moment. If you're shooting a guy 3 or more times, smarten the fuck up and take advantage of their vulnerability animation to shoot them IN THE HEAD

 

[nolookjones]

Peace Walker..

missed that one agree completely...also far cry 2 is another bad one

 

[ghst]

bad company 2 pc version. if it wasn't for hardcore mode i'd have this pegged as an insultingly pedestrianised piece of forgotten values.

 

[jiggles]

It's Resistance 2 in co-op. By a goddamn mile.

8 people, EIGHT, pumping bullets into a single (unreactive) enemy for a whole 4 minutes watching his life bar slowly drain before he slowly explodes. Fuck that noise.

 

[RefigeKru]

Can't believe Halo has been mentioned so many times. Seks, sorry to single you out but you must be really bad. :lol

Personally, Gears of War takes it for me. It makes using assault rifles pretty pointless next to the godlike shotgun. At a distance you're more likely to get a random headshot from a shotgun than gun someone down with the lancer.

 

[Azure Phoenix]

I've never understood why people complain about Uncharted so much.

Anyway, my vote goes to Black. The weak weapons ruined the rest of the game.

This god damn it, the weapons were absolutely useless and the enemies were complete bullet sponges. Even on easy mode it took hundreds of machine gun bullets just to kill a standard cannon fodder enemy.

 

[Danne-Danger]

I remember Black and Fear being bad for this, which is why I liked neither. Also that boss on the train in Uncharted 2 was really fucking lame.

No no no no, FEAR doesn't have that problem. Unless you were using the SMG the whole game.