Desperation Attack: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

{{quote|''"Get close enough to death, and you will become Death himself."''|''[[Team Fortress 2|The Equalizer]]'s publicity blurb''}}

The problem with video games, though, is that the progress of the hero is directly tied to the skill of the player. And a player who's bad enough to start losing is probably bad enough to continue losing. [[Critical Existence Failure|While video games rarely simulate the negative effect that injuries have on fighting prowess]], this still makes video game fights more similar to reality than the heroic mano-a-mano battles seen in movies.

 

 

Occasionally, this leads to a situation where the best strategy is to run around on the edge of death for the massive bonuses it gives you.

 

{{examples}}

== [[Action Adventure]] Games ==

* In ''[[The Minish Cap]]'' Link learns, in addition to his normal full-health [[Sword Beam]], a beam attack that only works when his health is at or below 1 heart.

* [[Alice: Madness Returns]] has 'Hysteria Mode', which is activated when Alice's health is down to one rose. Time slows down and she is able to deal more damage to enemies. However, it only lasts for a short while.

 

* In ''[[Ninja Gaiden]]'', the Unlabored Flawlessness becomes the most powerful weapon in the game if your health is at critical levels.

* One of the few things most ''[[Devil May Cry]]'' fans admit to liking about the otherwise [[Fanon Discontinuity|non-existent]] ''Devil May Cry 2'' was the Desperation Devil Trigger. When Dante's health was in the critical, activating his Devil Trigger [[Super Mode]] would cause Dante to shift into a towering alternate devil form with [[Nigh Invulnerability]] and dramatically improved power.

* ''[[Final Fight]]'' started the staple of a desperation attack taking a little of your health. [[Streets of Rage|Many]] [[Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Turtles in Time|other]] [[Undercover Cops|beat'em ups]] [[Rushing Beat|soon]] [[Follow the Leader|followed]].

 

** Also, some SNK games (and certain Grooves in [[Capcom vs. Whatever|Capcom vs. SNK]]) would allow the player to perform unlimited Supers if their health was critical.

** Related: If a character is down several points or stock, they automatically gain [[Limit Break|Final Smash]] powers the next time they drop down onto the stage.

* In the doujin [[Fighting Game]] ''[[Eternal Fighter Zero]]'', each character has a unique "Final Memory" move, which is a level 3 super that is only accessible when the character is down to their last 1/3 health. These range from extremely damaging attacks to special effects like freezing time or granting hyper armor. In many cases, the attack models the [[Canon]] scene [[Utsuge|in which the character dies]], hence the name.

* ''[[Tekken]] 6'' has "Rage Mode", which activates when a player is near death, making them much stronger.

** Also a case of the [[Computer Is a Cheating Bastard]], as in arcade mode, and most modes, in fact, when you fight Jin, at the start of every round he will ''begin'' in Rage Mode. Even worse, the true final boss gets an upgraded Rage Mode, where both attack ''and'' defense increase dramatically. And it's ''also'' activated at the beginning of the round.

** 3 introduces the [[Turns Red|X-Factor ability]], which is available to everyone on the cast. It can be triggered at any time but is best used as a Desperation Attack because the fewer characters you have, the stronger and longer the effect. Each character has a different effect suited to their style.

** In ''[[Marvel vs. Capcom 2]]'', if Jin was the last member alive on a team, and has 1/3 health or less left, he activates a [[Golden Super Mode]] upon standing on the ground. His attack are strengthened, his specials are augmented, and it takes two hits to stun him. However, if an opponent can keep him off the ground, he can't activate it.

* [[Naruto Shippuden Ultimate Ninja Storm 2]]: All characters have "Awakening Mode", whereupon they transform into their respective Kickass modes. To wit: Naruto-->[[Super-Powered Evil Side|4 Tails form]], [[Lethal Joke Character|Tobi]]-->{{spoiler|[[Big Bad|Mad]][[The Chessmaster|ara]]}}

 

== [[First-Person Shooter]] ==

 

== [[Hack and Slash]] ==

 

** Amusingly, Defiance was originally called "Desperation" during beta testing of the update it was added in, but the name was changed due to player complaints. Considering how useless the original version of it was, the original name was much more fitting and remained as a derisive term for it until it was eventually changed to be much more useful.

* ''[[Star Trek Online]]'' Has the ability "Go down Fighting" which allows the player to do more damage the lower their ship's hull condition is.

*** Honorable mention goes for this quote: "So much unstable energy... but worth the risk to destroy you!"

* In ''[[Guild Wars]]'', an elite Necromancer skill stole enough health from a target enemy to bring your own to 50%. Though double-edged (it could lower your health, and heal the enemy if used when you were above 50%), and originally intended as an "oh $(@#" skill, it was rarely used that way. The skill was used to destroy some otherwise very difficult bosses by pumping the Necromancer's max health as high as possible, having the Necro hurt themselves down to very low health, then hitting this skill to tear away a big chunk of a boss's health.

* In ''[[The Lord of the Rings Online]]'', the Warden class has a single skill that restores power, which is needed to execute skills. However, this skill can only be used when the Warden has less than half of it's health remaining. This is an interesting case, since the Warden also has a few skills that heal itself. This means that as long as the Warden doesn't heal itself too much, it can find a balance between regaining health and regaining power, allowing them to stay in a fight where other classes would eventually run out of health or power. This technique, known on the forums as "morale-surfing", essentially comes down to relying on your Desperation Attack to keep you from dying, while slowly burning down your opponent.

* [[Dungeon Fighter Online]]'s Asura's have the Deadly Enticer skill. While the requirement doesn't specify that they must be at low health, they have to have taken a certain amount of hits, and the most practical application is to use it when caught in an opponents [[Spam Attack]] which is usually going to be lethal

 

* Six of the first eight bosses in ''[[Mega Mari]]'' have these. A notable one is Reimu's, which continually spawns high damaging yin yang orbs until defeat. The orbs (and most attacks for that matter) can [[Kaizo Trap|kill you even after the boss dies]] as well.

* The first eight bosses of ''[[Mega Man X]] 8'' also do this. All of their attacks are also used by the first form of {{spoiler|Lumine}}.

 

 

* ''[[The Binding of Isaac]]'' has Whore of Babylon item which Eve starts with. When health drops to half a normal heart, the player turns into a demonic form with greatly increased damage which lasts as long as the player exits the room with half a normal heart. One strategy is to get an item which slowly refills spirits hearts and use a blood bank to get down half a normal heart to keep this ability going. This item is not a desperation attack for one of the unlockable characters because when he picks it up, the effect is permanent.

 

== [[Real Time Strategy]] ==

* ''Star Wars: Empire at War'' and its expansion have, for some units, the ability to self-destruct. The TIE Mauler was the only one to have this in the first game, and considering how pathetically weak its armour is, the self-destruct became useless unless the player managed to park ten of them at full health in the middle of an enemy formation first, just to ensure that at least ONE did some damage. The expansion gives this ability to the following Zann Consortium units: MZ-8 Pulse Cannon tank, Vengeance-Class Frigate, Aggressor-Class Destroyer. Much more effective for them since a. It's automatic and b. those units could actually survive long enough after taking a shitload of damage for the ability to be effective.

* In ''[[League of Legends]]'' there are several champions who get their stats boosted as they take damage. Karma gains ability power, Olaf gains attack speed and Tryndamere gains bonus damage. Poppy's innate ability will typically cause her to take less damage the lower her health is.

 

* The ''[[Pokémon]]'' games have several of these:

** Flail and Reversal are moves that get stronger the weaker the user is. When the user's HP are at less than 4% of maximum, these moves do the most damage.

** Struggle is an [[Emergency Weapon]], as it only executes when the Pokemon has run out of normal combat moves. It also comes into play if the opponent's Pokemon has used Encore, thus blocking the player's Pokemon from using any moves other than the one it last used, and that move is out of PP. It is completely exempt from the usual [[Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors]].

* One of these shows up in many of the ''[[Final Fantasy]]'' games.

** ''[[Final Fantasy VI]]'' introduced actual Desperation Attacks to the series, incredibly powerful attacks that can randomly occur when a character with critically low HP is given the "Fight" command. However, they occur ''so'' rarely that most people have never actually seen one. Plus the Valiant Knife which does more damage the lower Locke's HP gets.

** ''[[Final Fantasy VII]]'' has the ''[[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|Final Attack]]'' materia, with which almost every spell materia can be paired. Equipping it on someone lets that character [[Taking You with Me|cast one last spell upon their demise]], but the right combination can bestow functional immortality. {{spoiler|Phoenix}} is recommended; Scan is not. (Unless you want to have your possessions identified, in which case, you've been playing too much [[Nethack]].)

** ''[[Final Fantasy IX]]'' has Steiner's Revenge ability.

*** And the Blue Magic Limit Glove, an otherwise unremarkable spell which is guaranteed to do 9999 damage if (and only if) Quina has exactly 1 HP left when using it. Mostly useless because of this limitation, but with proper element cancellation...

**** Savvy players will knock Quina out in a battle, then go to a save point and revive him/her repeatedly (resetting each time) until s/he has 1 HP. Perfect for taking out that tricky boss in one shot! It's also available extremely early (from the [[Disc One Nuke|moment you get Quina]], in fact), letting you lay the smackdown on the rest of disc 1 and most of disc 2 (by disc 3 more reliable means of violence become available). By extension, it's also a valuable skill to have when doing the [[Speed Run|Excalibur II challenge]].

** ''[[Final Fantasy X]]'' has Auron's [[Infinity+1 Sword]], which does more damage as his health gets lower.

** ''[[Final Fantasy Tactics Advance]]'' has several "Last" abilities that cast a specific spell on the character at low health, such as Berserk.

** In addition, several of the games have skills that do a set amount of damage equal to a character's maximum HP minus their current HP.

** Considering that this is Final Mix+ , those two really help with the Critical Mode.

** [[Kingdom Hearts (video game)|The original game]] and [[Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories|mid]][[Updated Rerelease|quel]] have the ability Berserk, which does indeed increase attack at critical health levels (the latter game and its remake requiring the use of the Hades enemy card).

* The Crisis Arm, one of Robo's final weapons from ''[[Chrono Trigger]]'', claims to work this way, but actually depends on the last digit of your HP. There are actual desperation attacks in the form of Frog's "Frog Squash" tech and Ayla's "Dino Tail" tech.

** Then, there's the [[Combination Attack]] Grand Dream, which is a massive, impressive ''three-character'' Desperation Attack. It's surprisingly effective against the final boss, simply because he has a habit of near-flattening you. Grand Dream contains Frog Squash as one of it's components.

** The similarly insane Frog Flare (a Combination Attack of Frog Squash and Lucca's * Flare) is universally acknowledged to be ''the'' best way to take out the final form of Spekkio, who uses [[HP to One|Hallation]] a lot - particularly if you're playing the DS version and got the [[Game Breaker]] armour for Lucca, which renders Hallation Spekkio's only attack capable of damaging her - and you're never going to die from HP To One attacks.

** Unfortunately, by that stage of any of the games, your character was likely to be wearing items boosting strength to 10 (absolute maximum, no temporary bumps over it allowed), or 8-9 if the starting build was really puny. Add to that the fact that the most successful melee and unarmed builds only required and effectively used medium strength scores, and it really seems pointless (melee and unarmed being the only usable attacks utilizing strength score bonuses, only other uses of strength were max carry weight and min score to wield weapon, as well as the really rare and optional quest and the absolutely buggy and random throw skill). Also, unlike Dungeons&Dragons, strength bonuses were small and rather linear, with the average weapon in the second half of a game dealing 10 or 20 times more base damage than the strength bonus. Furthermore, since enemies were plentiful and came in groups, which were defeated by a combination of strategy and predictable/expected critical hits, these strength bonuses really meant nothing whatsoever. A temporary increase in carry weight, only in the heat of battle and at the brink of death, also obviously provided little benefit in a world without encumbrance-increasing magic.

* A number of clothes in ''[[The World Ends With You]]'' have abilities called "SOS", which only trigger when the player is in "mortal peril" (their health bar is completely off one screen and less than half is left on the other).

* ''[[Xenogears]]'' has an equippable item which increases your attack power ridiculously when near death. If you give it to Fei, he can do 19998 damage every turn when not inside his Gear... and being outside his gear means most of the time gear-sized enemies miss him. He becomes a gear-destroying machine.

* ''[[Tales of Phantasia]]'' gives Cless one when he equips a certain title.

** Also, Lloyd's Falcon Crest, his deadliest attack, can only be used when his health is at 16% or less. In addition, Sheena's most powerful techs, the Summon Spirits, can only be performed while she is in Over Limit mode (Double desperation?).

* Atton Rand from ''[[Knights of the Old Republic]] II'' has "Fighting Spirit," which causes his saving throws to increase as he takes more damage.

* [[Troubled but Cute|Fenris]] from ''[[Dragon Age 2]]'' has the Veneer of Calm ability, allowing him to do increased damage as his health drops.

** This ability is also on the Ravager talent tree somewhere.

* ''[[Breath of Fire]]'' has your characters attack faster when their health points are dwindling.

 

== [[Shoot'Em Up|Shoot Em Ups]] ==

* ''[[No More Heroes]]'' has at least desperation attack for most bosses. Some bosses, mainly in the first game, gained a [[One Hit KO]] when they were down to about half health.

 

 

== Wrestling Games ==

* In ''[[Smackdown vs. Raw|WWE '12]]'' a character can have the "Comeback" ability. This allows a severely damaged character to get up and/or launch a flurry of attacks in a [[Press X to Not Die|quick-time event]] which leaves the character's momentum gauge full and their opponent dazed, ready for a [[Finishing Move]].

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Videogame Effects and Spells]]