One-Bullet Clips: Difference between revisions

 

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* In ''[[Uncharted|Uncharted 2: Among Thieves]]'' Nathan Drake's reload animation for the Moss 12 pump-action shotgun always shows him loading three shells and pumping.

 

* Almost all [[FPS]] games except the ones near the classic end of [[Fackler Scale of FPS Realism|FPS realism scale]] (with no reloading) and a handful near the realistic end of the scale. ''[[Half Life]]'', ''[[Halo]]'', ''[[Doom|Doom 3]]'', ''[[Call of Duty]]'', the ''[[Medal of Honor]]'' series, ''[[First Encounter Assault Recon|FEAR]]'', the list goes on. The classic exception is any game featuring the M1 Garand; this is [[Truth in Television]] to an extent, as the weapon is tricky to unload while under fire and typically US soldiers were instructed to fire off the rest of the en-bloc clip rather than do so.

* Particularly aggravating in ''[[Call of Duty]]'' - the game actively encourages the player to abuse this trope, by increasing the reload time of every weapon in the game when empty (except for some reason ''United Offensive's'' Gewehr 43 and ''World at War'''s M1 Garand and M1919 Browning, which all reload ''faster'' when empty, though the M1 Garand's case makes sense). There is an additional step involved in reloading if the chamber is empty (you have to pull the charging handle/slide back, then release it to chamber a new round), on the other hand, you aren't considered to have an extra bullet to fire since you now have a chambered round and a full magazine... many games ignore this fact and have only one animation for reloading any given weapon, typically showing the player character rack the charging handle after inserting the new magazine (even if there's still a round in the chamber, which would eject a perfectly good bullet from the gun in real life) or, worse, simply replacing the magazine and leaving the 'chamber a new round' step out entirely.

 

 

* In the ''[[Fallout]]'' series, you can always reload the exact number of bullets needed directly from your inventory, never spending a magazine. This is made even more confusing by the icons for ammunition items in one's inventory, many of which ambiguously feature a container of loose bullets, chains of linked cartridges, and partly loaded magazines that look like they could fit in one or two of the many weapons that will take a given type of ammunition.

** Also, if you have a submachine gun drawn and stand around without doing anything for a few moments, your character will change magazines and throw the old one over his/her shoulder, over and over. Apparently you have infinite magazines available.

** This, however, does not explain why you can have 0 shots remaining for your Sniper Rifle but 60 shots remaining for your Assault Rifle. Standardized heat sinks would imply that you can use any of the ones that you have with you for any of your guns at any time.

 

* In ''[[Metal Gear Solid]]'' the trope is played perfectly straight; in the original game Snake can reload instantly simply by unequipping and equipping his current weapon, and keeps all his ammo. In a rare example of the entire magazine teleporting back into the player's inventory along with the bullets, if the player actually finishes a magazine, it's stored in their inventory despite being discarded on the ground during the reload animation. Moreover, Snake loads three tracers at the base of each mag, yet never encounters an entire magazine of consolidated tracers.

** ''[[Metal Gear Solid]] 4'' eliminated the instant reloads (largely because of how easy they'd made the previous game's [[Humongous Mecha|Shagohod]] boss) and required the actual reload animation play out; this showed him taking out the old magazine and tucking it away for later. However, almost all weapons have a [[Dramatic Gun Cock]] which usually ejects a non-spent round, which is never deducted from the player's total, and all weapons that aren't single-shot follow this trope to the letter.

*** Also actually averted by the Type 17 pistol, which required a speedloader to reload. You cannot reload it unless your entire mag is empty.

 

* Averted in the original "Resident Evil" games, where your character will not go through a reload animation without first emptying the magazine. To reload a partially loaded gun, you must access the inventory screen and combine your ammo with the gun.

** Interestingly enough, in the "Outbreak" spinoff of the ''[[Resident Evil]]'' series, characters find both filled magazines and individual shells, and if you reload using the latter, your character has to reload each shell individually. Magazines can be used to reload instantly, but only when the weapon is empty.

* ''[[Call of Cthulhu (tabletop game)]]: [[Dark Corners of the Earth]]'' plays this beyond straight: any weapon can be reloaded at any point by removing its magazine (or clip, or shells, etc.) and putting a new one in, even if the weapon is already full.

 

* Also, many [[Third-Person Shooter|Third Person Shooters]], such as ''[[Max Payne (series)|Max Payne]]'' and ''[[Resident Evil]]''.

* ''[[Dirge of Cerberus]]'' had a peculiar case... the Giant Hydra, final form of the [[Sniper Rifle|Hydra]] if you choose to upgrade it trough the power route, could take down just about any common enemy with a single shot...and then reload, since you cannot load more than a single bullet inside at a time; literal one bullet clip.

** That's right, the bonus from loading your gun harder expires. But that's another can of worms entirely.

 

* ''[[Silent Storm]]'' and the other games based on the same engine.

 

* ''[[The Godfather (video game)|The Godfather]]: The Game'' plays this fully straight.

* In ''[[Scarface the World Is Yours]]'', gunfighting on foot follows the trope, but entering a vehicle abruptly prevents you from reloading until the magazine is emptied.

** You can also use it to use a mixed load. For example, the shotguns can often use the regular pellet shells, a dart shell and a slug. If you take the time to juggle it, you can have it so your gun is loaded with one type, then the next, then the last type, and so on.

 

* Reloading in ''[[Mafia]]'' wastes any ammo remaining in the current magazine.

 

* Averted in, of all places, ''[[Die Hard]] Arcade'' (or ''[[Dynamite Deka]]''), where every firearm has a set amount of ammo - and if enemies fire said guns at you, they'll be down that many rounds when you get your hands on them.

 

* Bungie Software has gone from one end to the other of this trope:

** ''[[Pathways into Darkness]]'' had its ammunition management integrated into its inventory system, in which everything that can hold another item (including guns that hold a magazine and magazines that hold bullets) were treated as generic "containers" openable with a click of their disclosure triangle (exactly the same as the Macintosh Finder's list view, similar to Windows Explorer's TreeView), and items can be moved in and out of each other with a drag and drop. Individual magazines and the bullets in each one are all tracked as separate items, although you can not repack bullets from one magazine to another. In case you're wondering how all this works in the heat of combat, [[Talking Is a Free Action|the game pauses whenever you click outside its main window]].

* "Metro 2033": Mostly played straight due to the scarcity of ammo in the game, but one of the shotguns in the game doesn't necessarily fully reload every time. The ammo is put on a belt on the sides of the gun, and it can hold up to six shells at a time. However, the slot on top of the gun can't be accessed which means if you completely ran out of ammo before reloading, one slot will be empty. If you were to fire the gun then reload again, you would be at full ammo though.

 

* Light-gun game ''Operation Wolf'' would only get you more ammo by the magazine. Reloading is automatic, too, so if you want to avoid it you'll need to waste a few rounds.

* ''[[Virtua Cop]] 3'' provides an example of actually accounting for the chambered round. Practically every gun from the default pistol with unlimited ammo to the ones you collect from pickups will keep the chambered round upon reloading when you haven't spent the full clip. You even get to see a cross-section of the magazine and chamber so you can view the entire process as well as have the ammo counter go up by 1 when a round is kept chambered. Though every other aspect of the ammo system plays this trope straight.

 

* Averted for comedic purposes in ''[[Contra]]: Shattered Soldier'' - the intro movie shows one of the main characters loading individual bullets into magazines. (Turns out that they're [[Bottomless Magazines]] once the game starts.)

 

* The first ''[[Xenosaga]]'' game used ammunition for both mecha and some characters, but there was no reload mechanic in battle; rather, characters started off each battle with the necessary ammunition. Then again, since the weapons ''themselves'' occasionally phased into existence, it's unclear as to why ammunition couldn't do the same (and, in fact, in the case of KOS-MOS it did, so go figure).

* Averted in the Sega Genesis version of ''[[Shadowrun]]''. Ammuntion was listed in number of magazines instead of bullets, and characters would only reload when their magazines were empty. However, it is possible to reload in the pause screen. Doing so when the magazine isn't empty brings up a warning: "You still have ammo left. Reload?" Accepting would discard the ammo left in the half-empty magazine.

* The classic RPG ''[[Wasteland (video game)|Wasteland]]'' had variable-sized magazines, but once loaded you can't unload or otherwise salvage the ammo inside if you have to either reload or unjam the weapon. In other words, reloading a weapon results in losing the ammo which was left in the weapon before reloading. Consequently, reloading a fully loaded weapon by mistake is equivalent to tossing away a full magazine.

 

* Classic wild west shooter ''Outlaws'' is an interesting case. In this game there are only boxes of bullets and shells which are manually loaded into their respective firearms one at a time.

 

* Averted in the first ''[[Hitman]]'' game. If you reload, the entire magazine is tossed away.

* In the original 80's version of ''[[Castle Wolfenstein]]'' (the non-3D one), the character only wielded one pistol, and did not store any extra bullet magazines. Thus if he came across enemy bullets, he only reloaded if they had more bullets then he currently had.

* ''[[Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater]]'' does account for already-chambered bullets when reloading.

 

* Averted in ''[[Eternal Darkness]]'': when revolvers (the most common firearm) are reloaded, only the spent shells are dropped, and each bullet is reloaded one at a time (you can even stop before the revolver is full by letting go of the reload button or moving). Weapons like shotguns and single-shot rifles also avert this trope; however, in the one level where a character acquires magazine-loading weapons, this trope is played completely straight.

* The revolver, double-barrel/pump-action shotguns, and hunting rifle in ''[[Alan Wake]]'' all have to be reloaded one shell at a time, which will slow Alan down if you have him trying to run from the Taken. Reloading can also be stopped if you have to let loose a round or two to get some breathing space, or find a Safe Haven.

* When reloading an empty unscoped rifle in Cryostasis the protagonist is shown using a speedloader to reload. However when you try to reload a non-empty rifle the protagonist takes the required amount of bullets from the next ammo pouch and loads them in manually.

 

* In ''[[Oni]]'', individual rounds aren't tracked, only whole magazines (not that they could be given ''Oni'''s universal ammo system), so reloading with a shot left in the weapon wastes it (and magazines are very hard to come by). Enemies carry finite numbers of ammo magazines, and reload, so their weapon will have exactly as many bullets in it as they had left to shoot at you (so, it's best to kill him just as he reloads.)

* ''[[SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs|SOCOM]]'' games tend to do this. When reloading, you simply switch between magazines you're carrying on you, so you could end up with any number of One Bullet magazines if you're not budgeting how you use each magazine.

* ''[[Blood Rayne]]'' doesn't reload weapons. She fires until the magazine is empty (or she finds a better weapon) and then tosses the entire gun to grab a fresh one.

 

* ''[[Jagged Alliance]] 2'' works similarly, except that when the squad isn't in contact with the enemy, reloading a partially full weapon transfers rounds from the new magazine until the weapon is full. This allows partial magazines to be consolidated between battles.

** The characters seem to haul a [[Bag of Holding]] full of empty magazines of every size and description, though; it's possible to load an arbitrary number of, say, 10-bullet magazines of 7.62 WP bullets into an AK-47 (three magazines of 10 at a time, obviously) and have a fully loaded 30-round magazine, or vice versa with the Dragunov sniper rifle (although that leaves you with a loaded 10-round magazine and a 30-round magazine with 20 rounds remaining). Note that in some fan mods of the game such as some iterations/builds of the famous and continually evolving ''v1.13'', using magazines not suited for a weapon (such as feeding a 7-shot pistol a 30-round SMG mag of the same caliber) costs extra action points

** Each gun also requires its own model of magazine that takes up inventory space, with some magazines (like the ammo boxes for machine guns or drum mags) taking up large amounts of space. The magazines all need to be individually filled with ammo, which is [[Captain Obvious|best done before combat]]. Ammo quality is also tracked by the bullet.

 

* Averted in ''[[Mercenaries|Mercenaries 2: World in Flames]]''. Whenever you pick up a gun, you get X number of magazines with Y number of bullets in each. When you reload, you throw the magazine, and any bullets left in it, on the ground.

 

* Sidestepped in ''[[Pathologic]]''. The revolver is reloaded offscreen (the character pulls it down to their side first), avoiding the need for custom animations depending on how many bullets it currently has. The rifle is reloaded on-screen, but it has a literal one-bullet clip, so the trope doesn't apply. Played straight with the shotgun, however—your character always chucks the shells out of the gun, regardless of whether or not one is still unspent. The shotgun is also guilty of the "reload more visible shots than you actually have" subtrope.