Automoderated users, Autopatrolled users, Bureaucrats, Comment administrators, Confirmed users, Forum administrators, Interface administrators, Moderators, Rollbackers, Administrators
116,469
edits
One-Bullet Clips: Difference between revisions
undoing so-called "fixes" by Burnator
Looney Toons (talk | contribs) (fixed mangled and misspelled contribution; spelling. Numerals to words, potholes) |
Looney Toons (talk | contribs) (undoing so-called "fixes" by Burnator) |
||
Line 20:
* 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.
** Also, particularly ridiculous in ''[[Call of Duty: Black Ops]]'', as when reloading the Python (a six-chamber revolver) your character is clearly shown taking all six bullets/shells and taking them all out of the chamber at the same time, regardless of how many shots out of six, and then only loading as many bullets as had been fired. Every other revolver in the series partially avoided this by using
** The first two games are actually somewhat schizophrenic about this trope. The bolt-action weapons all follow these rules ''except'' for the Lee-Enfield, which can only be manually reloaded if there are five or less bullets left in it. Additionally, the BAR in ''1'', along with the Bren, Gewehr 43, and SVT-40 in ''2'', do not have alternate reload animations for emptying the magazine.
** ''Call of Duty: World At War'' mostly follows this, with one exception. When using the Double-Barreled Shotgun, you may reload after firing only one shell. If you do, the reloading animation will show you blocking the other shell with your thumb while shaking the spent shell out.
Line 39:
* ''[[Crysis (series)|Crysis]]'' can't make up its mind, magazine-fed weapons realistically have the +1 statistic and faster reloads if they aren't completely empty. At the same time, magazines are filled from the reserve and not individually tracked.
** On the other hand, enemies DO have limited ammo, often falling back on their sidearms if they use up their assault rifle rounds. You also get more ammunition if you kill the enemy before he can get off too many shots.
* ''[[Halo]]'' follows this trope to the letter. Maybe the MC [[Hyperspace Arsenal|stores his magazines/grenades/reserve weapon (in H1) inside his suit]], which also contains a universal
** [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] by some [[NPC|marines]] in the game, who will occasionally shoot a few rounds into downed enemies (when there are no other obvious targets remaining) and sometimes say things like "Don't mind me, just emptying the magazine," as they do so.
** This may be a callback to the below mentioned ''[[Marathon Trilogy|Marathon]]'', which required the player to expend their remaining ammo in order to reload to a full magazine.
Line 47:
* Every gun in ''[[Quantum of Solace]]'' follows this trope except for the Golden Gun, which you don't get reloads for, and any weapon fed with loose ammo, such as the pump-action shotgun, the LTK revolver, and the Revolver Grenade Launcher. Interestingly, the last two examples will have you eject ALL the rounds in the weapon (spent ones get dumped, unfired ones go back to ammo pool) and then reload the chambers individually. Interestingly enough, guns picked up from NPCs will always have a random number of rounds missing from the magazine, completely regardless of whether or not they have actually fired any shots, implying that enemies just walk around with half-loaded guns all the time.
* ''[[Sin]]'' and its sequel, Episodes play this one straight, but even more maddening is the fact that the shotgun in [[Sin]]: Episodes, which uses a magazine, will always be pumped after reloading no matter what (ejecting a shell). Since it also is pumped automatically after firing a shot also, Blade is in essence ejecting an unused cartridge with every reload.
* ''[[Rainbow Six]]: Vegas 2'' is similar to ''Crysis'' in this regard. Reloading an empty weapon requires the protagonist to cock the gun to put the first round into the chamber. In addition, reloading before a gun is empty adds one extra bullet to the next magazine (excluding belt
** Also averted in previous ''Rainbow Six'' games, where you start each level with X magazines, each holding Y bullets - all tracked individually. You never just drop a mag unless it's empty, instead you put it back in your pocket. Whenever you reload, any non-empty magazine you're holding is kept, and put at the bottom of your loading queue. Meaning that if you're the kind of person who reloads when half of your magazine is gone, then more often than not by the middle of the level you'll be reloading with half-empty mags.
* ''[[Perfect Dark]]'' has it with all guns, but especially amusing is the sight of a full clip being loaded into a revolver no matter how many bullets are left. The Jackal sniper rifle in ''Zero'' avoids this by being single
* ''[[Home Front]]'' plays it straight.
* ''[[Cry of Fear]]'' any magazine-based weapon loses all bullets in the mag when reloaded. Of course, Simon is a disturbed teenager, not a soldier. Given his already remarkable proficiency with the weapons, he can be forgiven for not thinking of simply saving the magazines and manually topping them up from each other.
Line 56:
=== [[Role-Playing Game]] ===
* 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
** Taken to extremes with weapon mods in ''[[Fallout: New Vegas]]'', where you could be loading normal magazines into a weapon, then stop, add an extended magazines attachment to it, and suddenly ''every'' magazine loaded into it is extended.
*** However, New Vegas also averts the trope with revolvers; you'll reload exactly as many bullets as you've fired, be it one, three or four, or the whole clip.
Line 67:
** ''[[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.
*** Special mention must go to the highly [[Unorthodox Reload]] of the long-barreled, scoped [[Hand Cannon|Desert Eagle]]. Due to a glitch, rather than inserting just a magazine Snake mimes reloading with a whole other gun which he places into the space occupied by the first.
*** Also actually averted by the Type 17 pistol, which required a
=== [[Survival Horror]] ===
Line 73:
** 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.
** This happens a lot with shotguns in third-person shooters. For example, in ''[[Resident Evil 4]]'' Leon always loads two shells into his shotgun(s), regardless of how many shells you actually load with it ([[Egregious]] in the case of the Striker, which, when fully upgraded, can hold a staggering one hundred shells, but still only needs two to fully reload).
*** Speaking of ''RE4'', this is also averted with the [[Hand Cannon]]: Leon is shown loading three shells into the chamber when he reloads, which is the number of bullets the gun actually holds. Upgrading its capacity at all makes him start using
*** Furthermore, in ''RE4'' Leon picks up loose bullets as opposed to actual magazines and clips. Since he carries these in boxes, and doesn't have any magazines in his inventory, it's unknown where he gets the magazines from. Although, having to watch Leon load fifteen individual bullets into a magazine would get extremely aggravating.
* ''[[Call of Cthulhu (tabletop game)|Call of Cthulhu]]: [[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.
Line 80:
* Also, many [[Third-Person Shooter]]s, 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 through 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.
* ''[[Gears of War]]'' takes this to baffling levels because of its "Active Reload" mechanic. Reloading a gun starts a slide that takes a few seconds but stopping the slide in a thin bar will reload faster. Missing the bar will cause the gun to jam, making the reload take longer than simply waiting. However, hitting a small area inside the bar will trigger a "Perfect Reload," which will bestow bonuses (typically to some combination of damage, rate of fire, recoil reduction, effective range, or shot prep time on some heavy weapons) -- but only to the bullets it actually replaced. This means that doing a mid-mag perfect reload will show the character ejecting a magazine and replacing it with another, but only bestows a bonus to a number of bullets within the new magazine as were absent in the previous one. The first two games overwrote previous Perfect Reloads whenever a new reload was attempted (i.e., eight perfectly reloaded rounds left in a thirty-round mag will leave a mag with twenty-two perfectly reloaded rounds after a fresh Perfect Reload), while the third allows all Perfectly Reloaded bullets to keep the bonus until they are fired
** That's right, the bonus from loading your gun harder expires. But that's another can of worms entirely.
Line 117:
* If you toss your magazine in the ''[[Ghost Recon]]'' series, kiss it goodbye. The tutorial at the beginning of the first game actually makes a point of saying that it is better to sacrifice a few bullets and reload than to have a magazine run out in the middle of a fight.
** However, there is no animation for racking the gun on an automatic weapon, regardless of whether or not there were any bullets left in the magazine.
* If you unload a weapon in ''[[System Shock]]'', you lose the magazine if, and only if, the weapon has been fired. So, if you have a thirty round Flechette weapon, and fire only one shot (technically impossible, but whatever), then unload it to put in a different kind of ammo, say goodbye to that magazine. Generally
** Not quite. The game actually keeps track of the unspent ammo in an ejected magazine. If you have three seven-round magazines, fire four rounds from one, eject it and load another and fire three rounds, and eject it, you'll have two magazines left. It doesn't happen very often (most people just empty their magazines entirely, or don't keep track of each individual round), but System Shock actually is one of the most ''realistic'' aversions of this trope.
** Curiously, the sequel, ''[[System Shock]] 2'', followed this trope to the letter.
Line 124:
* Averted in ''[[Condemned]]'', in which you simply can't reload guns. [[Throw-Away Guns|At all]]. Also, guns you scavenge off corpses will only be fully loaded if you managed to take their previous holder down before he could squeeze a shot, otherwise they'll be down by the correct number of bullets, or even empty (in which case you're probably ''dead'').
** ''[[Condemned]] 2'', however, allows the player to scavenge ammo from dropped weapons and find ammo in supply lockers, but not carry reloads. This ultimately meant that the player had one magazine, and that was it.
*** However, you can carry two of the same
* Fully averted in ''[[America's Army]]'', where the game keeps track of the individual magazines, so if you fire a bullet and reload you can later re-reload that magazine with one less bullet. It also keeps track of whether a round is in the chamber.
* ''[[Unreal]]'' had the Automag, which is the only weapon in the game that needed a reload every few shots. In fact, even the Automag avoids this trope, because while you have to reload every magazine, you can't reload manually - the only way to do it is firing the remaining bullets or switching it out. Additionally, you can't see the number of bullets left in the magazine (though you can hear the gun clicking in the last five shots). Originally, ''[[Unreal Tournament]]'''s Enforcer was also meant to work like this, though all that remains of this is the animation in the game files.<ref>A certain mod for UT, Oldskool Amp'd, has the Automag's reload much more manageable via a key and an ammo counter.</ref>
Line 147:
=== [[Role-Playing Game]] ===
* The first ''[[Xenosaga]]'' game used ammunition for both
* Averted in the Sega Genesis version of ''[[Shadowrun]]''. Ammunition 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
=== [[Shoot'Em Up]] ===
Line 164:
* 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
=== [[Third-Person Shooter]] ===
Line 183:
* Likewise, the first two ''[[X-COM]]'' games, in which every magazine is a separate inventory item, and the number of bullets in each is tracked realistically.
** Except for the bug where partially used magazines in a weapon are counted as gone at the end of mission. Magazines not in a weapon however, [[Good Bad Bugs|return to base fully loaded regardless of if they actually were]].
* Averted to an almost ridiculous extent by ''[[7.62 High
** 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.
Line 190:
=== [[Genre Busting]] ===
* 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"
{{reflist}}
| |||