One-Bullet Clips: Difference between revisions

This tends to be a [[Rule of Fun]] thing; manually consolidating ammo between half-empty magazines wouldn't exactly be entertaining, and while it potentially makes reloading a more complex decision than "press button when not shooting," having half-magazines lost completely or remembered doesn't exactly fit the style of a more arcade-y shooter. Obviously, this trope doesn't apply to weapons that are manually loaded with single shots such as RPGs, and typically also doesn't apply to weapons with internal magazines that are loaded with single rounds like shotguns, though sometimes the latter use a fixed-length reload animation no matter how many rounds are actually being put into the gun.

 

 

== [[Action Adventure]] ==

* 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|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.

* ''[[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.

 

* ''[[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.

* ''[[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., 8 perfectly reloaded rounds left in a 30 round mag will leave a mag with 22 perfectly reloaded rounds after a fresh Perfect Reload), while the third allows all Perfectly Reloaded bullets to keep the bonus until they are fired or it expires. YMMV on which of these models makes more sense.

* 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]].

* 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.

 

* 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.)

* ''[[SOCOMUS 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.