Painfully-Slow Projectile: Difference between revisions

 

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* ''[[Okami]]'' does this, but there's generally a reason for this - you have to deflect the projectiles with your Power Slash. That, and they aren't bullets, they're generally rocks or fruit being thrown at you. In any case, later projectiles are sped up considerably, with the idea that you need to use Mist to slow time down in order to be able to slash them- if you try to slash them without Mist, they either don't show up on the brush screen or they aren't affected by Mist.

* In ''[[ZZT]]'', bullets travel at cycle one (i.e. once per frame), which is a fancy way of saying "twice as fast as the player can move". They're destructible, too: when hit by another bullet, they annihilate each other. Stars are slow, but homing, indestructible, and [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking|change colors a lot]]. The same is true in ''[[MegaZeux]]''.

 

* The old Nintendo ''[[Ninja Gaiden]]'' games not only featured slow bullets, but slow rockets that could be detonated with your ''sword'' before they hit you.

* The Xbox360 game ''[[Earth Defense Force 2017]]' has a line of missile launchers called, fittingly, the Air Tortoise. Once fired, you can run ahead of the missile and soften up the target with a machine gun while you wait for it to kill the thing five or ten seconds later. The only advantage to it is that later versions are really powerful and relentless in tracking a target.

 

* The Emperor's giant flare balls and bouncing mines in ''[[Dissidia Final Fantasy]]''. The slowest projectiles in the game, but if you accidentally dodge into one, then ''you'' become the fastest projectile in the game.

** Kefka's projectiles are generally faster, but still slow enough and erratic enough that you will be using them to control the target's movement while you set up a better shot.

* The reasons why Sentinel's Sentinel Force assist is one of the best in ''[[Marvel vs. Capcom]]'' is because it's slow and covers a good half of the screen at any one time.

 

* In the ''[[Marathon Trilogy|Marathon]]'' series, the only enemy weapons which fire too quickly to be dodged are the assault rifles the troopers use and the rockets that the juggernauts fire. Everything else thrown at you you can dodge, and are essentially required to in order to survive.

* ''[[Doom]]''. The "light" weapons (on both sides) are hitscan, but rockets from the rocket launcher are fast, and bolts from the plasma gun are ''very'' fast, while imps' and cacodemons' fireballs move very slowly, and the hell knight's and baron of hell's fireballs are still slower than a rocket. The only monsters with projectile attacks at least as fast as a rocket are in [[Doom]] 2.

* The plasma cannon overcharge shot in Space Marine is pretty slow, mostly because it kills ''everything'' within a thirty-foot radius of its point of impact.

* ''[[Halo]]'' has the Needler. Its projectiles are homing... but this is of little use since they are so freaking slow you can outrun them by walking backwards. In ''Halo 2'' and ''3'' their speed was increased enough to make the Needler usable, but they're still quite sluggish compared to other weapons. It also has the Fuel Rod Gun that fires a large neon-green projectile that can be easily dodged at medium to long ranges.

* Guns in ''[[Borderlands]]'' have a hidden "velocity" stat, which determines how fast the projectiles move. Normally it's fast enough to not matter, but with sniper rifles and missile launchers, it becomes important.

* Most non-hitscan projectiles in ''[[Unreal]]'' are surprisingly slow, but the biggest offenders have to be the boulders. When a Titan throws a rock, it does not "fly" through the air as much as slowly float its way toward the player. Of course, this is a good thing, as a hit from one of those boulders is usually a one-hit kill.

* In ''[[Team Fortress 2]],'' bullets travel instantaneously, even from across the map. Rockets, grenades, and arrows, however, will have a marked flight time, occasionally measurable in seconds. This is primarily a balancing issue, as the first two mentioned weapons have considerable splash damage (and the slow speed gives more fleet footed class time to evade). Pyros have the option to [[Playing Tennis With the Boss|play tennis with enemies]] and reflect the aforementioned projectiles back at the people who fired them.

* The pistol and nailgun in ''[[Quake 4]]''. The shotgun, machinegun, and a few others are hitscan, although still dodgeable.

 

* In ''[[Diablo]]'' projectiles only really become dangerous when there are loads of them, or they home. The Amazons in ''Diablo 2'' also have a spell that slows down any missile. The partial exception to this is the red lightning Diablo itself fires, which is very difficult to avoid completely. Unfortunately, the Amazon's arrows also qualify which is why she gets fancy multi-shot and machine gunning skills to compensate.

 

* ''[[Virtua Cop]]'' series

** ''Virtua Cop'', in all its incarnations, feature grenades, rockets, and knives that can be shot out of the air. The first boss of the second game even throws a ''van'' at you, which is deflected with six bullets.

* ''Lethal Enforcers'' has the bosses use rocket launchers or blades. The second has cannons, barrels, and arrows, being in a wild west setting.

 

* ''[[Steel Battalion]]: Line of Contact'' feels like this with pretty much every weapon, especially smoothbore cannons, due to how easily they can be dodged with the slidestep pedal. The High Velocity Missile Launcher (HVM-la) is faster than usual, but can still be dodged easily at longer ranges, and while the railgun can't be dodged after firing due to ludicrous projectile speed, the lead-up time required to fire it allows skilled pilots to slidestep just before it fires so it misses wide. Homing missiles like the AS-mis and PZ-mis can be thwarted with chaff and a slidestep as well.

 

* ''[[Contra]]'' has enemies attack with bullets and missiles that travel at a shockingly slow pace across the screen. Their deadliness usually comes in [[More Dakka|waves]], from the fact you're a [[One-Hit-Point Wonder]], and from the fact that it's 2D so you can't just casually sidestep the shots. This is particularly WTF-inducing in ''Contra 3'', where on lower difficulties, an enemy behind you fires a bullet at you traveling ''slightly faster'' than the character. Since the animation of your character makes it look like he's merely jogging, dodging the bullet would simply be a matter of him picking up the pace and literally ''outrunning the bullet''.<ref>To ''really'' drive in the WTF factor, note that this means that if your character could sprint, you could jump out of the bullet's path, let it pass under you, and then, as is lazily floats away from you, run after it and '''kill yourself by hitting it from behind'''.</ref>

* Lampshaded in ''[[Metal Slug]]''. There's an enemy that's basically a big cannon on wheels; it has a large barrel, and when it readies to fire it looks like it'll blast half the screen away. It then does a huge boom, and—plops down a sloooowly rolling projectile that acts as a moving landmine.

* In ''[[I Wanna Be the Guy]]'', one of the boss fights involves a giant Bullet Bill (as a [[Shout-Out]] to ''[[Super Mario Bros. (video game)|Super Mario Bros]]'') which moves slowly enough for you to either destroy it by shooting it numerous times, or duck under it by [[Double Jump|double jumping]].

 

* ''[[Star Wars]]: Empire at War'' and its expansion. Although usually the targets are too slow to get out of the way, the concussion missiles and proton torpedoes are really, really slow.

* Arrows and siege ammo in the first two [[Age of Empires]] games could be dodged by any moving unit, at almost any distance, because no unit in either game is able to lead their shots without [[You Have Researched Breathing|research.]] In the first game one could easily see two groups of archers doing a little "dodge-dance" in between shooting each other.

** The Seeker Missile is [[All There in the Manual|explained]] as having been developed more as a guided mine for deep space territory denial.

 

* ''[[Morrowind]]'': all marksman weapons and ammo take enough time to travel to their target you can follow it. This also works the other way around: when an enemy fires an arrow or throwing weapon at you, at medium and long range you have plenty of time to step out of the way; smarter enemies will also dodge your arrows.

** ''[[Oblivion]]'' inherits this problem. Arrows move so slowly without mods (bordering on [[Bullet Time]]) that a bowman firing from even medium distance poses no threat unless the player's engaged in combat with someone or something else.

** ''[[Skyrim]]'' has retained the slow arrows and now they cut both ways as enemies are slightly [[Crosshair Aware]] (unless you're hidden) and will strafe to avoid your shots. Fortunately enemies are still completely unable to adjust for movement.

 

* In ''Tiger Heli'', tanks fire slow moving shells that resemble quarters, which you can often dodge quickly, provided nothing is in your escape path. Your bullets, however, move as quickly as you can push the button.

* As mentioned above, this is a staple for most [[Bullet Hell]] games. A metric tonne of ordinance is put into the air at low speeds, restricting your movement to create flying mazes made of bullets. And while you're carefully navigating the curtain of oncoming fire, they'll throw a handful faster and aimed at your head. Yannow, to keep you on your toes.

 

* The shots fired by some anticapital guns in the ''[[X (video game)|X-Universe]]'' series are so slow they can be outrun by a scoutship.

 

* ''[[Hitman]] 2'', especially with suppressed weapons.

 

* In ''[[Resident Evil 5]]'', the SMG and other guns are hitscan, while the huge Gatling gun you can unlock is not. Actually, it's the same Gatling gun the powerful vulcan ganado uses. This also makes the thing nearly useless considering the gun's horrible recoil. Most of the time your bullets fly right past the enemies. The hitscan SMG with infinite ammo makes for a much better weapon.

 

* ''[[Gratuitous Space Battles]]'' has two main types of weapons. Beams that hit instantly, and everything else. This leads to missiles that are so painfully slow that several volleys of fast firing close range beam weapons can be fired between the time the missiles are launched and they hit. Furthermore, missile velocity is a known statistic with actual effects.

* Annoth the Firebreather Dragon in ''[[I of the Dragon]]'' has access to the ''Hound'' spell which works like this... fortunately though, it does cast good damage and it is also a [[Homing Projectile]].

 

 

* Don Kanonji from ''[[Bleach]]'' has a [[Ki Attacks|spirit attack]] that launches a small and sluggish ball of light. Woe betide those that judge it by appearance, though; if it ''does'' hit, it packs quite a punch.

* ''[[Gash Bell]]'' features a demon who can summon massive and extremely powerful spheres of purple energy, which ''veeeeerrrrryyyy ssslllllooowwwwwlllllyyyy'' inched their way toward their target. He got around his obvious weakness by teaming up with another demon whose glue-based magic was good for immobilizing a target but not for dealing damage.

* ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog The Movie]]'' contains a [[Lampshade Hanging]]: during the climactic battle, Eggman fires such a rocket, and it's shaped like a tortoise to boot. The other, much faster rocket is shaped like a hare, and Eggman writes off the tortoise as a design failure. After the battle is over, Eggman [[Unspoken Plan Guarantee|gloats that he could make a better Metal Sonic,]] [[Chekhov's Gag|only for the tortoise, slow as ever, to come steal the data disc necessary to remake Metal Sonic and explode.]]

 

* In the film ''[[Runaway]]'', the villain [[Kiss|Gene Simmons]] has a pistol that shoots homing bullets. From the bullets [[Arrow Cam|point of view]] they travel only slightly faster than their running targets.

* ''[[The Last Airbender]]'' has the ''very'' infamous "Pebble Dance", which involves ''seven'' Earthbenders throwing a rock roughly the size of a human head, which travels at most two miles per hour. To contrast, in the original [[Avatar: The Last Airbender|cartoon]], a single Earthbender could launch a boulder forty times larger at least fifty miles per hour.

 

* ''[[Harry Potter]]'': Avada Kedavra, the "Unstoppable Death Curse" is described as a projectile that can be stopped by solid objects; gravestones and statues, for example. Granted, one probably couldn't do [[Bullet Time]] or something if out in the open, but this is less than the inevitable doom it was cracked out to be.

* ''[[Septimus Heap]]'': Despite Etheldredda being very close to Jenna, Alice Nettles manages to jump into the way of the bullet shoot by Etheldredda just in time.

 

* ''[[Monty Python's Flying Circus]]'': The Terry Gilliam animation "Opera Singer being shot by a very slow cannon," which is [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin]]. An opera singer sings while a cannon stationed a few feet away is shot at him. The cannonball takes about a minute to get to him.

 

* ''The Complete History of America (abridged)'' makes use of the [[Rule of Funny]] by having an enormous prop bullet carried on a stick.

 

* Done with a fist in ''[[Red vs. Blue]]: Revelations''. The Meta is slowed down by his malfunctioning time-altering upgrade. He still charges for Doc, who jokes about the Meta's attempt to very slowly kick his ass. Simmons notes that while the Meta's was appearing to move slowly relative to them, he was still technically moving as fast as he was before, therefore his punch would have the same amount of force. Doc laughs... right up until the point the Meta ''taps'' him, which sends Doc flying into a wall.

 

* ''[[Aqua Teen Hunger Force]]'':

** [[Played for Laughs]] with the Mooninites' laser cannons, whose pixelated bullets move sluggishly, but packed enough punch to vaporize Carl (it didn't kill him; it just teleported him to the Moon).

* Not a weapon, except symbolically: [[Bugs Bunny]]'s [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOt2iw-7n6A slow ball] in the 1946 [[Looney Tunes]] short ''Baseball Bugs''.

 

* To a degree: Certain Roman-era barbarian tribes worked up a technique where their soldiers, armed with a javelin, a side-weapon such as a sword, and practically no armor, would throw the javelin and run forward while it was in flight so that both of them would reach the enemy at close to the same time. Not so much "painfully slow projectile" as "painfully fast soldier", though.

* Until the advent of gunpowder, a man on foot had a decent chance of dodging artillery projectiles by the virtue of the fact that the projectiles were not particularly fast and rather large. As long as he wasn't hindered by a tight packed formation.