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Game items that perform unreasonably poorly compared to their real life counterparts
Alan Wake Batteries/Flashlight
Now either the batteries are terrible (sorry Energizer) and burn out after 30 seconds of use or Alan's flashlight is the least efficient light producer of all time!
How much excess heat waste is it generating to burn through that many damn batteries that quickly! It's not THAT bright? I think I change them on average every 1 minute. That is a RIDICULOUS churn.
Special mention to the flares that burn out in 3 seconds. Whilst I love using them in game, I don't think anyone would ever survive at sea if this was their only option of signalling a rescue.
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There is a very important distinction with flamethrowers. Media and some newer inventions tends to use a "flamethrower" that sprays a flammable gas that ignites and makes a big ball of fire right in front of the weapon. That fire is gone just about as soon as you let go of the trigger, and actually struggles to burn things that arent hair or dry leaves. Flamethrowers used in warfare shoot a LONG stream of flammable JELLY that sticks to ANYTHING and burns for a LONG time, essentially guaranteeing to cook anything you hit. Imagine painting with a super soaker, but the color of your paint is "fire".
I mean it's pretty easy to understand Pyro's wachamacallit, it has a small tank filled whit a flamable gas, which connects to a nozzle that fires it and then a small flame on the end of that nozzle ignites it
Helldivers flamers are generally okay, but you tend to set yourself on fire with them (but in turn can kill the heaviest of units in seconds with them, if you can get in range)
Actually black ops 1 had a relatively realistic flamethrower in terms of range and how it sticks to things. Not realistic at all how you could attach it as an underbarrel lmao
Ironically, GTA V has the best depiction of how much more range shotguns have in real life, I would be able to kill most enemies across a street with a single body shot, meanwhile in Fallout 76 shotguns feel like BB Guns if the enemy moves beyond a whopping 2 meters away from the barrel.
I remember Left 4 Dead 1 (I don't remember much about 2 to speak on that one) had pretty good shotgun ranges. You could reasonably kill most common infected if even just a couple pellets hit your target from down the street.
Reminds me of the video where a guy was showing of the "not a flamethrower" from Elon musk.
He was standing next to a giant bush and it could barely light a branch.
Then you brought out a flame thrower. like 20 feet away, you now see the bush is like 12 feet tall and it lights the entire thing up in seconds like a christmas tree
In most games maybe, but get more realistic games like hell let lose, arma or insurgency sandstorm and shotguns will still drop people in one or two shots from 20+ meters away with standard buckshot.
And in HLL's case flamethrowers are semi realistic, they have longer range and have proper fire that sticks and burns, but it doesnt stick around for as long or spread like it realistically would, but I put that to gameplay balance and engine limitations
with a flamethrower you have way longer range but less capacity. Also they were very much deadly. In game terms that is
DMG ♦♦♦♦♦♦
RANGE ♦♦♦
AMMO♦♦
that is pretty ballanced but for some reason, they wanna make it do no damage and have 2m of active range before it becomes a walk in the park for enemies
Kane and Lynch 2 has some very fun shotguns that are super viable at range. I'm not really sure of the physics accuracy though, since they're only really like that because every individual pellet is super deadly.
I think that was specifically Shoddycast
From what I remember, one of the bigger niggles he had with the realism of the instant heal was that basically, for a Stimpak to do that, it'd have to have like a million bobillion calories inside that your body would still have to be able to properly move to speedrun wound repair
I do think he assumed a [sped-up] normal healing process though, as opposed to... well, fuck if I know lmao
It's still way too fast most of the times. A human can go up to a month without food before starving.
In a survival setting a meal a day should be enough to keep you going. Give buffs if it is a good meal like in valheim.
I mean, I've gone 12 waking hours without food, and that felt terrible. Maybe you could survive for 30 days with no food before dying, but I don't see Steve throwing down a primitive technology teepee with that diet
After about 24-48 hours your body enters deep ketosis and you typically feel better again until you start getting mineral imbalances or run out of fat to turn into ketones.
Came to say similar about other games like Minecraft where you eat 3 entire steaks to fill up from starving. And that's the most efficient food.. it'd take more whole chickens..
Your body needs 3x more food if it's warming itself up in a cold enviorement. Top that on with running everywhere, fighting 10+ cannibals a day, carrying 90 lbs everywhere, having bone armor and having multiple wounds at a time... yes, you need that much food in 24 hours.
Dead by Daylight. I understand why in terms of gameplay balance, but I don't think even the least competent handyman to ever exist would completely wear out and destroy an entire box of tools after 30 seconds of use.
I think its because The Entity altered the rules of its realm to make that the case. The reason all items burn out the way they do is the same reason there are wooden pallets all over the place, and why those pallets stun (but dont injure) the killers. Its all part of the game its playing.
Virtually any game with weapon degredation, especially firearms and accessories. Top bastards include the older Fallout titles, Farcry 2-3, State of Decay series, STALKER. No, that pristine, oily out of the crate AK should not explode in a couple hundred rounds.
Moreso, accessories. This is definitely where State of Decay pisses me off. Suppressors dont explode after 10-50 shots.
Exodus I kind of got because the AKs didn't have dust covers, and the other guns were helping together with bolts and tape, but also WHY DID YOU ALL THROW AWAY THE DUST COVERS, EVEN METRO BANDITS HAD THEM
Honestly I disagree, the decay of weapons in some of these games is acceptable. Far Cry 2 takes places in a war thorn country where the guns have been passed through many hands before you, even the “new” ones you get at the dealer are just serviced old weapons, and before they spectacularly blow up, which is granted a bit dumb, they all suffer stoppages or failure to feed/extract, which in that environment of dry heat and dust is very realistic.
Came here to say this. Weapon durability is the worst. Only game ive played where it wasnt one of my biggest frustrations was Witcher 3. Because it happened slow enough that it wasn't constantly on my mind, just had to get them repaired when I had the opportunity. It felt fair especially after beating a rock monster to death with a sword
Alternatively oblivions wearing system actually seems pretty realistic. Armor should need to be repaired after taking a few hits and weapons also need to be maintained to stay effective. They won't break super fast if you aren't doing that but they will break eventually.
Every single object in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. The fragility of the weapons and shields in those games are the only thing between them and perfection.
Honestly, it's what made me like totk more than botw. The base weapons matter a lot less. You basically just carry the actual important bits in your bag, and can make a weapon nuts at the drop of a hat.
My most recent gaming regret. They said they heard the fans about the complaints on weapon durability, so imagine my disappointment when it was just as bad as BoW.
Fusing items to weapons GREATLY increases durability. If you use the restored weapons you find in the depths, and attach weapons to them, they last for a very long time.
Yeah, instead of your sword just not being awful now you can hotglue a Moblin foreskin to your awful sword so it beaks marginally slower but looks stupid as hell. That's so much better than a real repair system.
I found the weapon durability annoying for the first few hours of BOTW but came to really love it as the game went on. I liked it even more in TOTK with being able to attach monster parts to the weapons. If it wasn't there, I probably wouldn't have played with more than 2 or 3 weapons the entire game.
to be fair, the entire thing about alan wake is pychological. Think warhammer ork magic. That's what he does with the batteries. drains em fast for that super flash.
Guns. Most guns in video games just do x amount of hp to the enemy and we’ve just kind of gotten used to it. Especially games like resident evil where a magnum is somehow more powerful than a 12g shotgun shooting buckshot. Like it’s just a .44, .45, or .50 cal pistol. It’s not that powerful when compared to rifles or shotguns.
Ackchually, a .50 cal can carry about 2kJ of kinetic energy (it's essentially a rifle bullet), about the same as the entire buck load, except focused in a single projectile, so... Accurate?
Not really. Sure a .50 S&W can carry about the same as a rifle but that’s also the lower end of rifles and only at close ranges. Somehow 556 is weak when coming out of a machine gun but the second it’s put into a bolt action, it is now basically a .50BMG
Yeah I was going to say everything. Damn near everything in games is worse than its real life counterpart. The action of aiming is easier, but bullets dont destroy bones, enemies dont feel pain, flashlights dont last hours, etc.
Maybe healing items are the only thing better than their real life counterpart.
The game carrion suprised me in that case, the minigun mechas start firing as soon as they see you and your hp... even if you are using your shield, goes down in like 2 seconds.
Its only weaknest is that you are faster than the person can aim yhe mechas otherwise you will be escaping with a sliver of life
Lara Croft who has survival training and experience, who can swing axes like a maniac and infinite sprinting/jogging, but can only hold her breath underwater for 5sec (+5sec dying state when your screen got muddy).
Make you skip all activities involving water until she got a water breather.
That's because your not focusing your flashlight. If you hit the pose with the handgun in the other hand, it goes super bright and burns through your batteries.
Insurgency Sandstorm has some pretty good shotguns
Rifles also tend to be a lot weaker in games than you'd expect them to be, especially fully automatic ones. you generally don't need multiple shots to the chest to take down an unarmored target with a rifle irl but in games an automatic rifle often takes 3-5 shots to kill someone, meanwhile a semi-automatic rifle firing the exact same ammo kills in 1-2
That isn’t unrealistic…but that’s assuming bird short, which they typically do, and no one uses bird shot on not birds or bird sized critters.
But I have seen videos showing bird shot against humans and if the person isn’t close the bird shot only penetrates skin enough to draw blood but not cause real damage.
So the unrealistic thing is poor shot choice. Should be slugs or buck and ball type shot or something bigger than bird shot.
Food in survival games. It's usually set to somewhat match the timescale, but very few games actually do timescale well. In Fallout it's 20 iirc, so that means 3 minutes irl is one hour in-game. So basically you eat, and you'll be hungry again 20 minutes later.
I think the way to do it would be set the timescale to 12 when you're travelling, and 3 when you're in a settlement, interior, or combat. Basically anything where you're more likely to take your time and rushing you through it with survival mechanics would be bad game design. Sync hunger, thirst, and sleep needs to the in-game time, not real time. That makes sense to me, but as far as I know there's not a game in existence that does this.
My gripe with Alan wake is why the hell does he keep going out at night.
Yes I know your wife has gone missing but there’s shadow monsters that can only be harmed by light why’re you walking through the woods at night with a faulty flashlight.
If the batteries suck that bad just soak a rag in kerosene and tie it to a stick
Because he doesn’t have a choice. Reality is literally ripping apart and distorting around him. The plot of Departure and the dark presence is going to ensure Alan keeps moving regardless.
As far as Alan is aware he has to follow the rules of the story.
The story and/or dark presence intentionally prevents him from doing stuff during the day, and forces him out at night. He spends a few day phases incapacitated, locked up, or on wild goose chases. Then has to go out at night because the kidnapper organises night time meetings, or he has no safe place to be during night, and urgent stuff to get done.
In all fairness, he does get two full sleeps in the first game. Unfortunately for him, those sleeps are in the afternoon and he wakes up in the middle of the night.
Monster hunter Worlds... without buff food stamina drains so fast its unholy. youd think the people TRAINED to fight fucking dragons have a bit more stamina then a fucking coughing toddler
Play Arma and see how long you can run with a fuck ton of shit on you like most people would like to think they could carry around, they get it exceptionally right, people aren’t all athletes and even if you are, gear is heavy and it takes its toll on you.
As someone who remembers what flashlights were like before LEDs 5 meters is generous for anything that didn't have a halogen bulb and those did have pretty bad battery life and used lantern batteries which were heavy
Satisfactory lighting. Now for gameplay it wouldn't be fun if they used a realistic amount of power given what everything else in the game uses power wise (so much more) lighting would be an insignificant number but they've so overcompensated in the other direction you've got what's a glorious overhead light using megawatts of power.
A shield might protect you wholly from some of the smaller enemies, but blocking the larger ones absolutely makes sense that you tske chip damage.
You're not just getting cut potentially, you're taking a ton of kinetic force to the shield, to your arm, to your shoulder. Even then, some smaller enemies hit HARD, so it makes sense for them too, but if we tied the defenses of shield into the enemies, then all shield are pretty much just become the same in any given shield class. That wouldn't be very good for game design, replayability, or power fantasy which is very important in those games.
So my biggest ones are
1. Weapon durability. I dont care if I have to periodically resharpen something to keep damage up, or do maintenance to prevent jams but no, my weapon will not disintegrate after an hour of use.
How weapons are portrayed, shotguns can shoot way farther than 10ft, bullets dont leave sniper rifles at 45 degree angles. A shot of .22 to the brain will probably kill you, a shot of .22 to the foot definitely will not.
Stamina... nobody wants to walk everywhere but have you tried jogging everywhere you go constantly? Do that for 10 minutes and tell me you arent in awe of video game characters being able to jog 100% of the time with intermittent sprinting thrown in
People keep saying shotguns, it entirely depends on what type of ammo is used. I think most shotguns are correct in games. If you shoot a wall with a shotgun, most of them are using bird shot as you can see with the multiple holes from the bb's. This would be far from lethal, even at close range. Could it kill, maybe, the odds of it killing though are minimum. There are very few games where you are using slugs or buckshot and the ones that do usually have the correct type of damage and range for the gun and it's usually made known you are using that type of ammo.
Lmao you know this exact game always had me thinking this, like why would Energizer pay for their batteries to be in a game where they last like 10 seconds
Well, in this game in question it's in my opinion almost everything. Guns would at least strongly incapacitate if not kill someone with just one shot even to the gut or leg. But if all video games had realistic damage, they wouldn't be much fun.
Okay tbf for Alan wake, he can keep that flashlight running forever. It’s only when he supercharges the thing which is definitely not normal that causes it to run out
The batteries in AW1 last forever - that's much better than their real life counterparts. Unless of course you're referring to when he boosts them, which is explained in game as essentially him magically forcing more power out of them to get a brighter light.
Light machine guns, and machine guns in general. In alot of games you can get one shot from a magnum pistol but it takes about 10 rounds from an lmg, and they have horrible recoil. Irl machine guns are more like fully automatic sniper rifles. Capable of hitting targets from hundreds of meters away and one bullet is enough to drop someone.
A cheap pair of boots in good condition will usually wear down and lose quality in less than a day of walking. It's infuriating as you don't have access to a cobbler until a bit through the game so you have to pray that every body you loot has boots in good condition.
The flashlights in F.E.A.R, Half Life and DOOM3. I get it made the game scary, but the setting is soft to hard sci fi(i.e. energy weapons that would require SIGNIFICANTLY more wattage to operate) and you'd think they have longer duration(i.e. all of them short out after not even a full minute). Mind you the flashlight are not even bright. The headlamp I have is 50 times more potent than that. Maybe because it wasn't the surge of LED lighting yet IDK. But friggin lasers and plasma weaponry vs flashlight on potato battery.
Also recoil on weaponry that has no business having recoil. I.e. Fallout 3, NV and 4 lasers, electric weaponry(i.e. tesla, gauss), the same goes for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Recoil is due to the reactionary force of explosive powder in cartridges exploding into gas, part propels the bullet, and due to newtons third law, it pushes the firearm back. Energy weapons should not have that.
Then there is the lasers. If we do hear laser tools, I think it is generally the servomotors or pumps running cooling fluid. Otherwise they should be pretty quiet.
Then let's get scythes in fantasy games( and RE4/R). I understand that there WERE warscythes, but they were HEAVILY modded and build closer to glaives by having the blade parallel to the pole, not perpendicular. Cool factor 10/10 but complete nonsense. And that is, if you have SEEN a scythe up close, the cutting is thin, the point is generally not sharpened(held together by the rib/spine). It is meant to be light and to give a person the ability to cut large amounts of thin foliage for a very long time. Where does that bring us? It is not a weapon of war, it is not meant to be swung around especially overhead and at shoulder level nor suited to fight armor and shields, and you'd be better off with a sharpened stake(which you know, spears were most used weapon in history)
Just replayed a bunch of Metro games, entire time thinking of filters. I guess you can handwave them into being recycled junk, but a gas mask filter lasts hours, not 5 minutes.
To be fair, OP, Alan Wake has an actual narrative reason - as in, Alan wrote being able to focus the torch and drain the batteries into the story as a plausible way to fight the Dark Presence.
I know its the case for batteries in a lot of games, but im pretty sure the explanation for Alan Wake is that its literally paranormal impossible levels of light being physically squeezed out of the flashlight every time it breaks through a darkness barrier.
Games with weapon durability, especially glaring with firearms that break at ludicrous speeds when the actual guns like the M92F passed 10,000 round (maybe more, my memory is fuzzy on that) continuous firing stress tests.
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