PlanetPhillip » Archive » Poll Question 048 - Would you like to see a one shot, one kill gametype in SP games?

Poll Question 048 - Would you like to see a one shot, one kill gametype in SP games?

Single Player First Person Shooter Maps and Mods for Half Life 1, 2 and 3

About

Unreal Tournament featured a great gametype called Instagib. Put simply it was one shot, one kill! Assuming you hit the enemy that is! I loved playing that, partly because I always played on the easier difficulty settings. I was thinking how it could be adapted for SP games.

Would you like to see a one shot, one kill gametype in SP games?

Changes

Some changes would need to be made. For example, you, the palyer, would not be subject to the same rule. You would need perhaps 4 or 5 shots before you died. That would in turn mean health would need to be more readily available.

Now, if you killed every enemy with one shot you would need more enemies, otherwise it would be quite boring. You could probably use less ammo but I suppose those sorts of things could be balanced in proper beta testing.

Feel

Would the feel change much? Probably but it may make for some replayability, especially at the higher difficulty settings.

Request

I would like to make a request to the modding community: Would somebody be kind enough to make a mod that allows me to replay HL2 using this idea. The mod would need to automatically spawn three enemies for every one that it did in the original game.

I will happily spend some time Beta testing and amke suggestions if somebody wants to do it. TIA

The Poll

David 15th September 2007 at 05:33 1

I like the idea of one shot one kill. But I like the idea of realism much better. The best game that i have experienced so far, as far as realism goes, is Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield. It’s a bit old, but it goes on the principal of, no matter who you are, a 7.62mm round will put you down. A lot of the terrorists you have to take down go down in one shot, sometimes two. I always stay on 3 round burst so dropping them is just a simple click. However, you as a player can only take 2 shots, 3 if you’re lucky and 1 if you’re not. I feel this concept adds a much more tense feeling to the game because you aren’t just diving into rooms guns blazing, you think carefully about how to enter and take the enemies by surprise.

Half Life 2 is awesome, but the fact that the enemies take a pounding before they drop gets aggravating when you pump 1/3 of your clip into the chest of one. Now I’m a bit different than most FPS players cause I find the realism very captivating and entertaining. In the case of Half Life 2 I think it would actually heighten the experience. I also believe that if it spawned three times as many enemies it would be overwhelmingly difficult, especially if only 4 shots killed you. Half Life 2 wasn’t particularly designed with the idea of cover and use of team in mind. I believe if Half Life 2’s story and level design had been paired with Rainbow Six Vegas’ cover system and intuitive use of teams it would have been gaming bliss.

Just cause the game is set in the future doesn’t mean we have to throw realism away. As a player taking 10 shots and still being able to perform the same is a bit of a departure from any resemblance realism. Instagib may be a bit too much, but definitely brining in the realism aspect of instagib would be a huge plus.
Ryan "Quakis" Rouse 15th September 2007 at 13:35 2

I would like to, but I’d rather have the player subject to the same rule. Player or enemy, one shot is one kill with no buts. Maybe a few temp powerups can be used to speed up the firing a LITTLE faster for a few seconds, or a bonus shield to give you 1 armoured life point - but keeping it balanced and fun would be good.
Darth Marsden 15th September 2007 at 15:13 3

Not really, but I would like people to die when I shoot them in the head. It’s a freakin’ fatal shot! Die already! Don’t take three times more damage, just fall down in a heap on the floor and don’t get up! There is no defense against a bullet in the brain, dammit!

This is one of my major issues with FPS games.
Arque 15th September 2007 at 16:29 4

Not so much just one shot, one kill but, more acurate physical damage. Limping, seeping wounds, lifeless limbs, severed extremities. Oh, that’s why, isn’t it? After all the GLOBAL furore about Manhunt 2 it really isn’t a surprise that FPSs continue to be fantastic. Even ‘Battle Simulators (C)’ are guilty here. Yes, most FPSs have a one shot sniper rifle. Yes, I’m sure most of us want more realistic gibbing but, thanks to the fact that this form of entertainment is also enjoyed by little Tommy and Tommette and their inbuilt impressionable minds, it is unlikely that we will get what we want.
Ad3 15th September 2007 at 23:06 5

It might be cool to play it once, but not to get used to it, cus it’s unrealistic and it breaks the good habbit of aiming for the head in other fps games. The enemy loses a finger or an ear, then goes down? I know I’m better than that..
Matt Glanville 16th September 2007 at 08:37 6

I think it would be pretty infuriating to be killed in 1 hit. Generally it’s fine in multiplayer because you just respawn and the game keeps going, but in single player you will have to play through each bit again and again, it could be hard. Unless you implemented a system for avoiding bullets ala Strangehold.

On a side note, Goldeneye for the Nintendo 64 had a ‘License To Kill’ mode where 1 hit kills. Very tense!
liddl3monk3y 16th September 2007 at 12:46 7

Instagib was my absolute favourite UT mod - instagib team deathmatch in some of the bigger arenas was a great combination of team work and twitch fire reflexes.

Of course it usually ends up with us “older” gamers getting massacred by a 12 year old with reflexes that have as yet to be subjected to the ravages of time but it’s still a lot of fun.

I don’t know if it would translate well to all games although most games do seem to have a one shot kill weapon in their armoury; for instance CS has the AWM and DoD has the KAR.
Ezequielhl 17th September 2007 at 02:12 8

I’ll like to see it as a variation in a game SP campaign game (people with Snipers, or in Sci-fi? Railgun derivations :P), not a game exclusively of it. And maybe, when we play in Easy-very easy difficulty, the player can stand more than one Shot. Nevermind, I always play up to normal/medium difficulty.
planetphillip 17th September 2007 at 15:50 9

planetphillip Said:

I feel this concept adds a much more tense feeling to the game because you aren’t just diving into rooms guns blazing, you think carefully about how to enter and take the enemies by surprise.

I agree and I remember when I have been playing mods where i only have 1 health point it certainly added a new element to the gameplay. I was really careful 99.99% of the time.

planetphillip Said:

I also believe that if it spawned three times as many enemies it would be overwhelmingly difficult, especially if only 4 shots killed you.

That’s assuming that all 3 enemies fire at you. Which I suppose would need to happen! Remember, if you only need one shot to kill them you may require less to time to kill 3 than you currently do to kill one.

planetphillip Said:

Half Life 2 wasn’t particularly designed with the idea of cover and use of team in mind. I believe if Half Life 2’s story and level design had been paired with Rainbow Six Vegas’ cover system and intuitive use of teams it would have been gaming bliss.

True the design of the game would need to be adapted if this idea were to work.

planetphillip Said:

Just cause the game is set in the future doesn’t mean we have to throw realism away.

Good point, but to counter we don’t know what is possible in the future.

planetphillip Said:

I would like to, but I’d rather have the player subject to the same rule.

That may make the game very repetitve because you will have to satrt from your last save. It really depends on the beta testing to balance things out.

planetphillip Said:

There is no defense against a bullet in the brain, dammit!

Who knows how strong helmets will be in the future!

planetphillip Said:

Not so much just one shot, one kill but, more acurate physical damage. Limping, seeping wounds, lifeless limbs, severed extremities.

That’s something that I feel is going to happen but separate from this idea. What I was hoping for was the tension created from one-shot-one-kill, rather than getting things to seem real.

planetphillip Said:

Yes, I’m sure most of us want more realistic gibbing but, thanks to the fact that this form of entertainment is also enjoyed by little Tommy and Tommette and their inbuilt impressionable minds, it is unlikely that we will get what we want.

Perhaps that’s one benefit of the modding community. To not be limited by moral, financial or legal obligations in the saem way a retail game is.

planetphillip Said:

It might be cool to play it once, but not to get used to it, cus it’s unrealistic and it breaks the good habbit of aiming for the head in other fps games. The enemy loses a finger or an ear, then goes down? I know I’m better than that.

perhaps it could be adapted. Head and full chest shots kill, the rest are ignored. This would encourage good aiming.

planetphillip Said:

I think it would be pretty infuriating to be killed in 1 hit. Generally it’s fine in multiplayer because you just respawn and the game keeps going, but in single player you will have to play through each bit again and again, it could be hard.

Agreed, which is why I initailly suggested the player required more than one shot to be killed. With careful planning it may be possible to create situations that provide both the tension from the idea without the worry of dieng too often. Perhaps a simple health regenration system that means if you get hit 4 times in X seconds you die. IF you can avoid melle situations that you could survive. Just an idea.

planetphillip Said:

Unless you implemented a system for avoiding bullets ala Strangehold.

I’m unfamiliar with that system.

planetphillip Said:

twitch fire reflexes.

That’s what I loved about it too!

planetphillip Said:

Of course it usually ends up with us “older” gamers getting massacred by a 12 year old with reflexes that have as yet to be subjected to the ravages of time but it’s still a lot of fun.

In this context it sucks to be old!

planetphillip Said:

I’ll like to see it as a variation in a game SP campaign game (people with Snipers, or in Sci-fi? Railgun derivations :P), not a game exclusively of it.

I cedrtainly wasn’t suggesting a complete game. I think it would be interesting to be used for small portions of a game or mod.

planetphillip Said:

And maybe, when we play in Easy-very easy difficulty, the player can stand more than one Shot. Nevermind, I always play up to normal/medium difficulty.

How many shots required to kill the player could definitely be part of the difficulty setting. 1 shot ofr hard, 2 for medium and 3/4 for easy.
MattyDienhoff 25th January 2008 at 04:38 10

In most games, dying from one or two hits would be VERY aggravating. But that’s only because of the way these games are designed and the way their technology works, in the course of completing an average FPS (HL2 included) you’re highly likely to get hit well over one hundred times. (Say what you like, this is, in general, the truth)

If you died from a single hit in a game like this, it would be truly maddening. Agreed?

But if you’ve played a tactical shooter like Operation Flashpoint or Red Orchestra: Ostfront, you’d know that while you can die from a single gunshot wound in these games, you don’t get hit nearly as often unless you’re careless. Why? It’s not because very few shots are fired, quite the contrary. It’s just that games that feature real ballistics acknowledge that bullets are small objects that occupy a very small amount of space, that weapons are not perfectly accurate, and that a person’s aiming accuracy can be affected by their injuries, their stance, their posture, even how winded they are. So basically, in a tactical shooter, it’s easy to send a lot of lead someone’s way, and you might get a few lucky hits, but it takes some effort - considerably more effort than in a mainstream shooter like HL2 - to actually draw a bead on someone.

So yeah, one shot kills have their place, but that place is not in mainstream first person shooters.