Summary
Visceral. Sharp. Bone-snappingly gruesome: all things that gamers might expect to experience after picking up a new, explosive shooter or fighting game promising gritty realism and heart-stopping action. However, it isn’t often that players really feel the punch, kick, or bullet wound that developers painstakingly seek to recreate.
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Since gunshot wounds, cracked ribs, and punctured organs are fairly grizzly to actually experience (not to mention inconvenient to gamers when it happens to the player character), most developers have to find a way to balance a brutal combat experience with something a little more “user-friendly.” But some games bend this rule, and some decidedly break it, all in the name of delivering scenes of immersive and shudder-inducing violence.
8Kingdom Come: Deliverance
In most games, sword fights are won with a few taps of a button, however, not inKingdom Come: Deliverance. Melee combat is intentionally fraught with sluggish blocks and weak stabs, at least in the early levels, when players areliterally put behind the eyes of a lazy peasant who could barely win a sword fight with a bush. The first-person perspective makes clashes all the more chaotic.
By building up Henry’s experience, the player will find fighting blade-to-blade much more fluid, but fights will always retain their feel of clashing metal and artful stabs (at least until the player gets into fights with multiple opponents and figures out how to exploit the enemy AI).
7The Last Of Us: Part 2
If there’s one thing theLast of Us: Part 2does well, it’s putting the player right in the middle of a fistfight and making them feel every single blow. Whether it’s the sound effects as a fist connects with another human’s cheek, or the way that pick-up weapons shatter upon impact, every detail adds up to conveying how it actually feels to squirm and thrash around in a fight to survive.
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WhatThe Last Of Us 2really does well (or a little too well), is highlight that, rather than start and end cleanly in moment-to-moment encounters,violence can quickly spiral out of controllike a forest fire of bloodshed, guilt, and misplaced pride.
6Bushido Blade
Hailing from the PS1 era,Bushido Bladeshowed the world what a fighting game with close-to-realistic weapons (sharpness, length, and weight) could look like. Forgoing the traditional fighting game staple of combo strings, players are expected to demonstrate extreme bursts of focus and learn to anticipate their opponent’s movement frame-by-frame by watching their stance or weapon swing.
Matches inBushidoare fast and tense, and learning how to counter or block strikes is essential. Failing to block even a single swipe can put the player out of the game, or, at best, break a bone, disabling certain stances. There are no health bars in the game and each player will know when they’re done from the viscera on-screen. When the blade strikes, players are treated toa spatter of pixilated bloodshed.
5Overgrowth
True, a game aboutanthropomorphic bunnies and other humanoid crittersrunning around a graveyard for gods doing martial arts doesn’t exactly scream “immersive realism.” That being said, the developers behindOvergrowthpoured a lot of love into making one of the most hard-hitting martial arts action games on the market.
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That’s thanks to its realistic physics engine, which really lends weight and momentum when landing blows or launching deadly weapons. Wolfire Games, the developers behindOvergrowth, aimed to make the gameplay “as cool as possible” as opposed to difficult. While they certainly made an air-tight action fighter, the game has received criticism for being somewhat sparse outside combat gameplay.
4Dark Messiah Of Might And Magic
While Arkane Studio’sDishonoredseries demonstrated some slice-and-dice greatness, their early entry,Dark Messiah of Might and Magic,really delivers action with a kick. While the setting contains fantastical elements and a magical arsenal, the best way to play is dirty, mostly by booting enemies (primarily orcs) into walls, crates, or, most satisfyingly, off cliffs, or throwing bits of junk in the enemy’s face.
While it might not be the grittiest combat in gaming, it certainly feels the weightiest and most satisfying, especially considering the importance of the environment in a real-life fight. It’s not just about remembering fancy move sets and executing flawless parries or flourishes. Sometimes, landing a good kick in the bum is enough to turn the tide of battle.
3Dwarf Fortress
When it comes to graphics, even with the overhaulseen in the 2022 Steam release, there’s not much to look at for those looking to see exploding bits or hacked-off body parts. However, when it comes to realism,Dwarf Fortresshas to have one of the goriest, most intricate combat and damage systems ever put to code.
Whereas most games involving violence could be proud of having a severed limb feature or an ailment mechanic,Dwarf Fortressgoes deeper, calculating each entity’s fingers and toes, and even muscle, fat, and skin layers when they get sliced, smashed, or burned. In battle, dwarves can have their fingers bitten off, their kidneys pop, or their skulls fractured, leading to long-term (even lifetime) effects.
2S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
The world ofS.T.A.L.K.E.R.is harsh and unforgiving, and there are no second chances for screw-ups. That goes for the environment and those that wonder the Zone. Combat is lethal, as one or two hits mean that it’s all over. If that wasn’t bad enough, without access to bandages, the player can slowly bleed out on the battlefield.Ranged combat can be just as bloody as melee, after all.
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While all too many games featuring firearms give off the impression that guns have as much punch as pea-shooters, theS.T.A.L.K.E.R.series really makes the player fear for their life when shots start popping off. In order to survive, the player needs to strategize and avoid the enemy’s line of sight at all costs.
1Hellish Quart
Hellish Quartputs great emphasis on realistic physics as well as move sets. Cuts and stab wounds are visible after every connection. Whileprecision and quick reflexes are neededto survive each fight, the characters can strafe into a stray swipe and end up losing a hand, an eye, or their life in the process.
One-hit kills are common, especially when well-placed, with a backstab or a tight lunge. When combatants go down, they cringe and nurse their seeping wounds or missing limbs with animations of unmatched realism, which really helps the player soak in the agony and despair of the loser or bask in the savage pride of the victor.
