The upgraded version was so terrible compared to the base gun, I'm glad they changed that in Up Your Arsenal.Samtemdo8 said:
Flamethrowers
- Thread starter Johnny Novgorod
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Into something even better in Up Your Arsenal that it freezes your enemies.Specter Von Baren said:
Speaking of shitty ones: Dead Space has one of the worst flamethrowers you can encounter in games. It's kinda justified, cause the gimmick of the series is that you're supposed to shoot aliens' limbs off instead shooting them in the head or "kill them with fire" as it's usual. However, i imagine burning all the tissue to crisp should be a good way to deal with self-replicating biogoo monsters. So, i'm still miffed about this meak kitchen torch we got, instead of a proper one.
On the other side of the scale is TF2. I liked playing as Pyro, cause setting enemies on fire was quite fun, and with Backburner it's usually one hit takedown.
I also gotta give credit to Far Cry 2: The flamethrower there, and how you could set the foliage on fire was pretty cool. Even if it didn't stop me from uninstalling the game.
On the other side of the scale is TF2. I liked playing as Pyro, cause setting enemies on fire was quite fun, and with Backburner it's usually one hit takedown.
I also gotta give credit to Far Cry 2: The flamethrower there, and how you could set the foliage on fire was pretty cool. Even if it didn't stop me from uninstalling the game.
It's really only there for killing the little Necromorphs that crawl all over you, it kills those guys good.MrCalavera said:
You mean in the first game right? That one sucked. But the flamethrower in DS2 kicks ass. Stops anything on its tracks (except Hunters) and kills anything in seconds if you climb halfway up its skill tree. It becomes a game breaker and it's also the main reason why I made this thread.MrCalavera said:
Um, really?Johnny Novgorod said:
-Army Men: Sarge's Heroes (get this, you're practically invincible against infantry - also really great against insect enemies as well)
-Halo: Combat Evolved (while the flamethrower's limited in use, if you use it correctly in tight spaces, it's very effective, especially when it comes to lowering/bypassing shields)
-Paladins (see above, minus the shield bit)
-Resident Evil 2 (eh, sort of? It's great against plants, but that's about it, but it's so good it kind of overrides the negatives)
The one game I can think of that the flamethrower arbitrarily sucks at is Conker's Bad Fur Day, in that while it's good against enemies, it's very rare you'll be able to use it, and mostly they can get out of range and shoot you. But apart from that, I've never thought of flamethrowers as useless, just good in specialized situations (like sniper rifles).
Isn't it really about how the games balance their weapons than it being an inherent fault of the weapon conceptually?
The flamethrower is fairly hilarious in Deus Ex cause enemies lit on fire pretty much just stay lit and running around in circles till they die. Granted you typically wouldn't keep one on you due to just how much more useful the GEP gun is, but sometimes I'd use certain heavy weapons just on the level they were available. I'd dump them to get the GEP back when it outlived its usefulness.
Loved the flamethrower in Return to Castle Wolfenstein. They were pretty satisfying to use in Fallout 3/NV too.
I recall the Flamethrower being pretty devastating in Halo 1 Combat Evolved. You could also do a thing where you just sweeped the area with flames on approach to obscure your opponent's aim as you closed the distance. Had to avoid walking straight ahead since you could literally burn yourself to death that way.
The flamethrower is fairly hilarious in Deus Ex cause enemies lit on fire pretty much just stay lit and running around in circles till they die. Granted you typically wouldn't keep one on you due to just how much more useful the GEP gun is, but sometimes I'd use certain heavy weapons just on the level they were available. I'd dump them to get the GEP back when it outlived its usefulness.
Loved the flamethrower in Return to Castle Wolfenstein. They were pretty satisfying to use in Fallout 3/NV too.
I recall the Flamethrower being pretty devastating in Halo 1 Combat Evolved. You could also do a thing where you just sweeped the area with flames on approach to obscure your opponent's aim as you closed the distance. Had to avoid walking straight ahead since you could literally burn yourself to death that way.
See, the thing is, after first one i don't think i ever bothered with flamethrower in DS2. Atleast i'm sure i didn't put any upgrades into it. Though, if it's really that good, i probably gonna try it next time i replay the game... if i squeeze it into my backlog.Johnny Novgorod said:
The single worse flamethrower has to be in the game LA Noire; the game forces you to ditch whatever more practical gun you were carrying and put on this clunky flamethrower pack. You are then forced to slowly wade around the sewers wearing it, whilst people shoot you to bits, and you can't fire back because the thing has a 6 foot range.
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Flamethrowers in real life are shitty weapons. Really the only thing they are good for is clearing out fortifications, otherwise you are just a big target, as soon as you fire you lose all visibility and make yourself an even bigger target, plus depending on wind direction you might end up choking on smoke.
In games though, they are ok, depends on the game.
In games though, they are ok, depends on the game.
They weren't even that good at clearing fortifications, and were basically made obsolete even during WW2 by grenades and submachine guns. The one thing flamethrowers really had going for them is that they were extremely frightening. If you were in a bunker and someone started shooting a flamethrower at you, you'd generally be pretty motivated to leave or surrender because of the noise, heat and general risk of suffering horrible burns.Worgen said:
The WW2 Crocodile tank could project a lethal gout over 110 metres and was effective against armour and hardened positions like pillboxes. Suffocating and blinding (and immolating) soldiers within cover, as well as much of a forward arc right in front of it allowing it to effectively suppress enemy maneuvers directly infront of it.
Its effect on enemy morale was also brutal.
The big benefit of the flamethrower is they tended to be fantastic for impairing or destroying various equipment, and pretty much whatever else it engulfed. It also had the benefit of effectively burning all flammable materials within buildings that would be otherwise dangerous to clear one by one.
Used to frightening effect in the urban fighting in Warsaw between Polish resistance and German soldiers. Flamethrowers cook people even if not directly exposed.
They produce roughly 1050C heat of anything they impact and burn, but even people around corners cannot deal with the ambient temperatures it produces. Sloughing skin and setting fire to clothes, and doing thermal damages to lungs breathing in scalding gases. It also doesn't help that it splashes when it hit walls.
That being said, using one was a job more dangerous than being a forward observer... It's hard to fault their effectiveness, however.
Its effect on enemy morale was also brutal.
The big benefit of the flamethrower is they tended to be fantastic for impairing or destroying various equipment, and pretty much whatever else it engulfed. It also had the benefit of effectively burning all flammable materials within buildings that would be otherwise dangerous to clear one by one.
Used to frightening effect in the urban fighting in Warsaw between Polish resistance and German soldiers. Flamethrowers cook people even if not directly exposed.
They produce roughly 1050C heat of anything they impact and burn, but even people around corners cannot deal with the ambient temperatures it produces. Sloughing skin and setting fire to clothes, and doing thermal damages to lungs breathing in scalding gases. It also doesn't help that it splashes when it hit walls.
That being said, using one was a job more dangerous than being a forward observer... It's hard to fault their effectiveness, however.
Flamethrowers had benefits over grenades in that they could be (wastefully) sustained. They're also instant. They can very quickly project a gout of burning napalm over anything within range, and what's more is they can keep doing so in bursts that can destroy visibility of people within hardened locations all while they were suffocating on noxious, scalding fumes.evilthecat said:
Even steel doors lose most of their tensile strength under a burst of napalm. Cement denatures and becomes brittle.
The big benefit of flamethrowers is they are guaranteed to render inoperable things like machine guns if they get directly hit. They'll also ignite flammable materials. Not only that, you could often splash fuel off walls or rooves to splatter cowering shoulders behind cover, and then ignite the area, or used for a controlled burn of an area. Which may be preferable than using timed explosives.
They were a terrifying weapon, but that terror wasn't merely a baseless fear of them.
The hatred flamethrower teams generated often lead to them not being taken prisoner even once out of propellent or fuel. Especially if the targets of the flamethrower team had suffered some of the injuries they caused by indirect exposure.
The big reason why they stopped using man-portable ones is less to do with their utility, particularly in urban combat ... it has more to do that using one was nearly a death sentence for a soldier. 92% casualty rate at Iwo Jima, for instance. They're big, they're obvious, they're heavy, and you don't actually get that much out of them.
That being said, anything man-portable that can inflict near instantaneous temperatures of over 1000 degrees celsius up to 30 metres away is going to find some use on the battlefield. It just depends on how highly you value human life in concerns to the person that has to use it...
Well yes, on a tank or napalm dropped in via bombs is a more practical way to use it.Addendum_Forthcoming said:
The infantry trying to lug that thing around (nevermind the singular character in most games) are just sitting ducks to be shot though.
Well ... flamethrower teams were still effective. It just came with a ridiculously high casualty rate. There's still jobs in the military that are high danger (beyond the norm). Artillery observer comes to mind ... but even FOs during WW2 still had a safer job than a flamethrower combat engineer. And FOs are quite honestly theclosest thing that comes to my mind of literally 'sitting duck' ... Some of the most famous imagery of the job comes from jungle warzones where Australian and U.S. soldiers would climb trees to co-ordinate firepower on positions sometimes less than a kilometre away. And effectively you're up 30 metres in a tree, and basically the first soldier that is liable to be shot at by a combat patrol... and not only that, but your job detail makes you quite a popular targetto shoot at on top of that...Seth Carter said:
It's hard to imagine a job that was more dangerous, and yet flamethrower combat engineer was still higher. But they never had a shortage of flamethrower teams.
The argument of man-portable flamethrowers was more so an argument about just how highly do you value the lives of soldiers outfitted with them. But even still, there were still people taking on the job and they were still mass producing the propane-napalm rigs to basically bring instant, glass-warping heat at a moment's notice.
To put it plainly ... it was a death sentence for the soldiers, but commanders still kept using them and they generated what I would argue is a rightful baseline level of hatred and fear in the enemy because of what they could do.
Ok then, since your knowledge of "useless" information seems as good if not greater than mine, can you come up with a plausible reason for there to be a flamethrower at an Antarctic research base?Addendum_Forthcoming said:
In my limited experience, flamethrowers (and flamethrower-styled attacks) are exceptionally useful in niche categories.
In the Pokemon series, the move Flamethrower can be a milestone for your fire-type starter and it sweeps most of the in-game competition, but in competitive play, it's seen in less than 50% of the movesets for pokemon which have access to it.
I love Dead Space 3, haters gonna hate; and sometimes, I just want to waste a swarm of little necromorphic weenies with my extra-strength flamethrower! DS1 and 2 also apply, but honestly, the weapon customization options in DS3 just can't be beat.
Dungeons and Dragons. It's my latest and most long-lasting addiction. There's a flavor of flamethrower for every situation in D&D, but they're all best in just a few select moments. Firebolt for focus-fire (heh) moments; Aganazzar's Scorcher when some fools have lined up foolishly; Burning Hands for when some fools are just too close for comfort; Scorching Ray for when one guy absolutely MUST die horribly; and the list goes on. In this list, Aganazzar's might be the most flamethrower-y; I may be awful at the Icewind Dale EE game, but I can always count on a well-placed Aganazzar's Scorcher to even the playing field.
Flame Mammoth. Mega Man X, the one game every SNES owner would trip over themselves to praise, has the quintessential flamethrower, and it's useful against a boss and some explosive fuel tanks. Again, situational.
Elder Scrolls, the series. I confess, I have only played Oblivion and Skyrim, and the only time I used fire magic, it was to hurl fire at some distant target so they would be in horrible pain before I made their day even worse with some up-close-and-personal sword damage. In Skyrim, throw in the right SHOUT and this strategy works 95% of the time. Argue with the results, I dare you.
I think the lesson here is clear as crystal: fire does not solve all your problems. It can, however, solve some problems with absolute certainty.
In the Pokemon series, the move Flamethrower can be a milestone for your fire-type starter and it sweeps most of the in-game competition, but in competitive play, it's seen in less than 50% of the movesets for pokemon which have access to it.
I love Dead Space 3, haters gonna hate; and sometimes, I just want to waste a swarm of little necromorphic weenies with my extra-strength flamethrower! DS1 and 2 also apply, but honestly, the weapon customization options in DS3 just can't be beat.
Dungeons and Dragons. It's my latest and most long-lasting addiction. There's a flavor of flamethrower for every situation in D&D, but they're all best in just a few select moments. Firebolt for focus-fire (heh) moments; Aganazzar's Scorcher when some fools have lined up foolishly; Burning Hands for when some fools are just too close for comfort; Scorching Ray for when one guy absolutely MUST die horribly; and the list goes on. In this list, Aganazzar's might be the most flamethrower-y; I may be awful at the Icewind Dale EE game, but I can always count on a well-placed Aganazzar's Scorcher to even the playing field.
Flame Mammoth. Mega Man X, the one game every SNES owner would trip over themselves to praise, has the quintessential flamethrower, and it's useful against a boss and some explosive fuel tanks. Again, situational.
Elder Scrolls, the series. I confess, I have only played Oblivion and Skyrim, and the only time I used fire magic, it was to hurl fire at some distant target so they would be in horrible pain before I made their day even worse with some up-close-and-personal sword damage. In Skyrim, throw in the right SHOUT and this strategy works 95% of the time. Argue with the results, I dare you.
I think the lesson here is clear as crystal: fire does not solve all your problems. It can, however, solve some problems with absolute certainty.
You could use it to help instantly thaw exceedingly cold engine blocks. Assuming you don't mind the damages it would inflict. That being said you wouldn't use a WW2 military grade flamethrower for that, but using a heat source can help engines tick over when it gets too cold.Specter Von Baren said:
Arguably the most conventional use for'flamethrowers' are for back burning operations in places like rural eastern state locations of Australia. Back burning eucalyptus tree litter so that you don't get summer firestorms and exploding trees.
Even then it's a 'flamethrower' in the loosest possible description. It's more like a squirt gun with petrol and a flame. You don't need pressurized napalm tanks for backburning.
Somebody's already covered Rising Storm, so I'll call up my other favourite flamethrower moment: Metro 2033 Redux, when you're first heading into D6. The base version had the memorable sequence with the player running a mounted flamethrower on the back of the Ranger train going in, but Redux adds a portable one you can grab on the way out (along with a Heavy Automatic Shotgun, IIRC). There's just something incredibly satisfying about storming a secret bunker, burning out hordes of mutants in close combat, even if the flamethrower is just an overgrown propane torch.
Which leads to my main complaint about flame weapons in games, very few devs actually know how real flamethrowers perform. TF2, Fallout, Metro 2033, just about every game I can think of (with the exception of Rising Storm and the first Killing Floor) uses the "Hollywood" flamethrower that runs on gas fuel and therefore handles like a leaf blower with fire or an oversized lighter. The classic US Army flamethrower series (M1, M2, M9A1-7) used from WWII through Vietnam, by contrast, is fuelled from a 5-gallon backpack tank of thickened gasoline or napalm, weighs 70 pounds loaded and has a range of up to 40 meters thanks to a pressurized nitrogen propellant system. That shit doesn't just woosh over a target and lightly sear it, napalm sticks as it's burning, which is what makes it so horrible to deal with. You torch a pack of zombies with a real flamethrower, and they're gonna stay burning for a while.
Which leads to my main complaint about flame weapons in games, very few devs actually know how real flamethrowers perform. TF2, Fallout, Metro 2033, just about every game I can think of (with the exception of Rising Storm and the first Killing Floor) uses the "Hollywood" flamethrower that runs on gas fuel and therefore handles like a leaf blower with fire or an oversized lighter. The classic US Army flamethrower series (M1, M2, M9A1-7) used from WWII through Vietnam, by contrast, is fuelled from a 5-gallon backpack tank of thickened gasoline or napalm, weighs 70 pounds loaded and has a range of up to 40 meters thanks to a pressurized nitrogen propellant system. That shit doesn't just woosh over a target and lightly sear it, napalm sticks as it's burning, which is what makes it so horrible to deal with. You torch a pack of zombies with a real flamethrower, and they're gonna stay burning for a while.