Welcome back Escapists to another one of Marine Mike's reviews, where I take my knowledge of modern warfighting and compare it to the world of video games. Today we'll take a look at how "realistic" shooters approach the concept of reloading and weapon magazines.
Lets start with something that as far as I know only one game has ever done right.
I hate seeing ammunition representing with "30|300"... its like saying that aside from the bullets in your current magazine, you're carrying a pouch full of 300 loose rounds. While this is not quite as infuriating as seeing things like 30|90 (such as in CoD:MW2 without scavenger), but we'll address that a little later. Now not all shooters do this, I have seen some that list the number of full magazines remaining and if you reload before the mag is empty those bullets are lost.
Well, one of the many skills you must learn to be an effective infantryman is something called "magazine retention". Simply dropping a magazine on the ground and moving on is not common practice as with enough practice you can learn to reload your weapon just as fast and keep that magazine with you. Most Marines and soldiers simply go out and buy "drop pouches" that attach to your vest to stow used magazines, and the rest of us learn to make use of those fancy cargo pockets found on our trousers. Either way, its just not good business to leave a half-full magazine laying around for whatever local happens to walk by.
I had mentioned earlier that only one game that I know of has treated reloading right.
That is only partially correct, see, it wasn't even a standalone game that sent my heart a-flutter. It was an independent mod for the original Half-Life called Firearms. Their interface showed you the number of rounds remaining in your current magazine, followed by the number of magazines you have with bullets in them. Some may say that this isn't really that much of a change, but I'll get into how it adds an extra tactical challenge to the gameplay. For those that are familiar with closed-bolt magazine-fed weapons, you would know that dropping the magazine is most definitely not unloading it, and the Firearms mod included this lovely little detail. You see, unless you fire off every last bullet in the magazine, you will have a round in the chamber ready to fire even if you drop the mag. So when you pop off 10 or so shots and decide to reload, you end up with 30 rounds in the fresh magazine plus one in the chamber (Commonly specifications for ammo capacity in weapons are listed like 7+1 or 20+1, now you know why). So on top of the "round in the chamber" feature, Firearms also keeps track of those half-spent magazines and will load them back into your weapon when you run out of full ones. There is also a hotkey to "merge magazines" which takes slightly longer than your average reload and makes as many full magazines as it can out of your used ones. While this is not necessarily realistic as it would take up quite a bit of time, its completely forgivable because realism in this case would destroy the pacing of the game. Here is where your tactical decision comes into play, do you risk not having enough ammo in your magazine to face what may be ahead or do you risk getting caught with your pants down as you merge together your ammunition. Alright I've gone on long enough about Firearms, this isn't a review of an old Half-Life mod. I just wanted to point out that they are the ones that did it right.
"Why is 30|90 so much worse than 30|300?"
Because its 210 less bullets to shoot, duh! To be more precise, absolutely no soldier would go into a combat situation with only 3 extra magazines!! I personally carried 3 magazines on my weapon alone; one loaded, one taped to the loaded one, and one in a pouch on the buttstock. When we deployed to Iraq we all had at least 7 magazines issued to us for our M16s, most of us went out and bought several more. I personally carried 8 magazines, and seen people carry as many as 14... and this was for patrols only lasting a couple hours. Our SAW gunners would carry at least 2 spare boxes of 200.
Well, now we know how much ammo the average warfighter carries now how fast can they really reload?
Fast. Fast enough that most shooters look like developers must have used someone who has been in the military for about 3 hours and assumed everyone reloads that slowly. If you don't take my word for it then,
<youtube=bp1Kzw4jHns>
<youtube=Hx0JzYcwUiY>
Now of course we all can't reload that quickly, and you can see that they drop their magazines on the ground which I mentioned earlier is a no-no. People will not always reload at the same speed and do something enough times and you're bound to make mistakes, something that games seem to overlook. Even the best of us may not lock the magazine in place correctly and watch with mortal embarrassment as your full magazine plummets to the floor and comes apart, leaving you to scramble about picking up the now scattered live rounds. I'm not saying that games should make you drop magazines on the floor, but I do think that there should at least be a small variance in the time it takes you to reload.
So in the end are these discrepancies developer oversight or for game balancing purposes?
As far as I'm concerned, for as little of a gameplay difference changing 30|300 to 30|10 and making the slight shift in how ammunition is handled, I can only describe why this hasn't happened often as laziness on the part of the developer. You may say, "Why does it matter? Its a trivial detail." I say it matters because it is such a trivial detail, because some people enjoy playing realistic shooters because they want to be able to save half-full magazines and have that round in the chamber, and most of the other players won't even notice the change. Now with my issue of extremely limited ammo; I can see how it can be used as a game balancing tool, and a realistic amount of ammo would take longer to fire than your average lifespan. Overall I think that we are due for some innovation in the lower-right corner of our screen, but most games seem content to leave it as it is.
Thank you all again for making it to the end of my second review, and as always am open for suggestions, feedback, or ideas. In case anyone was wondering I served in the US Marine Corps for four years from 2003-2007 as an Infantry Anti-Tank Assaultman. I've had two deployments to Iraq and one to Haiti, and love to talk about my experiences.
Grenades [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.190907-Marine-Mike-Reviews-Grenades]
RPGs, Rockets, and Backblast [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.191392-Marine-Mike-Reviews-RPGs-Rockets-and-Backblast]
Bullet Penetration [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.192012-Marine-Mike-Reviews-Bullet-Penetration]
EDIT: This one isn't nearly as technically detailed as the last one, so let me know which style you like better.
COMING SOON:
-Bullet Penetration
-RPGs, Rockets, and Backblast
Lets start with something that as far as I know only one game has ever done right.
I hate seeing ammunition representing with "30|300"... its like saying that aside from the bullets in your current magazine, you're carrying a pouch full of 300 loose rounds. While this is not quite as infuriating as seeing things like 30|90 (such as in CoD:MW2 without scavenger), but we'll address that a little later. Now not all shooters do this, I have seen some that list the number of full magazines remaining and if you reload before the mag is empty those bullets are lost.
Well, one of the many skills you must learn to be an effective infantryman is something called "magazine retention". Simply dropping a magazine on the ground and moving on is not common practice as with enough practice you can learn to reload your weapon just as fast and keep that magazine with you. Most Marines and soldiers simply go out and buy "drop pouches" that attach to your vest to stow used magazines, and the rest of us learn to make use of those fancy cargo pockets found on our trousers. Either way, its just not good business to leave a half-full magazine laying around for whatever local happens to walk by.
I had mentioned earlier that only one game that I know of has treated reloading right.
That is only partially correct, see, it wasn't even a standalone game that sent my heart a-flutter. It was an independent mod for the original Half-Life called Firearms. Their interface showed you the number of rounds remaining in your current magazine, followed by the number of magazines you have with bullets in them. Some may say that this isn't really that much of a change, but I'll get into how it adds an extra tactical challenge to the gameplay. For those that are familiar with closed-bolt magazine-fed weapons, you would know that dropping the magazine is most definitely not unloading it, and the Firearms mod included this lovely little detail. You see, unless you fire off every last bullet in the magazine, you will have a round in the chamber ready to fire even if you drop the mag. So when you pop off 10 or so shots and decide to reload, you end up with 30 rounds in the fresh magazine plus one in the chamber (Commonly specifications for ammo capacity in weapons are listed like 7+1 or 20+1, now you know why). So on top of the "round in the chamber" feature, Firearms also keeps track of those half-spent magazines and will load them back into your weapon when you run out of full ones. There is also a hotkey to "merge magazines" which takes slightly longer than your average reload and makes as many full magazines as it can out of your used ones. While this is not necessarily realistic as it would take up quite a bit of time, its completely forgivable because realism in this case would destroy the pacing of the game. Here is where your tactical decision comes into play, do you risk not having enough ammo in your magazine to face what may be ahead or do you risk getting caught with your pants down as you merge together your ammunition. Alright I've gone on long enough about Firearms, this isn't a review of an old Half-Life mod. I just wanted to point out that they are the ones that did it right.
"Why is 30|90 so much worse than 30|300?"
Because its 210 less bullets to shoot, duh! To be more precise, absolutely no soldier would go into a combat situation with only 3 extra magazines!! I personally carried 3 magazines on my weapon alone; one loaded, one taped to the loaded one, and one in a pouch on the buttstock. When we deployed to Iraq we all had at least 7 magazines issued to us for our M16s, most of us went out and bought several more. I personally carried 8 magazines, and seen people carry as many as 14... and this was for patrols only lasting a couple hours. Our SAW gunners would carry at least 2 spare boxes of 200.
Well, now we know how much ammo the average warfighter carries now how fast can they really reload?
Fast. Fast enough that most shooters look like developers must have used someone who has been in the military for about 3 hours and assumed everyone reloads that slowly. If you don't take my word for it then,
<youtube=bp1Kzw4jHns>
<youtube=Hx0JzYcwUiY>
Now of course we all can't reload that quickly, and you can see that they drop their magazines on the ground which I mentioned earlier is a no-no. People will not always reload at the same speed and do something enough times and you're bound to make mistakes, something that games seem to overlook. Even the best of us may not lock the magazine in place correctly and watch with mortal embarrassment as your full magazine plummets to the floor and comes apart, leaving you to scramble about picking up the now scattered live rounds. I'm not saying that games should make you drop magazines on the floor, but I do think that there should at least be a small variance in the time it takes you to reload.
So in the end are these discrepancies developer oversight or for game balancing purposes?
As far as I'm concerned, for as little of a gameplay difference changing 30|300 to 30|10 and making the slight shift in how ammunition is handled, I can only describe why this hasn't happened often as laziness on the part of the developer. You may say, "Why does it matter? Its a trivial detail." I say it matters because it is such a trivial detail, because some people enjoy playing realistic shooters because they want to be able to save half-full magazines and have that round in the chamber, and most of the other players won't even notice the change. Now with my issue of extremely limited ammo; I can see how it can be used as a game balancing tool, and a realistic amount of ammo would take longer to fire than your average lifespan. Overall I think that we are due for some innovation in the lower-right corner of our screen, but most games seem content to leave it as it is.
Thank you all again for making it to the end of my second review, and as always am open for suggestions, feedback, or ideas. In case anyone was wondering I served in the US Marine Corps for four years from 2003-2007 as an Infantry Anti-Tank Assaultman. I've had two deployments to Iraq and one to Haiti, and love to talk about my experiences.
Grenades [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.190907-Marine-Mike-Reviews-Grenades]
RPGs, Rockets, and Backblast [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.191392-Marine-Mike-Reviews-RPGs-Rockets-and-Backblast]
Bullet Penetration [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.192012-Marine-Mike-Reviews-Bullet-Penetration]
EDIT: This one isn't nearly as technically detailed as the last one, so let me know which style you like better.
COMING SOON:
-Bullet Penetration
-RPGs, Rockets, and Backblast
