Fall damage is shit

[Barry Admin]

Absolute garbage, I hate it. What a brilliantly effective way to make games less fun. Thanks a lot, realism.

[Mobius]

I'm still pissed about the Longtail Cat Talisman not doing fuck all to fall damage !

[Thursday]

I can see an argument for getting rid of it in a lot of cases. Like sure you can have instant death if the fall is too big, but when it's just being a bit picky, and punishing you because you didn't go down a series of platforms in the correct order... meh fuck off.

Elden Ring is pretty terrible for this actually. Huge falls you'll get by with barely a scratch, and then other shorter falls that are instant death with no readability as to which is which.

[David Pielingtonburygrot]

Absolute garbage, I hate it. What a brilliantly effective way to make games less fun. Thanks a lot, realism.

Likewise for encumberance/inventory limitations

[Barry Admin]

I can see an argument for getting rid of it in a lot of cases. Like sure you can have instant death if the fall is too big, but when it's just being a bit picky, and punishing you because you didn't go down a series of platforms in the correct order... meh fuck off.

It's Fortnite! Get it out of Fortnite, it's a completely bizarre choice to have it in such a cartoony BR.

[Mobius]

Does seem weird to have it in a game like Fortnight

i like it in spiderman when you can jump off the biggest building and just land like a boss

the horse double jump in elden ring somehow makes falls worse!

[Barry Admin]

I suppose it's fair enough to have it in the Fortnite build mode, to add tension to that whole mechanic. But god, it really ruined two amazing games for me there.

[Pink Gregory]

lara croft collapsing into a motionless heap if she falls too far is hilarious in how bleak and abrupt it is.  So much better than ragdolling.

[druss]

I quite like figuring out if a fall will cause death or if it will merely cause broken and shattered bones, easily remedied of course by a first aid pack or lucosade.

They fucked the fall damage talisman in Elden ring though.

[Terence Bowl]

Mark E. Smith says your band is crap in an NME interview
Go back 3 spaces

[Poobum]

lara croft collapsing into a motionless heap if she falls too far is hilarious in how bleak and abrupt it is.  So much better than ragdolling.

The extra effort of doing a broken neck one for the swan dive was thoughtful of them. Still how I always end Croft Manor.

[Elderly Sumo Prophecy]

The original Tomb Raider disturbed me a bit because at a certain point in the fall she'd do this awful scream as she realised she wasn't going to survive this one (apart from the swan dive, where she'd quite serenely piledrive the floor).

[Pink Gregory]

The original Tomb Raider disturbed me a bit because at a certain point in the fall she'd do this awful scream as she realised she wasn't going to survive this one (apart from the swan dive, where she'd quite serenely piledrive the floor).

I was thinking about that, somehow less disturbing than the prurient, gruesome deaths from the Square Enix trilogy

[Elderly Sumo Prophecy]

Yeah, it was the crunch of bone at the end that did it too.

[Vodkafone]

Yeah, it was the crunch of bone at the end that did it too.

All of the above, it was really quite brutal. I winced and looked away more than once in the happy, innocent days of the PS1, before video games desensitised me to violence, whereas now I don't bat an eyelid while I murder ethnic minorities on my way to buy meth with my bitches.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

i forget if it was Tomb Raider 1 or 2, but on the PC version when Lara fell the bone crunch never sounded mixed in like other sound effects

it was overlaid on top of the enviromental and character sounds. CRUNCH. hated it

[Poobum]

Abe's fall death was also quite "satisfying." A nice splat followed by his body shrivelling into decay.

[The Crumb]

I liked it in Half Life where the ladders were all messed up and you seemed to attach to and climb them by your head. Very easy to slip off, followed by a crunch and the HEV telling you off.

[Barry Admin]

Since the days of Quake and mostly Quake III, movement has been a huge love of mine in videogames. I'm quite dyspraxic but love the more complicated movement techniques in games.

What's the best, most freeing and wonderfully exhilarating thing you can do in a videogame? I'd argue that it's to jump up and down, particularly if you can propel yourself with rockets, and air strafe.

Why then punish you with death when you land again, it's such a bad decision to me. I understand it makes sense in a lot of games, but I'm gonna just say it's wank and should basically not exist.

There should at least be a permanent way to mitigate it. The glider you have in Fortnite should be deployable on command*, not just when take off from a luanch pad or first drop.

* It definitely isn't, right?

[Blue Jam]

Prey introduced it with the Mooncrash DLC, you can break bones if you're not careful jumping off high things. It was a bit annoying when I had been used to just gently floating down with my jetpack and not having to be too careful about it in the base game. Got used to it after a while though, and in that game it actually makes sense because it's supppsed to be played a different way from Prey and you're supposed to permadie a lot. The broken bone mechanic is in the base game now but there's the option to turn it off. That's one example of it being properly thought through.

Fortnite though? Fuck that.

[Kelvin]

The best thing about fall damage is the joy when you find a game that doesn't feature it, or a scam that helps you avoid it.

Xenoblade X has this vast open world with beautiful vistas, and yet you can jump off the highest peak, arms flailing, and land on the plains below, unharmed, like its nothing.

In Mario Odyssey you can sky dive from the top of the highest skyscraper in the city, and when you land the only punishment is a cartoon "wobble" effect. It's liberating - and encourages you to try and reach distant buildings and collectibles without fear of penalty.

I also enjoyed it in Tears of the Kingdom when I'd skydive down to the surface at maximum speed and then pull out the glider one fraction of a second before I hit the floor, meaning you wouldn't even see it deployed, just Link casually running on the surface like there wasn't fall damage. Both satisfying when you got it perfectly timed, and amusing when you got it wrong and Link crumpled into pudding.

[Utter Shit]

I have no imagination whatsoever so prefer my games to be as realistic as possible, and fall damage is in that category...if I'm playing as a real person in a real world, I would want to avoid falling from high places, so I want that jeopardy. I've never quite got my head round why I'm like that, and to some extent I wish it wasn't because it really limits the sort of games I enjoy ...I can never get into sci-fi, fantasy or other types of alternate reality. Or, more accurately, I never even try to because I assume I won't be interested.

[Elderly Sumo Prophecy]

More recently, the fall damage in Witcher 3 was pretty bad. Even a fall from a small mound of earth could be fatal.

[Rev+]

For crunch fans, Left 4 Dead (2, maybe 1) has a great one.  It only takes a little bit off your health, but you really feel the meaty boniness of it.  A hearty cry of 'ow me fuckin ankles' and you're back to it.

[madhair60]

i have no problem with fall damage on a game by game basis

now RELOADING: that's the thing that should go

[Barry Admin]

I was wondering about reloading while playing Quake a while back. The first game is still absolute mayhem in terms of it's pacing, and never/rarely having to take your finger off the trigger is a big part of that.

Have to concede that reloading adds a lot of strategy and decision making and such though.


Really enjoying reading everyone's favourite splats btw :-)

[Kelvin]

Managed to get a video off my Switch.

I thought the water here was deeper.

[idunnosomename]

Remember the sheer terror when a Kazooie flap can't break your fall, and Banjo goes "jam-joh!!!"

[druss]

More recently, the fall damage in Witcher 3 was pretty bad. Even a fall from a small mound of earth could be fatal.

Fall damage was fucking ridiculous in Witcher 3. I was doing pretty well with a no death playthrough on Death March, then fell from a highish ledge near the Nilfgard encampment and that was that. Not sure I even died again after that.

[Mister Six]

I remember playing something that I thought was a shit console remake of Spelunky (with the lovely cartoony graphics replaced with much blander 3D? characters) - although a quick google suggests it might have been something else entirely - where if you fell more than two or three blocks down you died instantly, but because the graphics were so inexpertly made, it was hard to judge how big a block was, so it was really easy to die by accident.

Sorry, this an even shitter anecdote than I thought it was doing to be.

Can anyone identify this game?