Posted by: Ryan


During the first act of Metal Gear Solid 4, shortly after you meet Meryl, you have to go through a mansion/hotel/building with a ton of guys attacking you along the way. The way the building is set up, the guys who were attacking you tended to be on the other side of the building, shooting at you from a balcony kind of thing.

I had a decent amount of money, so I bought a bunch of rounds for my RPG and went to town shooting grenade launcher rounds at them. My sister's boyfriend happened to see this chain of events (as well he should, since it was his PS3 I was playing on), and he said that he never would have thought to do that.

For me, it made perfect sense. There's a bunch of guys who are all clumped together, they're far enough away that I won't get hurt, and there's a wall right behind them, so if I missed, then it would hit the wall and still do a ton of splash damage to them. But for him, he knew that realistically, you'd never actually want to fire an RPG indoors, especially on a balcony that you eventually want to walk to so you can progress.

He knows a lot more about military stuff than I do. I don't play a lot of FPS games, but I at least know the basic gun types: pistol, shotgun, sniper, machine gun, grenade, etc. (Oh, and I know magnums because of RE4. I hope people in real life are that cool when they reload magnums.) He could probably tell you the actual difference between the gun models in MGS4, but I certainly couldn't.


Metal Gear Solid 4

I like blowing stuff up.

In fact, I found myself wondering why people don't blow me up more often. I don't know if this is realistic or not, but if I have a giant rocket launcher gun over my shoulder, shouldn't someone be able to shoot the large, obvious launcher and blow me up with my own grenade?

At first, this idea sounded irritating, but as I think about it more, I think I actually like the idea better than one-hit-kill headshots (which are in lots of FPS games). Imagine a squad game where if you equip a grenade, an opponent can snipe the grenade in your hand, and not only kill you, but then also damage the teammates around you. And if someone's really good, then they could shoot a grenade out of the air and make it blow up in mid-flight, and save themselves from getting hurt. (Sounds like House of the Dead, actually.)

Or what if I ran up ahead of my team and pulled out a rocket launcher to draw enemy fire, but the gun didn't blow up when people shot it because I didn't have any ammo? If I don't have any ammo, then there's no grenade in my gun, and shooting it doesn't blow me up. Yes, the launcher will look different with nothing in it, so there would be an obvious visual cue, but I'm sure people would still shoot it anyway. *laughs*

And what do you do about rocket launchers now with this mechanic? If someone's going to shoot a rocket launcher, does that mean that his team members should stand around him to cover him and make sure he doesn't get shot? Should he run away from his teammates before switching his weapon to make sure none of them are hurt in case he gets shot?

I don't know much about first-person shooters; this was just some weird brainstorming during my lunch break, but I'm curious what you guys think.


P.S.
I'm really excited to try out Red Faction: Guerrilla. I hear you get to blow up lots of stuff in lots of fun ways. <3
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