Edit: Here are the most recommended games
-Last of us (Part 2 specifically):
-Death Stranding
-Undertale
-Ready or Not
-Arma
-Dayz
-Metal Gear games
-Vampyr
-This War of Mine
-Kingdom Come Deliverance 1 and 2
-Hell Let Loose
Thanks guys, I'll be checking some of these out.
-
Specifically I'm looking for shooters, but any game that fits the criteria is good.
I'm talking about weight gameplay-wise, so killing another person actually feels like a challenge. Too many games, even those that pride themselves on their realism and grittiness, have you slaying hordes and hordes of enemies, so by the end your character racks up a triple digit kill-count. Even games universally loved, like Red Dead Redemption 2, have an unrealistic amount of enemies and superhuman main characters. Every shootout ends up with thirty bodies.
I want a game where the shootouts feel just as challenging, but the amount of bodies laying on the ground at the end of a gunfight is like, 3 or 4, not 40. Smart, accurate AI, and players have just as little health as the enemies, so running and gunning is a total no-go, you have to actually plan out your engagements.
I know there are games with elements like this, or where these are true to certain extents, but there are always just so many enemies to kill anyway.
I want to have the crater scene from All Quiet in the Western Front play out every time I kill someone goddamnit. I want my character screaming and crying and pissing their pants in sadness.
This War of Mine. Everyone's just trying to survive. That elderly couple that has medicine you need but will die if you take it? Yeah.
I set up a whole assembly line of stuff to make medicine. I was gonna donate it to the hospital to save lifes, only for the war to end before I could donate my first medicines. Damn it at least give me a chance to redeem myself for killing that garage father and son!
Garage trader is probably the best trader in the game, too :(
It's been about a year since I played that game but unless they patched it the garage is so broken it makes the game trivial. There's a bug where every time you go to the garage, the "stash" in their basement resets. So pretty much every night you can go and get free food, weapons, jewelry, medicine. It counts as stealing, so your people get depressed, but at the same time it makes the game way too easy once you know how to sneak into the basement
Played it again recently, and what really broke me was the nurse crying in the corner telling herself to keep it together because the patients needed her.
This War of Mine
I bought it at the beginning of 2022.
I have tried it multiple times, but I just couldn't. It's a good game, but so horribly depressing.
Understanding the message of a work of art sometimes hurts.
Also fits OP’s criteria for gameplay. Violence is not easy in that game. You always have the option to do it… but the risk is incredibly high that you’re often better off avoiding it altogether.
100% this game. In my playthrough, there was an area I had to sneak into in order to find supplies. I saw an armed man and did my best to avoid him, but I unexpectedly ran right into another one. In the struggle, I took a shot but I managed to stab him to death in an adrenaline-induced panic. Pretty intense right?
Then a woman drops down from a hole in the upper floor, screaming the guy's actual name. She runs right at me, scaring the shit out of me and I almost clicked to stab her, but I didn't. And instead of attacking me, the woman runs right past me and collapses in a sobbing heap upon the guy I just killed.
And then the other guy I managed to avoid catches up to us. I expected him to try to gun me down, but he didn't. Instead, he deliberately placed himself between me and his weeping friend and demanded that I just leave them alone, clearly devastated but desperately trying to hold it together for the person he wanted to protect. He didn't even care if I looted the place.
For a few seconds, I didn't move. I stared at the screen in dumb shock, taking in what I'd just done, and I felt an actual pit form in my stomach. It almost felt like I had actually killed someone, more than any other game I'd played. I didn't even loot all that much before I left, just staying in that area made me feel sick. I'll never forget it.
Man I suck at this game
I played this game through when it came out. I recently started anew and just _struggle_ to get it going. Everyone is constantly sick, starving and I keep getting robbed. I donno what am I doing wrong this time; did it get harder, did I get worse or is the rng just happily screwing me over, lol
Mate me too. I tried it and didn't get past maybe 2 or 3 nights. Everyone just died or I got robbed. Might try it again though. It definitely had potential
Build rat traps right away for food, and only eat once every two days. You'll be hungry, but not starved.
I cant get myself to play it.
The trick is to get a knife and listen in on every conversation you come across. If they talk about violent intentions or are bragging about violent acts they've committed your character can murder them without remorse. Backstabbing is an instant kill so killing a violent soldier early on gives you a gun, ammo, and or body armor. All essential
That's not necessarily true. Many characters will become rapidly depressed after killing.
No character gets depressed after killing hostile soldiers
The soldier character you can get that doesn't get depressed when killing makes the game easy mode. You can be absolutely stocked up on guns and ammo in a few days.
I just find it depressing. Not really fun at all lol. Guess that's the intent
Yep. That's the exact intent.
The Alters as well (probably because they are from the same devs)
Thank you for mentioning this. I had no idea it existed and I loved This War of Mine and all the DLC. I've just watched a review of it so I'm definitely going to give this a go.
For real! This came outta nowhere for me. Very cool.
Just finished platinuming the game the other day. Excellent suggestion, it's something special.
That game made me pause and take a few minutes to regain myself on more than one occasion
Came here to say this as well.
I managed to play for 11 hours but couldn’t finish it. Besides it being difficult, it always left me feeling so depressed
Goddamn. I couldn't get myself to continue playing the game. I had gotten to the point where i had to raid houses with people in them to get supplies. My fragile heart couldn't.
Just bought this game after reading this comment and I remembered I played this way back when. Costs about €3 for the complete edition
that game is fucking depressing. the board game just as much, if not more.
Dishonored 1 or 2, accidentally killing someone in a non-lethal playthrough feels like that guy actually just died in front of you, and you didn't want it to happen.
This is what I first thought of too. Also, using the heart to find out if an enemy guard is just a regular guy who loves his family - or a twisted puppy killer - is an interesting mechanic.
Would have been even better if killing evil guards lowered chaos.
Morally, it doesn't make much difference if the person you kill is evil or heroic. Either way, it normalizes death in general and murder more specifically, which increases chaos. Besides, the people who find the body probably won't have your magic soul-seeing talents.
Morally it doesn't. But chaos isn't necessarily a morality thing.
During my first nonlethal playthrough I loaded a real bolt by accident and shot a civilian through the back of his skull. In his own apartment no less. I think it was a good twenty seconds of me staring at the body in shock before I restarted.
This is honestly such a good way to describe these playthroughs. I played Dishonored when I was 11 for the first time, and then over a decade later I just recently played a non-lethal, partially for the achievement, partially to just take on a new image of Corvo and how I feel like he WISHES he could normally have behaved... it just amplified the experience so much, and I rarely (and I mean like I've only ever done it with less than 10 games) replay any game no matter what
Shit you and I definitely had different experiences lol
When I was 11 I went through and slaughtered everyone in the most creative ways.
This attitude didn't stop until cyberpunk tbh where I kinda grew a game conscious but not much of one. I'll still pop an NPC if they have something I want.
Even the children of Skyrim ain't safe.
If you haven't checked out the first Deus Ex it was the original game in the Immersive Sim genre that inspired BioShock and Dishonored. It can be played entirely non-lethal.
But that's just more like "avoiding killing" completely, not making it hard. Killing Dishonored is super easy. You just get a different ending if you kill too many. And the rats ...
I botched my non-lethal playthrough by hitting somebody with a tranquilizer, then they fell off the roof into water where they were promptly eaten by piranhas.
Vampyr! It's been a while since I played, but IIRC there are some baddies that you have to kill, but for everyone else it's optional, and there are significant effects from each death, or each not-death. Like every time you bite someone (other than the baddies?) there's an emotionally heavy cutscene and some power you get. Also every time you bite someone there are consequences in the game. Stuff like, you kill a woman, and later on you find her young freshly-orphaned son and have to deal with that. You could kill him too, but that has consequences too. It's up to you whether you want to try not to kill everyone or not. I got a lot out of trying to kill as few people as possible.
I was totally thinking this as I was reading this post, it's quite a shame that the game had a few flaws that didn't quite enable it to skyrocket.
I loved how the game changed pending on those choices. The environment would become void and empty when you killed but if you kept people alive your character really began to struggle.
I might have to play through it again, it's been years since I platinum'd!
This game is so scuffed and rough around the edges, but it’s also one of my favs. Highly recommend for people who love dialogue heavy games.
I came here to say Vampyr.
Story-wise, yeah, but every street and alley is filled with thousands of respawnable ennemies...
Vampires yes, humans no. If you kill any human, it's permanent
Except for all the vampire hunters you run into.
One of the best games I played. It's incredible how desolate the city feels when you choose to go around killing people. Brutal
Vampyr was such a good vampire game as well. I hope they make another one at some point.
If you like Vampyr, Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden is similar in hard choices except it’s more like: “do i save this person’s soul? Do they deserve it? Do i deserve it more?” Banishers is kind of a spiritual successor
Playing through Banishers right now, and it's way too good. I do kind of wish there was a tradeoff for killing vs not killing in the game. I'm playing the ascension path, and sometimes you come across a town person who just fucking deserves to die but you can't cause you wanna be "good". At least if I got some cool powers from killing them, the choice would be harder
Does that fit the criteria, though? There are consequences for killing, but killing itself is not a challenge.
Best answer 👆
Red Orchestra 2 usually let you be on the receiving end of things. When you were shot and started to bleed out, your character would literally freak the fuck out and monologue to themselves before dying. Here's an example.
https://youtu.be/ldNSMnEeKio?si=jRL-JviqkJkfnXQ_
Same with hitting anyone with a flame thrower in Rising Storm. Hearing people scream when you hit them was always really gnarly. It's kind of true to life, as flame thrower users were ALWAYS big targets in war, since they were terrifying and massively demoralizing (they were used primarily to burn people in bunkers)
Despite it being an almost arcadey war sim fps in the vein of battlefield, they nailed the gravitas of what was happening out there. When you started to let the game get to you, you really felt for the soldiers on both sides of the war, and the utter hopelessness of war itself. Tripwire got it right, it was enthralling, horrific and worth playing because of.
The game is unfortunately very difficult to find pub servers worth playing now.
there is usually one full european server every evening even during the week. plus you should try enabling for dead bodies to stay. when youre defending an objective, seeing 30 bodies laying on the ground in some hallway really makes you think
I remember the first time I turned an antitank rifle on infantry. Watched some guy just turn to mist and all his nearby squad mates start freaking the fuck out. Solid game.
RO2 is a masterpiece. They screwed the pooch on Vietnam, something happened with the higher ups and they didn't want to hire good voice actors or something. Plus the dialogue lines themselves are extremely PG.
Hell Let Loose devs sold out, they were aiming for a RO2 spiritual successor, instead they sold their game and now it's Battlefield-lite.
DayZ. The only real challenge is encountering other players and surviving. So either you make friends or send them back to the coast.
This was my suggestion, it’s not single player but the multiplayer aspect with voice comms and the horrific struggle just staying alive hits hard when those decisions have to be made.
I’ve never felt more adrenaline than certain gunfights in DayZ, and that’s before you take the plunge into betraying your teammates you’ve randomly picked up along the way (only done it a couple of times and they’re vividly stamped in my brain).
Even just hearing a gunshot nearby when you’ve finally got your character in a positive direction can completely derail your thought processes.
100% this and it’s not even close. No other multiplayer game at least rivals the level of investment in your character/gear and the stakes in a firefight with another well geared squad. I’ve been in firefights that lasted 3-4 hours and cost hundreds of cumulative player hours of effort to the losing side(s). I’ve played competitive CS and other sweaty FPSes for 25 years and they’re like kindergarten class compared to DayZ, I used to get so much adrenaline in firefights I would be shaking too hard to aim properly sometimes.
I play this one, and that's one of the aspects I enjoy greatly.
Roller Coaster Tycoon 2
Death Stranding (haven't played its sequel). Dead bodies are basically nukes waiting to go off. You have to dispose of them properly, which can be a pain at times.
Only problem is there's really no reason to ever actually kill a human enemy. The non-lethal bullets are just as effective, so you never need to consider the possibility of killing someone when you attack an enemy camp. I've completed both games now and I'm still yet to actually kill anyone
I found a reason.
I definitely hit a guy with a car once in the first game and that was a whole thing. No casualties in 2 so far
Ugh last night I thoughtlessly drove over an unconscious MULE with my trike and he died, resulting in an absolutely grueling hike through the mountains (without any chiral network setup yet) to dispose of his body.
I was explaining this to my wife, and how this was not fun, because it had no reward. And my wife asked "Isn't the reward that you can keep playing because the guy didn't explode?" And I said "When someone mugs you, you don't feel rewarded when you hand over your wallet just because you didn't die."
What a strange game.
Your saying this as a negative but personally I love emergent gameplay like this.
You basically got your own challenging personal side quest to complete.
Oh for sure. I told my wife "the reward was the lesson that killing people is bad, and that's very strange for a video game." Side quests hit different when they're entirely caused by your own decisions.
Death Stranding. It's pretty hefty if you kill people. Like, catastrophic.
Probably the best answer. Metal Gear could also fit here.
Could also play games where killing isn't possible, several horror games are like that.
Metal gear 3 where the y force you to walk through all the ghosts of the people you killed in the game is crazy. First time i did it i had no idea and was killing everyone i crossed paths with then that scene took me forever i was traumatized.
Not played it and not bothered about spoilers, why is it such a big problem to kill people?
theyll probably explode and leave a giant crater in the map. if theyre in the wrong area its also an automatic game over. you can properly dispose of the body but its a pain
Essentially souls stopped going into the afterlife after the death stranding. With nowhere to go, the bodies just necrotize, and the soul, never able to leave, becomes a creature that creates anti-matter when coming into contact with a human body. Result is essentially a nuke. Entire cities have been wiped off the map over improper corpse disposal.
That’s very much a TLDR.
I felt that in A Plague Tale: Requiem.
I'd say more so in A Plague Tale: Innocence. That first one you're forced into was a brutal scene.
I agree, it was traumatizing as well for Amicia.
Granted, just about every moment of those games is traumatizing for Amicia
Ready or Not is fantastic for this. You can take a couple of hits at most before you’re dropped. Swinging a corner or breaching a door can be a death sentence without proper recon. I’d give it a fair shake regardless of the “censorship” controversy.
What's the censorship controversy with it? I found it a quite shocking and depressing gsme when I last played it (a few updates ago) . Have things changed?
All nudity has been covered up. In addition some other "sensitive" topics have been censored, like the girl who was convulsing in her bed was changed to just be sleeping.
Just go read the last dev log they put out. It’s getting censored for the console launch. A lot of what makes the game dark and depressing is getting “covered up” to please the console overlords. It’s a bummer but the gameplay will still remain the same mostly
I’m presuming you mean MS and Sony? Whilst they will have a hand in it, most of the changes have come about because of the ratings board and individual country’s censorship laws.
I remember a while back WoW was trying to break into China and they had to do a load of assets swaps for WotLK because I think you’re not allowed to show bone in China?
R6:S also went through similar proposed changes I believe.
I believe it’s undead in general, but especially ghosts that will get the Chinese censors noticing. I do recall that they had to spend a lot of time adjusting WoW for the Chinese market, though.
Man, as someone that's played the game through multiple times, this censorship stuff is extremely overblown. Very little was actually changed - mostly some nudity. Contrary to what you said, the game's most notable and shocking levels - Spider, Valley of Dolls, Elephant, Neon Tomb - are entirely untouched. And although Hide and Seek is nudity censored, clearly malnourished women in a shipping container isn't exactly being subtle and still hits just as hard.
While I don't understand the review-bombing myself, I understand the sentiment behind it.
The devs outright promised that under no circumstances would they 'tone down' the gritty nature of the game. To many, they paid for a product, and the creators of the product no longer stand for what they said they would. This is a reasonable annoyance, however I personally take no real issue with it beyond that.
Personally, I hate all the "extra" shit in RoN. The game is 100% copaganda. I really liked SWAT 4, and I wanted a game with those mechanics and some realistic scenarios. But this game takes place in a dystopic near-future where the police and swat departments have all been defunded, and degenerate criminality is on a stark rise. Its why every fucking level is just loaded with meth addicted tweakers, crazed pedophiles, and violent murderers. There are no "small" levels. No realistic encounters. Just room after room of existential unknown threats to officer safety. There's even posters in the police station with signs saying "I SHOULD HAVE TAKEN THE SHOT" with a picture of a crying cop. The game plays like its made to make you empathize with cops who shoot people, because how can you not in this game? They dont surrender easily, and the AI have ridiculous sight lines and will start spraying you the second they see you through a Crack in a door.
Gameplay is 10/10 but the content and level building is fucking sketchy. I wanted FPP Door Knockers. Not a horror game about how tough cops have it.
I've played though all the missions and dlc. But the censorship issue is overblown to oblivion. A new player won't even notice a single thing that were censored. Nothing about the story is censored and is still extremely dark. Nudity is not going to make or break the rest of the game.
Devs used to claim that they will deliver a swat action without any filter... Only to apply light filter to everyone in order to get to console market. The changes are in most part really minor (pun intended).
Many people have issues with it. It's not about the changes but about the principle (censorship is Pandora's box that should never be opened) and the fact that it's forced on everyone. Some also see the problem in these changes being announced only few weeks before console release.
The changes aren't live yet. They will release it together with console release.
This is it^
Things are fast, intense, and have zero room for error. You have to be intelligent, aware, and prepared. It’s tough to make shootouts feel “tough” while being realistic, (Guys die in a few bullets instead of being sponges), but this game does an excellent job at it.
People's groans and screams after taking a hit are horrible
Hitman while going for silent assassin
Heavy Rain, Detroit Become Human.
Outward is a bit like this, especially at the beginning. Every random highwayman you meet is on par with you stats wise, so those first few fights are a struggle. Later on when you have good equipment you can cut through them like butter, but at that point you're generally fighting much stronger enemies, and typically you're never fighting more than 2 or maybe 3 enemies at a time.
I've also heard that the Kingdom Come games are like this, but I couldn't get into them so I can't speak to them personally.
Kingdom Come is somehow exactly what OP is looking for and simultaneously exactly what they describe as a body-count simulator.
I absolutely adore the games, they’re awesome, but after you figure out the gameplay mechanics and get pretty good at it you can legit solo a whole god damn castle. Granted, they’re MOSTLY 1-1 fights, but you’re still potentially littering the floor with dozens of corpses.
It's a lot like how FuzzyTentacle described the beginning of that other game, especially KCD2. In the beginning, you start off with nothing. Even getting into a fist fight would not be recommended for a new player. You need to really learn the mechanics and choose your battles wisely. Even after gaining some upgrades and skills, you are still going to need to think tactically and take on 1-2 enemies at a time. Even then, pick a fight with the wrong guy, and you are gunna get schooled. By the end though, Henry does get rather hungry...
Disco Elysium. It won't come up often, but each time it does your heart will be racing. Not a shooter though and fully narrative, but making it out alive still feels like the hardest challenge of your life.
Most worth it game over though.
Game over from an uncomfortable chair.
A gaming thread isn't complete without someone bringing up Disco Elysium. I know nothing about this game, only that it gets infinite glaze from its fans.
Best way to approach the game is by knowing as little as possible about it.
Last of us part 2 especially on higher difficulties. I know it’s a polarizing game but it is one of my favs of all time and I thought the story was fantastic. The AI is really smart and their death animations can be pretty brutal. Definitely had some kills when I first played that had me like “damn maybe that was a bit much” lol
The throat slitting animation is pretty intense. And if you play the way I do (trying to stealthily take everyone out), you see it a lot.
I put a mine out and absolutely destroyed someone. It was so messy and hearing their friends reaction made me regret it.
I’ve never felt like a worse person than the first time I killed a guard dog and their owner saw it happen…
Or killing the owner, and then the dog starts crying and grieving over their corpse. Great attention to detail in all aspects of the game.
The dog part didn’t really get me until you start playing as Abby, and they introduce the dogs. That made it so much worse.
I've said this elsewhere but TLOU2 is the only game I've ever played where the violence, and more specifically: the characters' reactions to said violence, was so realistically portrayed that it felt uncomfortable to play at times.
The game goes as far as having people call others by their name when they see you murdering them.
It makes the kill feel way heavier.
Same with the dogs having names! Hated killing the dogs. They did nothing wrong but they are so good at detecting you.
They hit pretty low with the dogs. I remember killing "Bear" and then later in a flashback the game shows you that he was "the best boy" kind of dog and you can play fetch with him.
Damn.
Sometimes when you kill someone in the game the other enemies in the area will scream their name, "NO Jenny!" Or "They got Michael!" It kinda makes you feel bad for bashing their face in with a wooden plank.
This is the best answer.
One of the best games ever made
I'm not a huge fan of this game, but I gotta give it props for how fucked up it makes the violence feel. Every life taken weighs on you because of how graphic and sad the AI reactions are.
Og Fallout 1 and Fallout 2.
If you're not into story driven strategy, then probably not for you. But piss of a wrong NPC and you're dead.
The original Rainbow Six game was like this. You absolutely needed to pick your team well, pick your moment better, and execute with precision. Killing somebody was a decision. Might have some nostalgia goggles on for this one though.
I also came to say the first Rainbow Six. One small error can get your team killed and throw the entire mission.
Don’t know if that’s the kind of game you’re looking for but XCOM 2 has you commanding a 4-6 men squad tactically. Most missions feature 12-15 enemies at most and when playing on harder difficulties, every mistakes you make could be the one that cost the life of one of your soldiers.
Especially when you give all your soldiers the names of your friends lol. I restarted a run on it cos my irl best friend died in the gatecrasher mission.... Somehow.
Haha I've always done this since the original XCOM games and other games like Wasteland etc.. It's funny when your characters take on traits or you unwittingly put them in situations similar to the RL version of themselves, like "Oh for fuck sake Uncle Mike, why were you standing there you dumbass, your gonna die now"
Disclaimer: RL Uncle Mike AKA "Toilet Blaster" is very much alive.
Uncle Mike is getting added into my character pool now. When it tries to give him a cool nickname - I'll get it swapped to Toilet Blaster. He will be immortalized across the planet.
Indiana jones and the great circle has tough gunfights that feel genuinely difficult especially in the early game.
I'd like to add Killzone 2 to the list. It's hard to play this days, locked behind the PS3, but the movement speed is very intentional, and most of the fights are against a small handful of enemies. It's a very deliberate game as far as "kill everything that moves" FPS games go.
Yeah those games had a lot of weight to the combat and they did pride themselves on their hit detection systems. Really wish they'd do a remake or new one.
Stalker, first three games. On the highest difficulty. Very rewarding.
Hunt Showdown, battle royale with permadeath
I second this!
In Hunt, all weapons are lethal with a headshot, the STK is usually 2-3 bullets tops, the gunfights feel methodical, and the sound design + ambience is second to none.
I agree. My absolute favourite game. It's completely sound based too so stealth is paramount and every kill and death feels incredible.
Escape from Tarkov. Ultra realistic shooter against other players. If you are killed, you lose your equipment. If you kill others, you loot their equipment. Extraction points are laid out across the map and it's up to you to find a way to extract safely without getting killed. The stakes are very high — you can die after a shootout if you don't have a first aid kit or die of dehydration/hunger if you don't find/loot ways to sustain yourself.
It's kill or be killed. You may encounter other players with extremely high level gear and it's up to you whether you engage face to face or ambush them from the side. On the off chance that you are able to kill them, there may be a 3rd person in the distance waiting for you to loot their body and take you out once you stand still.
To add to this, there's a whole-ass PVE mode if PVP is not your thing. I've only played PVP but I've heard it's good.
PvE has made some very very good progression since it was first released too
Been playing since 2019ish. PvE is all I play now. Higher lows and lower highs but the core gameplay mechanics are still very much present. It lets people like me that can only play for a couple hours a night really explore the mechanics and experience end game content.
He didn’t ask for the game with the most cheaters per lobby
Project Zomboid might satisfy this for you, though it's an isometric survival sim instead of a shooter. The zombies are pretty durable, so you really have to beat on them quite a bit to finish them off, and it just takes slipping up once for a zombie to potentially bite and infect you and then you're dead in a few (in-game) days. Guns and ammo are fairly rare, your character doesn't start out as a particularly skilled marksman, and gunshots tend to draw every zombie for a large distance to you.
Even when you start getting good at the combat, encounters with even lone zombies are meaningful and have to be approached tactically so you don't get bit, and more than 2 or 3 zombies in a group is a good reason to run instead of engaging.
not a shooter but the consequences never hit me as hard as they do in UNDERTALE.
I was looking for this.
ctrl+F "Undertale"
Upvote
Kcd 1 and 2
KCD2 and TloU2 took me out of gaming fatigue because of the challenge and threat posed by every enemy and how satisfying it is to defeat them.
Scrolled down too far to see this! (Kingdom come deliverance)
Death Stranding. I'd say that carries the most consequence
There’re definitely “kill an ungodly number of people” sequences, but Spec Ops: The Line is one of the only (maybe the only) games I had to put down and come back to due to the weight of a certain scene. It has a good story and decent gameplay, might be worth a play through
Just a heads up: the game got delisted on steam because of licenses expiring.
So it's not exactly easy to recommend unless there are still keys available at some keysellers or obviously disc versions for console.
Spec ops the line
It has some hard hitting scenes but you mow down hordes or basic soldiers.
The chemical drop level is pretty rough. It’s been a while since I played it but I remember the feeling of “what did I do?”
White phosphorus
Sadly its delisted on all digital stores.
Where we're going, we don't need stores
If buying isn't owning, pirating isn't stealing
I'm just borrowing it from a friend, with very convinient software. I have friends everywhere
Manhunt: https://www.rockstargames.com/games/manhunt
The game made every encounter intense.
Ready or Not.
Day z
Mainstream pick but Metal Gear Solid 5 does a pretty good job of this in my opinion. Just one guard in the wrong spot can totally fuck up your whole game plan and force you to improvise on the spot. There’s also a soft honor system based on whether you choose to kill or subdue guards.
DayZ.
You maybe get a kill every other day, and think about it for weeks.
I am alive.
Dayz.
You actually grow attachment to your character, you avoid doing risking things and would stay in the woods just to stay alive.
I firmly believe people have the mentality as it would in real world apocalypse scenario
I disagree wholeheartedly. DayZ imo is just as much a kill on sight shooter today as it was in dayz mod days.
I disagree with you. I have never had the rush in a game from a kill like the I got from stalking someone in day z and killing them. Everything is on the line and there is just so much realism involved to make it that much better.
It's not always like that. I've had many meetings with other players that turn into huge adventures. I followed the game for like 10+ years from the mod -- it always kind of seemed fundamentally broken, but I did hop back in a year or so ago and it was MUCH more polished finally. Was an absolute boatload of fun and adrenaline.
Last of Us Part 2
This. Put it on hard or higher difficulty from the get-go (id recommend survivor). Trying to make your way through a city full of people when a room full of them can end you will make you move verrrrrrry slowly and methodically. And then when everything goes to hell inevitably you’re gonna have to make your shots count because the enemy is flanking you and you barely have any ammo. Obviously this doesn’t apply as much once you get good at the game and yes you’ll still be able to kill hordes of npcs but it’s genuinely the most gritty third person shooter combat of all time imo, and combined with the melee and stealth takedowns it’s incredibly satisfying and rewarding to figure out how to maneuver through a building with a handful of enemies looking for you. And then once you get good it becomes rewarding In a different way trying to take down these enemies that formerly seemed impossible in the coolest ways. Like becoming guerrilla warfare insurgent Ellie is the most badass experience I’ve had in gaming yet, I’m always resisting the urge to replay the Mf lol
Shadow of Colossus?
Dayz
I hear Hell Let Loose is pretty brutal and realistic. There’s also arma.
I have no idea if this fits the bill enough, but the game that came to my mind is the original Mafia (2002).
A lot of the game focuses on driving, but if you get into a shootout there are usually few, but well positioned enemies. Sometimes there are dogs - you better avoid those or get rid of them quick.
Ammo is often limited and so is your health. Missions with two first aid boxes are rare. If the enemy gets a good hit in they can deplete your health in two shots. The same goes the other way around, of course. If you have buddies during the mission it gets even more difficult because the game is over if they die. Because of the physics engine, you can get heavily injured or die from car crashes too, so drive carefully.
It's a really old game by now with a lot of jank, the firefights (and sometimes fistfights) are tough as nails. There's this one mission where you and Paulie are supposed to beat up some goons but halfway through it turns into a gunfight. Boy I had to retry so many times.
I can't recommend the game enough though, it's a shorter GTA style game with an amazing story. But its age may keep you from playing it if things like visuals or jank bother you. The remake is really good too, but it leans more into the trend of mass shootouts so you probably wouldn't like it as much.
The whole Metro series!
Besides the fact that killing and its weight are explored as actual narrative themes in the said games, they're even employed as a gameplay feature -as killing your enemies, instead of knocking them out or avoiding them, prevents you from getting the "good" ending-.
Honestly kingdom come deliverance 2. Combat feels so personal, and even sneaking around or killing NPCs sleeping in bed feels like you’re doing something wrong due to the crime system
Undertale, sure it’s not a shooter but going full genocide is heartbreaking…
If you kill someone in Death Stranding, you have to lug their corpse to an incinerator or else a chunk of the map will blow up.
It is a pain in the ass. So you almost always go non lethal.
Not a shooter, but Baldurs Gate 3. Everyone can be killed, but shouldn't be lol
Alien Isolation. Firing a gun lets the Alien know exactly where you are, so any fighting you do is going to attract attention. Human enemies aren't hard to kill per se, but you will be terrified every time you have to do it.
Bioshock.
Condemned Criminal Origins has melee that feels weighty and consequential
6 Days in Fallujah is definitely one I would recommend but its more on the realistic side
death stranding
Escape From Tarkov
I remember Operation Flashpoint being like this - one unlucky shot and you're dead
DayZ
Splinter Cell. Yes, you can overpower anyone 2 or 3 on 1, especially by the later games. But you can not win a gunfight without getting lucky, and generally fail if you get into that situation anyway.
Chaos Theory is the best gameplay, but the original is where you’re the least OP.
I always liked the original Rainbow Six and original Ghost Recon’s for this as well. Gunfights are very “three shots and you’re dead” and the games encourage planning. Both a bit dated gameplay wise now, but they share a great mechanic where losing a squad made they stay dead for the rest of the game. Since everyone has different skills/weapons, losing people becomes a real risk
Honestly, mod Skyrim or Fallout with realistic combat mods and they get very different. I’m talking miss one block against a claymore and you’re dead.
Inscryption. Not gonna spoil anything, but if you've played this crazy game you know what I mean.
Barbie race and ride
Dishonored. There is a challenge to kill no one and do it unseen even. It’s quite the ordeal but a good challenge.
Dishonored for sure. Both games are fantastic.
Plague Tale Requiem
Death Stranding - the entire plot revolves around it.
Undertale....
Vampyr - when you choose to kill someone it’s kind of a big deal
Last of us Series
The Walking Dead games by Telltale come to mind, you'll def feel each character's life distinctly and be able to impact them. Not an action game but it's the best thing that comes to mind.
Other people mentioned Death Stranding and totally agree on that one too, but that's just a game where you avoid killing entirely and use non-lethal methods instead.
After that I think lots of great open world games like RDR2 capture that feeling but then naturally also let you go off the deep end too. Cyberpunk, Rogue Trader, Days Gone
Half of the replies here didn’t even read the full post. The request is not about morality, it’s about the actual gameplay. Everyone is saying spec ops the line, but in gameplay you mow down dudes just like in any other shooter at the time
Why read body when title do trick?
Yeah, I had a feeling Spec Ops: The Line would keep showing up. I even thought about mentioning it in the post body but the people who were saying spec ops wouldn't have read the body text anyway lol. I've played spec ops and it's a good game but you're still killing 6000 people every encounter.
That's why I feel like I have a hot take saying KOTOR 2. If you're going full Sith, killing good hearted Jedi masters feels morally heavy but also changes the power levels of your character which felt pretty weighty to me.