Combat games offer tense firefights, competitive challenges, and dramatic victories. Many players like them for the excitement of making decisions under pressure without facing actual danger. While it’s unrealistic to expect a game to recreate every aspect of warfare, they get more details wrong than you’d expect.
You’ve probably noticed a few yourself after watching an opponent survive an absurd amount of damage. Here are ten things combat games commonly get wrong, from historical inaccuracies to mechanics you’ve probably used to win a match.
Gear From the Wrong Historical Period
It’s not uncommon for combat games to get the equipment wrong for their historical period. Military tactical gear has evolved over the years, and developers sometimes give characters equipment that hadn’t been invented when the story takes place. Sometimes they get the weapon right but attach a modern accessory to it.
Other mistakes involve who carried the equipment. An item issued to a small number of specialized troops can appear on nearly every soldier in the game. Even when the dates line up, the developers exaggerate how widely soldiers used it.
Ammunition That Rearranges Itself
In many shooters, you can reload whenever you want and always insert a full magazine. Any rounds left in the magazine you removed go into your ammunition total. You never end up loading one of those partially used magazines later in the fight.
In reality, firing five rounds from a 30-round magazine leaves 25 in that magazine. If you put it away and reload it later, you’ll still have only 25 rounds available. You’d have to add five cartridges yourself to fill it, but many games skip that task entirely.
Suppressors That Make Gunfire Nearly Silent
In some stealth games, a suppressed shot barely attracts anyone’s notice beyond the person you’re shooting at. An enemy across the room continues their patrol without reacting. You can fire repeatedly as long as nobody sees you doing it.
Suppressors reduce firing noise, but the result depends on the firearm and ammunition involved. A bullet traveling faster than sound produces a separate supersonic crack that a suppressor doesn’t eliminate. Even without that crack, the remaining gunshot isn’t the tiny click heard in many games, making the oblivious guard nearby a lot harder to believe.
Recoil With an Exact Repeat Pattern
Some competitive shooters give each weapon a repeatable recoil pattern. Once you memorize it, you can move your mouse in the opposite direction to keep a long burst concentrated on the target. Players develop considerable skill at this, but they’re mastering a programmed sequence.
Actual recoil doesn’t move the muzzle through an identical sequence every time someone fires. The shooter’s position and grip influence how the weapon moves, with small variations affecting subsequent shots. Training improves control without turning recoil into a fixed pattern that someone can cancel perfectly by repeating the same corrective movement.
Accurate Shots During Acrobatic Movement
Jump around a corner in certain shooters, and you can land a precise shot before your character touches the ground. Some games even reward repeated jumping by making you harder to hit without imposing much of an accuracy penalty. Movement becomes a constant sequence of airborne shots.
A person attempting that shot has to maintain alignment while their body changes position. Landing then introduces another jolt that disrupts the weapon’s position. Games that let you jump repeatedly while aiming as precisely as a stationary character remove much of the physical difficulty from what they’re showing onscreen.
Cover That Stops Every Bullet
A wooden desk may stop every shot in a game while a nearby wall allows bullets through. The difference can come down to how developers classified those objects. Once you know which surfaces block damage, you can trust them throughout the match regardless of their appearance.
Actual penetration depends on the projectile and the material it strikes. A desk’s thin side panel doesn’t provide the same resistance as a substantial barrier like a wall. Simplified game environments encourage players to judge protection by an object’s programmed behavior instead of its physical construction.
Armor That Protects Uncovered Areas
In some combat games, wearing body armor reduces the damage you take regardless of where you’re hit. A shot to an exposed leg takes points off your armor meter even though your character only wears protection over their torso. You get the same benefit without any armor covering the injury.
Actual body armor doesn’t protect areas it doesn’t cover. A chest plate won’t stop a shot to your shoulder or lower abdomen if the bullet misses the plate. Even within the carrier, the protective plate covers less of your body than the outer fabric suggests.
Injuries That Disappear Between Encounters
After taking several hits, your character crouches behind a wall until the health meter refills. They return to the fight with the same movement speed and weapon control as before. Nothing about the next encounter reflects the wounds they just received.
An injury to an arm, for example, can interfere with holding and operating a weapon after the immediate danger passes. Treating the wound doesn’t instantly restore that function. Games that erase every effect once health returns let characters repeat demanding actions without accounting for the physical damage they’ve accumulated during the mission.
Heavy Equipment Without a Movement Penalty
Your character carries a heavy weapon and enough ammunition for several extended fights. Nevertheless, they climb over obstacles with the same animation and speed as someone carrying much less. In games without equipment weight systems, adding another weapon costs you nothing beyond an inventory slot.
Carried weight increases the effort required to move and changes how someone negotiates an obstacle. Bulky equipment creates additional difficulty where a person needs space to climb or squeeze through an opening. Reducing the entire load to a slot count ignores both the weight and the physical space that equipment occupies.
Enemy Markers That Track Hidden Movement
You spot an opponent and mark their position for your team. They disappear behind a building, but the marker continues moving with them. Everyone can follow their route despite having no view of what they’re doing.
Without a tracking system, a reported sighting establishes where someone was when the observer saw them. Once they move out of sight, their next turn remains unknown until someone sees them again. Games that keep the marker attached give players continuing information they haven’t actually obtained, removing the uncertainty that should follow losing sight of that person.
Enjoy the Next Round
There’s plenty to complain about among the things combat games commonly get wrong, and you probably have a few additions from your own favorite titles. You can still enjoy playing them without defending every ridiculous mechanic. Here’s to a fun next match and teammates who won’t disconnect halfway through it.
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