Why Realism Mods Suck

Ok, rant time, folks!

Realism mods. Whenever a new game engine is released, you can be sure that tons of thousands of realism mods will be developed for it. Personally, I really can't quite grasp the concept of playing computer games to defy real life, only to have realism mods which, admittedly, produce an utterly dire attempt at emulating real life.

You want some examples? Ok, let's take the infamous sprinting/running stamina bar. In most realism mods I have played spanning 4 years of the internet, it seems commonplace to give the player a very short amount of stamina. What I'm talking about here is the ability to run for around 5 seconds (some mods even have less) and then run out of breath, having to wait 10 or 20 seconds to regain your breath before you can do your little stint again. Now, in real life, the only way you're going to be able to sprint for a maximum of 5 seconds is if you're very old or a bag of crap. Or perhaps slightly obeise. But do the game characters look fat to you? No, they always tend to be slim, fit types, yet they have the breathing and stamina capacity of, quite frankly, a newborn. Ironic there, since new born babies can't even walk.

Well, enough of the stamina lark, let's talk about weapons. Don't get me wrong, I love hammering people down with a Spas-12 shotgun or an M4A1 assault rifle, but the fact that you have to literally pummel an entire clip into your enemies begs the question: Are the realistic mod weapons actually.. realistic? Well, not really. You hit someone in the chest with an M4 and they're going down, no question about it. In "realism mods" (couldn't help the quote there), you have to unload your entire 30-round clip into the chest region to score a hit. Then you've got the over-accurate sniper rifles, but I'll stop there.

Another thing: player collision. If you want to make a realism mod then for heaven's sake, make the players collide properly. In real life, if you jump on another person's head, generally you end up crushing them and you both end up as crumpled bags on the floor. In realism mods, you jump on a player's head, and you end up walking on top of them. Sorry, mate, but that ain't realistic.

A minor niggle that also bugs me, but not bites me, is the properties of weapons and not just the damage amounts. Say you have an M16 with a 30-round clip, you fire off the whole clip, and you reload effortlessly. Ok, where's the realism in that? Let me elabourate. If you have a full 30-round clip, there are going to be problems such as stoppages, and the reloading itself.. well, it's not always clip out, slap new one in. What if you have trouble remembering where you stored that last clip? Or if it won't clip in place properly? Ideally, it would be cool to see clip sizes of 29 rounds rather than 30, as many soldiers leave one bullet out so the spring inside the clip is more effective. That's logical and realistic, but it's not in realism mods. Shame.

And of course there's the jumping. Let me tell some of the realism mod coders out there something.

Realistic != Jumping height of your wang.

Ok, now we've cleared that, why the hell do developers think that because it's a realistic mod they have to neuter the jumping feature? Granted, you can't jump UT2003 player heights in real life, but you can at least get off the floor. And while we're on the subject, prone mode. If you're going to put it in, don't forget to lower the crouch radius and height values so it's actually effective.

Well, you know, I could think of more, but I don't want to bore you. This is just my opinion regarding the state of many realism mods out there at the moment, and how they need to try a lot harder to be at all realistic. Iron sights aren't enough to claim realism, to be honest. If you want to play a great mod that might seem realistic but in fact isn't at all, try Face Off. It doesn't try to emulate real life, and for that purpose it's a hell of a lot of fun. I really can't see why people want to re-enact real life anyway. Oh well, hope you enjoyed reading it.