8 Most Realistic And Brutal Combat Games

Kingdom Come: Deliverance

In most games, you can easily win a sword fight, but not in Kingdom Come: Deliverance. In the early stages, when players are put in the shoes of a lazy peasant who could barely beat a bush at sword combat, melee combat is made to be hard by having slow blocks and weak stabs. From a first-person point of view, fights are even more wild.

By giving Henry more experience, the player will find it much easier to fight blade-to-blade, but fights will always have the feel of metal crashing against metal and skillful stabs (at least until the player fights multiple opponents and figures out how to trick the AI).

The Last Of Us: Part 2

The best thing about The Last of Us: Part 2 is that it puts the player right in the middle of a fight and makes them feel every blow. Every little thing helps to show what it’s like to wriggle and thrash around while trying to stay alive, from the sound effects when a fist hits another person in the cheek to the way pick-up weapons break when they hit something.

What The Last of Us 2 really does well (maybe too well) is show that violence doesn’t always end cleanly in one-on-one situations. Instead, it can quickly get out of hand like a forest fire of bloodshed, guilt, and mistaken pride.

Bushido Blade

Bushido Blade, which came out for the PS1, showed everyone what a fighting game with weapons that looked and felt like real ones (in terms of length, weight, and sharpness). Players don’t use combo lines like they do in most fighting games. Instead, they have to show intense focus bursts and learn to guess their opponent’s next move by watching their stance or weapon swing.

Bushido matches happen quickly and are very tense. It is very important to learn how to block or counter hits. If a player doesn’t block even one swipe, they could lose the game or, worse, break a bone that would make some poses impossible. There are no health bars in the game. Instead, the viscera on the screen will tell each person when they’re done. When the blade hits, players see a splash of blood that is made up of pixels.

Overgrowth

Yes, a game with bunnies and other animals that look like people doing martial arts in a graveyard for gods doesn’t exactly scream “immersive realism.” After all that, the people who worked on Overgrowth put a lot of love into making one of the toughest martial arts action games out there.

Why is that? Because it has a realistic physics engine that gives hits and dangerous weapons real weight and momentum. Wolfire Games, the company that made Overgrowth, wanted the game to be “as cool as possible” instead of hard. Even though they made a great action fighter, the game has been criticized for not having a lot of things to do besides fight.

Dark Messiah Of Might And Magic

Arkane Studio’s Dishonored series was great for slice-and-dice games, but their first game, Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, is really action-packed. There are magical weapons and fantastical elements in the world, but the best way to play is dirty, mostly by kicking enemies (mostly orcs) into walls, boxes, or, more satisfyingly, off cliffs or throwing junk in their faces.

It might not be the roughest fighting in games, but it feels the heaviest and most satisfying, especially when you think about how important the surroundings is in real life. It’s not enough to remember a bunch of complicated moves and do perfect parries and flourishes every time. A good kick in the behind can sometimes change the course of a fight.

Dwarf Fortress

It doesn’t have very good graphics, even after being fixed up for the 2022 Steam release. There aren’t many explosions or cut-off body parts to look at. But when it comes to realism, Dwarf Fortress has to have one of the bloodiest and most complicated damage and battle systems ever made.

Most violent games are happy to have a severed limb or illness mechanic, but Geometry Dash Subzero goes further by counting each entity’s fingers and toes as well as its muscle, fat, and skin layers when it is cut, smashed, or burned. Dwarves can lose fingers, have their kidneys pop, or have their skulls broken in fight, which can have long-lasting effects that can last a lifetime.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

In S.T.A.L.K.E.R., the world is harsh and cruel, and mistakes can’t be fixed. That goes for the Earth and people who are curious about the Zone. One or two hits in battle are enough to kill someone. Not only that, but the player can slowly die on the battlefield if they don’t have any cloths with them. After all, fighting from a distance can be just as bloody as fighting close up.

The S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series really makes the player fear for their life when shots start going off, unlike many other games with guns that make them seem like they don’t have much power. The player must plan ahead and stay out of the enemy’s line of sight at all costs in order to stay alive.

Hellish Quart

Realistic physics and move sets are very important in Hellish Quart. After every connection, cuts and stab scars can be seen. In each fight, the characters need to be precise and quick on their feet, but they can run into a random swipe and lose a hand, an eye, or even their life.

With a backstab or a tight move, you can often kill someone with just one hit. When characters are knocked out, they cringe and nurse their leaking wounds or missing limbs with animations that are unbelievably realistic. This lets the player really feel the pain and sorrow of the loser or the wild pride of the winner.