A Wall-nut cracking under pressure.
"...In El Shaddai instead of a health bar you see your armor cracking and shattering, revealing that the protagonist doesn't actually have huge man-boobs."
Rather than just give an enemy - or occasionally your character - a generic Life Meter, or show the exact number of hit points, some games will show the characters taking damage on-screen. Sometimes this makes sense and looks good, other times, not so much. The bad guy's armor having bullet holes in it is all well and good, but weren't you using a sword?
Sometimes, this can even affect gameplay. Damage the enemy's laser cannon enough, and you'll disable his most powerful attack. Or perhaps discover that he's not left-handed, or make him angry, and proceed to get your ass handed back to you.
When done well, having the health of the player and the enemies displayed on themselves can serve a purpose of a diagetic HUD which can often help with the immersion. In addition, rather than player's eyes having constantly wander to enemy's health bar, the health can be checked by just focusing on the enemy, making the user interface less cluttered.
There are several variations of showing damage:
- Color change: The simplest form of showing damage is by adding a tint (usually red or orange) to the characters or changing color palette. Flashing when being on low health also counts in this category. Usually many older and simpler games or games needing to keep age ratings low belong to this category.
- Flying numbers: When you hit them, a number pops out and then disappears, showing exactly how much you hurt them. This is often more for the player's sake; the numbers don't actually exist to the characters.
- Particle emit: Characters and objects emit or spawn things when they're damaged. For example, damaged character may start sparking, smoking or being on fire. This is usually more for mechanical objects and characters. Damage Is Fire also fits here.
- Real signs of damage: The character or object shows physical signs of damage. When the game uses 3D models, they go into 2 subcategories:
- Retexture: Texture Swap: this frequently occurs in polygonal 3D games, with characters getting more and more bloody as they take more damage through the use of so-called "painskins", one or more replacement surface textures (skins) that get swapped in when a creature or individual body part/article of clothing/armor reaches a certain amount of damage. Newer games instead have partially transparent "decals" that are composited over the exact areas where the damage occurred. Mechanical bosses tend to catch fire and/or get dents.
- Model change: Full model swap: it's when besides seeing different textures, a model or sprite will be changed even more. Can be a source of Nightmare Fuel in some cases.
- Pose change: Rather than change the model entirely, some games let the combatant assume an "injured" pose and animation especially if they're low on health.
While the boss may Turn Red, and get a power boost, it doesn't necessarily have to do so. Note that Shows Damage is not mutually exclusive with Critical Existence Failure, which makes it all the more hilarious when the two overlap. In RTS games, this is typically shown via Damage Is Fire, at least for buildings and vehicles.
See also Flash of Pain. Subsystem Damage is a stats-affecting variation of this. Vague Hit Points can be used in conjunction with this trope.
Examples:
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Colour Change
Action Game
- In Tank Force armored tanks and bosses will turn redder as they're damaged.
- The final boss in Jackal turns mysteriously red when damaged.
- Metal Warriors: Instead of a health bar, your mech becomes darker with damage, eventually producing smoke and flames and missing arms, which prevents you from attacking. Most larger enemies also go through multiple stages of damage before being destroyed.
- Bosses in Sunset Riders flash red when their health is getting low, getting more rapid the closer they are to defeat.
- The evil exes in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game start flashing yellow when their health gets low. When just a few more hits will finish them off, they flash yellow and red.
- In Jump Super Stars and its sequel, the arena where your characters fight is designed like the pages of a Manga. Likewise, the controllable characters lose their color the more damage they take: when at 50%, their colors are more muted than at full health, when they have less than 10% HP they're basically black and white linearts.
- Double Dragon Neon's bosses start flashing orange when damaged enough. This is actually lampshaded by Skullmageddon if you pause during his fights with the Lee brothers.
Skullmageddon: I'm flashing orange so quickly! Quick, just hit me a few more times!
- The Final Boss of Pac-Man Arrangement (1996) takes damage as Pac-Man eats the dots in the maze, and gradually changes colors from silver to yellow to orange, and finally to red.
- Bosses in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles NES games will start to flash when low on health.
- The penultimate and final bosses in the NES version of Jackie Chan's Action Kung Fu change color when low on health.
- The Ristar bosses do this... well they Palette Swap a bunch of times at any rate, blurring the line between this and Turns Red (and yes, they tend to get harder as they take damage).
- In the first Contra game, 2 minibosses on stage 5 and the boss of stage 6 change color when damaged.
- Almost every boss and mini-boss in the 2-D Metroids show damage, mostly through changing colors. One notable example is the SA-X in Metroid Fusion which, like all X-Viruses, must concentrate to stay in its copied form when hit (this is shown by a blurry effect). As it takes more damage, the blurry effect becomes more pronounced.
- In Kirby Super Star and its remake, Kirby will flash red if his health gets very low. Helpers also flash at low health, and so does Meta-Knight when you play as him in the remake.
- In the Super Mario Bros. series games, Mario/Luigi will actually shrink after taking enough damage before dying. This is actually reversed with the "Small Fiery Mario" glitch from the original Super Mario Bros. (which is triggered by touching both (a fake) Bowser and the ax at the same time at the end of the first seven castles) where big Mario/Luigi will die if taken a hit, while small Mario/Luigi will be the stronger form, causing him to grow if taken damage. As a result, if Mario/Luigi gets a Fire Flower, he will turn into Small Fiery Mario/Luigi!
- Every boss in Wonder Boy in Monster Land (and a few of the Mooks) have a coloured dot on them that changes colour as they weaken.
- Bosses in Adventure Island games change colour to red after they take enough damage.
- Axiom Verge's bosses, save for the Final Boss, gradually turn red as Trace deals damage to them.
- The Spyro the Dragon games had a variant where Sparx, your dragonfly companion, would change color to indicate how many hits you have left. Yellow, then blue, then green, then he's gone and one more hit will kill you.
- Units in Mindustry have a health indicator that starts flashing when they're damaged and flashes faster the less HP they have.
- In Pokémon Black and White and Pokémon Black 2 and White 2, a Pokemon will glow yellow when paralyzed.
- Since Pokémon X and Y, this has been extended to all status effects. A Pokemon will glow yellow with occasional sparks when paralyzed, red with small flames when burned, purple with bubbles when poisoned, and white with a solid block of ice around it when frozen. When asleep, its eyes will close.
- Energy Shield in Event Horizon becomes fainter the more damaged it is.
- The core of the core ship of the first Gradius game changes its color when low on health.
- The first two bosses in Guxt lose their armor after enough hits. Then all bosses after the first have multiple eyes to shoot out. The four eyes of the Final Boss each turn gray after enough hits.
- Capital ships in NES version of Zanac start out as blue, then turn yellow and finally light red.
- Consequently, many units and bosses in Zanac Neo blink red when damaged.
- Dragon-type enemies in Space Harrier do this; Squilla and Godarni run green-blue-slightly different green-red-dead, while Valda and Salpedon start white and get gradually pinker and redder.
Other
- In Breakbar RPG, enemies turn more and more transparent as they are damaged.
Particle Emit
Casual Video Game
- The robotic punching bag from Rhythm Boxing in Wii Fit will emit smoke after punching it enough times. More landed punches increases the number of places it emits smoke. Regardless of the number of blows, it breaks down and one of its arms falls off after completing the exercise.
- The fourth Super Smash Bros. game has characters emit steam if they get heavily damaged.
- In the Gundam Extreme Vs. series, when a mobile suit is low on life, it gives off electricity. Additionally, when an MS is defeated at the end of a match, part of its body will break away; it's only vaguely associated with the kind of attack that defeated it (for example, explosive weapons will make them break into multiple parts).
- Mortal Kombat: The Lin Kuei robo-ninjas bleed Machine Blood, show sparks, and malfunction when they lose all their health.
- In Galactic Civilizations 2, damaged ships and stations show lightning effects arcing over the surface.
- In Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 2 (and maybe the first game), boss mobile suits start throwing off sparks as you do damage.
- In Seven Samurai 20XX, Humanoid give off particles and sparks when wounded and killed, with the exception of the most humanoid ones such as Cue, Zwei and Ein.
- Bosses from Golden Force tends to show external damage when their health is depleted enough. The first boss, a Krakken, notably lose it's skin and reveals it's massive skull, while the second boss, a shark submarine, begins emitting smoke as it's surface cracks apart.
- Star Wars: The Old Republic: During space combat, the player's ship will start smoking and, eventually, will catch on fire should you take enough hull damage. Other ships show this as well, to varying degree - interceptors start smoking after one or two solid hits, frigates and destroyers will start gushing smoke and fire when one of its hardpoints is blown up, and elite NPCs (which fly ships that players themselves fly) will show the exact same damage that players of the same ship would.
- PlanetSide 2 has vehicles start to smoke when their health drops below 80%, and the smoke gets progressively worse until the vehicle catches on fire, causing it to slowly bleed out while the engine starts to fail, crippling its acceleration and top speed. Better hope you're not in the air when your Liberator's engines catch fire!
- In Sonic Unleashed, both the Egg Cauldron and the Tornado start to smoke and then catch fire when low on HP.
- Robotnik's and Tails' mechs in Sonic Adventure 2 start sparking and smoking when low on HP.
- The Death Egg Robot in Sonic Generations also falls in this trope, showing sparks and smoke as the battle goes along.
- In StarCraft, Protoss buildings start catching on blue fire, while the Zerg buildings bleed. This is also played with on Terran buildings: once you damage them beyond a point, they catch on fire, and the fire will slowly damage the building more and more until it explodes. This is balanced by the Terrans being able to repair buildings, and therefore stabilize a critical structure.
- One nice touch with the Zerg bleeding is that the Terran Nuke uses a red dot to indicate its target...which tends to appear just underneath the bleeding, making it hard to tell the difference between "that building is bleeding" and "holy crap, two-thirds of that building's maximum health is doomed unless I can get an Overlord in there fast!"
- The HUD diagrams (wireframes for Terran/Protoss, something that resembles a thermal imaging reading for Zerg) for selected forces turn yellow, then red, to ostensibly indicate areas of the unit that've taken damage. In the case of Zerg units, the "thermal image" changes from reds and oranges (indicating higher body temperatures and working metabolism) to blues and purples (indicating weakening life-signs).
- Many vehicles in Command & Conquer series start smoking and sparking when damaged.
- Far Gate's Proximan ships start smoking, then catch fire after they've taken enough damage. When the ship finally blows, pieces of the mesh fly in different directions, the speed varying with the size of the unit. Those pieces then themselves explode.
- The Homeworld series, for all its scientific accuracy, shows the larger battleships on fire when they are damaged before they finally go boom. In the second game, they don't just blow up; smaller explosions, hulls being ripped off by the explosions, debris flying, and then the ship goes kablooie.
- The fire may be justified as fuel lines and ship atmosphere reacting and the resulting blaze being vented into space by damage control teams.
- All enemies in Galactix start smoking when they're a few shots from death.
- Bosses in Raptor: Call of the Shadows start emitting little explosions when they're low on health.
- Both Star Fox 64 and Star Fox: Assault show this kind of damage when the Arwing is low on shield; smoke for the former and violet particle trails for the latter. The lower the shielding, the more frequent it becomes for both.
- In Airfix Dogfighter, the more damage your (or enemy's) plane takes, the more visibly damaged it becomes. At first it's smoking a little, followed by being on fire when close to death.
- The Harrier 2 in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty belches out more and more smoke as it gets more damaged. It also unloads less missiles when it attempts a salvo.
- The Mako in Mass Effect starts to smoke and catch fire when critically damaged. Likewise the Hammerhead in Mass Effect 2 DLC missions, though it recovers quickly.
Real Signs of Damage, 2D Games
Beat 'em Up
- In Little Fighter 2, a fighter will bleed a bit from the mouth if he has taken sufficient damage.
- Certain bosses in Dynamite Dux get "X"s for eyes when close to dying. Also, the player characters start looking tired when low on health.
- In Gundam Battle Assault and related games, doing enough damage to a particular part of the enemy's body (for example, performing lots of leg sweeps) will eventually break their armor, replacing the sprite for that body part with one that shows the internal machinery.
- Nightmare boss Metroid Fusion is a particularly nightmarish example. When you first start the fight, it has a gravity manipulator and a sort of "mask" for a face
◊. After it Turns Red and activates the gravity manipulator, a strange green... fluid begins dripping out of the mask's eye holes. Then you destroy the gravity manipulator... which is followed by Nightmare's "mask" breaking, revealing its true,◊ utterly horrifying face. And it gets worse; as you attack it, its face melts more and more as damage is dealt. And it's terrifying. Nettori from the same game also loses its arms and head after enough damage.
- Some enemies (mostly machines) in Cannon Dancer break apart as Kirin hits them. Most notably, the second boss Gamran falls apart as the player strikes specific parts of its body.
- Dracula from Castlevania: Bloodlines in his One-Winged Angel mode, at one point will Turn Red, but then afterwards will change into more decaying colours until he reaches a pale bone white. And by which point hitting him from that point onwards will cause bones to fly off his body.
- Sentinel Proxima in Iji loses parts of its chassis and has exposed wires hanging out from it as its health bar drops. Doesn't affect its weapon resistances any, however.
- X and Zero from Mega Man X games start to breathe heavily when standing idly while low on health. Depending on the game, they'll also be clutching their chest or arm, too.
- The same patterns are replicated with Nina and X in Spiritual Successor 20XX.
- Old Bitey/O' Jaws/Megamouth/the giant piranha at the bottom of the lake located in certain levels of Spelunky is already quite terrifying, but hurting it causes it to lose pieces of flesh and casually keep swimming.
- In Nibblers, durable Lizards will sport black eyes if damaged, while Cactus Lizards get Clothing Damage instead. Blocks that take more than one hit will show cracks once hit.
- In the 2D Command & Conquer series, buildings have a "damaged" sprite that's used when at less than half HP.
- Buildings and some vehicles in Patapon series look broken when damaged.
- Enemies in Final Fantasy Mystic Quest have different sprites. All enemies have "healthy" and "damaged" sprites. Minibosses have a "severely damaged" sprite, while crystal guardians have "grievously damaged" ones. So to sum up: mooks have two, minibosses have three, bosses have four.
- Dragon's Crown has a rather disturbing example with the Chimera, who starts slowly rotting and falling apart the more it's damaged.
- In Live A Live, player characters' posture is affected by taking damage, falling to one knee and finally collapsing.
- In Paper Mario 64, Huff N. Puff shrinks the more you damage him.
- Horde enemies in Shin Megami Tensei IV comprise a large group of opponents represented mechanically as a single foe that takes multiple actions per turn. The horde visibly thins out as you wear down its collective health.
- In World of Horror, your character's portrait will show signs of damage, including cuts and scrapes as their Stamina depletes, and baggy eyes as their Reason depletes. Some curses also show on your portrait, such as visible gills when afflicted with the Insmasu Look, and facial branding with a Black Eye of Crazy with Cursed Signs.
- The War God from Forgotten Worlds gets his armor cracked and starts losing chunks of it as the battles goes on.
- Most bosses in Chariot, one of the three games forming part of Three Wonders, fall apart the more damage they get, some times in rather creepy ways.
- Bosses in UN Squadron show damage by having parts explode or start burning.
- Action Doom 2: Urban Brawl has the hulking serial killer Hugo, who gets more and more bloody and bruised as you beat him up.
- In Dancing Monster, you have to shoot at the monster's body parts to remove them. The less parts the monster has, the closer you are to winning.
- SturmFront: The Mutant War applies this to all the bosses as well as your hero, Sigfried. As boss enemies start having their health depleted, they will visibly break apart and lose chunks of flesh. Meanwhile, Siegfried's current health meter is displayed at the bottom along a shot of his face, which becomes increasingly bloody when his life is dangerously low.
- The first boss in Tyrian loses its forward 'prongs' when you damage it enough; the same is true when it makes a second appearance at the end of the first episode, and its attacks also get stronger. Strangely enough for the second time, you have to shoot the prongs down if you want to damage the actual body.
- Lord ZZT's blimp in the second Savara level also shows significant damage when it's down to about a tenth of its health; however, unlike the aforementioned boss ship, it loses all of its attacks when it's sufficiently damaged.
- Super Famicom Wars: battle animations have units visually damaged, such as turrets on a ship being blown up.
Retexture
Action-Adventure
- The Legend of Spyro:
- As the larger Apes and Skavengers take damage, pieces of their armor come flying off.
- As their health is depleted, the various armored-colossus bosses — the Ice King, Electric King, Executioner and Elemental Spirits — lose the armor over their legs, abdomens and arms. The Ice King's helmet's horns are also snapped off in sequence.
- The Legend of Zelda:
- The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time: During the battle against Ganondorf, his cape gets more tattered as Link damages him.
- Hyrule Warriors: Dark Beast Ganon during the first part of his battle. Hit his bomb weakpoint and his left bracer breaks in half. Hit his arrow weakpoint and his right bracer breaks. The hookshot weakpoint rips off the tip of his tail and breaks one of his tusks. The two boomerang weak points break his horns. Once all of his weakpoints are broken he Turns Red and enters the second, more dangerous half of the battle. Land the killing blow, and the jewel on his forehead shatters.
- American Racing: Each car shows damage by having their backs and windows cracked.
- Crashday has the cars displaying damage according to how bad they've been battered in the different modes.
- Need for Speed: Most Wanted and Carbon. Because licensing contracts that allow the developers to show damaged cars cost a lot, Electronic Arts settled for showing scraped paint and shattered windshields when you hit something.
- Art of Fighting. The first two games had characters getting visibly bruised to the face, based on the damage that was done. Furthermore, characters will go into a tired looking stance when low on health, and the games even had a sort of sprite-change clothing damage mechanic for some characters such as being able to knock off John's sunglasses or Eiji's mask. Surprisingly, SNK never used this concept in anymore of their 2D fighting games.
- Warpath: Jurassic Park for the Playstation 1. As the fight goes on, cuts, lacerations, and even missing flesh (with ribs exposed if on the body) appear on the dinosaurs. The amount and speed of the damage depends on what part of the opponent you attack most often (if you bite at the head a lot, the snout and cheeks become bloody; body blows and throws cause exposed ribs and bleeding sides, etc).
- Mortal Kombat: Starting with Deadly Alliance, characters start showing bruises and marks after a certain health loss. While it started off as a simple face texture swap, later games elaborated more on the details, like Scorpion losing his mask in Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe. Mortal Kombat 9, in particular, have characters sporting gnarly injuries if they take a beating, such as Smoke having part of his jawbone exposed and the eyelids of one eye missing, making his eye appear to bulge.
- Bushido Blade: In both games' Story Mode, after each death the player character shows up with bandages over the struck areas.
- Ready 2 Rumble Boxing: In both games, boxers get black eyes, missing teeth, and look weakened/tired as the fight goes on.
- Super Smash Bros. Brawl was going to have this, with fighters suffering damage to their equipment and clothes as they get hit. While scrapped, the textures for Meta Knight and Falcon's cracked helmets still exist. The fourth and fifth games, however, do have this, but only when playing as Little Mac. The more damage he takes, the more bruises, bumps and Instant Bandages show on his face, like in his home game.
- For Honor has heroes accumulate battle damage as they lose health, from rent helms to particularly nasty gashes. Fittingly, these scars remain even after the character has recovered health or been revived.
- Quake II: When they go below 50% health, the Strogg's textures change to a battered variant with scorch marks, bullet holes, cracked glass, blood and even missing patches of skin. Humans also display damage similarly, though their injuries are not as grisly, being mostly cuts, scratches and Blood from the Mouth.
- Team Fortress 2: If shot, spots of blood will appear on player models, and, if you have the luxury to look close enough while in the middle of frantic multiplayer combat, their facial expressions become increasingly pained as their health drops. This can also be subverted due to the Overheal mechanic: it's entirely possible for a character to be bleeding, on fire, covered in Jarate, covered in "milk," and pockmarked with dozens of bullet holes... and still have more than their maximum amount of health.
- Serious Sam: In the HD releases of The First Encounter and The Second Encounter, monsters have painskins for when they're low on health. They take on a particularly battered one when they die.
- Red Faction: Most enemies only show blood decals, but the nano-zombies in the second game can be dismembered piece-by-piece.
- Evolve: While averted for the hunters, the Monsters slowly change as their health drops. When at extremely low health they are bloodstained and battered, with bone showing in some places and bullet holes dotting their bodies.
- Vector Incremental: If the Ring Effects option is on, rings become more and more cracked as they're damaged.
- EVE Online: Damage done to ship's armor will leave behind scorch marks, and once the armor layer gets breached, flaming holes in the hull.
- Damaged structures in Mindustry have dark marks that get wider and darker the more damage the structure has sustained.
- Star Fox Zero: If your Arwing takes enough damage during a stage, close inspection will show bits and pieces of the ship looking burnt and chipped away.
- In Alone in the Dark (2008) the injuries look more like stickers applied over someone's clothes, rather than actual injuries.
- In The Coma: Vicious Sisters, Mina has a standard five-segment life bar. If she doesn't have an optional item at the end of the current area, the end-of-area cutscene will result in Mina getting damaged and permanently lose one segment of her life bar. This also gets reflected in her character, with her dialogue portrait, menu picture, and model getting scratches, a bruised lip, and bandages to her face and arms.
- Beating enemies in Silent Hill: Homecoming causes them to gradually become more red and cut up.
- The back (and flashlight) of protagonist Murphy becomes more and more beat up as he takes damage. Notable in that aside from opening the pause screen, it's the only way to check your health.
- In Battle Brothers, bruises and wounds appear on the units' faces the lower their health is. Also, armors look more and more battered the lower their condition is.
- Minecraft: In versions 1.15 and later, the Iron Golem's texture appears more cracked as they take damage, which serves as an indicator to player that they need to reverse this by repairing them with iron ingots.
- Used effectively in Scarface: The World Is Yours where almost every character model has a "bloody" skin than shows streaks of blood as they take damage. Tony himself has about four or five skins per the suit he is wearing.
Model Change
Action-Adventure
- Alice: Madness Returns has the Doll Girl Giant Mook that gets stripped of its clothes, amputated of its arms, shattered of its frontal torso covering the heart-like organ.
- Most monsters in the Monster Hunter series can have parts of their bodies like horns and frills damaged and/or their tails removed if they receive enough abuse in the same location. You get rewarded with items for doing this (Many of which are only available in this fashion), and it can also expose weak points or hinder their fighting ability.
- Mooks in MadWorld will generally not show any damage on their models until they receive massive injury in a finisher, however if you hit them enough with some weapons, their limbs will fly off. Don't worry, it's as goofy and over the top as the rest of the game.
- In Soul Calibur IV, if you deal enough damage to a particular region of your opponent's body, that part of the body loses its armor.
- Doom Eternal: Demons will have bits of flesh stripped off wherever you happen to hit them, revealing more and more of their skeletons the more damage that they take. This also gives the player the ability to inflict Subsystem Damage on certain demons, such as using a sticky bomb to destroy the cannon of an Arachnotron.
- Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening: Damaging the Damned Chessmen enough times causes a part of their model to break, such as a Pawn piece's sword tip disappearing.
- Nightmare makes a return appearance in Metroid: Other M. He does the face-mask cracking from Fusion, but there is no face-melting in the second fight.
- In The Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning, as the fight with the Ice King wears on, the Ice King's clothes become ripped and tattered, and then his flesh starts coming off near the end, reducing his limbs to sticks of exposed bone.
- In Rayman Legends, most bosses get more damaged as the fight goes on. The dragon's wings become more tattered and its face looks more and more beaten up; the iron frog loses its armor (and its missile attacks) as the fight goes on; the giant luchador loses teeth and his mask cracks; and the robot dragon's mouth-gem cracks (making its attacks weaker-looking) as its facial armor first cracks and then breaks off completely.
- Shantae and the Seven Sirens: If Shantae has low Hit Points, like the last quarter-heart, her Idle Animation turns into being bowlegged, occasional wincing and holding an arm.
- Zombies and Mutants in the House of the Dead games will get shredded as you shoot them, from losing limbs to getting huge holes blown in their torsos. Some bosses get in on the act as well, but they're more infrequent.
- In the 3D Command & Conquer series, buildings show damage.
- SD Snatcher had enemies that would show visible damage the more you hit them. In addition, hitting certain parts would decrease specific stats.
- Too Human does this with Trolls — you can blow off the outer armor plating of various parts, then destroy the internal components. Their arms can actually be destroyed altogether.
- The portrait in Madou Monogatari is a visual indication of how much HP you have, looking more worried (or about to keel over even) as stamina declines. Enemies will also look beat up as they take damage. For Big Kindergarten Kids, Arle's movements in battle scenes will look more labored depending on her HP.
- LOKI mechs in Mass Effect 2 show damage in a variety of different ways. Basically, shooting an extremity will make it fall off. Shoot its arms and it marches, armless, at you to self-destruct; shoot its legs and it will painfully crawl toward you till the bitter end. This can be quite fun if you target only the legs and are rewarded with a room full of slowly crawling LOKI mech torsos.
- In the Japanese Nintendo 3DS game Moco Moco Friends, Plushkins that have lost health in battle will have their stuffings exposed.
- Resident Evil 2 (Remake) has damage inflicted upon zombies shown when they are shot, with the undead losing chunks of flesh where they are hit. The player characters, similarly, bear bite marks when they take damage.
- Loadout's characters will end up with pieces of them blown off if they take a heavy hit to a part of their body. This will often leave bone and gooey bits showing, assuming that it wasn't to the head, lest the characters end up with their brain and eyeballs bouncing around in the open.
- Twisted Metal: Cars change into a "battered" version after getting enough damage. They magically return to their "shiny new" version after picking up a Health icon.
Pose Change
Party Game
- Dead by Daylight: Injured survivors clutch their sides at all times when not interacting with things, while healthy ones move normally.
- Standard infantry units in Command & Conquer: Generals change pose to a weaker stance when severely wounded, and walk much slower with a noticeable limp when moving. Rangers and Red Guardes even have a "recoiling" animation if they reach low health while shooting.
- In Illbleed, characters at 30% of their maximum health will start clutching at their shoulder as they start staggering on movement, slowing them down significantly. Once they reach 10%, they now limp and clutch at their torso as they're slowed down even further. At this level, the selected character will start freaking out when idle.
- Characters at Caution health in classic Resident Evil games hunch over when standing and move holding their sides. In Danger, they hunch over even more and limp as they walk and run, both with reduced speed.
Multiple
Action-Adventure
- Genshin Impact has the monsters' Elemental Armor become more and more shattered as you damage it, with dust and chipped pieces flying off each hit, and eventually shattering completely when you break through.
- In The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, certain enemies, most notably Ganondorf, spew particles when Link hits them with his sword and the capes of Mighty Darknuts become more damaged as Link slices them into rags.
- Sword of the Stars has plasma fires show how damaged a ship section in. When a segment explodes, it undergoes a model swap.
- In Die by the Sword body parts will be retextured bloody when struck. If damaged enough, body parts (wrists/ankles/limbs/heads) will separate.
- In Command & Conquer: Generals units will smoke, slow down/limp when damaged.
- In Treasure Planet: Battle at Procyon, smoke will emit from ships when they take enough damage. The models of ships can also change to reflect how they have been damaged, for example, a ship with damaged engines will show sections of the engines missing or if the engines are competly destroyed that entire section of the ship will be missing, sails and weapons can also be damaged and completely destroyed, with the ships model changing to reflect this.
- Most of the bosses in the Metal Slug series show progressive damage, having bullet holes or damage to their armor appear. Later, smoke or fire may appear, and some weapon systems may be destroyed, signalling a change in attack pattern. Allen O'Neil, the machinegun-wielding elite, also Turns Red when nearly defeated.
- Enemies and bosses in ZeroRanger usually show damage by having their Flash of Pain change from white to orange, but some (such as Stage 1's boss and the "Buddha head" enemies) show fuselage cracking or other signs of combat wear and tear.
- The MechWarrior series uses this trope extensively:
- 'Mechs start to emit smoke and sometimes even visible flames when they are heavily damaged.
- In MW3, 'Mechs show exposed wires when damage is focused on certain areas, and taking head damage can cause fractures on the cockpit glass along with a quite loud and surprising "*CHING*". MW4 uses scorch marks instead. In Living Legends, the BattleArmor's Diegetic Interface visor will become permanently cracked if damaged, along with temporary suit sealant and blood stains.
- Limbs (and in MW4, missile racks as well as various gun mounts) can be blown off entirely, leaving only twisted bits of metal and wiring hanging from the stump. In Living Legends, destroyed components will actually fall off the mech and smack into the ground, which can crush oblivious BattleArmor into giblets.
- Mechwarrior 5 takes this up to eleven: damage shows up on 'mechs based on what they were hit with. Lasers melt armor, missiles mangle it, flamers scorch it, and autocannons crater it. Even a basic engagement with light damage will result in a 'mech looking like it just stepped through a smelter. If armor is blown off a location, the underlying structure will also get exposed and wrecked based on damage received. Blown off arms are represented by twisted stumps of wiring and metal, blown off legs are cracked, broken and barely functional, and blown off torso sections show extensive internal and external damage.
- The Freespace series uses two different kinds: when a ship is shot, it may start emitting flame-like particles where the shot hit it. In addition, when a ship is heavily damaged, lightning starts arcing across its hull. More lightning = more damage, to the point that a ship that is one point away from destruction will be almost constantly wracked with arcs of electricity.
- [PROTOTYPE] vehicles and destructible buildings are mixed.
- Civilian vehicles can be picked and thrown right away (except the coach/bus and the garbage truck), undergoing deformation and finally catching fire before blowing up as they take damage. You can also run them over with a tank to just flatten them without blowing them up unless you damage them in another way.
Uncategorized
- This was a major feature of the game for X-Men Origins: Wolverine, occurring to Wolverine himself. Wolverine showed the trauma of every hit landed on him, to the point where if you take enough damage without dying you're down to an Adamantium skeleton with bits of muscle still clinging on, but only above the waist. Then healing factor kicks in and everything comes back right as rain, sans your shirt. (Until the next time you level up, anyway...)
- In Deadpool, whenever the titular character takes damage, his outfit gets torn and shredded, sometimes to the point where Wade looks nearly naked (but thankfully, he isn't). So long as Deadpool isn't actively taking damage, he'll begin to heal, which oddly enough, includes his outfit.
- Metroid II: Return of Samus: As you chip away at the Queen Metroid's health, her digitized grunts gradually go into more agonized shrieking.
- God of War:
- The Minotaur in the original God of War, with bonus credit for also having a health bar that shows damage (the armour on the health bar slowly breaks away as damage is added... the bar itself doesn't start going down until all the armour is removed).
- The Statue of Rhodes from God of War II is fought three separate times, with each time causing it to become more and more damaged.
- Dr. Tongue's final form in Zombies Ate My Neighbors is a giant head. As damage is dealt, it starts to mutate, then begins to break. This would be prime Nightmare Fuel, if it weren't for the fact that the head is revealed to be an android.
- As you progress in Batman: Arkham Asylum, the Batsuit shows more and more damage. By the end of the game, there are noticeably a tear at the chest, a few tatters and holes in the cape, a cut on Batman's cheek and a few bullet holes.
- Likewise in The Amazing Spider-Man, a game that's heavily based off of the Batman Arkham series, as most of Spider-Man's suits (including the default) show tearing as he takes damage, but oddly enough as soon as you enter "The Haven" (Stan's house), it instantly restores the suit to its undamaged form. Just look at how torn and scratched up it can get.
- Likewise in The Amazing Spider-Man, a game that's heavily based off of the Batman Arkham series, as most of Spider-Man's suits (including the default) show tearing as he takes damage, but oddly enough as soon as you enter "The Haven" (Stan's house), it instantly restores the suit to its undamaged form. Just look at how torn and scratched up it can get
- Over the course of Spider-Man: Edge of Time, Peter Parker's costume will get torn up.
- The zombies in Waxworks (1992) will lose their arms and head if hit in the right spots.
- While a Life Meter is used, The Warriors also shows damage to characters by increasing the amount of bleeding, cuts, and bruises on the bodies as they get hurt more.
- The Video Game Remake of Splatterhouse has the hero lose flesh and even body parts as he takes damage. He can use this to his advantage somewhat in that if his arm is removed (he'll grow it back quickly), he can pick it up as a weapon.
- As Bayonetta deals damage to her enemies, more and more of their skin and angelic accoutrements are flayed off until they're little more than bone, muscle and writhing internal organs.
Casual Game
- In the various Angry Birds games, if the pigs aren't hit hard enough to actually be popped, they can pick up bruises, black eyes, and, in the case of the helmeted pigs from the first game, cracks in their helmets. Angry Birds 2 added bandages and wrappings to the possible damage shown on the pigs.
- Many driving games will at least have your car become emit smoke and pained noises when on its last legs, and usually the cars become battered and lose parts. Some games that don't have a damage model, usually for technical reasons or because the licensing contract says the game can't show damaged cars, resort to showing scraped paint, bare metal and shattered windshields.
- Inverted with Driver: San Francisco where most cars! (140, not all of them are licensed like the made up A.S.Y.M., Caison, Camion, Dykemann, Van Dourn and Y.A.R.E have vehicles based on real models but not named) And it shows full damage and wrecks depending on where and how the car takes damage.
- The original F-Zero (1990) has your machine blink red, shake, and emit smoke when its life meter gets low. To make matters worse, your top speed will decrease. Interestingly, if your life meter drops to zero, you'll regain all your top speed. One more tap, though, and you suffer Critical Existence Failure.
- The Gundam 2D fighter Gundam the Battle Master (or Gundam Battle Assault in America) has the mecha show damage if you pound them in one specific area enough times. For example, performing a lot of sweeps will eventually make the armor on your opponent's legs break off, exposing the internal mechanisms.
- Halo:
- Especially after Halo 2, vehicles in the series will get broken, have large pieces fall off, and begin sputtering sparks and smoke as they're damaged.
- In the finale of Halo: Reach Noble Six's visor shows damage as his condition deteriorates.
- In Halo 5: Guardians, the Promethean Knights and Soldiers will have bits of their armor fall off and expose weakspots if you hit them enough.
- One of the trademark touches of Id's FPS series like Wolfenstein 3-D, Doom, and Quake is the presence of a floating representation of the Player Character's head in the middle of the HUD, which will become more badly wounded as you soak up damage. Other games that use the progressively bloodier face with a percentage health count method include:
- Ion Fury
- Apocryph (currently a free download in an alpha build)
- Catacomb Fantasy Trilogy
- Deathless Hyperion shows your character's face on an onscreen avatar alongside his health meter. Lose more than half his health and his face starts showing cuts and bruises, and when his health is dangerously low he'll be bleeding heavily.
- Nitemare 3D uses a variant where there is no blood. Instead, the skin wears away on the Player Character's face (not unlike Knightmare). There is only a skull left when you're at 10% health or less.
- Crypt Worlds has a variant on this where, since there is no combat, the face shows how close they are to starving to death. Good thing Death Is a Slap on the Wrist. It also shows whether or not you're a cyborg.
- The "vivisection point" of which Vivisector: Beast Within for has the enemies lose big chunks of their armor and flesh with each hit. However, since killing them falls into the Critical Existence Failure category, the damage won't actually affect their performance until the killing shot.
- The "gore zone" system in Soldier of Fortune allows players to destroy individual body parts of enemies, e.g. severed limbs, shattered skulls, and disembowelment, usually causing instant death.
- In Office Jerk and its Spin-Off Office Zombie, both the Jerk and Zombie show damage in various ways, depending on what object they get hit with. With the Jerk, it's typically bumps, head lumps, or bruises. With the Zombie, you can knock his eye out or even cut his arm or head off.
- Kingdom of Loathing: First Ed The Undying gets a rip in his hat, then a knocked-out tooth, then another rip, then an arm knocked off, then another rip and a couple more knocked-out teeth, and finally knocked-off legs, until he's nothing but a head and legs. And even after that, he's still technically alive.
"You're making me feel guilty, Ed. Knock it off!"
"UNDYING!"
sigh - MapleStory: Zakum, a huge, eight-armed statue, does this twice. By the end, it'll have quite a few huge cracks and its teeth will barely be there.
- EVE Online ships catch fire when they start to take structural damage.
- Most bosses in Banjo-Tooie were like this. Targitzan is a totem pole, a layer of which falls off each time he takes damage. Old King Coal's arms and head fall off over the course of the fight. Mr. Patch's patches come off with each hit, in the first half of the Lord Woo Fak Fak battle his boils explode with each hit (leaking blood into the water), and Mingy Jongo's plating comes off each time he takes damage, revealing more of his true robotic self.
- Also, the duo themselves, in Banjo-Kazooie; their expressions next to your Life Meter change as you soak up damage, from happy and care-free at 5 HP or more, down to tired and jaded at 1 HP, and beat-up and unconscious when you die.
- In Super Mario Galaxy, while the player has a lifebar, bosses are visibly affected when damaged. For example, Dino Piranha starts inside an eggshell, which shatters after the first attack. Subsequent attacks remove petals, and also causes the boss to Turn Red.
- Brütal Legend has this during the stage battles; the stages have ten lights which represent health, and as they take damage the lights break (healing the stage will restore one light)
- In SaGa Frontier, the final boss of T260G's game, Genocide Heart has Ominous Multiple Screens which fizzle out as he takes damage.
- Every enemy in Final Fantasy Mystic Quest shows damage as you whittle his HP away. Regular enemies have two sprites (normal and injured), while mid-bosses have three and area bosses four. The Dark King has four different One-Winged Angel forms (and a whole lot of HP).
- Star Wars: The Force Unleashed does this for Darth Vader. As you fight him, his cape gets more tattered. When he's really taking damage, his armor starts falling off. When he's almost defeated, his helmet falls off.
- In Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, Grodus's CPU head and staff crack slightly when he's close to defeat. Grubba's idle animation changes and shows him panting as his boss fight winds down.
- Paper Mario: Color Splash: Everything that can be damaged gradually loses color as it loses health.
- All enemies and player characters in Brave Story have "healthy" and "weak" forms, for when their HP drop below 20%.
- Heads and limbs can be blown/hacked off in Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas, either by the killing blow or post-mortem. This can also happen to the player character during the death cinematic, especially when explosives are involved. Similarly, when the player character's limbs are crippled, their stance changes accordingly and wounds leave blood spattered on their clothing and body.
- Final Fantasy:
- In all the 2D main games, party members who are low on HP are shown to be kneeling down from exhaustion. This is also used in the 3D installments where critically wounded party members are hunched over and panting in exhaustion.
- In Final Fantasy X, your characters and the Aeons all have an "exhausted" stance when their HP drops below 50%. Some (like Valefor) are barely noticeable, while Bahamut will completely hunch over from his normally stoic pose. To avoid having to duplicate animations for every attack from this altered pose however, anyone in a "damaged" state will momentarily get up and resume their normal pose to attack, and then hunch back over.
- Characters' and Aeons' stances will progressively worsen as they take more damage. One character begins to sway at 50% but will eventually hunch over or even collapse to her knees if her health is too low. While standing up to attack in their "normal" pose, the characters will notably shake and stumble. The same rule applies after the typical animation ends.
- Final Fantasy Tactics: Units at sufficiently low health are in "Critical" mode, are very nearly prone, and enemy AI changes to run away (and heal if able) unless they are the only surviving unit left.
- As your character in Skyrim takes damage, blood will begin to splatter on your clothes/armor. It should be noted however that some of this blood can be the enemies', spilled over onto you, if you were within melee range.
- In Dragon Age: Inquisition, party members' portrait icons become progressively more marred and bloodied as their health drops.
- The Shin Megami Tensei (and Persona) games with 3D models gives its bosses a separate idle animation when they reach the last quarter of their health, which depicts them in a weakened and exhausted state, though they still usually stick to thesame attack patterns as before.
- Starting with The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Link's idle state will be changed to him hunching over and panting heavily if his health is low.
Roguelike
- The Binding of Isaac's Afterbirth+ DLC adds the item "Adrenaline", which increases the size of Isaac's body and slightly increases his damage for every empty red heart container he has. Strangely, the size of Isaac's head doesn't increase to match his body, which results in a comical contrast in size if you have eleven and a half empty heart containers.
- In a reference to Doom, the more damage the Player Character takes in Dungeons of Dredmor, the more damaged their portrait looks, with 3 stages to it, along with different mouseover text for the portrait.
(When looking undamaged): "It's-a me, player name!"
(When low on HP): "Oh boy, this is gonna hurt, isn't it?" - The Final Boss of 20XX has a Diegetic Interface variant. Flat destroys his Omega Model's health bar when the fight starts, so the boss's health is instead measured by a glowing ring around his robot's cockpit.
- Just about every enemy in Einhänder, provided they take more than one shot to kill. The very first miniboss, in fact, has a weapon in each arm that you can destroy. It then pulls out a two-handed energy rifle. Blow that up, and it retreats. Blow up its propulsion source, and it falls to the ground while throwing out parting shots.
- Special mention goes to Ausf A Gestell, the crazy monkey robot Mini-Boss. You can literally blow off its hands, arms, feet, backpack and such, and this changes its attacks. If you blow off one hand for example, it will kick a crate at the player instead of normally throwing it.
- While not an enemy, the normal ax in Animal Crossing gets more and more cracked as you use it, until it finally breaks.
- In Star Trek: Starfleet Command, if too many phaser hits got through your shields you'd start leaking glowy purple plasma trails. In the sequels, you'd see scorch marks, electrical cracklies, and bits of your ship on fire.
- In BattleTech, mechs will armor get scorched if it's damaged, arms can get blown off, a crippled leg causes the mech to walk with a limp, and armor breaches can emit smoke.
- UFC Undisputed shows damage through bruising, bloody noses, and cuts on the face. Land a solid punch and you can open a gash across your opponent's cheek.
- Punch-Out!!: Every fighter in the NES and Wii games, with the former showing the battered characters in between rounds, and the latter having all boxers (including Little Mac) show all manners of bruises and bandages as they come closer to getting KO'd.
- From the second game onward, characters who take too much damage in Resident Evil games limp and hold their stomach in pain, sometimes losing the ability to run depending on the installment. Characters who die especially bloody deaths will also be covered in blood on the Game Over screen.
- Limbs can be severed in most games up to the fourth game, however this seems to not be the case with later installments. Occasionally, the camera angles and particle effects will fail to hide the fact that limbs aren't actually being severed.
- Unknown Armies for a tabletop example. Players do not keep track of how many hit points they have left. Instead the GM does it and tells them how wounded they are, eventually giving them penalties due to the pain of their wounds.
- Spec Ops: The Line has the protagonist become increasingly wounded as the game goes on. Captain Walker first suffers minor scratches and dings, then picks up minor burns over his hands and the back of his head, then gains deep lacerations that bleed copiously and a nasty second-degree burn behind his right ear. By the end he's become almost unrecognizable; he's covered in scorch marks, stains, blood, ash and sand, his clothes are totally ragged, his skin is peeling or scraped, and his eyes are hollow, unfocused and bloodshot with fatigue. His animations change over time as well, going from practiced, professional and precisely controlled to shaky and sluggish with exhaustion.
- Splatoon shows how damaged an Inkling is by how much opponent-colored ink is covering them, lasting until either they are splatted or Regenerating Health kicks in. The same goes for the single-player antagonists, the Octarians (and later on, to the playable Octolings); regenerating health included.
- Alligator Hunt, a Spanish Cabal-like arcade game, has enemies that as they receive damage either show it in several ways as flames or becoming cracked or begin to blink red, or both.
- Grand Theft Auto has increasingly polished the art of showing how messed up a car is as the series has progressed. The original and 2 had changing sprites and an increasingly more broken sounding engine. With the jump into 3D, III had individual parts get broken until the eventual explosion, with Vice City and San Andreas further polishing it. By IV, vehicles can be damaged in multiple manners, depending on where and how hard the hit was, reaching a strong level of detail (and situations where a car-turned-accordion can still somehow keep going).
- Vehicles in Saints Row demonstrate this quite well. Ramming things damages your bumper, shooting the tyres makes the wheels spark as you drive, and you can snipe off doors or panels with the right weapons.
- The other games in the Batman: Arkham Series continues this, as Batman will get scuffed up during the course of the game and DLC. City and Knight also sees Catwoman, Nightwing, and Robin get roughed up over the course of the games. However, this is usually only in default costumes, as alternate costumes will remain intact.
