Kill It With Ice / Video Games

Kill It with Ice in Video Games

• One can use the Ice Wand weapon in American McGee's Alice to kill opponents with cold; they freeze solid and then fade away.
• Apocryph grants you an Ice Sword, which freezes enemies instantly and works even in the Fire and Brimstone Hell parts. Once frozen, a second attack allows you to kick enemies into Literally Shattered Lives.
• Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance has several magical spells that work like this, with the potential for turning enemies into little ice chunks if you have the proper spell setup. They either turn all blue for a time where you can hit them physically to shatter them, or if you do it long enough, they shatter all on their own. It's not really practical to do this sometimes because they might be immune to it for some reason or another, or it's rather mana-intensive to do this for long periods.
• Beyond Sunset has the levels in Genemp Laboratories' freezer rooms, where enemies will inexplicably stand near coolant tanks. Aim for the tanks to create an icy explosion with a wide radius, and enemies will turn into ice blocks. One more weak attack reduces them to Literally Shattered Lives.
• The Binding of Isaac: The Repentance DLC adds a possible freezing effect as one power up Isaac can obtain. Enemies who are frozen will never unfreeze, and count as dead even if they are not shattered.
• BioShock and its sequel have the Winter Blast plasmid, which freezes splicers when hit, then you can shatter them into pieces with your wrench or any other weapon before they thaw out for a few seconds. The drawback here is that you won't get loot after doing this method. Later on, some splicers will have attained this ability, and are much resistant to your own ice-based attacks. Therefore, do the opposite thing on them, which isn't hard to figure out...
• BlazBlue has Jin's main ability which is to freeze opponents with his katana, alongside summoning ice swords, creating ice barriers, turning his sword into a bow that shoots icy arrows, and riding ice cars.
• In Bloody Battle, by using the Frosted Fury, you can freeze someone to death by hitting them over and over until their hit points are reduced to 0.
• Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel! introduces ice-elemental weapons that can freeze enemies solid and shatter them into teeny-tiny pieces. DLC character Aurelia not only has an Action Skill that does constant Cryo damage at a certain area, but also has an entire skill tree dedicated to doing Cryo damage in a large area, with her final ability letting her do Cryo damage with any gun after scoring a kill.
• Crysis has frost-based aliens armed with ice-shard guns. Later on, you can get one of their weapons to use against them. And it has infinite ammo, too!
• Attempted in Dead Space with the hunter, which you have to lure into a cryogenic chamber to freeze it solid. This works for a while, but it eventually breaks free and keeps coming after you, no worse for the wear. In the end, it requires firing the rocket engines of a spaceship into its face to really kill it dead.
• In Deltarune, Noelle's IceShock spell can freeze enemies. It is also Played for Horror, as it's also the only spell that can kill enemies, who otherwise flee when beaten with any other attack. In the alternate route where the player has her freeze every available enemy, she even gets a stronger ice attack, whose description is simply "Fatal." Once the Fountain is sealed and the party gets back into the Light World after Noelle uses the latter on Berdly and leaves, he doesn't wake up with the rest of the party...
• Torch Bearer from Demigod switches between this and Kill It with Fire.
• Diablo II introduces the Cold element to kill stuff and be killed with. Has a chance of successfully shattering stuff as well.
• Die Hard: Vendetta has a stage in a cooling chamber, filled with liquid nitrogen tanks. Shooting them causes freezing gas which turn mooks into solid ice, and shooting the frozen mooks results in Literally Shattered Lives.
• Subverted slightly in Duke Nukem 3D with the Freezethrower. It fires frozen nitrogen crystals that bounce around the room and damage any enemies they hit (including yourself if you're not careful), but when they reach death, they instead freeze solid, at which point they are a One-Hit-Point Wonder - although they will harmlessly thaw out after a few seconds (but can still be downed or re-frozen in one hit). Duke Nukem Forever changes the Freezethrower into a ray-based weapon (actually some kind of maintenance tool) with a similar effect.
• One fascinating quirk of dwarven physics in Dwarf Fortress is that any water exposed to open air below freezing temperature, freezes instantly along with anything that was unlucky enough to be in it. When you melt or dig out the ice, only things left are bones and metal equipment.
• In The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, frost damage hurts health and stamina. A lot of enemies in Skyrim favor ice too. The more powerful Undead shoot frost from their hands, vampires fling spikes of ice magic, Wispmothers fling volleys of ice spells while their children attack, Ice Wraiths are hostile elemental spirits of ice and air, and Dragons occasionally use the Frost Breath Shout. The native people of Skyrim, the Nords, developed a hardy resistance to cold in response to the various ice-wielding menaces in Skyrim. Including Skyrim itself, since it's the coldest province in Tamriel. Conversely, ice isn't that practical for the player character to use since so many of the enemies in the game are resistant to it. Taken to an even higher level in Dragonborn with the return of Bloodmoon's Stalhrim. Players can now forge weapons made of enchanted ice that are on the same level as Ebony weapons that also increase the power of any Frost enchantments placed on them.
• In Evolve, all of the Glacial Behemoth's abilities are ice themed. Two inflict the standard slow effect, while one slows reload speed and another freezes hunters in place.
• Fallout 4 has the "Cryolator", a prototype weapon found in Vault 111 that functions in a similar manner to a flamethrower (and uses the same ammo), except freezing enemies into brittle chunks of ice as opposed to burning them to a crisp. There's also the Freezing legendary weapon effect, which adds ice damage and the chance to freeze enemies to any gun.
• You have a lot of options to do this in a standard Final Fantasy game: the Ice/Blizzard series of spells is generally one of the Black Mage's basic abilities, ice-elemental equipment is usually obtained around the half-way point, and summoners have Shiva (or Mateus in the Ivalice games).
• In Final Fantasy VIII, at the end of the first act, the party's gotten in Edea's way for a bit too long, so what does she do? Impale.
• In Fire Emblem, the Ice Dragon can theoretically do this via using their ice breaths. In Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem, Tiki (who's actually a Divine Dragon) can use ice dragon-like attacks if she gets an Ice Stone from the secret shops.
• In Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade, Ninian and Nils are half ice-dragons and could potentially use these attacks, but their shared dragonstone was taken away by the Black Fang. But after being revived, and most likely due to being near the powerful Dragon's Gate, Ninian uses ice blasts to kill two dragons and wound another (which becomes the Final Boss), while begging them for forgiveness and crying for their deaths.
• Gift: The Blue Crystal power, while freezing water, kills everything in it. Including you.
• In Doom mod GMOTA, The alternate attack of Daggar subweapon turns your sword into ice and freezes enemies. Frozen enemies will shatter and become tasty ice creams, so you can eat it to replenish your health.
• Hexen: Beyond Heretic has the Mage's Ice Spell, which if you kill someone with it, they freeze, and you can shatter them like glass.
• One of the bosses in the final level of Kid Dracula requires to shoot it with an ice projectile which is almost completely useless elsewhere.
• Being An Ice Person, this is Vexen of Kingdom Hearts's weapon of choice. Erm, besides his big-ass, spike-covered shield.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild has the Ice Arrows, which freezes enemies upon contact. Weaker enemies will be killed the moment they're thawed out, while stronger enemies will need either another Ice Arrow or to be dealt with up-close. A Link to the Past uses an Ice Rod instead of Ice Arrows. The Wind Waker gives you the option of using an Ice Arrow to freeze the enemy and then, you can either use the Skull Hammer or throw the frozen enemy to smash it to pieces for an instant kill. Even on Darknuts if you're quick enough. Moreover, in Wind Waker, Ice Arrows freeze the hottest flames, which makes it a crucial item for the Fire Mountain quest where Link has to find the Power Bracelets, and is also handy against fiery enemies.
  • The Twinrova (Kotake and Koume) boss fights in both Ocarina of Time and the Oracle series. The former game has the two witches being fought in the Spirit Temple as the eighth and final standard boss before facing off with Ganondorf, while the latter two game series has you fighting them in the Room of Rites after completing a linked game in which all 16 dungeons in either game are completed and Veran (Oracle of Ages) and General Onox (Oracle of Seasons) have been bested. The first half of the battle has the sorceress twins being weak to their opposite elements, so the gimmick is you have to reflect a blast of magic fired from one sister to the other (in Ocarina of Time, neither the Fire or Ice Arrows can harm them, and the same applies with the Oracles' Ember Seeds). Kotake attacks with ice, which the fiery Koume is weak to, and vice-versa. After a few hits, regardless of which sister taking the most blasts, the sisters fuse together to become Twinrova, a single super-witch with the combined powers of both sisters.
    • Ocarina of Time is where you have to use the Mirror Shield to absorb three blasts of their magic, then reflect it back at them, followed by a few hits from your sword. Make sure you avoid absorbing the opposite element, as it cancels out the already-absorbed element and deals damage to you at the same time.
    • The linked Oracle games has Twinrova alternating between two phases of attack, which affect the battlefield and Link. When in ice form, the battlefield's entire floor becomes encased in slippery ice and she materializes spiky ice crystals that ricochet back and forth from the walls. When in fire form, parts of the battlefield become lava pits Link has to avoid falling into and she launches damaging fireballs. Link must navigate each element thrown at him to strike Twinrova with his Sword several times to stun her, and once she is stunned, he must use a Mystery Seed to actually damage her.
  • Along with the sorceress sisters, Oracle of Seasons has the Sword and Shield Maze, and its miniboss, Frypolar. Very simple to explain, because the dungeon is ice-themed on the shield floor and fire-themed on the sword floor, and Frypolar has the power to convert from ice to fire, hence their respective names. While in ice form, Frypolar creates pillars of ice rising from the ground, and in fire form, shoots multiple fiery geysers that will harm Link upon contact. When its in fire form, Link has to throw the ice pillars that it originally created to attack him, but when in its ice form, it is weak against Link's Ember Seeds when they're fired at him. Link can also fire Mystery Seeds at it to make it change elements faster in order to execute the proper attacks. In addition, you have to use pillars of ice on the shield floor to freeze over the lava on the sword floor and make it cool off, allowing Link to progress to the boss, Medusa Head, and recover the eighth and final Essence of Nature, the Changing Seasons.
  • In The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Link becomes twice as vulnerable to ice and fire attacks if he wears the Zora Armor, losing up to 10 hearts when hit. If he falls into icy cold water or lava, he will die instantly.
• Luminous Arc: Mel the Torrent Witch starts out with a simple water spell, but she later learns Ice Crush, her strongest magical attack second only to Claire's Volt Storm. She is also the Combat Medic.
• Luminous Arc 2: Fatima's Shadow Frost Spell, while technically a Dark Magic Spell, has a taste of this. Her FD is pure of this though.
• Magicka: Ice and Frost are both 2 elements you can use.
• Mass Effect:
  • A secret research lab is built in high mountains on a permanently frozen planet, the idea being that if anything goes wrong, the cold would stop whatever they create from leaving the labs. In case of an emergency, the doors are locked and the power cut off, and after a week or so, cleanup teams with arctic gear can take care of the frozen mess.
  • Cryo and Snowblind rounds freeze targets solid with predictable results. This is one way to keep Krogans from regenerating and coming at you again.
  • The sequels add Cryo Blast as a tech ability, and the Avalanche heavy weapon. The N7 Paladin and Alliance Infiltration Unit classes in Mass Effect 3's multiplayer have the Snap Freeze ability that sprays ice in an arc in front of them. It can cause damage on its own but is particularly useful for slowing enemies down and increasing the damage they take, as well as being able to hit enemies through cover. If a frozen or chilled enemy is hit by a detonating power, such as Overload or Concussive Shot, it will also set off a Cryo Explosion that harms and freezes enemies across a wide radius.
• Mega Man:
  • If the eponymous character is up against both a fire-using boss and an ice-using boss in the same batch of Robot Masters, the one using fire will usually be weak to one using ice, though this is occasionally inverted. Otherwise, Kill It with Water.
  • ROM Hack Rockman No Constancy has Ice Circle, Wood Man's new weapon.
  • Inverted in 6 - Blizzard Man is weak to the weapon that Flame Man gives Mega Man.
  • 10 has Solar Man (fire), Chill Man (ice) and Pump Man (Water). Kill Solar Man with water. The Chill Spike (which creates spines of ice on the ground) is good against Nitro Man (who turns into a motorcycle).
• Melty Blood has one in White Len.
• Metal Slug Code J has a new weapon called the Ice Shot, which fires a powerful, freezing mist capable of turning enemy soldiers into Human Popsicle(s) in an instant. You can fill an area full of enemies intoan impromptu ice sculpture display within seconds with this weapon.
• Metroid:
  • The titular metroids themselves are traditionally vulnerable to extreme cold. Fortunately Samus has an Ice Beam. This is also why, in Metroid Prime, the Space Pirates built their Metroid research facility in the icy environment of Phendrana Drifts: they hoped that the cold would weaken any metroids that might escape, making them slightly less dangerous (one of the better ideas their Science Team came up with). It also explains why, when Samus becomes part-metroid in Metroid Fusion, the X start coming after her with ice-cold parasite-variations that hurt her if absorbed, at least until she can reacquire the Varia Suit to withstand extreme temperatures.
  • Super Metroid: Generally, when an enemy is hit with the ice beam, they will take damage normally, but then freeze when the next shot would kill them. There are a few exceptions, such as enemies that can't be killed by the beam alone, like rippers, and metroids themselves. These enemies become frozen after one shot.
  • Metroid Fusion and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption enhance Samus's arsenal with Ice Missiles, replacing the Ice Beam. For Fusion, this is because Samus is told that the Metroid-based aspect of her physiology would reject the Ice Beam. In Corruption, it's simply for gameplay reasons (the game replaces the weapon switching mechanic with a stacking system due to the presence of Hypermode); the Ice Missiles can be used to freeze fire-based enemies on the volcanic side of Bryyo. (Incidentally, there's one that attempts to attack Samus with a round boomerang. You can make it so that projectile shatters its body right after you freeze it, which nets you an achievement token.)
  • In Metroid: Other M, a rogue group of Federation scientists allegedly managed to engineer some Metroids immune to cold, effectively rendering them invincible. Fortunately, all living specimens of this group are killed in an explosion before they become mature; this is actually how Adam Malkovich dies, performing a Heroic Sacrifice to detonate the area containing them. And the rest of the Federation realizes exactly how stupid creating invincible metroids is, and do not continue the project.
• Played with in Minecraft. Players and snow golems can kill the Nether's "blaze" mobs with snowballs, and the former can also whack any given mob to death with ice and snow blocks.
• Mortal Kombat: Sub-Zero, being An Ice Person in general, hands out plenty of these as Finishing Moves.
• Freezing to death from staying outside too long is one of the ways you can let Nancy Drew die in Treasure in the Royal Tower and White Wolf of Icicle Creek, and in one of these games the villain tries to get rid of her this way.
• In One Night At Flumptys 3, the titular "egg" tries this on you by locking you in a room that's freezing cold. You're forced to constantly keep an eye on your body temperature and juggle watching for incoming threats while taking every chance you can to run to the nearby incinerator to warm up. Worse, is one of the monsters can get into the incinerator and deliver an instant kill if you go near it at the wrong time, effectively combining this and Kill You With Fire all in one nasty package, while another of the monsters can instantly drop your body temperature to near zero with its otherwise harmless attack. If you fail to keep warm, your body freezes over and prevents you from doing anything other than sitting there motionless waiting for the next monster to come by and kill you.
• In Pokémon, this is the standard way of dealing with Dragon-types, since the only other type that's super-effective against them is their own (or, starting with Generation VI, the Fairy type). You will want something else for Reshiram, Dialga, Palkia, and Kyurem, however. Ice is also super-effective against Grass, Ground and Flying types, which makes it even better for dealing with Dragon/Flying and Dragon/Ground Pokémon such as Dragonite and Garchomp.
• Prayer of the Faithless: The Pyro Core Passive Ability gives a "lowered ice resistance".
• Red Alert 3 gives the Allied faction several new ice-based superweapons and units, including Cryoblasts and Cryocopters. While the ice itself doesn't do any damage, it does leave frozen targets vulnerable enough that a single shot from the weakest infantry unit will shatter an Apocolypse tank.
• The eponymous Implacable Man of Resident Evil 3: Nemesis is particularly susceptible to liquid nitrogen grenades. Not only do they slow him down for a good 5 seconds or so, but they do as much damage to him as a magnum round. However, just like everything else, it doesn't keep him down for more than a few minutes.
• If you want to fight it instead of dodging it until the elevator arrives, Salazar's "Right Hand" in Resident Evil 4 is much easier if you use the conveniently-located canisters to repeatedly freeze it solid and pump it full of lead while it's frozen (or just freeze it once, pull out the rocket launcher, and call it a day).
• The flies surrounding the Dimitrescu daughters in Resident Evil Village are revealed to be weak to sudden drops in temperature when you fight Bela, and are said in a notebook to go dormant in temperatures below 10 degrees Celsius. You can invoke this trope two times, which noticeably thins the swarm of the daughter you're fighting:
  • Bela is fought in the Kitchen, and the cutscene shows for the first time the effect of the cold European air on the flies when Ethan shoots out a window accidentally when his aim on Bela is thrown off by her efforts.
  • Cassandra is fought in the Library, which has a convenient skylight. This tactic requires actual timing to lure her under before you pull the lever to open it.
  • Daniela is fought in the Armory, with a weak wall behind a shelf. It's easy to move the shelf and blow up the wall with a single pipebomb.
• RosenkreuzStilette's Freudia Neuwahl, Spiritia's best friend in the series, is no slouch with her ice and snow powers, but unlike her friend, she will not hesitate to end you with said powers if you've proven yourself too evil to stand. Just ask series Big Bad Iris herself, who Freudia freezes to death at the end of Freudenstachel.
• Ruphand: An Apothecary's Adventure: The Fire Affinity badge divides Ice Resistance in half, after all Percent-Based Values addition and subtraction effects are applied.
• Shining Series:
  • Freeze spells in Shining in the Darkness.
  • Noon's specialty in Shining Force III "Now bare by arctic wrath!"
  • Shining Wisdom Gueid, the only way to defeat him is to freeze the hot rocks he throws at you and then throw them back while they’re frozen.
• In Sonic Adventure, Sonic and Knuckles battle Chaos 6 on the deck of the Egg Carrier. Dr. Eggman tosses freezer bombs, intending to use them to freeze Sonic or Knuckles, but the two can use them to freeze Chaos 6 by tossing them at him or tricking him into sucking them up with his Vacuum Mouth. Once Chaos 6 is frozen, Sonic or Knuckles can jump on him to damage him.
• This seems to be Soulcalibur's (and by extension Siegfried's) goal for the entire world in Soulcalibur IV.
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • Paper Mario 64: When the time comes for Mario to face off with the Crystal King and free the last Star Spirit, this is the most outright threat the king makes on the heroic plumber's life. He planned to freeze over Mario's icy corpse and present it as a gift to Bowser if he defeated him, although he can freeze Mario for a few turns during the battle.
  • In New Super Mario Bros. Wii, while few enemies die outright from being frozen with the Ice Flower, it does turn many into ice blocks which can then be crushed with a Ground Pound or thrown into walls. This is the most convenient way to handle Dry Bones.
• Freeze missiles in the Twisted Metal series are an effective tactic for inflicting some outright savage damage on enemies, as they are an energy attack that can be fired by a button command rather than needing to be equipped, do the same damage as a fire missile, home in, and leave their victims helplessly vulnerable to being outright slammed by a barrage of firepower until they thaw out. There's a reason freeze missiles are incorporated into a number of the boss character's special moves.
• In Touhou Project, ice fairies can often to do this. One of the strongest fairies is Cirno who can manipulate cold to this extent. Even if it's effective enough to freeze enemy projectiles, she likes to freeze frogs more.
• In Warcraft III, the Scourge specializes in ice attacks (since Evil Is Deathly Cold), particularly the Lich heroes. The Lich King provides the page quote.
• The Soviets in War Front: Turning Point love their liquid nitrogen weapons.
• Used to truly spectacular effect by the Kingslayer in the intro video of The Witcher 2, with an ice bomb instantly freezing an entire ship (and almost everyone on board) liquid nitrogen-style.
• In World of Warcraft, Mages and Death Knights are both capable of specializing in Ice-based attacks. Also, Shamans have Frost Shock. Averted with Hunters, whose freezing traps don't kill, but merely immobilize an enemy in ice or create a slick surface that slows enemy movement. As mentioned above, many Scourge mobs also tend towards ice.
• The playstation version of Xena: Warrior Princess has a late power-up called the Frostbiter, which allows Xena to solidify her enemies into an ice statue with a single hit. Land a second hit and the frozen enemies shatter into ice shards.
• One Boss Battle in Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure has an ice dragon kidnap Wiki by swallowing him whole and forcing you into a Light and Mirrors Puzzle to save him. Make three mistakes, and you will be treated to a Non-Standard Game Over with Wiki freezing to death.
• The fire extinguisher in Zombies Ate My Neighbors doesn't cause direct harm to most enemies, but it does cut their defense while they're frozen allowing you to dispatch them in half the hits it would normally take. However it will actually kill the Jelly Blob enemies in six hits, as well as extinguish the Flaming Dolls. Popsicles on the other hand do outright damage to most enemies and will kill the Jelly Blobs in a single hit.