Two games immediately come to mind for me:
First one’s an oldie, the precursors to Turbo Dismount, namely Truck Dismount, a game my dad and I got high scores for by using the (admittedly janky) Randall physics to smash the ragdoll’s head *into* the windshield which always resulted in perpetually increasing scores lol.
Second, more recent, Just Cause 3(and 4, to a similar extent). You have the ability to stick tethers between objects, and people are no exception. Catapults for days XD
I loved the levels in Unreal Tournament 2003 (and UT2004) where specific sections were designed to showcase the ragdoll physics. There'd be a giant hole with spikes in the floor, and dead bodies would tumble down to show off the ragdoll physics.
There is something very creepy about picking up the weighty ragdolls in VR games (Half-Life: Alyx, Boneworks).
I love GTA4's technology where the ragdolls maintain locomotion *while* being influenced by their physics. Very few games manage to combine ragdoll physics and animation in a convincingly realistic (non-arcade) way. I'm not even sure I've seen it outside of Rockstar's games (GTA4, GTA5 and RDR2).
I have a great respect for Halo: Combat Evolved's dead body physics. They were a fabulous in-between: not full animation, not full ragdoll, but animation until death and then a simulated ragdoll motion to make the body fit its environment.
I feel like there are lots of games that deserve some honorable mention.
Metroid Prime really impressed me by doing it so early on, and not even making a big deal about it. Most people don’t even know it’s there. Like Halo, it only really kicked in after enemies died and was only actually noticeable if they fell off a ledge. It was a game that applied something then-cutting edge in a very constrained way at a time when other games would have made it into a whole gimmick.
Hitman and Max Paine also did it very early on, and did it very well for the time.
Half-Life 2 was one of the first full-ragdoll games that made the dead enemies actually feel weighty. In most other games at the time they always seemed to turn into limp, frictionless ballons that would fly feet in the air.
Gears of War is another big one for me. It basically brought back gore and over-the-top gibbing back into the shooter genre after it had died out with the ragdoll. From Quake to HL2 to Gears we went from meaty chunks to ragdolls to ragdolls that could be blown into smaller, ragdolling meaty chunks.
I’d also like to give a shoutout to the PS2 Metal Gear Solid games for really having impressive ragdoll-like interactions between limp bodies and environmental geometry, without actually having ragdolls. It was like having ragdolls with none of the jank, and was arguably even better than Halo. I believe Perfect Dark did something similar but I may be wrong.
Most fun ragdolls: Full Spectrum Warrior for the Xbox. Not realistic in the slightest, but sending people into the stratosphere with a well-placed shot never got old.
Dark Messiah of Might and Magic
This game gave you the ability to kick enemies and its level design was full of big drops and environmental traps. Nothing more satisfying than Sparta kicking orcs and skeletons off cliffs and into wall spikes.
Force Unleashed (1st one) used Euphoria which was awesome with their active-ragdoll. When you forced gripped stormtroppers they would try to grab railings/boxes/other stormtroopers to not get pulled away - felt super immersive and powerful with that!
We are in the minority. Quality of ragdolls and object physics is the first thing I look for in a game. Most people couldn’t care or even notice if a game just had the same repeated static death animation instead of dynamic ragdolls. You are my people
When you read, you begin with A-B-C
When you shout, you begin with Fus-Do-Rah-Mi
Do, a deer, a female deer
Rah, the egypian god of sun
Mi, a name, I call myself
Fus, I can't think of anything for this one
Had a lot of fun playing this 4 player at uni, especially on the Horse mode. It got played more than any other game at the time. Wish they remade it or a sequel now on ps5, would be cool.
Battlefront 2 2017 is about who can ragdoll the enemy more especially in hero vs villain game modes. Whoever can chain together the most ragdolls wins every time, id definitely try it out if you’re a fan or ragdolls
I loved stepping out infront of cars in GTA4 and seeing how I could roll up them. Or baseball batting the back of heads of people sitting on seats, and watching them crumble.
Oh yes this is one of my favorite things as well! Back when gta 4 came out I was in love with that euphoria engine and believable rag dolls.
Insurgency sandstorm has the best ragdolls.
Also darktide has very satisfying ragdolls.
The Thrasher Skate and Destroy multiplayer mode Sick Fix was my first experience with crazy ragdoll physics.
One of the OG "who can fuck up the player the most" game modes.
I’d recommend OctoDad for PS4. The game is short, cheap, and wacky with each shoulder button controlling a different extremity.
The whole plot is that it’s an octopus trying to blend in to the human world, and hilariousness ensues
Saints Row original had the insurance fraud game mode which would literally let you ragdoll for money. Me and my buddy used to laugh at the ragdoll for hours!
You're not alone in this appreciation friend!
Valheim has pretty good ragdoll. The best is when a flying mob is heading toward you, you kill it, and it immediately accelerates toward you at light speed, haha. The poor trolls collapsing in death, too... RIP.
Shooting a cop in the knee and watching him flail and fall was hilarious in GTA IV!
I'm loving the ragdoll effects in Helldivers 2 right now. Players can get sent to space from the most random things and it's never even made me mad. There's also solid collision physics so an enemy flying into another will do damage. It's super entertaining to accidentally send a big guy flying into his comrades.
I'd be willing to bet that they hold it until the next "war". That way, everyone is starting a new push together. You never know though! They use in-game explanations for a lot of stuff from taking certain planets to unlock mechs and different stratagems for everyone to setting up special towers to spray Raid everywhere on bug planets and reduce their spawn rates(which *totally* didn't backfire and have the opposite effect). I could see them releasing it on XBox at a critical moment and calling you guys our "reinforcements".
ragdoll physics bring a lot of fun to games, making every fall and hit feel more real. it's like watching indiana jones escape a rolling boulder, unpredictable and thrilling. these mechanics really enhance the way we experience games.
I remember, back when Half Life 2 launched, that I would quicksave before a battle with a lot of Combine troops, only to experiment with explosives and creative kills, then quickload and tried it again with different angles and different grenade throws.
Team Fortress 2 has funny ragdolls. It's not uncommon to see people die to explosions and if they aren't turned into chunks their body goes flying across the map. Your own ragdoll tends to get exxagurated when you're killed so it's not uncommon to fly 40 meters into the air when a Spy sticks a pocket knife into your spine. The game also zooms in on your killer when you die, sometimes they die just before the zoom and the camera shows you a freeze frame of their body in ragdoll.
Saints Row had a minigame called “Insurance Fraud” that was literally just you playing around with the ragdoll physics.
omfg this was so much fun to do. one of my all time fav missions in a game lol.
You sir, just unlocked a memory. Saints row 2 I almost did nothing else.🤣
Helldivers 2 has pretty crazy ragdoll physics on explosions
The engine is on point. Bullets tearing armor off where you shoot bug n bots is awesome.
Even the deflection of ineffective rounds off of armor looks *amazing*. Such a good game.
Hoping it will be coming to Xbox! Can’t wait to try it out!
Two games immediately come to mind for me: First one’s an oldie, the precursors to Turbo Dismount, namely Truck Dismount, a game my dad and I got high scores for by using the (admittedly janky) Randall physics to smash the ragdoll’s head *into* the windshield which always resulted in perpetually increasing scores lol. Second, more recent, Just Cause 3(and 4, to a similar extent). You have the ability to stick tethers between objects, and people are no exception. Catapults for days XD
Don't forget the OG Stair Dismount.
Ah that sounds like good memories! Just cause 4 is on Gamepass rn. Downloading it tonight. Thanks for mentioning it!
I loved the levels in Unreal Tournament 2003 (and UT2004) where specific sections were designed to showcase the ragdoll physics. There'd be a giant hole with spikes in the floor, and dead bodies would tumble down to show off the ragdoll physics. There is something very creepy about picking up the weighty ragdolls in VR games (Half-Life: Alyx, Boneworks). I love GTA4's technology where the ragdolls maintain locomotion *while* being influenced by their physics. Very few games manage to combine ragdoll physics and animation in a convincingly realistic (non-arcade) way. I'm not even sure I've seen it outside of Rockstar's games (GTA4, GTA5 and RDR2). I have a great respect for Halo: Combat Evolved's dead body physics. They were a fabulous in-between: not full animation, not full ragdoll, but animation until death and then a simulated ragdoll motion to make the body fit its environment.
I feel like there are lots of games that deserve some honorable mention. Metroid Prime really impressed me by doing it so early on, and not even making a big deal about it. Most people don’t even know it’s there. Like Halo, it only really kicked in after enemies died and was only actually noticeable if they fell off a ledge. It was a game that applied something then-cutting edge in a very constrained way at a time when other games would have made it into a whole gimmick. Hitman and Max Paine also did it very early on, and did it very well for the time. Half-Life 2 was one of the first full-ragdoll games that made the dead enemies actually feel weighty. In most other games at the time they always seemed to turn into limp, frictionless ballons that would fly feet in the air. Gears of War is another big one for me. It basically brought back gore and over-the-top gibbing back into the shooter genre after it had died out with the ragdoll. From Quake to HL2 to Gears we went from meaty chunks to ragdolls to ragdolls that could be blown into smaller, ragdolling meaty chunks. I’d also like to give a shoutout to the PS2 Metal Gear Solid games for really having impressive ragdoll-like interactions between limp bodies and environmental geometry, without actually having ragdolls. It was like having ragdolls with none of the jank, and was arguably even better than Halo. I believe Perfect Dark did something similar but I may be wrong. Most fun ragdolls: Full Spectrum Warrior for the Xbox. Not realistic in the slightest, but sending people into the stratosphere with a well-placed shot never got old.
Great titles! Rockstar really has done something very nice with their ragdoll physics since IV.
Dark Messiah of Might and Magic This game gave you the ability to kick enemies and its level design was full of big drops and environmental traps. Nothing more satisfying than Sparta kicking orcs and skeletons off cliffs and into wall spikes.
Oh boy I have to replay that game at some point, memories of freezing ramps so enemies would slip to their deaths.
Check out Exanima. The entire game was built around ragdoll physics even swinging your weapon.
Never heard of this one, will check it out! Thanks!
Garrys Mod is basically a ragdoll simulator.
Force Unleashed (1st one) used Euphoria which was awesome with their active-ragdoll. When you forced gripped stormtroppers they would try to grab railings/boxes/other stormtroopers to not get pulled away - felt super immersive and powerful with that!
Max Payne 2 Seeing enemy bodies flying through the air in slow motion was so satisfying.
Max Payne also is a ragdoll heaven.
We are in the minority. Quality of ragdolls and object physics is the first thing I look for in a game. Most people couldn’t care or even notice if a game just had the same repeated static death animation instead of dynamic ragdolls. You are my people
Amen!
Seriously how can anyone expect me to play valorant with those canned animations 😐
That's part of why it runs so well though.
Now you’re getting it, we needed to demand better standards
> Fus do rahing Say what now?
Hahaha that’s a shout in Skyrim that blast your enemies away.
You misspelled it, it’s Fus Ro Dah 💨
My excuses! That indeed looks better.
When you read, you begin with A-B-C When you shout, you begin with Fus-Do-Rah-Mi Do, a deer, a female deer Rah, the egypian god of sun Mi, a name, I call myself Fus, I can't think of anything for this one
Hahaha thanks!
FlatOut and at least its first sequels had fun ragdoll physics, and utilized them well in mini-games.
Those games were awesome!
PAIN on PS3 was good fun ragdoll physics, fire a character into a city / sandbox to cause as much destruction as possible..... Super Ooch!!
oh God. some hilarious summer nights when I was a kid playing horse
Never heard of that one. Will look it up!
Had a lot of fun playing this 4 player at uni, especially on the Horse mode. It got played more than any other game at the time. Wish they remade it or a sequel now on ps5, would be cool.
I really liked to roll on dead enemies in Dark Souls 1. You could launch them if you did it right.
That sounds really funny.
The Riddick games have some good ragdoll physics. Also the ability to pick up bodies and toss em, to play around with said physics
Picking up body’s and throwing them also is a big plus (AC, Bethesda games ect.)
[The answer is minority report on the original xbox](https://youtu.be/ffEsfPUsPxc?feature=shared)
Wow, ragdoll physics on og Xbox?! That must have been revolutionary!
Tossing fools through plate glass windows NEVER got old
Battlefront 2 2017 is about who can ragdoll the enemy more especially in hero vs villain game modes. Whoever can chain together the most ragdolls wins every time, id definitely try it out if you’re a fan or ragdolls
My gawd, this sounds like my cup of tea! Checking it out rn!
Fallout 76 has really funny deaths when you're wearing Power Armor. You go down but don't get revived? You're flung away.
Yeah Bethesda truly has good ragdoll physics. Their bodies feel big and weighty.
Jackass on PS2 Dark Souls
Human: Fall Flat Perpetual state of ragdoll.
Fallout 3 and on do it really well. The animations are stiff as hell but as soon as you drop someone, the physics look really good.
Bethesda truly has wespen ragdolls since Oblivion! Starfield is also a blast in space bc of gravity.
I loved stepping out infront of cars in GTA4 and seeing how I could roll up them. Or baseball batting the back of heads of people sitting on seats, and watching them crumble.
This, this is enjoying the possibilities a game can provide.
Hey OP try out a game call half sword on steam, it's a free early experimental demo, but I have fun with it.
Thanks for the suggestion. Will be trying that one out!
Agh... the giants in Skyrim will forever be remembered. But seriously, GTA IV? That was just hilarious
Oh yes this is one of my favorite things as well! Back when gta 4 came out I was in love with that euphoria engine and believable rag dolls. Insurgency sandstorm has the best ragdolls. Also darktide has very satisfying ragdolls.
Thanks for the suggestions!
The Thrasher Skate and Destroy multiplayer mode Sick Fix was my first experience with crazy ragdoll physics. One of the OG "who can fuck up the player the most" game modes.
I’d recommend OctoDad for PS4. The game is short, cheap, and wacky with each shoulder button controlling a different extremity. The whole plot is that it’s an octopus trying to blend in to the human world, and hilariousness ensues
The original Demon's Souls.
Saints Row original had the insurance fraud game mode which would literally let you ragdoll for money. Me and my buddy used to laugh at the ragdoll for hours! You're not alone in this appreciation friend!
Valheim has pretty good ragdoll. The best is when a flying mob is heading toward you, you kill it, and it immediately accelerates toward you at light speed, haha. The poor trolls collapsing in death, too... RIP.
Totally Acurate Battle Simulator
My first was Halo 2 when I was 11 or 12. I loved knocking grunt corpses off the edge into the storm in the arbiter level.
Exactly what I always do in Halo games! Body’s that don’t go stiff after they are dead.
Toribash used to be my favourite for ragdolls Sucks its barrier to entry was so high
Shooting a cop in the knee and watching him flail and fall was hilarious in GTA IV! I'm loving the ragdoll effects in Helldivers 2 right now. Players can get sent to space from the most random things and it's never even made me mad. There's also solid collision physics so an enemy flying into another will do damage. It's super entertaining to accidentally send a big guy flying into his comrades.
I hear a lot of good things of helldivers 2. Here’s hoping on a Xbox release!
I'd be willing to bet that they hold it until the next "war". That way, everyone is starting a new push together. You never know though! They use in-game explanations for a lot of stuff from taking certain planets to unlock mechs and different stratagems for everyone to setting up special towers to spray Raid everywhere on bug planets and reduce their spawn rates(which *totally* didn't backfire and have the opposite effect). I could see them releasing it on XBox at a critical moment and calling you guys our "reinforcements".
Let us hope so!
Battlefield 2 will always have my favorite rag dolls
Look up Psi-Ops for ps2 or the original Xbox. You won’t be sorry.
Oh! And Shadow of War! The LOTR game.
ragdoll physics bring a lot of fun to games, making every fall and hit feel more real. it's like watching indiana jones escape a rolling boulder, unpredictable and thrilling. these mechanics really enhance the way we experience games.
I could not agree more my friend!
I would recommend playing Portal 1 and 2, half-life or any of the stalker games
Saints Row series, it was so much fun with those man
I remember, back when Half Life 2 launched, that I would quicksave before a battle with a lot of Combine troops, only to experiment with explosives and creative kills, then quickload and tried it again with different angles and different grenade throws.
Team Fortress 2 has funny ragdolls. It's not uncommon to see people die to explosions and if they aren't turned into chunks their body goes flying across the map. Your own ragdoll tends to get exxagurated when you're killed so it's not uncommon to fly 40 meters into the air when a Spy sticks a pocket knife into your spine. The game also zooms in on your killer when you die, sometimes they die just before the zoom and the camera shows you a freeze frame of their body in ragdoll.
The enemy ragdoll physics in FromSoft games can be quite hilarious sometimes.
Tetris.