History Main / RocketTagGameplay

** In ''VideoGame/PokemonGo'', Team Rocket trainers fight you with Shadow Pokemon, which inflict and take significantly more damage. This results in fast-paced battles in which a super effective charged attack is usually enough to one-shot a Pokemon.

** This was the competitive play of the original ''VideoGame/{{Super Smash Bros|64}}''; the game had extremely high hitstun that allowed for easy, frequent very long combos, that often ended in a KO. Additionally, the entire cast had terrible and easily edge-guarded recoveries outside the GameBreaker Pikachu, and most moves dealt high damage while [=KOing=] early, especially throws. Then on top of that heavy offense, defensive options were very limited, and the only two dedicated defensive options in the game, shielding and rolling, were terrible (shields had such immense shieldstun when attacked that a competent player could keep a shielding opponent stuck in their shield through a flurry of attacks until their shield broke, and rolls were slow and very easily punished). This all resulted in a game where the entire cast dies ridiculously quickly and is heavily based on who can get the first hit, and is the reason why competitive ''Smash 64'' runs more stocks in their matches than all the subsequent ''Smash'' games do in tournaments.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Exalted}}'' seesaws between this and PaddedSumoGameplay due to its lethality issues. It's trivially easy to throw an attack at someone that is absolutely certain to kill them instantly, resulting in whoever attacks first winning easily... unless the enemy uses one of the game's perfect defenses. Once everyone is using an impossible-to-bypass suite of perfect defenses, the game changes from Rocket Tag to PaddedSumoGameplay, with no attack ever doing more than making the opponent pay a tiny amount of the game's equivalent to MagicPoints.

* ''VideoGame/SwordOfPaladin'': Even on the highest difficulty, the party's endgame damage is high enough to defeat most mobs and bosses very quickly. However, the enemies can just as easily wipe out the non-Paladin party members if they get lucky or if the player is careless.

* ''VideoGame/{{X}}'':
** Destroyer-on-destroyer battles in the ''[[VideoGame/{{X}} X-Universe]]''. Their guns are powerful enough that if both ships are A.I.-controlled, the one that gets off the first salvo usually wins. Averted in ''Albion Prelude'' (and in many {{Game Mod}}s for earlier titles) due to a significant buff in the hull strength of all ships.

* ''VideoGame/{{X}}:

* ''[[VideoGame/XCOMEnemyUnknown XCOM: Enemy Unknown]]'' is like this, at least towards the start of the game. The first enemy aliens you will encounter are Sectoids; only 3 HP, unglamorous stats, and instead of a highly useful grenade they have a relatively weak Psionic ability to support one another. However, they wield Plasma Pistols- doing the same damage per hit as your own assault rifles, but without the need to reload. Your own forces' vitality varies on difficulty- in Classic, they have 5 HP to start, and in Impossible it's just FOUR (enough for a single lucky-rolled non-critical attack to kill them). On high difficulties, such as Classic and Impossible, kills will be determined by who hits whom first- making abilities such as Hunker Down and using frag grenades utter necessities to survive.
** Ditto the original ''X-Com'', especially when the player first gets their hands on a plasma rifle: Enemies are still weak enough to die from a single hit, and so are your troops.

* ''VideoGame/GoldenEye1997'' has a one-shot one-kill weapon (the golden gun), but players can also unlock and set various game settings to increase enemy damage, reaction time, health, etc (nicknamed [[VideoGame/PerfectDark Dark]] License To Kill) to make the levels NintendoHard.
** There's also the Licence to Kill multiplayer mode, which makes every character into a OneHitPointWonder. This leads to tense pistol duels where quick reflexes win the day and {{mutual kill}}s run rampant.

** This is quite commonplace in the VideoGame/{{Marvel|VsCapcom}} entries of the ''[[VideoGame/CapcomVs Vs.]]'' series, with other notable offenders being ''VideoGame/MarvelSuperHeroes'', ''VideoGame/XMenVsStreetFighter'' (to the point that [[VideoGame/MarvelSuperHeroesVsStreetFighter its direct successor]] existed partially to do away with all of the crazy infinites in ''[=XvSF=]''), and -- of course -- ''VideoGame/MarvelVsCapcom2''.

* In ''VideoGame/KatanaZero'', which draws a lot of inspiration from ''VideoGame/HotlineMiami'' (see above), you play as a katana-wielding GlassCannon that cuts through {{Mooks}} as if they were hot butter. Most hits end up with ''someone'' dying in a ludicrously bloody fashion, with a few exceptions. (Some enemies can block attacks and need to be hit twice, although this can be averted by ambushing them or hitting them with the right timing. On the enemy's side, some gun-wielding enemies can knock the protagonist to the floor if he gets too close. It's not lethal, but it might as well be, because it stuns him, and in a game as fast paced as this one...) To get a bit of an edge, the player can slow down time to dodge blows and deflect bullets, but still, prepare to die a lot.

* Fights in ''VideoGame/{{BushidoBlade}}'' can easily end in a second, thanks to the realistic damage system.

* ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons''. In 1st Edition ''Advanced D&D'', there was no limit on spell damage, so (for example) a 20th level magic-user's Fireball did 20d6 (20-120) HitPoints of damage. This meant that at higher levels of play, whichever side gained initiative would probably win the fight. The designers of 2nd Edition decided to put level caps on most of the damaging spells to prevent one-round wipeouts. This also happened between two editions of ''Basic D&D''. In general, D&D is this at very low levels (when characters can be potentially killed with a single high-damage hit) and very high levels (when save-or-die effects become prevalent).

** TabletopGame/{{Pathfinder}} eliminated most of the damage loops and frank abuses of 3.5, buffed melee and ranged physical damage so the warrior classes do most of the damage, and still results in this trope due to the prevalence of "Save or Suck" spells. In short, casters can shut down the enemy with spells that inflict status ailments so severe the warriors simply cut down the enemy like butter. For example, failing a save versus Blindness seems like an inconvenience by itself, but if it happens while a Barbarian is in the room, your life expectancy can be measured in seconds.
*** Not to mention that the aforementioned buffed up damage on warrior classes can make reach the point where a full attack from a martial character will one-round kill most level-appropriate enemies.

** 5th edition's armor class incorporates both missing and the attack doing no damage, so while attacks that do hit won't necessarily kill in one shot, even a min-maxed StoneWall won't last long against multiple enemies, while a SquishyWizard might well go down in a single round.
*** Some spells automatically deal damage, but the target can roll a save to reduce the damage taken.

* In high-level ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyTacticsAdvance'' play, especially in multiplayer, there is really only one stat: [[OneStatToRuleThemAll speed]]. Thanks to a series of [[GameBreaker balance-annihilating skills]], first strike generally wins. The amount of damage a character can take or deal is irrelevant with Viera Assassins covering half the battlefield in a single turn and instantly killing their target 85% of the time or more, or Moogle Gunners blasting insanely powerful Ultima Shots at ludicrous ranges.
** Likewise, the original ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyTactics'' lends itself to this sort of thing. By the end of chapter 3, it's a common strategy to stack damage-boosting equipment in every slot, and it's very difficult to build a character that can survive more than a round or two against a high-level Ninja or Summoner. And that's before you start dual-wielding Knightswords, driving your Brave stat as high as it can go and making your attacks ignore evasion.

* Destroyer-on-destroyer battles in the ''[[VideoGame/{{X}} X-Universe]]'' are basically this. Their guns are powerful enough that if both ships are A.I.-controlled, the one that gets off the first salvo usually wins. Averted in ''Albion Prelude'' (and in many {{Game Mod}}s for earlier titles) due to a significant buff in the hull strength of all ships.

* Many ''Franchise/ShinMegamiTensei'' games, including the ''Franchise/{{Persona}}'' spinoffs, use this style of battle. You get extra turns for attacking enemy weaknesses, and lose them if you attack an enemy with something it's resistant to. They play by the same rules. So the turn-based battles revolve around either annihilating the enemy on the first turn or getting your HP wrecked by the demons if any survive your initial assault. Especially notable is ''VideoGame/{{Persona 5}}'''s Merciless difficulty level: critical hits and weaknesses do three times as much damage as normal, meaning that they're extremely likely to be one hit kills against everything but bosses.

* ''VideoGame/TeamFortress2'': Every class has amazing damage output, bar TheMedic, whose primary weapons range from mediocre to okay in that regard. Either they have a rapid-fire weapon which has pretty good per-hit damage (Heavy, Pyro), a usually-weak weapon that has the potential to instant kill if one is skilled enough (Sniper, Spy), or a mildly slow weapon that will almost always two-shot on close-range direct hits (Scout, Soldier, Demoman, Engineer). In contrast, most classes have low HP, and even the toughest can be taken out with a few good shots. This is where the Medic comes into play, with his ability to temporarily increase a teammate's max health allowing them to survive some more damage, but even a fully overhealed heavy can die surprisingly quickly (most notably to charged headshots and backstabs).

** Another popular mod are "10x servers" (based on a forum concept, then turned ''VideoGame/GarrysMod'' [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPjvF-WqRuA video]] by Blood_Wraith), where everything in the game is multiplied by a factor of 10. This includes damage. [[MacrossMissileMassacre And the number of rockets]] [[LethalJokeWeapon a Beggar's Bazooka shoots.]]
*** Of course, the inverse is also true in these servers, as "everything" includes damage debuffs. Since nearly every weapon in Team Fortress 2 is not an upgrade, but a sidegrade by way of a SituationalSword, you'll either be decimating the opposition or be doing jack crap to any of them.

* ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'', especially in earlier generations, has a metagame role called the "Sweeper". The purpose of this monster is to one-shot the entire opposing team due to a high speed stat, insane damage, and good coverage on the ElementalRockPaperScissors table. The best counter for a Sweeper? A faster sweeper that can one-shot it. Barring that, a character tough enough that it can survive a Sweeper's attack, so it can retaliate. Many Sweepers focus purely on Attack/Sp. Attack and Speed, so they're likely to be a GlassCannon or a FragileSpeedster.

[[Administrivia/TropesAreTools This trope doesn't]] ''[[Administrivia/TropesAreTools have]]'' [[Administrivia/TropesAreTools to be a bad thing]]. Fast-paced battles tend to be more exciting than longer and tedious ones, and they may require less LevelGrinding. In [=RPGs=], this can make each turn extremely tense, as the stakes are always at their highest. In real-time action games, this allows the inclusion of weapons which are difficult to use, like an extremely slow-moving rocket launcher, for example, because if it connects at all there will be immediate positive feedback (like your opponent exploding). In a real-time strategy game, this can place a greater focus on the "strategy" side and the logistics, as once battle is joined there is almost no time for the player to micro orders to troops before the demise of themselves or the enemy.

* In the ''Videogame/{{STALKER}}'' series, the 'Master' HarderThanHard difficultly shifts the game into rocket tag. [[BoomHeadshot Headshots are almost always lethal]], and only the PoweredArmor can protect the user from more than just a couple rounds.

* In ''[[VideoGame/NintendoWars Advance Wars]]'', attacking first is crucial. Not only do good match-ups leave victims with 20-0% health left, but [[UnstableEquilibrium the more injured a unit is, the less firepower it has]]. So the strategy is to never let yourself get attacked to ensure you do max damage and reduce the enemy's firepower considerably before they do that to you. Medium tanks and their heavier counterparts have higher defense, but even those have [[TacticalRockPaperScissors counters]] who can chop off 40% or more of their health/firepower. In ''Super Famicom Wars'', however, units attack each other simulatenously, so there is no advantage in attacking first (but firepower still decreases when you're injured).

** [[Franchise/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles The Shredder]] vs [[ComicBook/{{Wolverine}} Silver Samurai]] ultimately goes down to who would be the first to land a lethal hit due to Oroku Saki's ninja precision and Kenuichio Harada's Tachyon Blade. [[spoiler:The Shredder is deemed the winner since the hosts shown that Saki [[SuperSpeed can strike faster]] than Harada [[SuperReflexes can react to protect himself]]. That, and Oroku could always [[CuttingTheKnot just chug some Mutagen]] to become [[SuperMode Super Shredder]], whose strength far outclasses Harada's defensive abilities.]]
** ComicBook/{{Carnage}} vs [[Manga/ElfenLied Lucy]] overlaps this with PaddedSumoGameplay; the fight goes down to who would be the first to land a lethal hit due to Carnage's [[GoodThingYouCanHeal frankly]] [[FromASingleCell ludicrous]] HealingFactor letting him tank all manner of damage short of complete bodily destruction and Lucy's [[SuperSpeed unbelievably-fast]] [[NoSell and incredibly durable]] [[CombatTentacles Vectors]] letting her block almost anything while one good shot from Carnage could easily kill her. [[spoiler:Lucy is deemed the winner since the hosts show her Vectors can not only [[SuperSpeed move much faster]] and [[LongRangeFighter reach farther]] than Carnage, but they can also hit with enough force and [[KillItWithFire firepower]] [[NukeEm (as in, nuclear explosion)]] [[AntiRegeneration to overcome Carnage's durability and]] HealingFactor while also exploiting his [[WeaksauceWeakness weakness]] [[WeakToFire to fire]] to kill him in one shot]].
** [[Franchise/SonicTheHedgehog Shadow the Hedgehog]] vs [[Anime/KillLaKill Ryuko Matoi]] has it noted that both fighters had the ability to end each other rather swiftly, with Shadow's sheer speed and [[TimeStandsStill Chaos Control]] allowing him to slice through Ryuko's Life Fibers [[HealingFactor faster than they could regenerate]] while Ryuko has enough raw power to one-shot Shadow's base form. [[spoiler:The hosts determine that Shadow is many times faster than Ryuko's best reactive feats even without factoring in TimeStandsStill, meaning her chances of actually landing that fatal one hit were rather nil. Plus Shadow can match Ryuko's raw power output simply by removing his [[PowerLimiter Inhibitor Rings]], to say nothing of how his raw power and speed so utterly eclipse her as [[GoldenSuperMode Super Shadow]] that he would have no issue ending her before his HourOfPower wears off.]]

* One of the ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'' expansions, "Wrath of the Lich King", did this by accident. Due to a few miscalculations, gear scaled up so fast that the healers had effectively limitless magic for healing, so damage capabilities were increased to the point where any character could be killed in seconds, so that the healers had to be healing quickly and proactively to keep anyone alive. As a side effect, [[PlayerVersusPlayer PvP]] combat became a game of rocket tag where any class could die or kill another in seconds with a lucky crit.

* ''VideoGame/MetroidDread'': Once Samus acquires the Omega Cannon, both she and the local E.M.M.I. have one-hit-kill weapons. It's just a matter of who lands their's first.

** ''VideoGame/FireEmblemThracia776'' is often joked among fans to be a game where the broken abilities of the enemy are counteracted by the broken abilities of the player. One-rounding enemies is trivially easy for most units, but enemy accuracy and critical rates are noticeably high, and magic enemies hit very hard. Staves that inflict StandardStatusEffects are at their most powerful, with infinite range and duration, but are also fairly trivial for the player to obtain. Map designs gleefully abuse all these aspects. In the lategame, a common strategy is to Sleep, Silence, and Berserk as many enemies on the map as possible on the first turn before they can do the same to you.

* In ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12913821/20/Game-and-Bleach Game and Bleach]]'', Yoruichi's spar against Tatsuki works this way. Yoruichi's hits each take out a full third of Tatsuki's health while Tatsuki's one successful attack leaves Yoruichi unconscious with zero health. To take things further, Yoruichi was deliberately striking Tatsuki's armor while pulling her punches as well.

* In high-level ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyTacticsAdvance'' play, especially in multiplayer, there is really only one stat: speed. Thanks to a series of [[GameBreaker balance-annihilating skills]], first strike generally wins. The amount of damage a character can take or deal is irrelevant with Viera Assassins covering half the battlefield in a single turn and instantly killing their target 85% of the time or more, or Moogle Gunners blasting insanely powerful Ultima Shots at ludicrous ranges.

** 4th Edition was the one edition to [[InvertedTrope invert]] this with its PaddedSumoGameplay. While enemies ''did'' have some attacks that could take a PC down if focus fired, these were generally once per fight skills, and the easy access to quick healing would mean that PCs would be back up on their feet within a round (Monsters seldom got healing or regeneration because it unnecessarily prolonged an already long slog). A typical 4th Edition fight would start with the monsters unleashing some fairly strong attacks against the party that could make them concerned for a minute, the party quickly healing everyone back up, some exchanges of blows where one or two enemy combatants would eventually be defeated making victory pretty uncertain, and then another 30-60 minutes of mop up by the players. The rules tried to fix this slightly with the second Monster Manual toning down HitPoints and defenses while buffing up an enemy's attack once they [[TurnsRed were "bloodied"]], but combat still took a long time. Probably one of the reasons why 5th Edition below reverted back to quicker combat mechanics.

* Most games in the ''Franchise/KingdomHearts'' series have the option to play in [[NintendoHard Critical Mode]], which halves the health of the player and makes enemies significantly more powerful in exchange for bonuses that vary between games but are always incredibly powerful including the Critical-exclusive [[LowLevelRun No Experience/EXP Zero]] abilities that sacrifice the player's ability to gain experience or level up in exchange for [[LowLevelAdvantage a significant damage boost that scales to the current world's difficulty]] and usually results in the player dealing significantly more damage than a properly leveled player without the ability or on a lower difficulty and getting [[OneHitKill one-shot]] or two-shot if they have [[LastChanceHitPoint Second Chance and Once More]] equipped.

* Because there's no actual stats system in ''VideoGame/AIDungeon2'', battles tend to be quick and brutal, with either the player [[CurbStompBattle curb stomping enemies]] or the enemies [[HeroKiller doing the same in toll]]

* ''VideoGame/TeamFortress2'': Every class has amazing damage output, bar TheMedic, whose primary weapons range from mediocre to okay in that regard. Either they have a rapid-fire weapon which has pretty good per-hit damage (Heavy, Pyro), a usually-weak weapon that has the potential to instant kill if one is skilled enough (Sniper, Spy), or a mildly slow weapon that will almost always two-shot on close-range direct hits (Scout, Soldier, Demoman, Engineer).

* In ''VideoGame/NintendoWars'', attacking first is crucial. Not only do good match-ups leave victims with 20-0% health left, but [[UnstableEquilibrium the more injured a unit is, the less firepower it has]]. So the strategy is to never let yourself get attacked to ensure you do max damage and reduce the enemy's firepower considerably before they do that to you. Medium tanks and their heavier counterparts have higher defense, but even those have [[TacticalRockPaperScissors counters]] who can chop off 40% or more of their health/firepower.