Kill Streak

M-M-M-M-MONSTER KILL!!

Let's be honest, anyone can get a couple kills by just mashing random buttons and hoping for the best. It takes an entirely different class of player to continue getting kills without dying or even taking damage and sometimes under a certain amount of time. Because of this, many Video Games appropriately reward players who can perform these feats with special bonuses, exclusive titles, or even hidden content.

May overlap with Awesomeness Meter, Idiosyncratic Combo Levels, Chain Lethality Enabler, or Score Multiplier if an unbroken kill streak contributes to filling it. Compare Unstable Equilibrium, which is also a means of rewarding good players by helping them get even better scores.

Subtrope of Kill Tally.

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Examples

Action-Adventure Games

• Assassin's Creed
  • While Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood doesn't feature any extra bonus for its Kill Streaks (actually named that, it's a feature where you can one-hit-kill an enemy who is in range of you when you kill another), its VR training does have a survival mode that counts how many enemies you can kill before taking damage.
  • Assassin's Creed III plays this straighter - some Elite Mooks are normally able to counter Kill Streaks, but if you have built up enough normal kills, they will be scared into vulnerability.
• Devil May Cry:
  • The Stylish Rank system rewards you more Stylish Points for killing multiple enemies without taking any damage at all in between your kills. This means killing several enemies at once in a few seconds or in a single move can easily net you S ranks. The higher the rank, the more Orbs are dropped by the slain enemies. Inversely, if you get hit or take too long in killing the next enemy, the counter stops rising and your rank would drop or reset.
  • Depending on the game, the need for kill streaks is encouraged, acknowledged, or enforced in a given scenario. For example:
    • Some Secret Missions require you to kill all enemies in the room without taking damage.
    • The Bloody Palace mode in later games reward you more time if you kill enemies while maintaining your Stylish Rank.
    • There are achievements in Devil May Cry 4: Special Edition and Devil May Cry 5 requiring you to kill 10 and 5 enemies within 1 second, respectively.
    • DmC: Devil May Cry, the only game in the series which displays in-game feats in real-time, actively points out any kill streaks you've made by showing the phrases "Double Kill!", "Triple Kill!", or "Flawless Kill Streak!" on-screen.
    • The "Extra Bonus" system in Devil May Cry 5 rewards you additional Red Orbs for accomplishing various optional feats, some of which include killing two, three, or five enemies at the same time.
• Dino Crisis 2 rewards you handsomely for completing a kill streak in a given area, and throws a huge bonus on top of that for scoring one without taking any hits. Since the points are used as in-game currency to buy weapons, health and ammo, you have twice the incentive to avoid enemies, but you also have to be aggressive and expose yourself to more danger so you can rack up the kill streaks needed to make it worth your while. You can eventually purchase an upgrade that allows the timer to tick down much more slowly between kills, allowing you ease up on the pace and play more defensively.
• The Matrix: Path of Neo has these - killing a SWAT team in 5 minutes, surviving 10 waves of Smiths that earns new moves and unlocks Concept Art.

Fighting Games

• Divekick: calls out your consecutive headshot streaks. "Double Kill" for two, "Multi Kill" for three, "On a Rampage" for four, and "Total Domination" for a perfect 5-headshot streak. You'll get a PSN trophy if you pull off Total Domination in a ranked match.
• Soul Calibur 2: Features a "Survivor" mode based on killing multiple opponents without dying.

First-Person Shooter

• Battlefield Bad Company 2 rewards players with medals for Kill Streaks 6 or 8 kills long. Later Battlefield games have a similar experience bonus for managing to kill multiple people in a short amount of time.
• Borderlands awards XP bonuses for consecutive kills with no more than a few seconds between each. The top level is called "Conveyor of Death" and requires 25 kills. Characters also have "Kill Skills" that activate upon killing enemies and remain active as long as you're able to keep killing.
• Beginning with Modern Warfare, games in the Call of Duty series have deployable Kill Streak rewards for reaching certain streak counts in multiplayer:
  • Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare has three: a UAV (3), an Air Strike (5) and an Attack Helicopter (7).
  • Call of Duty: World at War also has three: a Recon Plane (3), an Artillery Strike (5) and Attack Dogs (7).
  • Modern Warfare 2 introduces Death Streaks as well, giving a player who is suffering a string of deaths without killing anyone a helping hand to turn the tide. While the player can still only equip three Kill Streak rewards at a time, they have an expanded list to choose from, all the way from UAVs (3), counter-UAVs (4) and sentry guns (5) up to an AC-130 (11), EMPs (15) and even a Tactical Nuke (25) that immediately wins the game for that player's team. This game's utilization and prevalence of streaks (in particular the aforementioned Nuke) broke the base. This game also introduced a reward for players who kill others who are just a kill short of a Kill Streak reward (Buzzkill).
  • Call of Duty: Black Ops also has an expansive list of Kill Streaks, such as a deployable SAM launcher that can destroy opposing killstreak rewards, and an SR-71 Blackbird, which is a better version of the Spy Plane which cannot be shot down. It also introduced bonus weapons that can be received as a streak reward, such as the "Death Machine" minigun and the "Grim Reaper" incendiary rocket launcher.
  • Modern Warfare 3 and Ghosts expands on this with "Strike Packages", killstreak rewards tied to your custom classes - you can choose an Assault package to get the usual directly-offensive killstreak rewards with one class, a Support package to get pointstreaks instead that don't reset upon your death and allow you to both help your team survive longer and see the enemy better with another class, or a Specialist package to acquire additional perks as you make kills with a third class. Regardless of your streak setup, there's also a hidden fourth kill/pointstreak, the M.O.A.B./K.E.M. Strike, at 25 kills, which is much like the Tactical Nuke but less abusable - it kills every enemy on the map, but rather than ending the game at that, just gives doubled experience to the team that called it in for the rest of the match.
  • Call of Duty: Black Ops II (and beyond) switches to a "scorestreak" system, wherein streak rewards are given based on how many points you make in a life. Functionally it's the same as the killstreaks from Black Ops, except the streaks wrap around after your third one, allowing you to gain the same streak reward multiple times in one life rather than having to die before you can get streak rewards again. It's also still possible to gain new streaks by way of kills made with prior streak rewards (something that was removed from MW3 due to how broken it could get in MW2), but is much harder to do so, as killing someone with a streak reward only gives you a fourth as many points as you would get for killing him with your own weapons.
• The Announcer Chatter in Halo uses fictional adjectives involving the word "kill", such as Overkill, Killtacular, Killtrocity, Killimanjaro, Killtastrophe, Killpocalypse and Killionaire.
• Some achievements in Team Fortress 2 involve this (often with extra conditions, such as using a particular weapon).
  • The Heavy's Killing Gloves of Boxing and Sniper's Cleaner's Carbine guarantee critical hits and mini-crits respectively after a kill, and reset the duration for consecutive kills with the same weapon within that time.
  • The Sniper's Hitman's Heatmaker can fill its Focus meter during Focus mode through kills and assists.
  • In the Mann vs. Machine update, the Demoman's and Spy's upgrades for their melee weapons allow critical hits after a kill for 2 seconds.
  • The Two Cities update introduced Killstreak Kits, which you can apply to your weapons. The standard version just tracks your kills, the Specialized version gives a colored sheen that grows in intensity every 5 kills, and the Professional version gives your eyes particle effects after a 5+ killstreak.
  • The Love & War update introduced the Air Strike, a weaker rocket launcher that fires much faster when rocket jumping. It initially only loads up to 3 rockets at a time, but every kill with it allows a player to load another rocket, up to 8 rockets at 5 kills.
• One of Respawn Entertainment's goals in Titanfall is to allow all players access to the titular Mini-Mecha. The quicker the player scores kills and complete objectives, the faster they can call their Titans to the battlefield.
• Unreal Tournament features special names for making specific numbers of kills within five seconds of one another, and for reaching kills in multiples of five without dying, which the announcer calls out. Specifically:
  • Announcements for rapid kills: Double Kill, Multi Kill, Ultra Kill, Monster Kill. Later games add a "Mega Kill" between Multi and Ultra Kill, and continue past Monster Kill in 2004 with "Ludicrous Kill" and then "Holy Shit".
  • Announcements for streaks of five kills in a row without dying: Killing Spree, Rampage, Dominating, Unstoppable, Godlike. 2004 added Wicked Sick, which was replaced in Unreal Tournament III with "Massacre".
  • Unreal Tournament 2004 adds streaks for kills with specific weapons: Bio Hazard for 15 kills with the Bio Rifle, Flak Monkey for 15 Flak Cannon kills, Combo Whore for 15 Shock Combo kills and Head Hunter for 15 headshot kills with the Sniper Rifle. Then III went all the way adding streaks for the rest of the weapons: Jack Hammer for the Impact Hammer, Gunslinger for the Enforcer, Shaft Master for the Link Gun, Blue Streak for the Stinger Minigun, Rocket Scientist for the Rocket Launcher and Big Game Hunter for the Longbow AVRiL.
  • The Warcraft III map/mod Defense of the Ancients uses these sounds as well. Ditto for some server-side Counter-Strike and Team Fortress 2 mods.

Multiplayer Online Battle Arena

• In the original Defense of the Ancients, streaks were announced with lines taken from Unreal Tournament as follows: 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 successive kills as "killing spree", "dominating", "mega kill", "unstoppable", "wicked sick", "monster kill", "godlike", respectively. 10 kills and beyond was announced as "beyond godlike", while 2, 3, 4 and 5 kills within about 30 seconds received parallel announcements as "double kill", "triple kill", "ultra kill" and "rampage". If you heard "holy shit" followed by "rampage", that meant someone already on a big spree just soloed an entire team.

• In League of Legends, racking up a killstreak without dying will cause the announcer to declare after 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8+ kills respectively: killing spree, rampage, unstoppable, dominating, godlike and legendary. Getting a bunch of kills quickly after one another has her announce double kill, triple kill, quadra kill and penta kill. This provides no actual benefit to the player, though, and it instead raises the amount of gold their enemies will get from killing them as their streak rises. Likewise, dying over and over reduces gold gained from you by 70% each time.

• In Heroes of the Storm, gaining a killstreak without dying will cause the announcer to declare after 5, 10, 15, and 20 kills respectively: Killing Spree, Mayhem, Untouchable, and Hero of the Storm. Getting a bunch of kills quickly after one another has the announcer declare the following: Double Kill, Triple Kill, Quad Kill and Mega Kill. However, gaining kill streaks raises the amount of ExperincePoints their enemies will get from killing them as their streak rises. There are certain heroes like Li-Ming and Genji that has abilities or passives that is designed to have bonuses upon gaining kill streaks.

Platformer

• Bug has hit streaks, every time Bug successfully jumps on an enemy without landing on the ground, he gains more points (1 hit- 50, 2 hits- 100, 3 hits- 200, 4- 500, 5 or more- 1000)
• Donkey Kong Country Returns: defeating 3 enemies in a row will reward 1 banana coin and more for every defeat after that.
• In Purple, stomping enemies continuously without landing will yield bigger amounts of points and eventually 1-ups.
• Ratchet & Clank games since the second one feature a bolt multiplier (which multiplies the amount of bolts, the in-game currency, enemies drop) on a New Game Plus. It increases by one for every time you kill an enemy up to a maximum of x20, and resets to x1 if you get hit.
• Most Sonic the Hedgehog games have some form of this in their scoring. Like the Super Mario Bros. examples below, Sonic the Hedgehog 3 even had an infinite 1-up trick.
  • Weirdly, Sonic Adventure 2 capped the bonus, so at points where there were a large enough number of targets for lock-ons, it was actually more advantageous to destroy them in groups rather than all at once.
• As seen in the trope image, many installments of the Super Mario Bros. series give increasing point bonuses, and eventually extra lives, for consecutive kills, whether it be multiple Goomba Stomps or using a shell. This can be exploited to gain Infinite 1-Ups.
• Germination: jumping on multiple enemies without landing or getting hit increases your multiplier, as well as giving you extra powers.

Rail Shooter

• In The House of the Dead: OVERKILL, you can climb up the violence ladder the more kills you get without missing or being hurt. Extreme Violence, Hardcore Violence, Ultra Violence, Psychotic, and finally Goregasm (which is accompanied by a waving American flag in the original Wii version) - each condition increases the amount of points a kill will net you (sequentially 200, 300, 400 and 500 for the first four streaks, then doubling to 1000 for Goregasm), and as such a long Goregasm is a definite requirement for a high score.
• In the Namco arcade games Time Crisis (beginning with Time Crisis II) and Razing Storm, landing hits increases your combo meter, but too long of a delay between hits or taking damage resets the meter.
• Getting a kill streak actually figures into Sewer Shark's plot. You need to pull in higher and higher numbers of "pounds of tubesteak" to maintain your job as a sewer jockey and, thereby, earn a ticket to Solar City as a reward. Later on, critters attack you to drain your energy reserves, meaning you're just shooting them to live longer... and later on, they start One Hit Killing you, further boosting that second incentive.

Rhythm Games

• Rhythm Games often feature a variation of this, known as "combo" or "chain"; hitting consecutive notes without getting a sufficiently bad judgement rank will increase the counter. In some games, having a high enough chain will give bonus points, but in some other games, it's simply used to indicate how many notes it's been since your last major mistake. Completing a stage without any significant mistakes is commonly called a "full combo".

Roguelike

• DRL awards the player with a UAC Star medal for killing a number of enemies without taking damage - 25 enemies for bronze, 50 for silver and 100 for gold. In a little downplay of this trope, it also awards the Untouchable Badge, Untouchable Medal and Untouchable Cross for winning the game with less than 500, 200 and 50 damage taken throughout the whole game.

Role-Playing Games

• In Final Fantasy XII, you can chain enemies of the same type. Killing a certain amount will raise your chain level, and each level will increase the chances of getting a rare drop.
• At one specific point towards the end of Jade Empire, the player has the opportunity to take control of Black Whirlwind for a fight against a siege golem and a horde of Lotus Assassin Mooks. The assassins will keep dropping into the arena until the golem is dead and all die in one hit. A Large Ham announcer will gleefully bestow titles on you for every multiple of 20 assassins rendered into Ludicrous Gibs, up to 150 (at which point he will berate you for not just killing the damn golem already).
• In Pokémon, the ability Moxie increases the Pokemon's Attack by one stage for every opponent it defeats. The ability Soul Heart does the same for Special Attack instead for any Pokemon that faints, which includes opponents. The Ultra Beast exclusive ability Beast Boost increases the Pokemon's highest stat.

Shooter

• Cloud Cutter rewards you for racking up consecutive kills, with the game announcing "Killstreak Record!" if your streak lasts long enough.
• This is a core scoring mechanic of the DonPachi series. In general, defeating enemies in a row is worth bonus points, while letting your combo meter run out or getting hit breaks your chain. In later games, each subsequent enemy in a chain is worth its base value plus the base value of all previous enemies in the chain combined. This can lead to some pretty ridiculously big numbers; for example, a perfect chain through stage 5 (much easier said than done) in DoDonPachi Dai-Fukkatsu with some good Hyper Counter usage will result in the last couple enemies in the stage being worth over 100 million points each.
• Fury Unleashed, which is equal parts roguelike and action-platformer Shoot 'Em Up, references this as a "Combo." It adds bonus XP and HP (red and black ink), and a Deflector Shield once it gets up to 5, and character upgrades can add other benefits or enhance these. There's even an upgrade that gives you Gradual Regeneration at a combo of 20+.

Survival Horror

• In Resident Evil 4, in the Mercenaries mode, the more kills in a row you get, the more points you get, which in turn can be used to get unlockables.

Third-Person Shooter

• The Club: Designed around this.
• Red Faction: Guerrilla awards an achievement for achieving 25 kill streaks throughout the game.
• Transformers: War for Cybertron
• Warframe: One possible mission objective to gain extra affinity is killing 3 enemies under 10 seconds.
  • Another example is stealth-killing unaware enemies, which grant a rising affinity bonus so long as the streak isn't broken by drawing enemy attention or running out of time. Done properly, a stealth-kill streak can severely reduce the amount of time needed to level a weapon or frame.
• The 2D Bullet Time shooter My Friend Pedro bases its rank system in large part on how long you can keep an unbroken kill chain going.

Turn-based Strategy

• In Dota Underlords, winning multiple rounds in a row will cause your border to glow with a special effect, as well as earn you extra gold the longer your win streak goes on.
• Downplayed Trope in the Enemy Within expansion pack for XCOM: Enemy Unknown. Enemy Within introduce Gene Mods that improve your troopers, one of them is the Adrenal Neurosympathy. When a soldier with Adrenal Neurosympathy confirms a kill, he buffs soldiers in a radius around him by giving them accuracy, critical chance and move bonuses for two turns. A single soldier can only trigger this rush once every five turns, but multiple soldiers (up to six) can go on a kill streak, resetting the duration of the buff.
• XCOM 2:
  • A melee-focused Ranger can get into this with the Colonel-level "Reaper" ability, which when activated allows the Ranger to move and make another sword attack provided their previous attack killed an enemy. Each subsequent sword strike deals less damage, but when set up properly it allows a Ranger to massacre a whole crowd of weak enemies in the space of one turn.
  • The War of the Chosen expansion uses something like this when The Lost are on a map. The Lost come against you in hordes, and more will appear based on how much of a racket you make fighting them, so to make things manageable, the Lost are subject to a "Headshot" mechanic. Each kill shot against them will refund that soldier's action, allowing your squad of four to six operatives to cut down Lost hordes before they stagger into melee range... assuming every shot hits, every hit kills, and your soldiers have enough ammo to handle the current wave. If someone's clip runs dry or they miss a critical shot (and they will), things can get dicey. On the upside, one of the available Resistance Orders from the Reaper faction is "Between the Eyes," making every successful shot against the Lost a One-Hit Kill. This turns Sharpshooters into zombie-killing machines due to their class' high Aim stat and the Bottomless Magazines of their sidearms, allowing them to rack up insane kill counts. There's even an achievement for taking down 15 Lost in a single turn.

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