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Wednesday’s Trope: More Dakka

[Tuesday's Trope is a weekly department highlighting an amusing video game trope from TVTropes. Aggrogate is not affiliated with TVTropes.org in any way. All trope examples come from TVTropes and are shared via the Creative Commons license.]

Late again, but no less great! When in doubt, use a gun. If that doesn't work, use more gun. Many video games take this idea to heart, giving the player increasingly powerful and elaborate weapons. The most famous example is the BFG from Doom, but games from Ratchet & Clank to Command & Conquer embrace the ideals of More Dakka.

The term comes from Warhammer 40,000, a tabletop strategy game that has seen several video game ports of varying success. "Dakka" is the sound that guns make, and when Orks say they need more dakka, they mean they need more guns. Many more guns. And bigger guns. Many more, bigger guns that go dakka dakka dakka. And no, you can never have enuf dakka.

Examples of More Dakka include:

• All Ratchet And Clank games feature a weak, rapid-firing basic weapon, which usually upgrades to a less weak, extremely rapid-firing weapon. The fully-upgraded Heavy Lancer in the second game fired so fast it was almost a continuous stream of bullets, and the fourth game takes it still further with the ability to add "speed mods" to guns, greatly increasing their dakka output. If even more dakka was needed, the second game onward added weapons that pop out mini-turrets. A stage in the fourth game where you had to stop a bunch of weak mooks from crossing a certain line could simply have been called "Needs More Dakka", because you did.
• The Heavy and his Gatling gun Sasha from Team Fortress 2 are a perfect example. His vast ammunition supply goes down a lot faster than you'd expect. Right down to his closing quote in the 'Meet the Heavy' video: "Some people think they can outsmart me. Maybe... *sniff* maybe. I've yet to meet one who can outsmart bulletboolet. "
• Duke Nukem 3D, known for being a very Dakka-riffic game, has the Devastator, combining More Dakka and Stuff Blowing Up, with rapid-firing stinger missiles. Really only practical against bosses, though, but then it's REALLY useful.
• Modern Warfare 2 features a HMMWV-mounted mini gun during the first mission and, later, guns akimbo. For multilayer kill streaks, you get the afore mentioned C-130 gunship, sentry Gatling guns, even a NUKE if you're REALLY Good at killing without dying.
• The Boss's weapon of choice in Metal Gear Solid 3 is an assault rifle called The Patriot. Her method of using it is simply to hold down the trigger until whatever she points it at is dead. The weapon never overheats and quite literally has a Bottomless Magazine. You eventually get your hands on it... somehow... and can use it in much the same manner — although, unlike her, you can't use it to deflect incoming bullets and must wield it with two hands, while The Boss herself wields it one-handed. Which is impressive because of the gun isn't much larger than a pistol. During an exposition break, a team member comments that the recoil would break a normal person's arm.
• Serious Sam has various guns dedicated to this. The First Encounter and The Second Encounter had a Tommygun, a minigun and a quad-barrelled lasergun, not discounting the fact that the twin revolvers and rocket launcher cycled faster than most competing games' versions. Serious Sam II dropped the Tommygun and lasergun, putting in twin Uzis. Of course, near the end of the game, The War Sequences have been escalated so impressively far that the combined output of the mook swarm on the enemy's side is a very real danger.
• The Fallout series has miniguns and Gatling laser cannons. That's pretty much self-explanatory. Duel-wielding SMGs is also a good way to put out damage early on if one has enough ammo.
• Devil May Cry has the accurate variety. Despite the fact that Dante wields dual pistols, which a) don't have rapid fire capabilities and b) should only have 7-9 bullets per round of ammo, he still manages to bring the Dakka with his magic-enabled Bottomless Magazines and Gunslinger abilities. One of the most notable abilities being Rain Storm, where Dante dives towards the ground while showering bullets downward — the initial recoil actually pushes him upward for a short distance. A second being the 4-introduced Honeycomb Fire, which pretty much causes normal mooks in the general area in front of Dante to have about as much holes in them as an actual honeycomb does. A third being the 3-exclusive Wild Stomp, where Dante stomps on a grounded "small" enemy and fills it full of lead.