Damage Incorporated

An early Tactical Shooter using the Marathon 2 engine that came out for PC and Apple Macintosh in 1997. Though obscure today, the game was one of the first first person shooters that took place in a realistic modern military-based environment and was likely the first to have the player command a fire team of NPCs.

The game pitted the player as a USMC Force Recon sergeant leading a fire team of U.S. Marines to deal with terrorist threats. Today the game is an example of abandonware and can be downloaded from several sites.

Of particular note is that the creator of Damage Incorporated, Richard Rouse, is also the project head and writer of the upcoming Rainbow Six Patriots, a video game with a very similar premise.

Not to be confused with Damage Inc., a Marvel Comics company that repairs damage caused by superhero battles.

Tropes used in Damage Incorporated include:

• Action Bomb: The low level members of the Seekers of Desu.
• Artificial Stupidity: Your teammates will often fail to keep their trigger fingers in check if you or another teammate will come between their sights and an enemy.
• Artistic License Military: Unfortunately, and to be expected in a game developed before the internet was commonly used for research, this shows up plenty of times in regards to the US Marine Corps and in weaponry. The developers as much as said they were just going along with the general expectation of the things instead of going for accuracy. For example:
  • The term "Soldier" is used interchangeably with Marine.
  • The "M9 handgun" is actually a Beretta 92SB, an older model than the Beretta 92FS that the M9 pistol is based on.
  • The M16A2 in game appears to be an M16A1 according to the weapon in hand sprites and its full auto trigger group. Although the M16A2 in the player's hands has an M203 grenade launcher mounted on it, it is invisible when the player wields it. The M203 is however, visible on the M16A2s wielded by the Minute Militia enemies.
  • The MP5 in game is supposedly an MP5N/MP5A3 and looks like one when on the ground or in the hands of anyone except for you, much the same as the M16A2. Then it turns into a hybrid between and MP5N and a MP5K. The rear sights are all wrong, too.
  • The SMAW rocket launcher in game has a tremendous amount of recoil, although due to their design, shoulder fired rockets have no recoil.
  • The hand grenades used in game, the Mk2, is a WWII era handgrenade that was phased out of US military service back in the 1960s.
  • The combat knife appears to be the bayonet to an L85 assault rifle, a weapon that has never been used by the USMC. Why the combat knife doesn't resemble an iconic USMC Ka-Bar knife or the M9 bayonet for the M16 is unknown.
• Arms Dealer: Graziano-Fellini Limited.
• As the Good Book Says...: Preacher is quite fond of quoting scripture.
• Awesome but Practical: The M16 assault rifle. You start out with it and it's easily one of, if not the, best all-around weapon in the game.
• Ax Crazy: Carnage
• Badass Crew: Damage Incorporated.
• Badass Bookworm: Vidiot is sort of an example of the "nerd" type; he's a squeaky voiced geek who loves to play video games, but he's also a trained Marine Rifleman who can put the hurt on your foes as well as anyone else.
• Badass Preacher: Preacher.
• Big Bad: Jeremiah.
• Bomb Disposal: The whole point of the second and fifth chapters.
• Crazy Survivalist: The Militias of Nebraska.
• Cult / Religion of Evil: The Seekers of Desu.
• Deadpan Snarker: Banzai to a tee.
• Difficulty Spike: The game starts becoming very hard very fast on the fourth chapter.
• Do Not Run with a Gun: Averted with the Marines in game; they can fire when moving, same as you can.
• Face Heel Turn: On the third campaign, do not bring Carnage or Ryan with you. They will become outraged at the mission and turn on you and the rest of the fireteam.
• Dual-Wielding: Possible with the M9 pistols, the MP5N submachine guns, and shotguns. Also done by a few enemies in game.
• Elite Mooks: The Better Tomorrow Shocktroopers.
• Exploding Barrels: Plenty of exploding objects in game such as propane tanks, powder barrels, and even artillery shells.
• Expy: Duke is an obvious one of John Wayne
• Faceless Goons: The White Paladins and the Shocktroopers.
• Gas Mask Mooks: The Seekers of Desu.
• Glass Cannon: The Minute Militia enemies. Slow and weak, but carry powerful weaponry.
• Gratuitous French: Frank, a Cajun Marine, often uses French phrases and words peppered in with English.
• Gratuitous Japanese: Banzai, a US Marine of Japanese ancestry, occasionally throws out phrases and insults in Japanese.
• Heroic BSOD: Can happen to some Marines.
• Hollywood Nerd: Terminus.
• Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: Named after US military operations in the 20th century. Grenada (Very Easy), Desert Storm (Easy), Korea (Normal), World War II (Hard), and Vietnam (Very Hard)
• I Know Mortal Kombat: Implied with Vidiot; his dossier says that he blew through the training exercises for Damage Incorporated with the highest scores anyone had seen.
• Insufferable Genius: Terminus again.
• Kill It with Fire: The flamethrower and any weapon that can use incendiary ammunition.
• Large Ham: Pretty much everybody.
• Mighty Glacier: The Better Tomorrow Shocktroopers and the Robotank enemies.
• Nintendo Hard: A good example, especially in the later chapters.
• Old Soldier: Johansen.
• One Bullet Clips: Subverted, you can reload in this game but any rounds in a partially spent magazine will be lost.
• One-Man Army: Heavily subverted. You will die brutally if you attempt to go the later missions without help from your fireteam.
• Patriotic Fervor: Ryan, Carnage, and to a lesser extent Duke.
• Poirot Speak: Frank, quite egregiously so.
• Politically-Incorrect Villain: Oh God, the White Paladins.
• Putting on the Reich: Definitely the Graziano-Fellini Ltd. Guards and A Better Tomorrow, who all wear uniforms reminiscent of those worn by the SS or other fascist organizations during WWII. The White Paladins are stated to be neo-Nazi like in the briefing, although they just seem to be the KKK on steroids in game save for a swastika-shaped topiary in one of their strongholds.
• Rare Guns: The shotgun in game appears to be a Stevens Model 77E, an obscure 12 gauge pump action shotgun used by South Vietnamese and US forces during the Vietnam War that went out of production long before the game was made. Why the developers chose this particular shotgun instead of the far more common Remington 870 or Mossberg 500 is unknown.
• Semper Fi: In spades.
• Sergeant Rock: The player character.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Jeremiah
• Shout-Out: Plenty, mainly to Vietnam/USMC themed war movies such as Full Metal Jacket, Platoon, and Heartbreak Ridge, as well as to heavy metal songs and bands, especially Metal's lines. The title of the game comes from a Metallica song. Vidiot is fond of spouting references to video games.
• Sinister Minister: Noah Hesa.
• The Smart Guy: Wagner.
• Ragin Cajun: Again, Frank is the poster child of this trope.
• Right-Wing Militia Fanatic: Most of the domestic enemies in game fall under this. Subverted in the second mission of the third campaign, where said militia fanatics will not attack the player and will allow him to complete his mission unhindered.
• Tactical Shooter: One of the earliest examples of one.
• Unusable Enemy Equipment: Averted with a vengeance.
• What the Hell, Hero?: The result for letting hostages die or breaking the rules of engagement.