question about headshots

[alien chicken]

so yea headshots do more damage than shooting other body parts depending on the armor the zombies have of course. ive been shooting their legs all this time so i can melee them and avoid the plaga thing coming out of their heads. but im getting tired of running out of ammo shooting their body when i can just shoot the head. but im afraid of that thing.

so my question is how do i know which zombie will have that thing in their head (whatever its called) so i can avoid shooting their head? or do they all have them and it comes out by chance or something?

edit: ive played the game for 40+ hours i know the ways to deal with them, i just wanted to know if the plagas are rng. thanks for the responses everyone :)

[critter]

there isn't really a way to know, and sometimes it happens anyways.

[Steel]

It's kinda random, you can't know beforehand outside a few specific guaranteed ones.

[TyresTyco]

There are a lot of static plagas.. like for example the guys in the water room where you get the wheel. You will know after some experience where they are. Other than the static spawns. It's rng.

[Baron01]

Plagas are no issue on normal difficulty as long as you use shotgun. Shotgun ammo is the second most common for me after handgun ammo, therefore, I can easily afford this approach. When you blow their head off and plaga is popping out, step back to avoid the initial swipe that does small amount of damage and staggers you. Once the plaga is out, run in and blast it with a shotgun from close up. If there is a wall or other object to step behind and force plagas to come to you all the better.

I always try to stab enemies that are writhing on the ground to prevent them raising as harder to kill enemies so I see rather limited amount of random plagas.

[UberZombieReaper]

Use flash bangs is you don't want to deal with them too much I like to make sure i have 2 or 3 of them before throwing a flash bang they're pretty easy to deal with normally and I'm playing on hardcore mode