Favorite weapons Readdyyyy....GO!

Howdy All-

Was playing through a couple games recently and for whatever reason I just thought "Man, these games have some great weapons".

Not just great weapons, but portrayed really well.

So it got me thinking: what is my favorite weapon? And so I thought, why not ask my friends (and frenemies😉😁) on Gamespot?

Now, hold on one second! Let's think about this for a second and break it up into categories. Or you can be like "You're not my dad, Mr Bojangles" and just list some of your favorites.

So anyway, let's keep this organized:

1. List your three favorite melee weapons.

2. List your three favorite firearms or ranged weapons (these can include sci-fi guns or pre-gunpower weapons like bows, but no "mega weapons" i.e. Redeemer from UT).

3. Special weapons, tools, and "mega weapons" (mega weapons would be things like a man-portable mininuke launcer, an orbital satellite you control with a laser designator....shit like that).

4. Finally, what three games do you think portray weapons extremely well? These games don't have to have your favorite weapons in them (but it certainly helps!).

And, because this is System Wars, if you think someone is full of crap or you strongly disagree, let 'em have it (but somewhat respectfully and within the rules, of course 😉)

Apologies in advance for the long initial post, but I figure this could be fun. Also is 3:30 AM.

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I'll go first:

1. Melee weapons:
   • Really like the flail in general, but I love the one in AC Valhalla. *Spin-spin-spin-spin-SMACK*
   • Crowbar, from Half-lIfe. So iconic, incredibly satisfying. As someone that worked demolition, I can tell you that using a pry/crowbar in real life is a lot of fun. Oh, see that cabient? *CRUNCH* not any more, it's gone. Oh what a nice countertop *SCREEEEEK* GTFO, counter top.
   • The dark tendrils from The Darkness 1 and 2. They rip, they tear, then go up your butt and out your mouth. They pick up pipes and hurl them at enemies. They eat hearts.
2. Ranged weapons:
   • Shotguns. From almost any game. There's just something satisfying about aiming a shotgun close range at an enemy knowing it's going to do massive damage. Or taking an extra split second to aim at the head and know it's going to blow it off. Not make a hole in the head; blow. it. off.
   • Bows. Again, from just about most games. Honorable mentions to VR games, though; something about drawing a bow in VR, aiming, and actually hitting your target as you intended to with a bow in something like Sairento (awesome cyberninja game). Also gotta mention TES: Skyrim; no matter how my build starts out, I always end up going stealth bow sniper lol
   • The GAU-8, aka "The gun on the A-10C attack plane". Oh, your airplane has a gun? My gun has an airplane built around it. Literally the size of a small car. 30 mm ammo combination of high explosive and depleted-uranium armor-piercing self-sharpening rounds that, when used in combination, is called "party mix" by crew. Love flying this plane in DCS World, flying around the hill, popping up and taking out a column of vehicles. BRRRRRRRRRRRRRT
3. Special Weapons:
   • Gravity gun. Pick up a dryer, launch it. Pick up thrown grenade, toss it back. Saw blade? WHEEEEE.
   • Vampire teeth/thirst in, well...just about any vampire game. Something so satisfying, just a touch erotic (just a bit!), about sticking your fangs into a living creature and gaining power or health from it. Be it Bloodrayne or your character in Vampire: The Masquerade: Redemption, it's just a lot of fun. Taking out a room full of enemies and leaving one alive, only so you can disappear into the shadows and watch them fumble about and then finally sneak up on them and *CHOMP*
   • Ion cannon in Command and Conquer. Not sure if it's the first, but at this point it is my earliest memory of the whole "orbital laser-cannon" trope found in so many awesome things these days. Just really satisfying to hear EVA tell you it's ready. Like a miniature christmas every few weapons. Buildings tanks, building tanks, building tanks, building *ION CANNON READY* WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?!?! YES!
4. What games portray it well:
   • DCS World has incredibly accurate portrayals of weapons. It's called a study sim for a reason, and the basic functions of firing an AGM-65 electro-optical air-to-ground missile will take hours just to gain a basic understanding of. It's sometimes hard to call it a game, but it's still fun and educational and good for the brain I guess.
   • id (and Machine Games) shooters. Tough to pick one, so I'm just going to say them all. From Quake and Doom to Wolfenstein, the weapons are just chunky, funky, hunky, and oh-so-satisfying to use. Love the alternate modes they've added in the recent DOOM titles. Nice weapon models, great animations, amazing sounds.
   • FEAR. Everything in there is fun to use. Land mines, in slow motion, bounce up "bouncing betty" style and you can see the steel pellets disperse out of the mine. Shotguns send enemies flying. The bolt thrower staples enemies to the wall.

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OK, your turn!

1. Lightsaber

2. Doom 2 double-barrel shotgun

3. BFG

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1. Rainbow Six/Rogue Spear

2. Duke3D

3. Turok 2

Sorry if the choices are kinda generic.

@uninspiredcup: Not at all, I know I was asking for a lot haha.

Can't believe I forgot the lightsaber, such an iconic weapon both in film and in-game. I'm curious what game you think did it best.

Jedi Academy was pretty great, but I think there was one where you could put a "cheat" into the console and it enabled dismemberment (might have been Jedi Outcast?) and it was so fun. I'd just turn on Force Speed and run up the walls and hack and slash.

Melee Weapons:

• Executioner axes in Bannerlord. You Feel Like Guts, but with an axe.
• Devil Bringer (DMC5): A ton of utility, and played well into the crazy nature of this series battle systems.
• Fighter Ability in Kirby. Has more depth than pretty much any other melee system that isn't an actual fighter.

This list would have been dominated by fighting game characters. But I am not sure those count, so I added these 3 instead.

Ranged Weapons:

• Grenades (Halo). Being able to use frag grenades properly is what differentiates a skilled and unskilled player
• Rocket Launchers (Quake 3). Mobility, offense, zoning, everything.
• Farsight (Perfect Dark). Most Cheap and overpowered weapon in gaming. But it was fun.

Special Weapons

• ICBM (Civilization). Good stress relief. When an opponent annoys you.
• Gravity Gun (HL2). Lots of special utilities if you are creative. Made good use of source engine.
• Statis Rune (Breath of the Wild): Much like hte above, the Stasis rune make excellent use of the games mechanics and physics. With a ton of applicaiton for cheese, in both traversal and combat.

Good Arsenal

• id shooters: Excellent balance arsenal that plays well into eachother
• Devil May Cry: Excellent variety, and weapons co-exist really well, playing well doesnt mean simply mastering one weapon, but learning how to combine your entire arsenal.
• ARMA: Very realistic depictions

Honorable Mention: Ratchet and Clank, unfortunately power creep prevents the arsenal from being as good as it could have been.

Shotguns are very unrealistically portrayed though, and so are frag grenades. Why is it that in so many FPS Frag(mentation) Grenades are more akin to High Explosive than the actual fragmentation grenades they pretend to be?

And honestly, good on you for mentioning Arsenal, that is something so often overlooked in FPS,

@Maroxad: Great responses!

I always loved the nukes in Civilization. Especially when playing ironically as Ghandi or something. Follow me to peace and enlightenment...OR ELSE!

Double points if Germany somehow played as a diplomatic peace lover :P

*How is Mount and Blade 2 Bannerlord these days? I was really enjoying the early access maybe a year or so ago, but it seemed like they still had a lot to add in so I stopped playing it.

To be fair to Germany. Playing as a dipomatic peace lover works fine when you consider the early stages of the Weimar Republic or Modern Germany.

Havent played it in a while. But I want to get back to it at some point.

MELEE

• Penetrator (Saints Row) - The humiliation of getting beat down by a 3ft floppy dong.
• Lightsaber (Battlefront series) - 6 vs 6 Jedi battles made for some good times.
• Fists (Arkham Series) - Always fun watching Batman break some bones.

Ranged

• Laptop Gun (Perfect Dark) - Chase me around this corner at your own peril.
• UP-n-Atomizer (GTAV) - Flipping cars over with a phaser.
• Fat Man (Fallout) - Out numbered 10 to 1? Nothing a mini nuke can't handle.

Special

• Telekinetic powers (Psi Ops) - Force throwing soldiers in a modern setting with great rag doll physics.
• Cars (GTAV) - Still get a good laugh every time I run another player down.
• C4 & Jeep (BF2MC) - Tank got you pinned in? Send a rigged jeep up his back side.

Sad part about shotguns is many games often treat them as hardly effective at anything beyond melee range.

Melee Weapons:

• Gunblade from FF8. Stupid? Yes. Impractical? Absolutely. But they look so cool. A shame square has a copyright on them :(.
• Lance from Monster Hunter. Practically impregnable fortress with a pointy stick. I once killed a monster with a plunger...'nuff said.
• Also a shout out to the greatsword. Stupid? Yes. Impractical? Absolutely. But getting that level 3 charge hit in as a monster charges at you and knocking them over.....soooo good :D.

Ranged Weapons

• Assault rifle from Halo. It's Iconic. the sound, the shape...looks great. its also nice to use. they made a balls of it in Halo 2 though as far as i remember but brought it back (thankfully).
• Minigun from unreal tournament. It's a minigun....
• Gravity gun: Half Life 2. Can turn debris and even other enemies into ammo. Good stuff :D.

Special Weapons:

• Topsy turvy Bomb from Armed and Dangerous: Plant the bomb and turn the world upside down for a sew seconds. Apparently this was originally a bug the dev found during development and decided to tame it rather than fix it :P.
• Portal Gun from some game i can't think of. Genius idea.
• The crossbow from strangers wrath. They weaponised Fizgig.

Melee:

Demon's Souls spear - Helps to keep me away from the scaries, and has a badass leap attack after running.

40K weapons; Chainsword, Thunder Hammer, Lightning Claws - Hard to choose between them because they're all cool.

Lightsaber - Needs no explanation

Ranged:

CE Pistol - People whine, and it shouldn't be in most small levels, but it's an amazing weapon. Not only is it super effective, but it's the great equalizer. How good you are at the game depends on how good you are with the pistol; and excluding specific map settings, everyone starts with it.

Perfect Dark Rocket Launcher - The primary mode is fine, but the Fly-By-Wire secondary fire is awesome! Piloting the rocket to hunt down your friends is one of the most fun things I've ever done in a game.

CoD4 G3 - Very powerful (especially paired with Stopping Power and Deep Impact), unlocked relatively early, and single shot. Too bad the R1/L1 on the PS4 controller suck; I haven't really used a PS5 enough to know, but I bet it's similar. I just wish they didn't try to have "triggers" on the DS3. I much prefer the "clicky" R2/L2 on the DS2.

Honorable Mention:

Turok 2 Exploding Arrows: I don't know what it is with me, but anything thrown, launched or shot that "sticks" in something just triggers my happy switch. I threw a fork across the yard at a tree once, and it stuck. That was a good day.

Special Weapons:

I dunno. Running over the whole team with the Ghost is pretty fun.

Games:

Rogue Spear: Have to echo @uninspiredcup again. Tons to choose from, and they all feel cool. I'm sure military weapons are objectively better now, but they all look the same with the modern rail systems. Aesthetically speaking, I miss when they all looked unique.

CoD4: Again, decent variety, felt good to shoot, and their models look great. Too often games scale seems off. The guns are frequently too skinny or too fat. I think CoD4 nailed it on that front.

Halo CE: Short of the Needler, every gun is very well designed (if not iconic) and serves a purpose. Pistol is amazing all around, AR and shotgun shred up close, plasma weapons slow enemies down so you can smack the shit out them (so satisfying), sniper...snipes, tagging an escaping flag-loaded warthog from across the map with the rocket launcher is one of my best experiences in videogames, frag grenades are mini-nukes that don't explode until they come to a full rest, sticking someone in the face with a plasma is hilarious...I love it all. I don't think any of the later installments do it half as well.

MELEE

• Condemned Criminal Origins : Mannequin arm
• GTA Vice City: Chainsaw
• Manhunt: Hammer

Ranged

• Battlefield 2: PKM
• F.E.A.R. : AT-S Proximity Mine
• F.E.A.R: Shotgun

Special

• HL2 Gravity gun
• Resident Evil 4 Chicago Typewriter gun
• F.E.A.R. Nailgun

TBH the majority of my favorite weapons come from these games F.E.A.R., Resident Evil 4, Max Payne 2 and 3, GTA IV. They all do weapons incredible well and satisfy.

There's only one for me. The m40 battle rifle. Every halo fan should know

Ranged:

• Realistic weapons:
  • DMRs/semi-auto rifles. love being a 'marksman' in military FPS games - not quite a sniper, but picking people off at mid-longer ranges with well placed shots. thinking modern day BF games, Arma, PUBG types stuff
  • Unscoped bolt action rifles in WW2/WW1 or other historical games. so satisfying nailing someone in RO2/Rising Storm with these things in particular.
  • shotguns for up close, obviously.
• Non-realistic:
  • Plasma weapons in Warhammer 40k games. they are just cool. hope they are done justice in the upcoming 40k game from the Vermintide devs.
  • the gravity gun!
  • the NAIL gun in FEAR. pinning enemies onto walls never got old

Melee:

• Realistic weapons:
  • the Halberd. whenever I have an option to use this thing, I will. beat all the Souls games with them, and i'm mostly through Elden Ring using them as well. also love using them in Chivarly/Mordhau type games.
  • two-handed swords like the Zweihander are fun as well
• Non-realistic:
  • mostly Warhammer stuff, the Lightning hammer, chainsword etc.
  • the explosive-hammer thingy in Killing Floor 2

FPS characters need to stop using Birdshots. Move on to buckshots and maybe even slugs.

They also need to learn what Frag Grenades are. It is almost as bad as Andy not knowing what an Airport is.

I generally like fists in games, but yeah Arkham series does it well. So do the Riddick games.

C4 has always been enjoyable in games as well! Battlefield "jihad buggies" are always rewarding especially when you get those big multikills, and I always love setting traps in various games and waiting for enemies to walk by then "boom!".

Yeah, same. Back in the day the Half-Life mod Day of Defeat used to be my main game, and I looooooooooooved the Garand and the K98 in that game.

It required a certain confidence to shoot someone with the K98 since there was always that split second where you weren't sure if it was actually going to kill them and they could retaliate; the reload was quick, but it wasn't semi-automatic quick lol. So you had to be damn sure you were getting a headshot.

My aim used to be so much better but I've all but given up on multiplayer shooters in recent years.

Yeah, it's why I am always excited when they are done well. Especially when they sometimes give you alternate ammo like slugs or explosive shells or something.

Also, I consider the flak cannon from UT a shotgun, I thought that was always a neat spin on the gun type. The shot could recoil a lot or be used as a grenade.

Melee weapons... ...eh, I'm not much of a melee person. Even my favourite melee weapon in Warframe is a gun, and my second favourite is something you don't so much wield as throw. Warframe aside, "The lightsaber is the coolest weapon ever. Search your feelings. You know it to be true." I suppose that rounds out my three?

Ranged weapons, I have a thing for bows. I always go with archers for my flagship characters in RPGs. The most satisfying video game bows for me are probably Thief and Tomb Raider, while Horizon Zero Dawn is also pretty solid. I also really like sniper rifles or other high-damage, precision weapons like Quake's Railgun; there's something very satisfying about getting the job done in one well-placed shot. Finally, the good old shotgun. Go up to the baddies' faces and give them a face full of buckshot therapy.

Special weapons... ...eh... ...I suppose nuke launchers like Unreal Tournament's Redeemer and Mass Effect's M-920 Cain? Also, it has "gun" in its name, and used the right way it could do some damage, so I'm counting Portal's Portal Gun. Finally, Team Fortress 2's Jarate, just for the lol.

As for games, I suppose the Unreal Tournament games, Destiny 2 and Devil May Cry comes to mind.

@madrocketeer: melee is tricky these days because melee combat in most games isn't generally done that well except in Japanese games (so I've been told, at least), and I don't really like Japanese games, unfortunately. So I usually just go towards the coolest weapon or the most badass one (like in Riddick where you could really feel the punches and stuff).

Elden Ring looks good. I have a feeling I won't play it but man I am really really tempted to play it.

Melee:

1. Prince Of Persia Warrior Within Twin Blades

2. GoW Blades of Chaos

3. AssCreed original hidden blade or whatever. Looked cool but a shame the gameplay around it is sh*t.

Ranged weapons:

1. Gravity Gun, hands down no contest

2. Antlion Pheropods or whatever

3. Portal Gun

Special Weapons:

1. ICBMS in Rise of Nations

2. Ion Cannon in CnC

3. ...

* I like using silenced handguns for some reason.

* Bow from Skyrim is done pretty well.

* Proton axe from fallout new vegas old world blues.

* ap5 deployable turret from F.E.A.R persues mandate.

* ripjack from Unreal

* Shotguns in general

* The high powered rifles from fallout new vegas because of the ridiculous animations.

* Grenades from Fallout 3 using VATS (can't go wrong!)

* Bowling balls from Serious Sam series.

Melee:

1. Could pick several weapons from Ninja Gaiden 2 but I'll go with the Falcon's talons. This game will forever be the best Wolverine simulator.
2. Blades of Chaos are certainly the more iconic weapon but .... I actually really like the Blade of Artemis from the 1st game in the series. It's heavy and rips things in half or decapitates minotaurs.
3. Maybe something from DMC5 for my last choice ...

Ranged:

Honestly there's too many to go through.... but I'll pick :

1. the Gnasher from Gears.
2. the Micro missiles from the new Doom games.
3. There are tons of cool weapons from R&C , but I especially like the Ryno from Crack in Time which plays an iconic classical song when you fire it and the freeze guns from Into the Nexus

   which plays jingle bells

For portrayal.... I really like the look of some of the weapons in the Nioh games.

Bombs in Zelda have always been fun for those wanting to go fast. But Breath of the Wild really took the cake here in terms of being the best. I just love it when a single item can have so much utility ranging from combat to exploration to traversal to sequence breaking.

An honorable mention, since I already brought up a BotW weapon (I picked Stasis Runes over these, because I already had 2 similar items already).

Worst weapons: half of halo infinite's weapons

I'm gonna stick with special weapons:

Dubstep Gun - Saints Row. Makes people dance themselves to death. You can equip it with other genres of music in SR4, but dubstep is funniest to me.

Chain Chomp - Bayonetta 2. One if the Nintendo items you can unlock. You swing around a chain chomp and bash in some demon face. It's just as awesome as it sounds.

Satellite - Heavy Metal Geomatrix. High risk, high reward weapon. Your character is left exposed while you switch to a bird's-eye view of the arena and rain death from above.

As far a games, I have to shout out Dark Watch. Fairly typical weapons, but every one of them has a blade attached. When creatures get close, you just flip your gun around and stab em. Very satisfying.

The oil and fumes in Spyhunter (C64). Yeah, I am an old schooler, but those weapons were so cool.

The shotgun in Resident Evil 1-3. Come here zombie!

If we talk modern day gaming, I vote for the German machine gun in Far Cry 4 or the acid guns in Borderlands.

How could I forget all the weapons in the Dead Rising series? Most of them are ridiculously fun, especially the makeshift weapons

Ranged:

• Cerebral Bore
• Gravity Gun
• Shotguns in Red Orchestra / Rising Storm series
• Flamethrower in Vietnam games
• Wolfenstein 2009 tesla gun
• Wolfenstein 2009 particle cannon
• Tommy gun / chicago typewritter

Melee:

• Spear
• Halberd
• Link's sword, lol I love doing that spin move. I also finished Assassin's Creed Valhalla entirely with a one-handed sword
• Dead Rising contraptions