Weapons in game, we all love them and we all want more, but some are just downright lousy and encourage you to use them as effectively as grey paint would encourage you to make a mural!..

But what are the absolute worst weapons of all time, the most diabolical failures of so-called weapon design?..

Contrary-wise, what are the best, the most glorious golden songs of the weapon buffet and the epitome the perfect design?..

This could be anything, from a broken bear bottle of glory, to a squishy assault rifle that sounds like it shoots a spray of sludge. It could even be a weapon that doesn't to damage on it's own, such as the "Bug Bait" from Half-Life 2..

Personally, I would say the worst weapon would be the Stealth Pistol from Deus Ex, horribly designed in almost all ways..

Best would be, well it's a tricky one, Crossbow from Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood perhaps?..

Best gun in video games? That's Non-BW?

Hmm...

The M327 Grenade Launcher from the Killzone series comes to mind, powerful sounding, looks menacing and is truly a weapon to fear.

Worst weapon?

The Assault Rifle from UT2004 or Serious Sam 3. Weak sounding, weak looking and just feels like a plastic airsoft gun rather than an assault rifle.

It can be BW, doesn't matter where it's from, just the design counts..

Best weapons....
I'd say the particle cannon and Tesla gun from the newer Wolfenstein.... and the StA-52/M82 from the first Killzone(shotgun/GL respectively).

Worst?
Agreed on the UT2004 assault rifle.

The M4 revolver from Killzone 2/3, this revolver annoys me so much(partially because I'm on the train level right now, where all you start with is the revolver, regardless of what you had before).
It's probably one of the slowest firing weapons in the game, and it takes awhile to reload.

Oops, before I forget, the .44(don't remember the name) from Soldier of Fortune was pretty awesome too. What, with the ability to amputate with it, you couldn't go wrong. The only problem was the scarce ammo for it. >.>

WEAPONS?! I LOVE DESIGNING WEAPONS! <3


As far as aesthetics, I want the weapon to make at least some sort of sense. The gun should look distinct and have features that remind me of what its supposed to be, and example of that would be the BioRifle from UT99. You see a tube, presumably where the ammo feeds, and a glass covered chamber with a piston in it to move the goo. Makes sense. If you looked at it without experiencing what it does or being told what it does, you could still take a fairly good guess at it.

Compare that to guns from UT3. Sure, they might look neat, but what the hell do they do? Who knows. I can't even remember what the UT3 biogun looks like, and I played that more recently than UT99.

Making something look all futurey and high tech doesn't have to be a bland, boring design that leaves you with no impression of what it actually does. This is why when I design weapons I try to think why and how it would be used in a more or less real world scenario, then I come up with a rough profile sketch of something I like, then I further refine it by adding/changing it to roughly accommodate the mechanics that would be needed to make it do whatever it does.

I think some weapon designers just try to make something that looks complicated with little reason or thought behind it.

As far as actual gun play, I hate weapons that are coded in such a way that they are absolutely useless unless you use them in a very specific way. Shotguns are often bad for this. A real world shotgun has a usable range applicable in many settings seen in video games (at least ones with a lot of corridor crawls and such), yet in games, often will have such terrible spread and absolutely limited hit scan range that it is literally impossible to hit any thing outside a couple yards, even if you take into account the spread. This type of thing is terrible. Particularly if a mostly useless weapon also has the most ammo available. Forcing a weapon to only be used in ideal conditions is bad.

As far as favorite guns go, I'm gonna point you to just about any gun from BW. As far as worst weapons, I can't say I can think of any one weapon at the moment, though I gotta say aesthetically the guns from the Gunreal mod look awfully boring. No bright colors (or any colors for that matter), generic cylindrical look, hard to tell what some of them actually do.

Some of my most hated:

-Soldier of Fortune 1: Sniper Rifle, 9mm Pistol,
-UT2k3/2k4: Basically all of them, especially the assault rifle!
-Quake 1: Basic shotgun..
-Resident Evil 5: That ♥♥♥♥♥ pistol!!!... and some others too
-Crysis: blah.. boring
-Return to Castle Wolfenstein: most of them..


Some favourites:

-Doom 1/2: Shotgun and DB shotgun, Plasma Rifle, Chainsaw
-Quake 4: Most of them
-Half-Life(series): Magnums, Gravity Gun, HL1 Xbow
-Borderlands: Many!!
-Quake 2: Railgun!
-Prey: I don't remember the names, but I liked a bunch of them, notably the Acid gun.
-Unreal 1: Flak Cannon, Eightball, Automag, Minigun, Rifle
-Dead Space: Plasma Cutter, Line gun, Ripper

Oh yes, forgot about Prey.

Well, they looked neat.

Its a shame they didn't actually do anything interesting though, simply just carbon copies of your generic FPS guns with different art style.

It had some good shit, like the critter grenade, the Acid gun, that leecher gun which could suck up alternate ammo types. Even the basic MG had a cool "scope". They were all solid(as far as I remember) which is the most important bit

Best weapon
I would certainly mention SOF 1 weapons
Yeah the silver talon is just awesome and nasty
it rip off limbs, blow up heads, not mentioning the Berserker shotgun being one of my personal favorite shotguns.
I also loved its machinegun, autocannon and the awesome microwave gun with its nasty ability to inflate everyone pretty much like a Q2 railgun with a funny effect and the FLASH (alt fire is pretty much too powerful)

I can mention blood 1 napalm launcher, flare pistol,
blood 2' tesla gun, life leech, voodoo doll
I can add Turok's 2 cerebral bore
UT Flak cannon, Pulse gun, rocket launcher, ASMD, Redeemer, Minigun, Ripper (so much fun cutting heads)
SiN Nuclear cannon, Sniper rifle, machingun / grenade launcher (only sniper rifle that deploys and all with nasty anims yeah !) and pretty much overpowered too.
Painkiller's stake gun, painkiller, electrodriver
FEAR, nailgun, autocannon, particle 7, shotgun
NOLF 2 bananas, laughing nades, the dart gun, the sterlings, tommygun
Shadow warrior's rocket launcher, katana, railgun (after all it's the first one)
Duke nukem's shrinker/expander, freezethrower, RPG, pipebombs, devastator, Missile launcher,plasma cannon.
Quake II's hyperblaster, BFG (the first one who had the BFG effect with huge green ball shootung lasers), Railgun, rocket launcher, super shotgun
Quake III's rocket launcher, railgun
Unreal II's Shark, Hydra, Singularity cannon, shotgun
Wolfensteins particle cannon, Leichenfaust, Panzerfaust, Tasla gun, kar 98
Devastation's laser rifle, rat drones, bolta, mini hooverton (yeah even this average game have some awesome weapons)
RTCW's Venom gun, FG42, tesla gun, sten mkii, flamethrower
Kingpin's tommygun machinegun, rocket launcher, grenade launcher, flamethrower
C&C renegade laser chaingun, laser rifle, portable ion cannon, chemical gun, rocket launcher (most of the other weapons were pretty lame)
Necrovision's shotgun, hell glove, flamethrower, rocket launcher (after all doing air kills was awesome)
Prey's leech gun, acid gun
HL 1's RPG, magnum, crossbow, snarks, gluon
HL 2's Gravity gun, Pulse gun
If I have to mention mods
Unreal4ever guns (in the UT99 game)
Chaos UT 99 / 2004

Best Game Weapons:

- Turok 2 Seeds of Evil (PC), are the most awesome weapons ever I seen in a game!

For example, love the sound and animation of the Proximity Fragmentation Mine Layer weapon when it loads a new mine, the sound and animations of Firestorm Cannon when it selected, or the Scorpion Missile Launcher sounds and animations when it loads new rockets.

In summary, all weapons from this game! Yeah!

Of course, Turok 2008 Oro C9 Perforator Compound Bow! LOVE this Compound Bow! (image below).
C'mon RuneStorm guys, when a High Tek Compound Bow for Ballistic Weapons?

Worst Game Weapons:

- All games with real weapons! I HATE IT!

I like the grappling hook from Just Cause 2 very much.
You are on top of a driving car and want to get away from the military. There is a soldier pursuing you with a motorcycle and shoot you with his sawn-off shotgun. Now, you can either just shoot him with you MP5. OR you shoot him with you grapple and tie the other end to the car you are on, which makes him be pulled after it. And go while listening to his shouting of "Let me gooooooooooo!" and his crying, until a new pursuer comes and runs over him... lol

Bad guns? Hmm... I can't think of any now, the thing is that almost all game guns are just misused and therefore said to be bad. The UT2k4 Assault rifle for example: Did you notice that the first shot goes always in the center? You can even "snipe" with it that way, just do single shots with a little cooldown time and almost all will hit the target.


EDIT: Reivaj: U4E for UT2k4 has a "hidden" Compositebow, it's just not really finished...

Sorry. Having first shot of AR in UT04 being dead on isn't saving the gun at all. That's a whopping 7 damage you can deal with expert precision. Shock rifle does that at 45 damage without having to manually limit fire rate.

And besides that, the ARs sound like crap.

EDIT: Also, about the misused part, that leads back up to one of my earlier points. Don't design a gun to be useful (or even usable) in a very limited way. This makes it a bad gun if it is only "good" when used right.

In Turok: Evolution, there's this dart gun, and it could change into a minigun-type weapon.... I can't remember the name of it... I do, however, remember that in MP, it was only on certain maps. Or only one.
>.>
<.<
But it was one of the best guns ever.


Personally, I think the Lightning Gun in UT2k4 is pretty bad... The only time I found it useful was with Super Berserk on.

Agreed on that point...

Probably the worst thing about bad guns is the sounds, or just the general feel, if that sucks, it's a bad gun...

You do have a point there of course but there has to some kind of specialisation too, because if all guns are usable everywhere, there is no point in having different guns, right?
I think if there are some guns useable in a wide array (shotgun, AR, SMG, or similar) and some guns for the "pros" that are best in some certain conditions where they are much better than all others though, it would be the best.

Well certainly, but it has to excel at what it does if it is specialized. For example, you have a sniper rifle. Its really accurate and does about 90 damage in one shot (50% extra damage on headshot), but it has a really really slow fire rate (one shot every 1.5 seconds). Compare this to something like an assault rifle that does say, 25 damage a shot (no bonus damage in a head shot) and it has pretty decent accuracy if fired in a 3 round burst (can fire 10 rounds a second, about the same as BW's M50).

This is a hypothetical set of numbers, but a set of numbers that could be very close to existing games. The sniper rifle in this example, is specialized weapon. It can get kills at long to extreme ranges, but the AR could get kills easily in mid range and long range in a similar amount of time. Unfortunately, the sniper rifle has such a low fire rate that if enemies get closer, say mid range, this gun becomes useless.

If this is in a game where long range combat is very common, this would not be a bad weapon. It helps save ammo for the AR in the many cases where you have a lot of time to line up the shots. In such a game this is a decent weapon.

Now put that weapon in something where long range combat is rare. Sure you may have a few cases where its awesome, but if any enemy is in closer range, you find yourself with a slow weapon that can't get the kills. Even if you land head shots every time, you still got a long time between kills, but you won't land a headshot every time. In such a game the weapon is too specialized to be a good weapon.

True, but then again those special weapons are for the special moment only and then you switch back to your average weapon to be able to cope with the other AR guys running around (referring to your example).
Of course I'd have to totally agree to you if there was no possibilty for switching weapons (i.e. classbased gameplay), but you did not mention that...

Nah, Class based gameplay can't really figure into this too well. Weapons have to be limited in some way so that the classes have their own distinction.

But in my example, if the special moments are rare (in a game with few long ranges available), there is no point to the weapon when the general purpose weapon can do the same thing only better (since it can do much more). Its pretty much just adding an extra weapon for the sake of saying you have X weapons in the game. Why even add it if its only useful a couple times?

Indeed, the key is to make weapons useful in many situations, or make the world suitable for multiple guns, otherwise you have weapons that need not be there...

Of course having a variety of the same type of gun is also good, and though players will likely always gravitate toward the ones they like, they should be given a decent chance to use it...

But still, some people will always go for certain weapons no matter how they are designed..

I absolutely disagree with the idea that specialist weapons are useless and only general purpose weapons are good! If everyone has the same type of gun and it works in every situation, there is less room for tactics, less skills to learn and master. Just because a weapon is useless in the hands of an idiot doesn't make it useless in the hands of a someone who knows what to do with it.

I have always believed in putting in different weapons for different roles which allows players to optimize their situation by switching to the right weapon or to exploit enemy players using the wrong weapon in the situation.
Sniper rifles should be deadly at long range and less safe at closer, more confined situations where you might be unexpectedly attacked by multiple foes. Shotguns should be devastating at close range, but not very useful at long range. Machineguns can be a compromise, inaccurate at long range, not as powerful as a shotgun at close range. Weapons and tactics should provide some depth for player skill as well. An unadventurous player might just take the AR because it is OK in most situations, but they would usually be outdone by a sniper at long range or a shotgunner at close range or a machinegunner in a run 'n gun rambo situation.
Players also have different preferences and styles and I would want there to be different weapons available to suit their preferences.

Each weapon should have an optimal situation and be less useful in counter-situations, but there is no hard divider and there will be a lot over overlapping territory. Do I have to draw a Venn diagram to show how all this works?

If weapons in games seem useless, it's likely due to poor design of their specifics or they are not suited to the map or they are not even suited to the game itself. If the map is all tight corridors and they put in a sniper rifles, maybe that's bad map design or if the shotgun is absolutely useless beyond 3 yards, then that's bad weapon design.

This is not in contrary to what I was saying DC. Specialist weapons do have their place, but that place shouldn't be such a small role due to game design. If you have a sniper rifle in a corridor heavy shooter, it better be useful out side of long range combat since it would be so rarely used otherwise.

Also I am more thinking about design for an SP game rather than MP.

But I have seen instances of sniper rifles (or numerous precision weapons in the same game, anyways) in a game with lots of corridor action and very little long range encounters, and most of those precision weapons had dreadfully slow fire rates. And I have also seen the shotgun literally useless (hitscan going out 30 foot max) outside of its comfort zone. This was in the same game by the way.

Its when the weapons are forced to be used only in specific conditions through actual weapon or level design is when its worse. If you got a specialist weapon in a game that features a wide array of scenarios and results in the specialist weapon being useful outside of a few specific sections, that's good.

Sounds like bad design, no surprise they're in the same game then.

OK, I agree, that sucks.

Weapon variety is supposed to provide tactic diversity and add more depth and scope to the skills involved in playing the game.

Yep, but if weapon diversity instead forces you to use only a specific weapon in a very specific scenario, it is terrible.

I'm not saying a shotgun should exceed in all areas, but if it does a better (or at least comparable job) than the specialized weapons (without the shotgun being a terribly powerful weapon), that means something is not being done right.

Variety is the spice of life. *nod*

And getting back to Borderlands weapons like SB mention.

For the most part they're fine, but they need a boost in the sound department, sound like pop-guns.

Okay, can we agree on the fact that weapon design goes hand in hand with game design then?
(i.e. both can't really be looked at seperately?)


Also, now that I think more about it, I recall several games where there were several types of guns (pistol, AR, MG, shotgun, RL, sniper...) and all the bullet weapons (i.e. pistol, AR, MG, sniper) had the ability to kill foes with one shot if aimed at the head in sight mode. That way a low-sense sniper ace can use a normal pistol and kill all with ease while benefiting from the large amounts of ammo that the pistol comes with as it is a weak weapon if you do bodyshots.
This rendered the sniper more or less useless because it has far less ammo and far more reload time.

Now, what do you think about this? Is this bad design too? Or is it just a way of exploiting the system?

Bad design, like I said before, if your average, non-specialized weapon can do just a good of a job as the specialized weapon, something is wrong.

However, if the game provides many cases of a scope being almost necessary for the kills, it might not be too bad of a thing. Though one shot kills for not sniper/heavy weapons probably oughta be avoided for general purpose weapons with lots of ammo.

The UT2003 / 2004 AR is bad just because they wanted to make a starting gun in the vein of Q3's machinegun, really it's all the same crap.
In comparison the enforcers were decent firearms in UT, but they gone to an assault rifle that couldn't be dropped by enemies (Like Q3's MG ... LAME!) and finally a crappy gun that can be awesomely dual wielded, but still crap with grenades with low damage and of course low hit probability, yeah ...
At some points weapons have also no use because the devs don't place ammo in the levels and also sometimes limit too much the weapon's use with very low ammo caps.

Though I don't understand the hate mostly towards the SOF 1 sniper rifle, it's a great weapon, integrated silencer, and fires pretty fast despite the low mag cap, high power and plentiful ammo. if I had to mention weapons I hate in SOF; I can mention the t31 bulldog SMG, this one is truly crap, it eats ammo like candy for very low damage and effect, it's even worse than the 9mm pistol, but to mention a really worse SMG; I will mention the klobb from goldeneye, I'm surprised to not see that one.
I can also mention the 9mm SMG in devastation (the one without silencer) it's pretty much the same crap as the klobb.
System shock 2's stasis field generator, viral proliferator and annelid worm launcher, those are really crap weapons or only useful to die.
As for Deus Ex, if I had to mention a crappy weapon it wouldn't be the stealth pistol, but certainly the assault rifle, eats ton ass of ammo, sprays bullets everywhere, crappy sound, low damage per shot, the bad critics can be plentiful in that area ...
the only useful thing on that gun is the 20 mm launcher who saves it to be completely lame.
As for quake 1 I blame its shotgun, but also the axe for being one of the worst melee weapons at the point that they removed all form of melee in quake II
Oh yeah the guns in Crysis, just weapons that spread bullets everywhere and feel bland.
The guns in postal 2, while postal have a lot of fun weapons, the more classic guns just feel crap the only good weapons are pretty much the sniper and the shotgun with cat silencer capability.

Hah, looks like I'm the only one that likes the Q1 shotgun.
Fast fire rate, fairly tight spread, good enough damage for such plentiful ammo. Gets the job done.

Well yes, exactly my points have already been covered but I shall repeat for clarification, weapons should have roles as DC mentioned, they should also have choice in those roles, and most importantly, those roles should not be abused by poor design that makes any chance of tactics unlikely...

Making a many-role weapons is a loser approach to game design, unless you can't change the maps and other elements, ie: Mods.

Sadly some games make said mistakes and you are 'forced' to use unsuitable weapons even if you are a master ninja at using them or other weapons...

Here my weapon lists, well with every thing I could remember anyway.

Best Weapons
-------------------------------
DOOM 1&2 - Shotgun, DB Shotgun, Chainsaw, Bersekr, Rocket Launcher. Basically all the DOOM weapons except the pistol. Because it has the same damage as the chaingun, it is completely redundant.
The Quake 2 - Railgun!!!
Unreal 1 - Flak Cannon, Rifle, Minigun (after the patch), Automag, Razorjack
UT99 - Flak Cannon, Minigun, Rocket launcher, Enforcers, Redeemer, Translocator
Lots of the Borderlands weapons especially revolvers, just not the unsolid and weak sounding ones.
Halflife 1 - Shotgun, AR, Magnum, Crossbow, Egon gun, Satchel charges, Snarks, RPG launcher. HL1: Opposing Force Pistol, Machinegun and Sniper rifle
Halflife 2 - Gravity gun
Quake 4 - Nailgun, Lightning gun
Counter Strike - M4, Magnum sniper, ES five-seven pistol
Saint's Row 2 - Machinegun, Satchel charges, Dual SMGs, Shotguns
SOF1 - Silver talon, heavy machinegun
SOF2 - M4, AK, M60, Sniper rifle
Left 4 Dead - chainsaw, machete, katana, molotov, AK47, M16 and shotguns (except the silver non-automatic one). I always take the brown shotgun over the silver one and the MGs /just/ because it sounds right
DukeNukem3D - Shotgun, Pipebombs, Napalm launcher, Ripper
Serious Sam - weapons. They work quite well and play their part very well in mechanical terms
Blood 1 - Dynamite, Voodoo doll, Tommygun, Shotgun
Shadow Warrior - Sword, Uzi

Short list of best weapons ever:
- DOOM Shotgun and DB Shotgun
- Halflife 1 Shotgun, Magnum, Crossbow
- Halflife 2 Gravity gun
- Unreal Flak cannon
- Quake 2 Railgun

Worst Weapons
-------------------------------------------
Quake 1 - shotgun. It works sorta, but feels so weak. I always called the "sandgun" cause that's what it seems like it's firing. The axe was also useless
Basically all the weapons in return to Castle Wolfenstein. They were badly animated and just felt crappy. I think there were a few that were ok, but I don't remember them.
SOF1 - sniper. I think it worked OK, but it sucked aesthetically.
Most of the UT2k3 / UT2k4 weapons, especially the assault 'rifles'. They were weak and innacurate and sounded horrible. They were pathetic even dual wielded. The Quake 3 machinegun was actually useful and quite capable of killing.
Oh god, the lighting gun from UT2k3!
Many of Doom 3's weapons especially the shotgun, pistol and machinegun. They were all so unsmooth, unsolid and sounded crummy. The chaingun sounded very odd.
Gears of War's Hammer of Dawn. As a weapon, it's ok, but I really hate it when they put weapons in that you can't do what you want with and are meant only for a specific tiny, scripted scenario in a level. They do this quite a few games these days and it sucks.
Serious Sam weapons. Many of them are not very well animated, have crummy sounds and lack feedback in general
The accuracy and damage of so many weapons in STALKER, especially when the same weapon is so much more accurate in the hands of an enemy

There are lots of lousy weapons in games, but they are easily forgotten because they never get used...
In general, I hate unsolid, fiddly, rickety feeling and crappy sounding weapons and I hate 'noodle guns'.