In a first person shooter, a large focus of the game is the guns. They may look cool and have great effects, but how many of them have really moved beyond Doom in terms of what they can do and how you can use them?

In your typical shooter, you ability to kill is almost directly tied to your ability to keep the cross hair on the enemy and know when to shoot and when not to shoot. There will be some changes on how you do this based on weapon; shotguns work close range, machine guns tend to work over a larger range but do less individual damage, sniper rifles have low fire rate and high damage.

But all of these weapons still rely on you putting your cross hair on the enemy and firing, which in my opinion leaves you with a collection of weapons that lack depth and gameplay variety.

What are some memorable weapons you have seen that seem to take a step away from the basic formula?

Which ones are more fun/rewarding to use and which ones are frustrating to use due to their nature?

A game that comes in mind to me is Unreal/UT. It has your basics still, but it doesn't stick to that formula as tightly. The Flak Cannon for example is essentially your basic shotgun, only instead of hitscan pellets it has slow moving projectiles. This doesn't really change its optimal range since the projectiles are still easy to get hits within its preferred range, but because they can bounce of walls, it penalizes you for firing in close quarters if you miss, yet also opens up the ability to damage players around a corner by bouncing the shots.

This simple change opens up a lot of potential and really feels like a unique take on the shotgun.

What are your guys' thoughts?

Unique weapons.
Melee weapons, knives and butt stocks 100% reflex no sighting.
Lobing weapons, grenades and grenade launchers, the reticule is nothing more than a reference point.
Ricochet weapons Razor jack and Flack Cannon.
Razor jack is the one I miss.

Hmm...

In term of functionality, I like the Ripjack from UC2, disk launcher, explosive disk launcher and mine layer in all in one.

Also the MIKE from Crysis 2, not your typical flamethrower/microwave gun.

Aha, you posted a topic just as I was about to, mine was going to be lousy anyway...

Let's see...Unique weapons?..

I'd say the Gravity Gun from Half-Life 2 for sure, it turns any old junk laying about into a deadly weapon, watch out for flying toilets...

Perhaps the Half-Life 1 'Snark'.. Who can forget running away from a pack of tiny red 'crabs' with beaks!!!.. It turns your weapon into mini monsters that seek enemies or you on their own...

Bad ones?, Not really sure...

I love any weapon based in Laser and Plasma technology!

- Memorable weapons?
I can tell you the Compound Bow from the last Turok (2008), oh boy! A really nice weapon for long distances and not based on bullets or energy! I love it! Of course, I nailed a bot to the wall through his head! (I dream with a Skrith Compound Bow with crystal tip arrows!)

Another weapon is the XDisc from Unreal4Ever UT99 Mod.

- More fun?
A weapon ever seen in a game is the Cerebral Bore from Turok 2 Seeds of Evil, dinosaurs were running scared!

And I hate: He he, you know it, any weapon based in real life, because I don't like realistic features, like recoil, chaos... and of course, the main reason are they can hurt and kill (for better or for worse) in the real life. I don't like play a war game with real weapons because it reminds me the real life. (Oops! Sorry if I've spent a bit with the explanation).

I think I made enough threads and shown my tastes about weapons. I mainly love originality in matter of function, and yeah if there is a mod with the most original weapons in that matter, I can say that U4E is the very best. Pretty much every weapons that was made at the time was in U4E.
I will make a soo much exhaustive list that I can make a too long post, this includes serious weapons with great satisfaction and awesomeness and stupid weapons which I also like since they are silly and often made with immature humor in mind (yeah think about a shark gun or a voodoo doll)

I think fictional guns are best simply because they have unique functions, some realistic funcitons are cool like hyperburst fire modes, rifle grenades underbarrel attachments (with their own ammo) airbursting weapons, indirect attack missiles, projectile velocity, etc... And fictional functions, like gravity projectiles, ricocheting stuff, split missiles (well it's not fictional anymore) Missiles layers (think about a big missile that shoots rockets during its flight and release rockets continuously), sticky grenades, freezing weapons) rockets linked by a beam, A giant flying bow saw, weapons that push away people with a blast, wind.

A couple games I played that I think had rather poor weapon function design would be Jedi Academy/Jedi Outcast (they had same weapons) and Prey.

The Star Wars games had weapons that didn't really feel particularly solid. Some of the weapons had questionable usefulness while others had some weird overlap. Generally speaking the gun play in that game wasn't very enjoyable to me.

Prey has arguably some of the coolest looking weapons of just about any game out there, yet despite looking amazing, the weapons performed no differently than your next game. The acid gun was your standard fare shotgun with a fairly standard grenade launch alt fire, the heavy machine gun thing with multiple barrels wasn't particularly different from any other machine gun as far as usage, with yet another fairly standard grenade launcher alt fire.

Even the grenades, which might conjure up memories of Half-Life 1, ended up performing much like you would expect a grenade to behave, plus a sticky mine alt fire. No alternatives to an explosion like a swarm of them crawling on the target, just a green explosion that behaves exactly like any other explosion.

Pretty much all of the weapons are just nice reskins of weapons you could have seen in another more generic game, which is really a shame considering how creative the aesthetics of the weapons are.

All in all they are some pretty solid feeling weapons, but they behave very much like you could have expected the next game's weapons could have behaved.

I don't think they would have had to reinvent the wheel, the machine gun could still have been a machine gun, but they could at least made it behave somewhat uniquely by making the projectiles have somewhat randomized flight patterns (like the bullets themselves were some kind of critter flying towards its doom) or something.

The leech gun however was a nice break from the ordinary by giving it variable functions.

Guns which don't work how they are supposed to...
Like the sticky jumper on TF2, that with the caber (before they "fixed" it) was disgusting, you could propel yourself the entire map, assassinate someone and launch yourself back... if you were really good, all without landing!

Same if you get the portal gun in half life 2... that is fun...

so... weapons which don't hurt, but are used for movement...

Also, weapons like the Genki Mollusk Launcher... propel little squids who mind control people... when that person has completed his/her usefulness... detonate them!

Mal

P.S Long time no see guys ^^;