Fire and remember: 23 great unorthodox weapons in video games
From exploding golf balls to bionic arms to the musical stylings of Disturbed, here are awesome video game weapons that aren't the same old guns or swords
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There’s nothing new in noting that a disproportionate number of video games are focused on violence. Killing in games is, after all, very easy (and not just in a squishy moral sense). It’s a simple, easy-to-implement formula: Apply Bullet or Blade A to Enemy B, drop loot, repeat as needed until game is complete.
Weapons fascinate in games, though, because of how they let us interact with the world (usually in a very “now there’s slightly less of it” sort of way, admittedly). They let us change things, alter things, affect things. If we’re talking about guns and swords, these changes happen in simple and binary ways: stab, shoot, bludgeon, etc. But what about the other weapons? What about the more unorthodox entries in the gaming arsenal?
That’s what we’re contemplating here today: Some of the most interesting weapons in all of video game history that aren’t a simple series of well-statted axes or spears or Uzis or other straightforward implements of death. What lurks in the weeds, beyond your Super Shotguns or your Master Swords?
Many of the entries in this list (presented in roughly chronological order of their first appearance) are practical tools as much as killing ones; quite a few concern themselves with movement, that other major way we interact with virtual worlds. But together, they share one key element: They transform the basic assumptions about violence in games, taking the rote and making it, for lack of a better word, joyful. If games can never shake their link with killing, at least they can display a jot of the unique interactive creativity that only the medium can posses.
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How can this article not include any of the weapons from 2003’s “Armed and Dangerous”, which included the Land Shark Rifle (which fires a shark that swims through the ground and devours your enemies), the Topsy-turvy bomb, which turns the whole world upside down so your enemies fall off it, and the aptly-named “World’s Smallest Black Hole”.
I know this dates me, but the Barn Blaster from the Earthworm Jim games was especially fun.
Only reason I clicked was to see if the Land Shark Rifle made the list. You are doing the Lord’s work. Carry on!
There’s something to be said for the classics.
Ah, the purple freedom dildo
Obligatory missing-option post: Half Life 2’s gravity gun, which was a game-changer in every sense, and heralded a whole new era of physics-based weapons and tactics.
Yeah, scratching my head over that omission too; especially since it inspired the Portal gun which did make the cut.
Wish Bubble Bobble had a candy wrapper that allowed the dragons to “auto-fire” bubbles just by holding down the button. Would’ve spared my 15-year-old ass from some serious carpal tunnel syndrome…and saved me several rolls of quarters!
Honorary mention to Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath which is full of odd ammo, love the inventiveness in that one.
The Electrodriver from Painkiller.“It shoots shurikens and lightning. It could only be more awesome if it had tits and was on fire.”
https://images.app.goo.gl/r2jYutRBE87PRHAs9
Pretty sure an exploding golf ball is the exact opposite of “a bizarre twist of fate where you’d never even know an assassin had been there”.
Everyone just thought to themselves “Boy, that must have been some mix-up at the Titlist factory.”
I love tit lists.
You’re right; it does not count as an accidental kill in HITMAN. Everybody knows that the target’s been whacked. It’s presence justified somewhat in the Dubai level, at least. Sapienza, it’s just 47 shenanigans – the best kind of shenanigans, I suppose.
I was telefragging people in Quake if i recall correctly!
i remember 1 game that had a shark gun, you would fire it, there was a trail and a shark would come up out of the ground and eat the targetapart from that the antrax pig head from postal 2, still the game with the most extensive list of melay weapons ever
Pretty embarrassing this did not make the list:
Always a fan of Bioshock’s genetic plasmid that turns your hand into a beehive to launch a swarm of angry bees at your enemies!
No! Do the other one! That’s the hand I beat off with!
So you can play a card with, for example, the drumbeat from “The Mother
We Share,” the strings from “Call Me Maybe,” the guitar from “Take Me
Out,” and the horn part from “Fireball,” and Dropmix’s tech is so good that it’ll sound pretty awesome.
I’ve never heard of any of those songs. I have heard “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.”
You mention Hulk: Ultimate Destruction and not the missile launcher that’s just you grabbing the armament off a missile tank, hoisting it on your shoulder, and throwing the missiles at the enemy by hand?Also: Dubstep Gun. The best BFG.
I don’t recall the hookshot in A Link to the Past having the power of bringing enemies closer to you. It instead stuns them like the boomerang.
binary ways: Stab —> binary ways: stabhere today: Some —> here today: somemedium can posses —> medium can possessAt least, if —> At least ifit’s a joy: One —> it’s a joy: oneSo, it transforms —> So it transformslimited harm, you can jump —> limited harm, and you can jumplarge, green shoe —> large green shoeit’s sublime: The —> it’s sublime: thenot withstanding —> notwithstandingvideogame weapons —> video game weaponsFriday The 13th; Shears —> Friday The 13th; shearsBut then, there are —> But then there areSomebody teach William Hughes how colons work
Somebody teach William Hughes how colons workSomebody teach VolunteerProofreader how full stops work.
Needs more Mad Cow/ Sheep Strike/Old Lady from Worms.
Saddened by no love for Borderlands 3’s Eridian Fabricator or the Gun Gun.It’s a gun that shoots….guns.
No mention of Binding of Isaac, where the titular hero fights horrible monsters *with his own tears*?
The Cerebral Bore is like 25 years old, sigh.
Came here hoping someone would mention that nightmare of a weapon.
In Down With The Sickness, it’s really more of a “Wah ah ah ah”.
Since we went way back for a few of these, let’s recall how deeply weird it was in Dig Dug that your weapon was a bicycle tire pump.
No Holy Hand Grenade from Worms
The drill in Mr. Driller