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A Future Site ? GamesRadar Home Xbox 360 PS3 PC Vita Wii U 3DS Mobile ? »iPhone »iPad »Android Games Features News Previews Reviews Videos Galleries MMO Cheats & Guides More ? »Feedback »Submit News » Video Games » Features » The most ludicrously impractical FPS weapons The most ludicrously impractical FPS weapons Sometimes a BFG can be too FB Words: David Houghton 5 hours, 11 minutes ago 14 Comments Email Share / Save 
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A big job requires a big weapon But even in the lunatic world of video games, overkill is still a concern. But how do you guage whether your weapon of choice has tripped over the line between "Awesome" and "Flat-out stupid"? Simple. You just ask yourself if said firearm would be a genuine benefit on the battlefield, or just a weapon of mutually-assured mass destruction.
If your tool of choice allows you to absolutely, positively kill every motherflipper in the room and walk away clean, well done. Your weapon is calibrated correctly. If using it would more likely destroy the enemy, then yourself, then every one and every thing in a 300 mile radius leaving only a steaming crater filled with glass and charcoal, then watch out. There's a good change you have one of gaming's most ludicrously impractical weapons.
Crossbow (Half-Life 2) A crossbow that fires super-heated, armour-piercing metal bars should be great fun. Even better should be one that that emits its red-hot iron ejections with enough force to leave a bad guy’s corpse dangling like a wet sock from a washing line. Half-Life 2’s drawstring weapon of choice is both of those things, and it also makes a satisfying-as-cake “thunk” noise when it fires. So how in could it ever be a useless weapon?
Simple. That super-heating feature that makes the H-L2 crossbow such a devilish tickle to the homicide gland is also its greatest drawback. You see, the crossbow’s metal bolts are heated by an electrical charge that comes from an under-slung battery pack. The problem with this? The entire crossbow is made of metal and wood, meaning that if the electric jolt doesn’t see the user involuntarily hurling it skyward before falling down into a pile of their own freshly voided bowels, the temperature of the weapon will see it permanently fused to the user’s skeletal structure before they can fire a single shot. Assuming the whole thing doesn't catch fire. And speaking of self-defeating arm-mounted tomfoolery…
Ice Beam (Metroid Prime) Shots from Samus’ frosty firearm are so cold that upon impact they causes their targets to become instantly encased in ice. So how exactly do they manage to get out of the barrel the weapon without freezing the inside of it solid along the way? If the ammo is cold enough to insta-freeze at distance, surely it’s even colder as it leaves the gun.
Indeed, given that metal has particularly strong temperature conducting properties, using this thing should freeze Samus' whole suit up, or at least chill it to the point of severe discomfort, giving her an instant full-body brain freeze and goosebumps you could grate cheese on. Yes, the heat-insulating Varia Suit might also protect Samus from cold, but consider her armour’s metallic outer materials. Consider the effect on their integrity if using the Ice Beam immediately after the flamethrower or red-hot Plasma Beam. Seen Alien 3? Yeah, that.
Lightning Guns (Various) Controlling lightning is hard. There’s a reason that it doesn’t come out of the sky in straight lines. Electricity is a prancing free spirit of an element, never happier than when it’s jumping unpredictably from point to point like a sugar-rushing ballerina. Albeit one whom no dance partner wants to lift, because her mere touch means an instant cardiac arrest and severe surface burns.
So what makes you think that your weaponised Van de Graaff will be in any way discriminatory in its targets? There is, after all, a sub-set of FPS lightning guns whose shots jump from target to target after scoring a hit. What makes you so special, Mr. Rubberpants? Even assuming the gun itself is made of an electricity-resistant material, the average FPS hero’s crazy 12-weapon arsenal is sure as hell packing a lot of metal elsewhere. Bullets, for a start.
Dark Matter Gun (Quake 4) How many times must we tell you, kids? A black hole is not ammunition. It is made of gravity. You inherently cannot throw it. Quake 4’s example is even more egregious that Mass Effect 2’s, in that the shot it fires visibly drags along any environmental objects not nailed down.
Presumably in Quake 4’s world, gravity only properly kicks in if occurring a safe distance from anyone it would inconvenience. In the real world, the damn thing would yank your arm off as soon as you fired it.
Gravity Hammer (The Halo series)
While we’re on the subject of assuming that the natural forces of the universe are on our side, let’s consider the Gravity Hammer. Let’s ignore for a moment the ludicrously top-heavy nature of the thing, which would surely make it less practical as a melee weapon and more useful for tying to the legs of unruly children in order to stop them from straying. Yes, let’s ignore that and instead consider its damage output.
The Gravity Hammer generates kinetic charge, which it outputs as a violent 4 to 5 metre discharge field at the point of its impact. Said discharge is powerful enough to knock a motor vehicle so far that, upon landing, its driver will need to learn a foreign language in order to ask anyone around what just happened. Yet we’re expected to believe that the shockwave would have no effect on the wielder? No unfortunate kickback-related, user-mulching side effects, despite the fairly generous area of effect? Those mighty downward strikes would turn your shins to jam.
Peacemaker Carbine (Bulletstorm) The Peacemaker’s standout feature is its secondary fire option. Under normal circumstances, the Peacemaker is simply an assault rifle, albeit one from the gratuitously penile-insecure school of weapon design. Fire up its special party piece however, and it fires all 100 bullets in its clip at the same time. The resulting shot is so hot that it instantly sears enemies down to the skeleton and reduces their bones to barbecue fuel a fraction of a second later. Based on all that we know about thermodynamics and human physiology, we can logically conclude that this effect means the shot’s temperature is somewhere between ‘Really Frickin’ Hot’ and ‘Boil your eyes just looking at it’. Centrigrade.
The force of expelling such a shot would not simply make the weapon briefly glow, as it does in Bulletstorm. It would instead explode the white-hot liquid remnants of what was recently a gun all over the user’s big smug face.
Experimental MIRV (Fallout 3) It's a rocket launcher. It fires mini nukes. With the emphasis on plural. Not only does the MIRV fire eight of the things at a time (pretty much guaranteeing to knock a real-life user flat with the force of the blast while also blinding them, frying their skin to a crisp and inciting a lingering death by radiation poisoning should they miraculously survive all of the above), but it will only fire eight at a time. Unless you keep a vast amount of nuclear ordanance on your person at all times, you can forget this thing being in any way useful on a regular basis.
Which, given what Fallout teaches us about radiation and giant scorpions, would probably be a good thing. (And yes we know Fallout 3 is just as much RPG as FPS, but this one was too good not to include)
Energy Sword (The Halo series) The problem with an infinitely sharp sabre of bone-cleaving electron gas is that you have to be really, really sure where the edges of the blade are at all times. Spontaneous combat with this thing--hell, even carrying it across a room--would be nigh-impossible without inadvertently leaving much-loved bits of one’s own thighs and knees behind on the floor.
As for the fact that the blades encircle the user’s hand with about an inch to spare, who made that design decision? Covenant Commander I-Hate-Fingers-So-I-Don’t-Think-Anyone-Should-Have-Them-Any-More? And that’s to say nothing of the risk of hurriedly picking the hilt up from the wrong direction and slicing your arm off at the elbow the instant you fire up the blade. We’d love to see the percentage failure rate for Covenant military training programs using energy weapons. The number of drop-outs due to dismemberment alone must be astronomical.
Plasma Guns (Various) Remember that atmospheric resistance problem that made lasers a bit of a non-starter? Plasma beams have a similar problem, and compared to the range of a laser, they’re the energy weapon equivalent of a man standing sheepishly in swimming trunks having just got out of the sea on a cold day. A really cold day.
If you could persuade your enemy to get within a range of about two inches you'd be pretty much sorted. But only if you could intimidate them into surrendering with a nasty but very small burn...
SBC Cannon (Serious Sam) Two words: Ammo storage. Also, unless you actually were Serious Sam, the recoil would break your spine.
Big Forgetful GamesRadar?
So, did we miss anything? Is there any FPS weapon you can think of that's more unweildy or potentially hazardous to the user? Let us know.
And while we're on the subject of silly weaponry, why not check out some of our other related content, like Fantastic video game weapons vs their real-life equivalents or The most ludicrously impractical RPG weapons.
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14 comments View as: Newest first Oldest first
communinja - 15 minutes ago
1) The crossbow would have a heat-reflective surface to focus the heat on the rail whilst preventing damage to rest of the gun.2) Samus' blaster, much the the Tardis, is bigger on the inside. There is no way for it to possible fit her arm, AND still fire rockets. The beam generator is likely rather large and well insulated. with no direct contact with the suit except for a control module. Think of it like a 'pocket dimension' similar to where the Transformers store most their robot bits, or a bag of holding.3) The lightning gun. It has already been proven that we can direct, and redirect, lightning using a laser. This at least gets us to the intended target. With sufficient enough voltage the lightning should jump to the nearest grounding points.4) The dark matter gun doesn't fire just a black hole. It fires a gravity well generator that contains a microscopic black hole. When this generator breaks open on impact, the black hole is released and becomes unstable. This is why it consumes the matter in the immediate area vicinity then collapses in on itself and vanishes.5) the gravity hammer uses an inertial dampening field to negate any forces acting upon the wielder, while also anchoring that person to the hammer itself so as to prevent them from suddenly floating off into space. This explains why the wielder is immune to the effect, as well as explaining why they appear to be floating when the hammer hits the ground. 6) the peacemaker is a railgun the fires using a magnetic centrifuge. The centrifuge would also be a vacuum chamber, which prevents any surface friction from air resistance. Once fired, the ammunition follow magnetic stabilization system in the barrel (to prevent contact with the sides). Once the rounds leave the barrel, the air resistance causes each round to become superheated which immolates the target. As there is no friction in the gun itself, there is no heat transferred to the gun.7) The experimental MIRV was loosely based on the Davy Crockett nuclear rifle from the cold war. It didn't see action because it was impossible to outrun the blast wave cause by the mini-nuke's explosion. With a 'clean' enough nuclear explosion, the radioactive material is used up in nearly it's entirety. There would still be plenty of radiation, but in a post-apocalyptic world such as the one seen in Fallout, it would hardly make a noticeable difference.8) the energy sword. These are designed to be wielded by an individual wearing energy shielding. The blade and the shield would be designed to work along very specific wavelengths, to prevent the blade from passing through it's own wielder's shield. Similar to how a light sabre can cut through all matter EXCEPT the blade of another light sabre. Furthermore, the handle of this weapon is designed in such a way that only an idiot would hold it backwards, and even if they did, they wouldn't be able to hold down all of the (numerous) blue trigger buttons pictured. If is an obvious safety feature that would prevent the blade from triggering unless the hilt is held in a very specific manor.9) plasma simply refers to superheated air. Much like railgun, the flames you see when it fires are not the propellent, but rather the air turning to plasma because of the friction of the air resistance. It wouldn't be hard to fathom a gun that could fire a small fusion reaction or something else that would generate enough heat to surround the round with plasma as it passes through the air.10) Yeah, okay, i agree. Only Serious Sam (and most pirate ships) would be capable of this one.Thoughts? Reply Report
dlam - 46 minutes ago
"Sometimes a BFG can be too FB"^ genus subheading Reply Report
DanteMurasaki - 2 hours, 2 minutes ago
how about the redeemer in UT? Reply Report
Hmb556 - 2 hours, 34 minutes ago
Maybe that's why the covenant only have 3 fingers :3 Reply Report
JCrysis86 - 2 hours, 49 minutes ago
Cerebral Bore from Turok 64....One of the coolest weapons ever. Possibly one of the most crazy! Reply Report
FoxdenRacing - 3 hours ago
Hilarious and practical, unlike the weapons in the article. Well done, Dave.It's a lot older, but I'd also put about half the arsenal from UT on the list. I've watched someone take their own head off with a ripper, and with the Biorifle I can't imagine lugging around a gun whose barrel is coated in toxic slime would be good for your health. Not to mention using a tactical nuke in a small arena... Reply Report
DICEs - 3 hours, 19 minutes ago
Fun article Dave really enjoyed it..But I would just like to nit pick one thing. As they have space travel where temperatures can get close to absolute zero (-273C/-460F) it's probably likely that they have developed a type of metal or system that can negate thermal conduction or minimise it to a large degree. Reply Report
BladedFalcon - 3 hours, 45 minutes ago
Y'know Hooters, for all your reliance and logic used for this article, your nitpicking fails in two instances regarding the gravity hammer and the energy sword. With the hammer, if you're conceding someone could be strong enough to swinging, there's a rather easy, non-brainer solution to the shockwave problem: Just jump or lift your feet to make sure they are not touching the ground when the hammer makes contact. You'd be perfectly fine then. Of course, that's not what happens in-game, but still, kind of an easy solution there.As for the energy sword... did you see the design of the handle? how stupid would one have to be to grab it the wrong way even when it's turned off? I'd think that very prominent, big ridge in the middle makes for an obvious indicator that you're supposed to grab that with the fingers sliding along, since it'd be pretty much impossible to grab that pointing at your palm. Reply Report
KA87 - 3 hours, 58 minutes ago
You know the sad part is the US government actually developed a rocket launcher that fired a mini nuke. The problem with it was that its effective range was like 5 mile less than the fallout from the nuke so the guy or guys that fired it were going to get radiation poisoning. Reply Report
ObliqueZombie - 4 hours, 16 minutes ago
Not to mention the space-time effects of the Gravity Hammer. Albert Enstein would write whole papers on its that.South Park's (the N64 game) cow-gun-thing would be on my top. I mean, how would that even work? Reply Report
bass88 - 4 hours, 28 minutes ago
Pretty much all the weapons from Painkiller can qualify too. Reply Report
Hyperion - 4 hours, 52 minutes ago
land shark gun. that is all. Reply Report
GamesRadarDavidHoughton - 4 hours, 48 minutes ago
Third-person shooter, otherwise it would have been the crowning glory of this list. Though if this proves popular enough there might be room for a follow-up. Reply Report Hyperion - 4 hours, 35 minutes ago
oh yea it was wasn't it. been a while since i played it.I'll keep an eye out for that then. Reply ReportShowing 1-14 of 14 comments
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