One of the worst feelings in an FPS occurs when you run out of ammo for your rocket launcher or battle rifle and realise the only ammo you have is for the worst gun in the game. As your enemy’s approach, the scent of blood in their nostrils, you raise your ineffectual gun and prepare to meet your maker in the most undignified and pitiful manner – with a virtual pea-shooter in your hand. Here’s five of those shameful, shameful non-weapons.
5. Unreal Tournament – GES BioRifle
My friends were probably not the only ones to nickname this “the snot gun”. Comedic in appearance and ridiculous in action, the combined ability to lay down “slime mines” and to cover your enemies in sticky goo was far from appealing. A fully charged load would kill an enemy in one hit but you had to get very close. Even when you did manage to get the enemy with this attack, it didn’t feel good. Covering enemies in your goo is never cool.
4. Halo – Plasma Pistol
A slow firing pistol that shoots slow-moving projectiles, the plasma pistol has been in Halo since the start. In all that time, I’ve never been glad to pick this weapon up. Rather, its been the weapon of last resort when all other guns are gone and all ammo is depleted. Sure, a charged shot can “disable” a vehicle, but then other weapons can actually blow that vehicle up with one shot. Whenever I’m stuck with this BB gun, I start melee-ing mofos until I get something better.
3. Goldeneye – Klobb
Ah the Klobb. No list of bad guns is ever complete without the Klobb. Pitifully weak, comically inaccurate and with a terrible firing noise, the only viable tactic is to annoy your enemies to death with this buzzing, spitting pop gun. Even using two of these would more often than not simply result in a thousand bullet holes appearing in the wall behind an otherwise unscathed opponent. The laser watch was more effective.
2. Quake 3 – Lightning Gun
Perhaps the most annoying thing about this terrible looking gun is how ineffective it is for humans as opposed to how devastating it is in the hands of the AI. As a human its very difficult to hold a cursor over an enemy and drain their health with a beam weapon, especially in a very fast FPS like Quake 3. The AI in Quake though would follow you tenaciously and never deviate from perfectly targeting and draining your health while your scrambled to get away. Unsatisfying as a weapon to use, frustrating as a weapon to avoid, the lightning gun was the very definition of a terrible FPS gun.
1. Counter Strike: Source – M249-SAW
At a LAN party, a friend of ours who didn’t play much Counter Strike insisted on buying this gun every round. He was under the mistaken impression that its high cost and huge clip size made it a terrifying prospect on the battlefield. He would jump round a corner, yell “covering fire” and loose off 50 rounds in the direction of the enemy team before would of them would finally realised he was shooting at them, turn around and pop a single bullet in his head. The following round, he would do the exact same thing and with exactly the same results. It wasn’t his fault, he didn’t know that hitting an enemy with the SAW is like trying to hit a speeding ninja with a blunderbus from a mile away.