Unusual/unique FPS weapons?

The Game Room
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I was watching a video review for Destiny 2 the other night, and one of the complaints the review had was, in brief, that two of the new weapons (the only two? I forget) in this installment, in a future setting of high-technology and demi-magical powers, were…a submachine gun and a grenade launcher. Noting that this was something of a missed opportunity to add some creative, maybe even iconic, weaponry.

That got me thinking: what are some good examples of unusual, creative, even unique weapons from first person shooters?

I’ve got a few I can nominate, some that I’ve had the personal pleasure to play with.

-Postal 2, and it’s several addons, sequels, or mods that managed to be adopted into the official game, has got to be the gold standard—for something, anyway. If nothing else, for it’s use of chemical and biological weapons. It is, in fact, possible to kill someone using food poisoning. Using a couple of different contaminants.

But incendiaries are the other, less (?) gruesome but still notable place the Postal franchise shines—the first is simply a can of gasoline, and a box of matches.

The other…the Napalm Launcher. Something like a cross between an RPG and a Livens Projector, this one fired a leaky fuel canister that exploded on impact, igniting the trail of napalm left in it’s trail. The alt-fire mode made it bounce wildly across the map, finally igniting the drizzled napalm when it came to a rest. A framerate killer, but fun.

-Shadow Warrior, a 3D Realms from the 90s, and a remake from a couple of years back, had hearts. Literally, a bloody heart, taken from demonic fallen enemies.

It seems the 90s version, when used, would summon a ghostly clone of the player who would run around shooting onscreen enemies.

The remake version, when used, would give magical, fatal heart attacks to enemies within range. Snazzy.

So…anyone else got some suggestions, or old favorites? It doesn’t even have to be a lethal weapon, really.

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The legendary Gravity Gun from Half Life.

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From PO’ed:

Frying Pan: I can’t recall another game where you get one as a weapon. The character is a cook though so it makes sense as a starting weapon.

The Power Drill: Instead of the more common chainsaw. You drill your enemies while “blood” splatters your screen, and when you stop a hand wipes it off.

The Meat Seeker: It fires a stream of purple balls that bounce randomly off the walls damaging anything they hit; including you if you aren’t careful.

Camera Missile: The first time I played a game with one. You fire a missile and you pilot it first person. You can even see your character and blow *him *up.
From Fallout: New Vegas:

K-9000 and FIDO, the dog-cyborg guns. They bark when you equip them, growl when enemies are near, and whimper pitifully when you switch to another weapon. The only weapons that ever made me feel guilty to un-equip.

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The Painkiller, from the game Painkiller.

Primary fire: rotating cuisinart of slashy doom, like running through the fight hitting people with a wood chipper.
Secondary fire: Shoots a grappling hook which hurts things and sticks into them; when you let up on the fire button, it pulls the hook back and if it’s stuck in somebody, it’ll yoink him towards you. Extra points for hurling people off of high places to their deaths. Alternate use: if you fire this into a wall, it sticks and sets up a beam of hurty death between you and where it hit the wall, and the beam moves with you, so shoot it into the wall and then run around the room, dragging a line of fire across all the bad guys, or fire it diagonally down the corridor and they all run slowly along it, taking death the entire time.
Combo move: press primary fire to start the blades whirling, then secondary fire shoots a whirling sawblade of even more hurty death that hits everybody in a long line.

Also, the Stake Gun: Fires a length of sharpened, rusty-iron-reinforced broomstick at things. The longer you hold the fire button, the more damage it does. Hold the fire button long enough and the stake will catch fire when you shoot, and do even more damage. Plus, burning.

Also the crossbow from Half Life 2: fires a chunk of red hot rebar.

… great. Now I want to play painkiller again…

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The Redeemer, from the Unreal games, also has this as one of its fire modes. Note that, regardless of whether you see your character or not, you’re still quite likely to blow yourself up, because it’s a nuke and has a blast radius appropriate to that.

And is there no love for the Aperture Science Hand-Held Quantum Tunneling Device?

Oh, and an honorable mention for the polymorph items from the Heretic/Hexen games, which turned their targets into small farmyard animals. Who could still attack, in their limited way. My fondest deathmatch memory ever, from any game, was rounding a tight corner and getting turned into a pig… and then oinking my opponent to death while he gloated over his successful ambush.

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I was thinking about the first heretic game, and the ball bearings weapon, that scattered ball bearings everywhere [edit: firemace]. All the weapons, IIRC, had a power-up mode (I forget how you got it), and the ball bearings turned into a giant silver beach ball of death that would bounce slowly and inevitably across the field toward your opponent. That one was pretty weird.

A lot of the weapons in that game had serious personality.

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Fallout 4: junk gun
Fallout 4: rail gun (shoots rail spikes, blows steam, and makes chuffing and train whistle noises)
Halo: light sword things (can’t remember the name), and the needle gun that fired “needles” that homed in to the target.

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Doom or doom 2 BFG9000 when you absolutely positively have to waste EVERYTHING in the room.

Plastic bag from, manhunt.

This may not be what we’re looking for, but in Rise of the triad there was a god mode where you walk around holding out your hand and when you “fire” your power at them the sound effect is like an angel chorus.

Also from ROTT dog mode, looking down the dog snout bite all in your path.

Note I haven’t even seen any of these games in 20 years, let alone played them.:cool: memories may be foggy.YMMV, do not take internally, professional driver on a closed course.:smiley:

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There’s also the other demon-procured weapon in the game, a giant Oni head (uh, liberated from its body) that shoots laser beams.

Blood and Blood 2 had a lot of good ones:

  • Flare gun which would set enemies alight
  • Flamethrower made using a lighter and aerosol can
  • Voodoo doll (that damages you if no target)
  • Toxic bug spray canisters

Unreal series’ bio-sludge gun. The razorjack, redeemer and ASMD (combo attacks) probably qualify too.

Duke Nukem’s shrink ray.

Hexen was already mentioned but my favorite weapon in that game is still the Wraithverge. Press trigger and you get a bunch of ghosts flying out to hunt down and kill enemies even through walls.

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Both Left 4 Dead 2 and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds have one, and in the latter it’s actually the top-tier melee weapon (though mainly because it serves as armor when not held).

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Someone already mentioned the gravity gun, but these weapons from an old pc game “Armed and Dangerous” are still entertaining:

Land Shark Gun is exactly as described. You fire off a tunneling great white and it chomps down on an unsuspecting mook in the distance.

World’s Smallest Black Hole Gun sucks in everything around you.

And finally, the Topsy-Turvy Bomb which turns the whole world upside down with the turn of a corkscrew. (This one was probably my favorite visual.)

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Darkness II allowed you to grab a car door, use it as a shield and then fling it at an enemy to cut him in half. You could also throw rebar at mooks and pin them to the walls like a bug collection.

Killing Floor 2 has a microwave gun which causes enemies to slowly expand like balloons as their skin burns until they finally explode.

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The railroad gun was particularly interesting; if you get a critical headshot, the head is detached intact from the shoulders and, quite possibly, pinned on a wall behind the target. :eek:

Also from Fallout 3/New Vegas/4: The Fat Man. A pneumatic catapult for football-sized nuclear grenades. Almost never a good idea, because the damn thing doesn’t have to range to put the detonation at a safe distance, but BOY does it mess up packs of bad guys.

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Morrowind/Oblivion/Skyrim had the Wabbajack, a quest reward from the Madgod Sheogorath, which would instantly transform a creature into another random creature. So you could defeat a massive daedroth by turning it into a deer or a rat (of course, the reverse is also possible…) The Skyrim version would occasionally transform the creature into an edible sweetroll.

In the JRPG Earthbound, Paula’s primary weapon was a frying pan. Later in the game you could upgrade to a non-stick frying pan.

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Honorable mention for a different sort of FPS: a camera.

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No love for the Farsight XR-20 from Perfect Dark? The thing could shoot through walls and used infrared vision to find targets.

I terrorized my friends with that bad boy, when we’d play multiplayer matches.

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Just to defend Destiny 2, there are a lot of weapon types and unique variations on weapons (like a handgun that fires flaming ammo that causes the enemy to explode on death, making them into living grenades). Grenade launcher and SMG are only a couple of options with sniper rifles, swords (yes swords), rocket launchers (seeking rockets or those that split into smaller rockets), shotguns, and so on. There’s also a “cold fusion” laser that fires a beam that gets stronger the longer you hold down the trigger, a 3-round burst rifle that creates a tiny black hole with every third round, etc. I just wanted to dispel the confusion in the OP.

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The Snark in Half Life 1. A pissed off, hand-sized alien bug that you throw at enemies. Also the severed hand of one of the bigger enemies, which shoots wasps.

If it counts as an FPS (limited first person), the GTA games had dildos, bouqets, etc. to beat people with.

I guess nothing too weird, but Borderlands has some unique guns (shotgun revolver!) but the gun that constantly annoys you takes the cake.

You’re missing the starting weapon - your own penis. You can pee on people. Normally it just pisses them off. In one day (level), you get an STD, so can sicken them. One of the cheat codes makes you pee napalm.

Alien vs. Predator 2 (and possibly the other ones in the series) had a similar weapon.

Both the Junk Jet and Railroad gun were also in Fallout 3, the former much more useful in the earlier game because it didn’t weigh as much as an engine block. Nothing like gibbing a guy with a teddy bear, though.

No Wabbajack in Morrowind, he gives you a spear instead (that used to be a fork). It’s in Daggerfall though,

One of the Lufia games had a frying pan, IIRC. Though these are not FPSes.

Rolling pin is another similar weapon (e.g. some of the Fallout games).

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one of the twisted metal games (black I think ) had a evil priest that would shoot a flaming unbeliever out of a hood mounted launcher into another car

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Divinity Original Sin (not an FPS) has frying pans as a type of Mace.

It was Black. And the guy would shout “Repent!” before blowing up. (Also not an FPS).

And many of the weapons in Team Fortress 2 were amusing (not an FPS).

My favorite for shear explosive ability is putting the Experimental MIRV modification on the Big Boy. (Which was a unique version of the Fallout universe’s portable tactical nuke launcher–called a Fat Man–mentioned above. The Big Boy, like the MIRV modification, were both only part of Fallout 4.) The MIRV attachment split the portable nuke into 6 smaller MIRVs which in total did the same amount of damage, but spread over a larger area (and with greatly reduced range, seriously, it was really easy to blow yourself up if you weren’t careful). Anyway, the Big Boy was unique in that it fired two mini-nukes for the price of one. So with the MIRV modification, you got 12 MIRVs. Great for crowd control. And leveling small villages.

Oh and someone mentioned a camera. The Fatal Frame series employed that as your only weapon.