The Craziest Guns of Gaming
In the vast sea of shooter games out there, standard ho-hum arsenal fare like pistols and machine-guns get old in a hurry. If you're a PC gaming shooter enthusiast of any sort, you appreciate having a little crazy spice thrown into the mix now and then, right? With so many games in the genre checking off the same old boxes each year, it's always a blast when developers are willing to inject a fresh and crazy vibe into their pew pew picks.
From screen-destroying doomsday weaponry to outrageous armaments that will make you double over with laughter, here's a look at five of the coolest and craziest guns of PC gaming.
The "Fat Man" - Fallout 4
It's hard to suppress the inevitable moment of glee that arises when you pick up and use The Fat Man for the first time. A super-high-powered and hard-to-find staple of the Fallout series, The Fat Man is essentially a portable nuclear bomb launcher capable of turning just about any foe into a meaty spray of red mist of flying limbs. It looks like you're carrying around a space shuttle launch tower, and its grisly aftermath suggests that perhaps you did indeed ram a spacecraft through your unfortunate foes.
In action, the Fat Man is a thing of sheer destructive beauty -- particularly when you're watching its devastation unfold in slow-motion through the V.A.T.S. kill cam. It catapults a small spinning nuke at your target that detonates the entire screen if you launch it too close for comfort. And the updated MIRV edition found exclusive to Fallout 4 ramps this up by allowing you to launch multiple mini-nukes in one shot. It's ridiculous, and oh-so-satisfying.
Portal Gun - Portal
A real slick piece of sci-fi kit from Valve's popular first-person puzzler, The Portal Gun is less of a gun in the traditional sense and more of a mind-bending tech tool that lets you do some insane tricks within Portal's puzzle-filled chambers. Instead of bullets, this sweet device shoots trans-dimensional portals that stick to most surfaces and let you jump through time and space. The gun lets you fire off two separate portals, which serve as the entrance and exit to your teleportation loop. Once placed, you can dive through the hole and hop out the other end.
It sounds simple, until you start to uncover some of the incredible stunts you can pull off using the gun. For example, any momentum you build before diving into a portal carries through to the other side. As such, you can jump off down a pit into a portal and come catapulting out the other side at high speed. Other objects - including enemies, blocks, and more - can also pass through the portals. The game builds on these reality-warping concepts to create a masterful puzzle experience built around this quirky cannon.
Mr. Toots - Red Faction: Armageddon
Red Faction: Armageddon may not have been the most original sci-fi shooter in the world, but its team scores mega-points for concocting what might possibly be most outrageous gun of all time (and that's saying something). Hidden down a gauntlet of secret halls, accessed by skirting mission objectives and blowing up a ton of walls, is a creepy easter egg chamber that contains this deadly weapon of destruction: aka Mr. Toots.
Mr. Toots is a cute, cuddly unicorn pal with some serious gastro-intestinal issues. When you equip the little fellow and give him a gentle squeeze, he shoots a massive beam of psychedelic laser poop that annihilates everything it touches -- buildings, people, whatever. Yes, you just read that last sentence correctly. It's the sort of thing you really need to see in action. But perhaps more disturbing than the spray of rainbows and stars coming from Mr. Toots' backside is the horrified expression he makes while doing the awful deed. Yikes.
Mk 2 Lancer Assault Rifle - Gears of War
Most automatic guns get the job done fine with a hail of bullets alone, but that's not messy enough for the Gears of War games. This grim shooter series is steeped in gore and gritty warfare against burly alien invaders. It only seems appropriate, then, that your main weapon of choice be a huge assault rifle with a chainsaw bayonet attached to the tip. If anything, this simple enhancement makes melee a lot more impactful and hyper-violent. Cleanup on isle 12.
As you might expect, attacking things with a chainsaw produces a bit of a mess. You can actually saw foes clean in half straight down the middle. If that's not gruesome enough, there's also the stylish move of knocking enemies to the ground then stabbing them with the whirling blade. In either case, the screen is bathed in epic volumes of blood splatter. Good times!
Dubstep Gun - Saints Row IV
It might be hard to top Mr. Toots' level of sheer ridiculousness, but this dance-tastic gun from Saints Row IV comes pretty darn close. The series is well-know for its outrageous (and occasionally offensive) weaponry, and the Dubstep Gun is easily one of the silliest. Designed to look like a giant boombox you shoot from your shoulder, this gun fires a loud blast of dubstep tunes accompanied by a powerfully destructive sonic wave.
That alone is pretty funny, but its the effect it has on people and vehicles in the immediate vicinity is the real punchline. Anyone caught in the blast zone starts making goofy poses and dances themselves...to death. Vehicles also start to rattle and bounce, like they're amped-up on hydraulic boosts. It's utter chaos.
The perfect gear for the crazy guns
With all this explosive craziness flying around, it's important for any hardcore first-person shooter fan to ensure they're properly equipped with hardware that can handle the action. To improve your accuracy and up your kill count on the battlefield, check out the ROG Gladius -- the gaming mouse specially designed for first-person shooters. And if you find your frame-rate chugging during busy firefights and intense explosions, both the Strix R9 Fury and the ROG Matrix GTX 980 Ti will keep things running smooth as butter so you can focus on the important things in life: upping your frag count.
By Nathan Meunier
