The 50 Most Awesome Guns in Video Game History

This is an article we’ve been meaning to make for a while. We present to you a list of 50 of the coolest guns in video game history! This is a bit of a throwback article since most shooters today only have plain, unoriginal gun design. Things that make a gun stand out to us are not only its sound effects, creativity, and originality, but its use of the game engine’s technology to create spectacular effects as well as multiple functionalities that are somewhat logical and incredibly fun to use.

Without further ado, let’s jump right into the list starting on the next page. Each gun has at least one video to demonstrate its powers and functionality. Many of the videos do involve using in-game cheats, since many of the featured guns are not accessible until late in the game and we may not have save files at such points in the games.

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The Dispersion Pistol is one of the most useful sidearms in the history of gaming. It appears in the very first Unreal, although a different version of it appears in Unreal II: The Awakening. The one in the first game is cooler as is everything else in the first game. It slowly replenishes its ammo over time, ensuring that the player always has ammo for something. Another thing that elevates it is that you upgrade it throughout the game; its model changes, its particles change, its rate of fire changes as does its damage of course.

The primary fire mode of the Dispersion Pistol is semi automatic energy beams that move rather fast for such a weapon, though not as fast as a bullet. Secondary fire is held to charge the blast to deal more damage with a larger blast radius, pretty straightforward. It is also compatible with the Amplifier item, which increases damage by 4x! Furthermore, it can be chained together with the ASMD weapon from the game (which appears later in this article), a deadly combination indeed. So what we have with the Dispersion Pistol is an upgradable, always useful sidearm even late in the game.

The ZICS-C Shotgun had to fight hard for this spot, as we were really looking for a special multi-barrel shotgun that could fire one barrel at a time or all of them at a time, while being unique in some way. We found it with this gun, featured in Shadow Warrior.

By default it has two barrels, but can be upgraded to have four. This combined with the fact that you can fire each barrel at once, or all at once, and the additional upgrade capabilities within the game, are why we chose the ZICS-C over similar shotguns.

The Lightning Gun from Unreal Tournament 2004 is an excellent high risk, high reward weapon that is very satisfying to shoot due to the game’s particle effects and sound effects. As the name implies, it fires a lighting bolt. This lightning bolt is incredibly fast and perfectly accurate, and it is one of the most powerful guns in the game, the high reward. The downside is its very slow rate of fire, the high risk.

One headshot kills an unshielded opponent, and two shots anywhere else will kill an unshielded opponent as well. This gun requires a lot of skill to use, namely excellent accuracy. Anyone without a good enough skill level attempting to use this gun will be met with failure, especially in close range.

The Drakk Laser Rifle is one of the cooler laser guns in video gaming, featured in Unreal II: The Awakening. It was closely contended with the Type-12 Laser Carbine from F.E.A.R., but the Drakk won because it has two firing modes while the Type-12 only has one, and because the firing mode both weapons share is overall more awesome with the Drakk.

The primary firing mode shoots a deadly laser beam. One quick, accurate shot with an awesome sound, enough to kill regular enemies in one shot. Things get really cool with the secondary fire mode which shoots a continuous laser beam that burns into surfaces. That’s not all though, since if we just stopped here then this secondary fire mode is the same as F.E.A.R.’s Type-12 and many others.

What makes the Drakk even more awesome is that 1-2 seconds after you shoot something with the secondary blast (which leaves very obvious markings), the area you shot bursts aflame, as shown in the video above, adding even more killing power to this already deadly weapon.

The Vampire Gun from Turok 3: Shadow of Oblivion is another high risk, high reward weapon with cool effects. It is a wrist-worn creature, like something out of Half-Life.

Firing it at nothing drains your health, by sucking the blood out of you. Firing it at a living creature at medium range (its maximum range) will drain health from both you and the target creature. It is only effective at point blank range, where it drains health from the target creature and gives it to the player. When draining an opponent’s health, you see their physical model shrink and deplete, which is a reason this gun makes our list.

The Spider Gun from Unreal II: The Awakening is a truly unique weapon. Its primary mode of fire sends a pack of deadly spiders hurling towards an opponent. If you miss and hit a wall, the spiders will splatter and die. But if you hit your target, they will cover the enemy and inflict damage.

This is best used in tandem with its secondary mode of fire, which fires a spider egg. This secondary fire actually has dual functionality on its own: first, it acts as a spider mine. If an enemy steps on it, spiders hatch from the egg and cover the enemy like the primary mode of fire, dealing normal damage. The other functionality of secondary fire is, you can fire a shot into the egg using primary fire. This causes the egg to grow, and within seconds a large deadly spider hatches from it! See the video above on how to use it effectively.

The first real-world weapon in this article, AR-15 variants are everywhere in video gaming, but never like this. Escape from Tarkov features bar none the best, most extensive gun customization in video gaming. The video above shows a good amount of it.

This level of weapon customization, along with the excellent, authentic shooting mechanics are the reason this M4A1 makes our list. It is many different guns in one, due to industry leading gun customization and excellent mechanics featuring things such as bi-pod deployment, picture-in-picture scopes, realistic reloads and being able to chamber an additional round, and much more.

Another entry for Escape from Tarkov, this time the AK-74N. Ultimately it is on here for the same reasons as the M4A1 – customization and the game’s weapon mechanics. It has a higher spot than the M4A1 due to wider variety in furniture materials, just the nature of the gun. For a breakdown of the gun and its customization options, look here. We list the AK-74N, but most or all of these customization options also apply to some of the other AK models in the game

The AS Val is a fan favorite in Escape from Tarkov. Similar to the previous entries on this mod/game, it features industry leading weapon customization and shooting mechanics. It is compatible with some NATO furniture upgrades, both Warsaw Pact and NATO optics, and the rifle is integrally suppressed and fires subsonic ammunition, making it a proper stealth weapon.

Here we have the Remington M700 from Escape from Tarkov, the game’s most customizable sniper rifle. You can keep it old fashiond with a simple wooden or synthetic stock, make it state of the art with a cutting edge aluminium railed stock, and much in between. Optic selection is vast, plenty of barrel length selections too. See a breakdown of the weapon and its configuration options here.

Continue to the next page to see more weapons.

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