The 50 Most Awesome Guns in Video Game History

#20-11

The Nuke is a superweapon found in Turok 2: Seeds of Evil. It requires a lengthy charge up time, but the resulting blast is enormous, blinding the player and freezing everyone in the vicinity. These frozen enemies then explode into pieces. Like the Chronoscepter from Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, the Nuke is not found in one piece, but requires collecting all of its pieces across all six levels of the game, so it can only be used toward the end.

The Inflator is a unique weapon built upon a somewhat comical concept. Like every other gun in Turok: Rage Wars it has two modes of operation: the first one fires needles filled with air, inflating the target. Continuous fire from this results in the enemy visibly inflating, filling with air, until they explode.

The second mode of fire is a much more powerful version with a long charge up time, but the result is one shot that inflates and then explodes the target into pieces! A lot of fun to use especially due to the visual effect of the enemy blowing up with air.

A powerful and highly versatile weapon, the Leech Gun from Prey accumulates ammo by using the secondary fire to draw energy from nodes found throughout the Sphere. Different nodes enable the gun to take on different properties, making it quite the all-purpose device. This also makes it interesting from a game design perspective since its properties largely depend on the level designers!

It can fire plasma (red glow) and fast-moving energy balls at a high-speed discharge rate. Frost (a light-blue glow) continuously emits a short ranged freezing cloud at a constant rate of fire, slowing enemies and freezing them. It is ideal for close range situations with lots of generic enemies. It also boasts lightning (white sparks), which deals massive damage per shot with high DPS levels to boot. Last but not least, there is the sunbeam; an orange glow which continuously emits a long-range incandescent beam and pushes the player back while he or she is firing. Overall, the Leech Gun produces a constant fire rate and inflicts a good dose of damage.

The TAC Launcher is the most powerful weapon in Crysis. It is a handheld, portable gun that fires a nuclear warhead. A straightforward concept, also seen in the likes of Fallout 3 with its Fat Man, but the TAC Launcher of Crysis is better than similar weapons of mass destruction due to the physics, graphics, and sound of the game. It causes more destruction, even if not as much as was shown in pre-release footage shown below

There were a few mods that restored that level of physics and destruction for the TAC Launcher and other nuclear weapons in Crysis, but it would appear they were only uploaded onto Crymod, MyCrysis, and perhaps Fileplanet, since it can no longer be found. Crymod and MyCrysis no longer exist and Crytek deleted nearly all, or perhaps all mods uploaded, and Fileplanet has also lost tons of files over the years.

The Redeemer from the Unreal Tournament franchise is a weapon of mass destruction. It fires a thermonuclear warhead that is as deadly as you’d expect. Its primary firing mode fires this warhead in a fire and forget mode. What makes it unique and so highly ranked is primarily the secondary fire mode, which lets you remotely control the warhead. If need be, it can also be detonated manually before impact. A cool feature in general, but to see this on a superweapon? Truly awesome.

The Unreal Tournament games have always been state of the art in their technology, from physics to particles and gore effects, so those also help boost the Redeemer’s ranking on this list.

Unfortunately, the Redeemer also has a notable list of drawbacks: It can be destroyed from afar, makes its user vulnerable in manual mode and has but a single missile. No reloading is possible and the set-up time is long

The Flak Cannon is one of the most beloved weapons in the Unreal series. It is essentially a shotgun with ricocheting projectiles, causing devastating mayhem on everything in the vicinity. It is possible and easy to kill yourself with this weapon due to the ricochets.

Its alternate fire mode is that of a short range grenade launcher. Its model and sound changed throughout the franchise’s lifespan. Personally I prefer the more powerful sound in Unreal and Unreal Tournament, and the bulkier model from those as well, with a slight edge to Unreal Tournament’s model.

As the name implies, the Gravity Disruptor from Turok: Evolution defies the laws of gravity. The primary function of the gun fires an antimatter beam at a target, hurling them back. This can either stun an opponent or blow them to bits, depending on your distance from the target.

The secondary function creates a ring of energy around the player, when holding fire. When releasing the trigger, the ring is fired outwards, hurling everything back away from the player.

The third and final function works as a sort of tractor beam, letting you grab an enemy from a distance and gaining full control over them, letting you fling them around and smash them against things. Incredibly fun to use. It would be even better if the game had far more physics objects in the environment, but Turok was always console focused so it wasn’t possible unlike even older PC games.

The Dark Matter Gun from Quake IV lives up to its name. When fired, a dark matter ball slowly travels through the air until it hits a wall. Most enemies and small objects will be sucked into the small black hole and killed, though very large enemies will have to be shot a second time. On contact with a wall, the dark matter explodes, inflicting loads of damage to enemies caught in the blast radius. The sound effects are as satisfying as the ball is dangerous, and the dark matter looks damn cool in-game.

This is the big kahuna, the archetypal big boy gun, and one of the chief inspirations for many others on this list. First used in DOOM (the original), it represents a gigantic plasma bazooka that completely obliterates entire rooms of weaker enemies and inflicts damage upon or straight up kills even the most powerful demons. It’s the very definition of a shooter super weapon—so much so that it has become a trope for gigantic overpowered weapons.

Later versions of the BFG are no less awesome. DOOM 3’s incarnation has a charging mechanic (which can lead to suicide if you overcharge) and fires a gigantic, slow moving blob of green plasma that upon impact could deal insane amounts of damage to all of the enemies near it. Since there is no kill like overkill, it also had rays of energy identifying enemies and meting out moderate punishment even before it would detonate. The DOOM (2016) version of the weapon is very similar but the projectile is faster and it doesn’t have the ability to charge, though its already huge radius was augmented, letting it clear entire rooms of enemies and gibbing them to pieces! This is why it gets our nod here.

Here we have the superweapon from Mass Effect 2 called the M-490 Blackstorm. It fires a heavy singularity projectile that pulls surrounding enemies into it, and then explodes violently, killing potentially huge amounts of enemies in a single devastating blast.

Aside from its obvious low ammo capacity, its primary downside is its availability. It can only be acquired via pre-order bonuses from specific retailers, or on consoles.

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