My favourite type of weapon usually gets labelled as a DMR - a high damage, single-fire rifle with mid range and no scope attached (I hate scopes in 90% of games that have them). Think of an M1 Garand, M14 EBR or indeed the Halo DMR even though it has a scope and you'll get the idea, the type of gun where every shot is significant and the weapon itself is versatile. I like Battlefield 4 for being one of the few online games with a good selection of these.
More specific examples, the 1911 usually becomes my go-to side arm in any game that has it. The AK-47 and any of its variants are always nice to see but in the majority of games they feel like flimsy pea shooters. Fallout 4 and MGSV let you heavily customize your guns and in both I ended up with a sort of long barrelled, single fire AK with very high damage per shot.
For examples specific to certain games, I like
-The pistol in Halo ODST. All the power of the original pistol, but silenced and with a much sleeker design.
-The Plasma Cutter in Dead Space. Has more oomph than maybe any other gun listed here, tears through limbs and convincingly feels like a heavy duty tool that's been co opted as a self defence weapon.
-The Magnum in any Resident Evil. Watch some heads pop.
-Half Life 2's Gravity Gun. Almost every gun in HL2 feels exceptionally great, but there's nothing as cool as switching to this thing just in time to catch a grenade and throw it back. Many games now have an automatic "press __ button to throw back" when a grenade lands near you but it's nowhere near as satisfying as needing the reflexes to do it manually, and in mid air.
-Shotgun / super shotgun in Doom. I'll take the trusty boomstick over the BFG any day.
-Basically everything from Ratchet and Clank. From the RYNO to the gunthat morphs enemies into sheep, they're all designed to feel great and fun to use.
-Experimental MIRV from Fallout 3. Basically a shotgun that fires a burst of nukes instead of pellets, the resulting destruction being enough to kill anything in the game several times over and reduce your frame rate to single-digits, with the blast radius being so huge and unpredictable that you'l rarely be able to use it without obliterating yourself and all your friends along with everything else. It's the type of thing that's usually restricted to jokey overpowered mods. Shoutout to the garbage launcher and railway rifle too.
At 12/12/16 05:28 PM, TheQuietGamer wrote:
The Lancer from the Gears of War series. That chainsaw bayonet is incredible.
Good shout. I don't find them that nice to use but the lancer is definitely up there as one of the best weapon designs, visually. That felt like such a big deal when Gears first came out, that they took something as ridiculous as a chainsaw bayonet and made it look sleek and plausible, and mirrors the games well in being a silly idea with sincere execution.
Fuck, that reminds me. I need to get that Gears 4 lancer replica before the price gets too prohibitive. I already missed the Gears 2 version and regret not picking up the Gears 3 retro lancer while it was affordable (it's like $450+ now), I actually like the retro design a little bit more.