Best videogame weapon? What is?
— Noppy (@ThomasNoppers) February 25, 2015
@ThomasNoppers I'd should probably just write a blog post on this.
— Tom (@TommyHanusa) February 25, 2015
*note to self; auto-correct is bad for tweets.
I've been talking about first person shooters lately and I'm still working on a blog post that breaks down all the component parts of first person shooters (I was starting with just weapons, but weapons and environments and AI are soo interconnected). But then on twitter someone asked what peoples favorite weapons in games were. Since my brain was in gear, I quickly had a list of 10 or so. Twitter isn't a place for lists (it's for snarky comments and ruining your career), so I'm taking it to the blog!
I'm going to make a couple blog posts about the best or most notable weapons I've seen in first person shooters. I'm starting off with my favorite and making less of a countdown and more of a review with favorites. I will also give some insight as to why I made the particular selections and what criteria I think make a good gun at a high-level. That high-level gun discussion isn't that important for most designers in the trenches, but when developing the concepts for guns and their roles, it can be important for creating more unique weapons and prioritizing ideas.
Zero Point Energy Field Manipulator
The 'gravity gun' has that right mix of 'gameplay niche' and 'utility' that is very hard to find in a gun. It changes the way you think about the game not only in puzzles, but also in the core combat of the game. For all its merits as a 'puzzle gun' it works well in the core of a shooter, uniquely allowing any physics object to be ammunition. It can also 'push' heavy objects allowing you to modify cover and the make up of a map. This creates emergent gameplay* not just for solving puzzles, but for working in the core of the games experience letting you do creative things from a shooter's perspective. Basically it innovates in on the core of the game itself instead and in the periphery of the games core experience, making it one of the most interesting weapons from any perspective that you view it in.
Of the other guns I thought of this was the one that had that balance of matching the core shooter experience and the ability to get players thinking around it. Most other guns tend to fall in that 'awesome gun' category of really reinforcing the feeling of power the player has, but don't radically change how players think. Other guns tend to fall into the 'puzzle gun' category. They are kinda these 'gimmick guns' specifically for puzzles with very limited use in combat (or whatever the core of the game is). This gun is the only one that does both to the strongest degree.
*emergent gameplay is a virus of a concept too often put on a pedestal. It's great for some types of play and puzzle games, but honestly not as necessary as many vocal designers would have you believe. It should not be the core or pillar of every game you make and I feel it all too often gets used like a buzz word to spice up a product. At least its clearly defined, and in this case is actually useful in describing something. However I wont blame you if you roll your eyes when I say it.
