This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Adam850: What about the chainsaw!
HeartBurn Kid: I dunno, does the chainsaw really make all that many appearances outside of the Doom series?
Zeta: Can't really think of it appearing outside Doom and Gears of War.
Nezumi: Technically third-person, but it was integrated into one of the guns as a bayonet in Gears of War.
HeartBurn Kid: O_o Chainsaw... bayonet? I don't even know how the hell that would work, but I want one.
Mister Six: There was a chainsaw in Quake as well, but they're really not that common.
Fire Walk: I'm pretty sure there weren't chainsaws in normal versions, unless they showed up in Q4 (1 had Axe, 2 had blaster, 3 had weird electric fist thing). FPS's seem lacking in chainsaws, a fact that needs rectifying, IMIO
Mister Six: I was thinking of the chainsaws that the Orc guys carried around. Sorry!
Kizor: Then there's the dragon's teeth sword in Deus Ex, laser swords/annelid crystals in System Shock and System Shock 2, and lightsabers in several games - I added "chainsaw" as an archetype of cool melee weapons before seeing this discussion. I've now added a note that there's no need for it to be an actual saw, just to be overly cautious.
Darekun: It appears in Unreal, and thus some Unreal Tournament maps.
Robert Bingham: Does Energy Gun cover the Railgun and its variants from later-generation FPS games as well? Their inspiration was the Schwarzenegger movie Eraser, and they're basically deadly-accurate energy weapons that can tag someone even from long range, and depending on the game, may or may not be used to blow through a target to hit another behind it. Examples include the railguns from Shadow Warrior (its first appearance) and the later Quake games, the Shock Rifles from the Unreal series, and possibly a good number of others I've missed as I'm not much of a next-gen gamer anymore.
Mister Six: Might as well put it in. There's the Carbine Rifle from Halo 2 as well.
Fallingwater: Pray tell, why was the line about the energy gun edited back to what it was before? I think the description of the two usual modes was pertinent.
Mister Six: Do any games other than Half Life 2 actually have gravity guns?
Andrew Leprich: I was wondering the same thing. Now, I'm not the biggest player of FPSs, and I wouldn't be surprised if a couple games feature unabashed knock-offs, but can the gravity gun really be considered a "standard" weapon? Taking it out for now:
* Gravity Gun: Relatively new addition in the wake of the popularity of Half Life 2. Picks up bits of the enviroment and tosses them around.
Ununnilium: I dunno, I've just picked up by osmosis that it seems to be common in more recent games. Improvised Weapon talks about Doom 3 and the "Grabber", and Die, Chair, Die! says of Alpha Prime, "A gravity gun would have been a great, if clichèd, addition to the game" — implying that it's common enough to have become a clichè.
Mister Six: The Grabber from the Doom 3 expansion pack is the only other Gravity Gun-style weapon I know of. I'll take the mentions out of that writeup as well.
Fallingwater: Sorry, the addition about Alpha Prime in Die, Chair, Die! was mine. The grav gun has become something that is talked about a lot despite not having been seen in that many games, which brought about that mistake. Editing the page now to re-add the grav gun part without the "cliche" word, because it really isn't one.
Morgan Wick: Well, you could say what it said originally, only with the parenthetical snarky comment "(Yes, it is cliche despite only appearing in one game. It's just that groan-inducing. Think the Jar Jar Binks of guns.)"
I'll run out of the room screaming now...
Kaybor: Time Splitters Future Perfect had a device that worked like the gravity gun. However, the levels didn't have have many items it could pick up, so it was mainly used for throwing far switches and pulling health and ammo toward you.
Mister Six: I've taken out the following because it's already in there as machinegun:
HeartBurn Kid: Removed this; it's so similar to railgun (in effect, if not in presentation) that I just combined the two:
- Magnum Pistol: A shiny chromed/brushed steel revolver, sometimes a Desert Eagle, with either awful or awesome accuracy, maybe with a telescopic or laser sight. Ammo is usually rare, but packs a giant punch.
cheesemaster: Added references to the pistol being an effective sniping weapon in Halo and the curiously long range of the Shotgun. Also mentioned how the entire game of Portal revolved around the portal gun.
I'm new to this, so tell me if I'm doing something wrong.
Darekun: So, is the Gimmicky Weapon category just a class for exceptions? I've noticed a tendency on this wiki for "standard X" pages to end up turning into classification systems for all X, Five Races is another example. Maybe an Exceptions section would help?
Kizor: No, the Weird Odd Thing Out is definitely a valid category in its own right, and part of the normal set rather than an exception. Incidentally, when I last visited this page it was spiralling out of control as people were adding every weapon model and name they could think of, such as a category for "Magnum." Tell me who fixed that so that I can pop a Made Of Win his way.
Eric DVH: That would be me. The dead giveaway of a Gimmicky Weapon is that it uses no/regenerating ammo and does little direct damage. Bye the way, I agree that the article seems to be getting bloated with oddly inserted examples from specific games. Should we just clean it out, or slice it into two sections á la Dying Like Animals and Five Races?
Clean. But perhaps the Gimmicky Weapon should have its own article, if we can define it well enough.
Thomas:I'm not going to take out the "almost never uses slugs" to Deus Ex because it's my favorite game, but it should be noted that even though there are "Sabot" rounds for the shotguns, they behave exactly the same as buckshot does, even down to the shot decals on a wall you shoot. It's just that they do extra damage to robots. And they can magically focus on a point with Master Rifles and Targeting combined. Stalker does use slugs, though.
Sparhawk: Regarding the Nailgun section: Why isn't the Quake 1 nailgun, which presumably is the trope namer, mentioned? I'm just curious if I've missed something.
Thomas: When I created the examples section, I tried to cite an example in each that was not cosmetically the thing being described but had the same gameplay mechanics. No reason to keep the trope namer out, of course.
Thomas: Tyris @ 25 May, are you talking about the flechette cannon replacing the rail detonator from Jedi Knight?
