fave weapon of all time for all games/platforms

[Lizzieborden]

Soo...inquisitive bloodites wanna know:
What is you all-time fave weapon--transcending all games, platforms?
Me: The perforator of quake 1.

[Dead Reckoner]

Flak cannon from the first Unreal Tournament.

[Daedalus]

Flak cannon from the first Unreal Tournament.

The correct response.

I've played a great deal of shooters, and it's funny how Unreal Tournament still holds the top spot of arena shooter style games for me. I don't really understand why the world ever moved on from it, haha. Everything that's come since is inferior and just adds nonsensical fluff while in many ways being worse. Anyway, getting back to weapons...

The flak cannon is beautiful. It has very high risk and high reward play. The amount of force it projects is just right. The primary fire will reward you by shredding your enemies into little pieces if you hit them just right, and the secondary fire does almost anything that primary fire can't. It gives the appearance at first of being a short range weapon, but it really isn't with enough practice. The flak cannon is deadly at all but extreme ranges. It feels great to use and even better to kill with. The flak cannon from Unreal behaved a little differently. As with most Unreal guns, the feeling was almost there, but not quite, and Unreal Tournament perfects it. The only complaint I'll say towards the flak cannon is that Unreal's sounds a little bit cooler, while unfortunately the newer one was a little less exciting in its audio.

Honourable mentions:

Basically all of Blood's guns are brilliant, obviously. Blood's sawed-off shotgun is the best shotgun to this day.
I really, really love Shadow Warrior's grenade launcher. It's an absolutely over the top weapon, like basically everything in Shadow Warrior, and it feels extremely satisfying to use. As with just about everything, it's hilarious in Wangbangs (I can't remember if that's one word or two).
I've got a thing for energy weapons, so naturally I can't end this post without adding FEAR's particle cannon. It takes my reward for coolest sounding weapon ever made (perhaps I'll have it tie with the life leech, which I adore the sound of as well).

Almost every shooter since that generation has failed on some level. The guns either have terrible sound design, next to no impact, or just don't feel right. In any newer shooter I tend to just find a gun that's acceptable and stick with it, but I can't think of a single newer one that's thrilled me.

[Dead Reckoner]

Unreal and Blood are my favorite FPS arsenals hands down. I agree that Unreal's weapons peaked in UT99 in terms of satisfaction and unique look. The original Unreal introduced the concepts, UT99 perfected them, and UT03/UT04 watered them down.

Unreal is my favorite arena shooter as well. I preferred it to Quake 3 and still prefer it to any similar game to this day. But I think Quake 3 had better map designs/layouts for deathmatch. There's been a lot of failed attempts to revive arena shooters, they miss the point and put too much emphasis on gimmicks like bunny hopping and rocket jumping.

Blood has my favorite iterations of stock FPS weapons like the shotgun and machine gun. There's something about the sawed-off and tommy gun that just looks and feels great. Unlike most games where the shotgun is practically a melee weapon and only effective at very close range, Blood's shotgun has a tight and realistic spread that makes it more than viable at medium range. When I first played Blood as a kid and didn't know what a flare gun was, I dismissed it as a weak peashooter, but then I saw its usage demonstrated in the title screen demos and it became one of my favorite vidya weapons of all time.

Other favorites are the ASMD shock rifle for another UT99 gun, rivet gun from Bioshock 2 as the best "marksman" weapon, and fuel rod cannon from the Halo series.

[Lizzieborden]

Have not yet tried unreal tournament..I blush to confess. So i missed out on flak gun goodness.

[Lizzieborden]

Actually, not a fave weapon, but the goofiest ones i've encountered are from Saints Row the Third
Giant purple dildo

[Lizzieborden]

Shark-o-matic
(fire fish guts on a hapless passerby, then a shark emerges and tosses him in the air, to then gulp him down)

[Lizzieborden]

octopus launcher
(fires cute , chatty octopuses, which then posssess the victim, kinda like a headcrab from HL)

[Dead Reckoner]

Actually, not a fave weapon, but the goofiest ones i've encountered are from Saints Row the Third
Giant purple dildo

Luckily I already know how to defend against a weapon like that.

Have not yet tried unreal tournament..I blush to confess. So i missed out on flak gun goodness.

You could get it from that GOG sale. The bot AI is excellent so it's worth it as a singleplayer experience on its own.

[Daedalus]

I can definitely second that. Note that Unreal Tournament kind of has zero story, though, so it's definitely one to avoid if you absolutely need a story in a game. If you want an arena shooter with loads of content, surprisingly great bot AI and amazing visuals*, music and weapons, it's a must have.

* - small addendum. The game is from 1999, so you'll definitely feel the lack of polygons and basically non-existent particle effects, but the game's graphics are really crisp and in no way ugly.

[Umnir]

Project brutality (Doom mod) has impressively ballsy set of weapons. That and the absolute blood mayhem they cause just always brings a big grin on my face.

Also first weapon that came to my mind was the cannon from Serious Sam. The satisfaction is added when you hold the trigger and the cannon starts to shake… BOOM!

[Lizzieborden]

Almost forgot the cool painkiller stake gun. Impaling demons is good clean fun for the whole family