1. Toilets – Half-Life 2

Half-Life 2 helped revolutionize the way physics work in video games with its versatile use of the Havok engine. Filling up trash bins with cans is cool and all, but the gravity gun really took physics to the next level. Just about any physical object in the environment could be used as a projectile with the gravity gun’s pick up and punt functionality. While saws and explosive barrels prove the most deadly objects to use, we couldn’t help shooting toilets at foes. Our excuse for using a toilet was the “flushed” achievement, but the hilarity of it was often the real reason. To Judith Mossman’s disappointment, we couldn’t help but treat the gravity gun as a toy throughout Half-Life 2.

Land Shark – Armed and Dangerous

This 2003 Lucasarts third-person shooter may have been a repetitive slog at times, but it had humor by the bucketloads. The Monty Python and Star Wars parodies were great fun, but the Land Shark gun takes the cake as the game’s craziest thing. Just shoot at an enemy and a live shark tunnels through the ground, popping up below your opponent to eat them alive. Armed and Dangerous may not be remembered for its level design or anything, but the Land Shark lives on as one of the wildest things shot at an enemy in games.

Pixels – Ratchet & Clank 2016

How could a Ratchet & Clank game not make it on a list like this? While it was a given, what was difficult was deciding which weapons made earned a spot. I couldn’t resist the Pixelizer from the 2016 reboot. As the name suggests, this handy shotgun variant morphs enemies into a pile of 2D pixels. The icing on top is that they crumble apart like lego bricks when defeated by the shot.

Drill Bore – Turok 2

It’s hard to beat the Cerebral Bore when it comes to game weapon brutality. A combination of a homing device, saw, and clamp, the Cerebral Bore tracks enemy brains and latches onto them, and well, you know the rest. Turok 2 shows a surprising amount of blood and gore as the bore tunnels through enemies’ skulls. While it’s certainly a satisfying weapon to use, the Cerebral Bore is one of the game’s slower weapons due to the lock-on and scanning time.

Dubstep ‘wubs’ – Saints Row 4

“It’s a party in a gun! Make the world dance to your beat and fear the power of your wubs!” That’s the in-game description of the Dubstep Gun and it fits the bill. Not only does it look like a turntable, but it literally shoots streams of dubstep energy at opponents. What’s even more hilarious and neat is the specific music track changes depending on the outfit worn.

Argent Energy Plasma – Doom (2016)

Every Doom player knows the destructive power of the BFG. It’s the most notorious weapon in the series for good reason. And it’s handy to boot, given that it’s one of two weapons in Doom 2016 with its own dedicated button (instead of the weapon wheel). Doom 2016’s iteration of the BFG uses green plasma made from Argent Energy, dealing up to 6000 damage to an enemy. This thing can vaporize and kill any enemy in a single shot as long as it’s not one of the bosses. The splash damage is also pretty large, catching groups and stragglers in the explosion radius very easily. You know you’ve just acquired the best weapon when that BFG Division music starts playing.

Swords – Borderlands 2

Among the thousands upon thousands of gun variants available throughout the Borderlands games, the Swordsplosion!!! gun takes the cake as most ridiculous. This E-tech shotgun is only available in the Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep DLC from Borderlands 2. Not only does it shoot an exploding sword, but it spawns other smaller swords that explode, spawning even tinier swords. It’s perhaps the most bizarre take on the weapons I’ve seen and I love it.

Rainbows Farts – Red Faction: Armageddon

Instead of your conventional super weapon being rewarded upon completing the game, Red Faction: Armageddon gives players a unicorn gun that farts rainbows. It’s not just a silly novelty though, as the Mr Toots gun provides some of the most damage in the game with its long-range high-powered laser shot. Enemies having the priviledge to be destroyed by Mr Toots explode in a confetti rainbow shower to top it all off.

Skunks – Oddworld Stranger’s Wrath

I’ve always appreciated Stranger’s Wrath for its unique take on the wild west bounty hunter schtick. It really feels like playing a sort of warped Jim Henson version of a classic Western. The third-person gunplay is pretty fun, but the live ammo is particularly charming. Each area has its own ecosystem of rodents and mammals that Stranger can pick up and use as Crossbow ammo, and those adorable but smelly Stunkz are my pick due to their cuteness and application. Shooting these skunks at enemies briefly immobilizes them, causing them to vomit uncontrollably.

Needles – Halo

While the famous M16 pistol from Halo 1 is undoubtedly the most effective weapon in the game, the Needler was the most innovative and intriguing. A Covenant creation, the Needler pins enemies with a barrage of energy needles that explode after a few seconds of insertion. They’re like an arrow with a timed explosive. Just shooting a few needles at enemies does peanut damage, but spam that sucker onto your opponent and you have a chained explosion that kills them within seconds.

Water – Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

The Water Pistol is one of many guns that can be developed on the Mother Base. And it’s far from the novelty item that it initially seems. Besides its utility distracting and potentially blinding enemies with splashes of water, it can short-circuit electronic equipment. But did you know the Water Pistol can even defeat a certain boss? That’s right, the Man on Fire can be defeated by spraying a ton of water from the Water Pistol directly on him. It takes about 80 or so hits, but once you take him down, it’ll be the ultimate humiliation.

Plungers – Luigi’s Mansion 3

The original Poltergust 3000 from the first Luigi’s Mansion defined the game’s premise and concept with its Ghostbusters-like vacuum gameplay. Well, the Poltergust has gone through some impressive upgrades since Luigi’s first haunted house visit. Luigi’s Mansion 3 introduces a bunch of new abilities and features for the Poltergust G-00. The funniest happens to be the Suction Shot, which involves plunging a ghost in the face and pulling it with a rope. The traditional use of Suction Shot is to break objects apart for easier suction, but we can’t stop shooting plungers directly at the enemies.

Thunderjaw – Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart

Rift Apart is the second and final Ratchet & Clank game to make it on the list, and of course it’s the RYNO. The RYNO is a returning legacy weapon, but the 8th iteration goes a step further, summoning objects from various PlayStation games. To get this ultimate weapon, players must find every Spybot in the game. Your reward pays off though. I mean, who doesn’t want to smash enemies with Sully’s plane from Uncharted, Jak & Daxter, or a freaking Thunderjaw from Horizon: Zero Dawn? Okay, technically, you’re dropping these objects from a portal and not shooting them, but you’re still shooting to open the portal, so it counts.

Junk – Fallout 3

Like Half-Life 2’s Gravity Gun, the Rock-It Launcher shoots a variety of environmental objects at enemies. What makes this weapon unique is Fallout 3’s emphasis on junk items. There’s a ton of junk within the Capital Wasteland and most of it can be loaded into the Rock-It Launcher. It’s a tad disappointing that every junk item has the same damage output, but the variety of stuff you can shoot at opponents is impressive nonetheless.

Bullet Bill – Mario Kart

Bullet Bill is the oldest object on this list, with its first appearance in world 5-1 of the first Super Mario Bros. Game from 1987. It wasn’t until Mario Kart Wii (and technically Mario Kart DS) when players could finally harness the dread power of Bullet Bill on unsuspecting friends. The kart turns into a giant Bullet Bill, auto-piloting through the course at top-speed catapulting others to the back of the line – that is, until they smash you with one later in the race.

That might not be entirely accurate though. In an article published by GamesIndustry in which several industry analysts have made predictions for the industry in 2022, Dr. Serkan Toto of Kantan Games stated that Mario Kart 9 is currently in the works, and, interestingly enough, that it “comes with anew twist.” Toto also predicts that Nintendo could tease the game sometime this year.

“I am aware Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is still selling very well on the Nintendo Switch, but Mario Kart 9 is in active development (and comes with a new twist) and Nintendo could tease it this year,” he said.

Meanwhile, Toto also predicts that Nintendo will be launching another one of its established properties on mobile devices sometime this year.

“On mobile, Nintendo has been very silent since Mario Kart Tour’s launch in 2019, but I think 2022 is when we will see an established IP arriving on smart devices again,” he said.

Rumours last year claimed that a new mainline Mario Kart game had been in development for three years, and that it could launch sometime in 2022. Read more on that through here.

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe launched over four years ago, but the last new mainline Mario Kart game was the original Mario Kart 8 for the Wii U back in 2014. Fans have been craving a new game in the series for a long time now, but with how well Mario Kart 8 has sold, and given that it refuses to slow down, many have said that it’s unlikely a sequel will happen any time soon. After all, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has sold over 35 million copies by now, while the original for the Wii U had sold around 8.5 million a year ago, so with all of that sales momentum, why would Nintendo bother making a new game?

Well, according to known Nintendo insider Zippo, a new game is indeed coming, and coming soon. In a recently published blog update, the leaker wrote that series producer Kosuke Yabuki and his team have been working on a new mainline game in the series for three years, and stressed that this project had nothing to do with the likes of mobile title Mario Kart Tour, AR title Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit, or the Universal theme park ride.

Zippo is unsure of exactly what the nature of this game is, but states that it’s looking likely it will launch either Holiday 2021, or early 2022.

It’s always best to tread with caution where unverified insider leaks are concerned, especially when it comes to the notoriously secretive Nintendo- so, you know… tread with caution.

In the same blog update, Zippo also wrote that the sequel to Breath of the Wild is unlikely to launch this year, and that a new Donkey Kong game, developed by the Super Mario Odyssey team, will be revealed at E3.

#15. MAKA WUHU

Set in and around an active volcano, Maka Wuhu is one of the most dynamic and visually diverse tracks in Mario Kart 7. From beautiful scenery and plenty of drifting opportunities to avoiding giant falling rocks and jumping off a cliff’s edge and paragliding through the air, Maka Wuhu keeps throwing interesting new elements at the player from beginning to end.

SPEC OPS: STEALTH PATROL – SWAPPED DIFFICULTIES

A perfect example of how the lack of post-launch patches (which is something we now take for granted) could ruin a game. Its easy, normal, and hard difficulties were dubbed private, corporal, and sergeant respectively, only in the game itself, private and sergeant were, for whatever reason, swapped. This meant that people who wanted to play the game on the easiest difficulty were unknowingly playing it on the hardest, wondering all the while just why things were as frustratingly difficult as they were. Spec Ops: Stealth Patrol wasn’t exactly the best of games as it is, and this did it no favours.

QTEs

Quick time events can be a great tool when executed properly. The Greek-era God of War games, for instance, used them to great effect to punctuate high octane action sequences in a great blend of cinematic and gameplay. The problem is, games that do that are very rare. QTEs more often than not feel unnecessary and arbitrary, and for every God of War, we have a dozen games that fall on the other end of the spectrum.

BLADES OF HADES (GOD OF WAR)

As compared to God of War 2 and 3, the very first God of War game had a lot more sections that put emphasis on pure platforming (or something close to platforming anyway). One such section was the Blades of Hades, and as anyone who’s played the game would tell you, it was a nightmare. Walking over thin wooden logs while trying to avoid all manner of massive axe heads and saw blades was even worse in practice than it sounds, and countless players died more than just a few times trying to get through this part.

In this feature, we’ll be taking a look at ten ways games have done that over the years- a few examples that are specific to certain games, and some more general ones that have been made use of in several titles throughout history.

PORTAL 2’S FINAL MOMENTS

Portal 2 is a game that wants you to be precise, and clever. Without those basic requirements, the core gameplay loop of Portal 2 would fall apart. But it makes an exception even to that. During the game’s final boss fight, there comes a moment – without going into spoilers – that requires you to place that final, crucial portal. But Portal 2 actually makes it so that no matter which fire button you press, you’ll always shoot out the correct coloured portal, the one the game needs you to shoot out. It’s a simple thing, but very clever, because in the absence of this trick, you might end up shooting a very – let’s call it weird portal – and the entire final fight would be ruined.

PLAYSTATION CLASSIC

Let’s kick thing off with the most recent example. While Microsoft has been making strides with backwards compatibility, other leaders in the hardware market ave instead chosen to release classic versions of older consoles. Nintendo kicked off this trend with the NES Classic and the SNES Classic, mini, portable-sized versions of the pieces of hardware that came pre-installed with a library of some of their best games. Quite recently, Sony announced its own take on the concept- except it wasn’t really their own take. From the name to the general core ideas to even the images that were used to promote its announcement, the PlayStation Classic is a hilariously obvious replica of what Nintendo has been doing for a few years now.

Crash Bandicoot 1

For all the flak that Crash Bandicoot gets about its difficulty, Naughty Dog weren’t complete sadists. If you die too many times, the game will begin removing environmental hazards and shifting checkpoints near obstacles to tip the scales in your favour. Bizarre? Sure but it’s the least egregious way to ensure players keep progressing.