You guys should look at Destiny for some sci-fi stuff on your lists. Destiny exotic weapons could probably have completely filled this list, and, as a gunsmith, I find very interesting as concepts.
One of mine is the humble M36 Lasgun from 40k. Its a perfect example of how insane the 40k universe is, because in modern times the Lasgun would be the ideal service rifle (accurate and reliable, simple to build and maintain, decent weight, and most of all it has rechargeable magazines you can reload just by plugging it into an APC/IFV, putting it into a fire, plugging it into a solar panel, etc. Plus it would be a match or penetrate most modern body armor. But because its 40k its one of the weakest weapons around.
My copy of "The Imperial Infantrymans' Uplifting Primer" informs me that my lasgun is more than capable of taking any conceivable enemy down in at most a few shots. Really, the only thing that can defeat a lasgun-wielding Guardsman is his own Commissar, if he should fail to maintain said lasgun properly.
I feel like the needler from Halo deserved to be on this list, becasue it's incredibly unique as well as being iconic. I would have also given an honerable mention to Tracer's pulse pistols from Overwatch, just becasue they reload by rewinding time which is awesome.
Oh yeah, the Needlers are the bomb. Also, I feel like it was weird to put a crossbow on the list. Laser guns are already stretching the bounds of firearm, but a crossbow just really doesn't count.
I've actually been replaying Halo CE Anniversary recently, and it reminded me just how cool the Needler is. The reload especially is very meaty and satisfying.
And of course you could dual wield those monsters, which was insane but so much fun And Tracer's guns are really cool, the idea of only needing to make some super special rounds once and then just "reusing" them is very cool
As Ian from Forgotten Weapons once put "the fiction part comes not with energy weapons, but with having cheap, sturdy and reliable drum mags in the future". Sci-fi guns don't have to be fantasy, they just have to be already existing modern tech made affordable. So good high capacity mags, electric priming, plastic cases and electrothermochemical ammo. And you have automatic gun that would laugh at most sci-fi. Or rather you get stright up "pulse" rifle from Aliens;)
I quite liked the Widow anti-material rifle from ME2, both for it's deadly headshots and the description that includes the sentence "the Widow Anti-Material Rifle is primarily used by sniper teams in assault missions against armored vehicles or Krogan".
Geth plasma SMG sounds crazy as it spins up, Salarian scorpion pistol mini sticky bombs, Bee plasmid from Bioshock. Not the top weapons but cool nonetheless.
Bolter isn't very sci-fi. We already have a pistol that does that from I think the 70s. We literally can make a bolter right now. Sci-Fi by definition is speculative in nature.
Artillery isn't on this list;) On a more serious note, I wish people, who argue bolter would just look up modern artillery tech and not just stop at gyrojet. Then they would have understood how broken that thing is. Active-reactive systems, controlled airburst, ramjet rounds, beam riding and inertial guidance. All of that and more was minituariazed to 25mm, 20mm or even 12mm irl already. The sci-fi part comes from the ability to mass produce said ammo with less then 100k$ per round.
Awesome list! Here's one obscure weapon from Deep Space 9. The episode had a murderer on the loose, killing his victims with an archaic sniper rifle. It wasn't clear how the killer was getting line of sight. Chief O'Brien figured out he was using a rifle with an advanced scanner and integrated micro-transporter beam. After firing, the bullet could be transported right through walls, and preserve lethal velocity for the target. Pretty cool!
It's built around a prototype Federation Starfleet TR-116 rifle (which itself is neat and unusual in the Star Trek 'verse, since it is an actual rifle, as in a weapon that fires a solid, chemically-propelled bullet through a rifled metal barrel, but using 24th-century tech and materials science, such as tritanium bullets). The micro-transporter enhanced version - after its debut as a tricked-out murder weapon - was eventually developed into the TR-116A and TR-116B, which are available in Star Trek Online. Surprisingly, while shields normally disrupt transporter tech, the TR-116A and B are good for shooting through personal energy shielding.
Definitely one of the coolest concepts in weapon design, particularly since it's not actually that crazy. The technology in it already existed in the Star Trek universe. It comes off as what a genius gun designer like Browning might build if given Star Trek tech to work with.
That was a cool gun, especially how every part of it MADE SENSE in the universe(which is very rarely the case in Treknology one-offs). I seem to recall the episode around it being cool as hell too, but that might be dodgy teenager judgement.
My personal favorite are the Tau Pulse Weapons from 40k. They fire a highly ionized pulse, by rapidly super heating a metallic element through a high energy convection field. Even by 40k standards its a brutal weapon, in an elegant package.
talking about W40K; anything made by' nids is win automatically. those fuckers can (and will) adapt to anything, given time. if not, sheer numbers (rippers are nasty) or subterfuge (lictors and genestealers) ;) . love space commies weapons and power armor though.
@@filanfyretracker pretty much all weapons in 40K are considered war crime generators almost by existence. The Tau Pulse Rifle is like having a man portable 30mm cannon, that will atomize you and pulverize what's left into meat chunks that are ready to server well done if not outright carbonized. But even by 40K weapons this is tame and doesn't get into the depravity that are Dark Eldar weapons. Those are the real intentional, blatant and as painfully as possible war crime generators.
Do you mean Voyager's hideous Compression Phaser Rifles? The TNG movie era phaser rifles are the best from Trek followed by the Into Darkness rifle and Enterprise M.A.C.O. rifles IMO.
@@brentbartley6838 I think they're both called compression rifles. I assume they mean the one that looks more like a standard future rifle from First Contact. Pity that Nerf's attempt at it was so damn ugly.
My favorite is the Shock Rifle from Unreal Tournament - first firemode fires a hitscan laser, second firemode fires a slow projectile that is unaffected by gravity. Shooting the projectile with the laser, creates an extremely powerful explosion! It effectively forces players to not move recklessly and consider their options, as going around the wrong corner can mean instant death.
I would hit people with that combo before they even came around the corner. Similarly, one of my favorite tactics was to bounce grenades off of walls around corners, or to bounce them off walls in front of me when being chased so that it caught my pursuer off-guard.
IMO the Shock Rifle is pretty much a mandatory inclusion in lists like this. Power, precision, knockback, area denial, this thing does it all. Not to mention a *_very_* high skill ceiling and the extreme catharsis-factor when you finally git gud with it. PC Gamer named the Flak Cannon as "the greatest gun in PC gaming." While the Flak is definitely in the All Time Top 10 list, we all know who the REAL king of the arenas is...
The Caster Gun from Outlaw Star. It uses literal magic shells. What it fires depends on the shell being used. It can stun, shoot electricity, energy beams up to shell #4, which fires a miniature black hole at the target, which also only affects the target. It might be just a single shot gun, but with ammo like that it ends the fight most of the time. However, the rarity of the shells also makes it a weapon of last resort.
A while back in a DnD campaign, I ran a cowboy themed artillerist artificier that "used" caster shells as his spell slots for casting his spells. Getting his shells back during rests was just him reloading his own ammo and etching a glyph on the casing. Loved Outlaw Star, Cowboy Bebop, and Trigun, the holy trinity of space western animes, as a kid growing up.
Glad you included a few shots of the PPG from Babylon 5 at the end there. I love that they aren't necessarily better than the slug-throwers that the Earth Alliance can produce, but they're specifically issued to the space forces so there's less worry about punching holes in pressure hulls.
Plus they're amazingly compact. They're absolutely perfect for their role because they'd never get in your way as you go about your job, but they still are there when you need them. I can still hear that "charge-up" noise when they're turned on.
PPG is definitely on my list, but wouldn't be at the top. Love how the books (specifically Psy Corps #3) made the PPG very suboptimal in the rain, and the fact that this would catch Mars-born Garibaldi off-guard. Earthforce went all-PPG because it never expected to need to use them on Earth. I just like the detail there.
Mine has gotta be the TR-116 from DS9's season 7. A gun that uses micro-transporters to shoot through walls?! Insane. Not even an honourable mention here? Even more insane.
Man it's a hard choice, I love all the different weapons in sci-fi but some of my top favorites have to be the aliens M41A pulse rifle, the MA5B assault rifle from halo, lancer from gears of war, Morita assault rifle starship troopers, and the bolter Warhammer 40k.
Only the Bolter and the Pulse Rifle are sci-fi weapons (mostly). The rest are reskinned real life weapons. They look cool, but the Morita, MA5 and Lancer (minus chainsaw bayonet) could exist today in a real life military.
@@owenlagger but then they are not sci-fi, just science. This doesn't take away from the coolness factor of the design, but it stops being fiction, as they have become real things.
The bowcaster from Star Wars has a special place in my heart. A high-powered cross between a rail gun and a crossbow with an energy jacket on the projectile for good measure. While heavy and standard patterns requiring extra strength to use its hit like a freight train. The fact the basic platform is highly customizable/modifiable and can also load a variety of specialty round types truly takes it to the next level for me.
Cool gun (if nothing else, it gets around the whole "hammerspace" issue), but the assault rifle mode was a bit underwhelming. Fine for standard mooks, but it really made you dependent on concentrated squad fire to bring down tougher targets.
I loved the 'infinite ammo on cooldown' of the DC-15s that came with that package. Decent punch per shot, you could do a lot with it as long as you were careful
@@selachianseas999 that was part of the gameplay I think, the characters in RC aren’t Jedi with lightsabers so a super battle droid is going to require concentrated fire
My vote goes to the Dominator from the anime Psycho-Pass. It is not just a cool weapon, but it also exemplifies how science fiction can explore futuristic moral quandaries. What happens to a society when a brain-scanning smartgun becomes the judge, jury, and executioner of the law, instead of the justice system that wields it?
What happens? It makes a really, really big and unpleasant splatter all over the place. Someone clearly saw what Kenshiro does in Dist of the North Star and said: That needs to be in a pistol.
The dominator is judge dred's gun but it's not just cool and badass it's also thematically integral to the story. It's an embodiement of the entire plot and is a magic system of its own. Spectacular sci fi weapon from a conceptual standpoint and for everything else it's just judge dred's gun but anime do i need to say anymore?
@@CptJistuce Not quite. Minority Report is "Our precogs have told us you are going to commit a murder, so we're here to arrest you and hold you in a medical coma so that won't happen." Pretty damn dystopic. Psycho-Pass is "In a nation where everyone is under very nearly constant biometric surveillance, psychological and audio-visual, and if the AI in charge of the system decides your 'crime coefficient' crosses a legislated threshold, the Public Safety Division's elite cops and enslaved 'latent criminals' are sent to hunt them down and generally kill them very, very gruesomely." It's MUCH more dystopic.
“Six men came to kill me one time. And the best of 'em carried this. It's a Callahan full-bore auto-lock. Customized trigger, double cartridge thorough gauge. It is my very favorite gun.[…]I call it Vera.”
Pistols from Bladerunner. Not quite Sci-Fi but I love the clunky "kachunk" they make when they fire, like a realistic near-future coil gun firing a fat slug out of an old frame. Perfect for the setting.
Deckard's pistol was the first sci-fi firearm that I was truly enamored by. I grew up on Star Trek TOS, and while the Phasers were freaking cool, they were closer to magic than reality. But the Blade Runner pistol was familiar and futuristic at the same time. It was just so purpose-built -- a sidearm powerful enough to retire a Replicant. Iconic. My honorable mention would be the double-barreled laser pistols from The Black Hole, which received a tribute of sorts in Guardians of the Galaxy. (I think they also inspired some designs in Halo.)
I'll always have a soft spot for Mal's pistol from Firefly and Han's DL44. I love Mal‘s gun because it's just a revolver with some stuff stuck onto the outside to make it look sci-fi and it fits the setting flawlessly, and Han's because, well, it's iconic for a reason. Everybody loves that one.
Unreal's Shock Rifle deserves at least a mention. Mostly for the sheer fun of firing a slow moving projectile, and then hitting it with the hit scan beam to trigger an explosion.
YES! The UT series has some wonderful weapons. The Flak cannon is arguably a shotgun, but it just feels different. But there is nothing more satisfying than a kill with the bio rifle.
The Penetrator Rifle from the FEAR series is worth mentioning. Nothing like nailing enemies to the wall in slow motion. Also the Flak Canon and Shock Rifle from the Unreal Tournament series.
He should have given them a mention while talking about the gravity gun, considering the Prawn mech had one Vickus killing one of the mercs by yeeting a pig at him was astonishing
The Gravitational Beam Emitter from Blame! Its essentially its own character and in its high powered modes deletes everything in that general direction for a few hundred Kilometres.
@@murphy7801 it is debated how the GBE works but I think delete is correct. antimatter would annihilate anything it hits, but e=mc² means that hitting even the air Infront of you would be the same as a nuke. What we see from the GBE is a beam that goes through everything along with an area around the beam that is suddenly empty of matter. It does cause explosions in some instances but its often the object being hit exploding due to the massive hole in it. The physics of the gun are questionable at best. But to my understanding it's ment to shoot gravitons that warp space-time, Effectively erasing whatever it passes through from existence. Edit: Also it's possible on the boundary between inside and outside the beam instead of erasing atoms it accelerates them outward (due to negative mass) causing the explosions we see. But definitely less powerful than e=mc² would dictate for an annihilation.
I forgot to mention that gun from Altered Carbon (tv series) with the darts that could return into the gun and kill everything in their path again on their way back. That was hyper-violent but so cool.
Might not be my _absolute_ favorite, but I've always loved the sheer insane brutality of the Cerebral Bore from the Turok games. Not the most realistic or versatile gun, but the incredibly sadistic savagery of it definitely left an impression on me the first time I played Turok 2: Seeds of Evil. 😅
The M56 "Smartgun" from Aliens. Basically a German WW2 MG42 joined with a camera steady arm plus the odd bits and pieces. This one plays a big role in some of the most bad-ass scenes in scifi!
D'Argo's sword/rifle from Farscape. The rifle railgun from Eraser. The transporter enhanced slugthrower from that one episode in the final season of DS9.
They weren't mentioned in the video's script but those impressively small but potent Babylon 5 sidearms at least got a callout in the final montage. They always kind of fascinated me because of the small dimensions but still impressive power, but not in a jokey sort of way (like the "chirping cricket" or whatever it was called from the first Men in Black).
Noisy Cricket is what you're thinking of, and honestly it could use a mention in any list of SF small arms. Hilariously impractical, and of course K should never have given it to him.
@@reliantncc1864 Read the MiB novels that take place after the movies. Elle actually reads the manual on the Cricket and discovers how to hold it so you don't wind up on your ass when firing it. It's all in the wrist.
@@alexanderwatson1980 You mean fan fiction? No, thanks. I don't want to hear about some fan's attempt to explain away something that was only included for comedy. If it knocks you backward 20 feet, how you hold it doesn't matter.
The phaser is a brilliant piece of worldbuilding; it's a multitool first and a weapon a very distant second. The perfect analogy for Starfleet and the Federation as a whole. It's also fitting how the TNG-style phasers get replaced by the more weapon-like phaser rifles as the Borg and the Dominion enter the scene.
@@shinyagumon7015 That's part of why I really like the itty-bitty Type 1 phaser. Such a multitude of uses, in a package the size of a garage door opener.
@@shinyagumon7015 Yeah, I mentioned the other day to someone who hadn't seen TOS but commented about the early TNG phasers being impractical while watching that show, that as part of the show's... sort of 'less-military' rebrand between the two series, they redesigned the uniforms and equipment to make it clear what the Federation was about: that this is a society so peaceful but also confident in its ability to improvise under pressure to overcome obstacles by understanding them, that their military consists of people who are scientists and diplomats first and soldiers a distant second (even bringing their families with them on fancy ships like the Enterprise) rather than a dedicated full-time military, and the rather un-threatening weapons packed full of utility features were a great prop design / worldbuilding element to help sell that idea. It's almost as much a "poke it with a stick" implement for scientific exploration or a pocketknife for MacGuyvering solutions to problems as it is a weapon.
I actually never used the Arc Pistol in ME3, but I LOVE the Talon. Lovely little pocket shotty. Always brings a smile to my face. And of course the M7 Lancer, such a good rifle.
A weapon i like is the Colonial sidearm "clamshell" from Battlestar Galactica. I like the look, it's a real weapon with some covering, unfortunately it was replaced after season one. Love the movie Elysium and all the weapons, District 9 have some great (alien tech) firearms as well.
I do love the Chemrail... But aesthetically I also really enjoy the modular human firearms from Avatar, even if I'm not that big a fan of the movies themselves. They even had concept art for a chemical / magnetic anti-material rifle, which I don't believe ever made it to screen, but looks chunky and insane. Lots of good tech in those movies, though some of it was a little bit silly in concept or application (Impractically large / exposed pilot, etc). Combination chemical / magnetic weapons are some of my favorite because of how flexible they could be, to the point I've included them as the main guns of many ships in my own hard sci-fi work. You can crank up the coils to fire sub-calibre munitions at hypervelocity, turn the magnets off to lob slower proximity rounds while saving the capacitors for PD lasers, or use only the magnets to launch specialty rounds that might not have a propellant charge - like gun-launched missiles, coms drones, which can then coast the distance without lighting their engines and giving themselves away to thermal sensors. They're functionally the 'shotguns' of space warfare, in terms of the wide range of ammunition they could theoretically handle. If your setting is concerned with keeping ships as light as possible, a good multi-purpose main gun can go a long way to reducing the number of mounts you need.
I like the pocket phaser in TNG just because of how ridiculously OP it is. Able to vaporize a guy from a single blast. Idc if it can only for once, they just makes it on a tier of high powered sniper weapons for taking out individual enemies. Or assassinations.
One of my old favourites is the Sandman pistol from Logan's Run. I love the blackened crater the burning magnesium slug leaves when it hits its target. A classic!
The Empee from John Scalzi's 'Old Man's War' book series is really really cool. It's a rifle that is fed bricks of nanomachines and a selector for what type of round you want to fire, which takes different amounts of your ammunition depending on which mode you select. It has rifle, flamethrower, rocket launcher, and probably more. It also links up to a personal computer in the user's head to give more control. I highly recommend anyone who likes realistic sci-fi to read Old Man's War series. His other book Red Shirts is hilarious as well.
Freaking love that series! It lends itself well to a lot of creative uses as well - like setting up the rifle in a remote location, then triggering it when your enemy comes around looking for you, or setting it up to fire two-round bursts where the first round is heavy enough to break a light shield, and the second round is left as a hollow-point to deal with the squishy enemy just behind the shield.
In one of the later books (I believe it's in The Human Division) some CDF soldiers come under fire from a sniper hiding in an apartment building. The squad leader stands up to act as a distraction and let's her combat unitard absorb the hit, but giving away which apartment the sniper is in. One of the troopers then fires a grenade programmed to with mini cameras instead of explosives to pinpoint the sniper's exact location in the room.
The Smart Pistol from Titanfall really deserved a spot on this list, it's design is deceptively simple and running around cracking Grunt Skulls mid-Wallrun is genuinely awesome and fun to do!
Mine has to be Malcolm Reynold's Moses Brothers Self-Defence Engine Frontier Model B. It's a gorgeous gun, and does a fantastic job of combining real-world firearms with more futuristic elements.
I would like to add 3 time weapons from Singularity. The Kasimov sniper rifle the accelerates the users timestream while aiming, the E-99 Autocannon that reverses the time in the magazine to reuse the same bullets, and the Seeker Rifle that fires guided, time dilating explosive rounds. Although not a weapon the T.M.D. itself could also be considered on the list.
The rifle that Galactic Federation Marines in the Metroid Prime series use is one of my favourites. It makes so much sense for people in power armor, combining all the upsides of inbuilt and handheld weapons while eliminating the downsides of both. It's a real wonder that no other group of power-armored marines in sci-fi uses a gun design like that.
Space marine boltgun is based off of a real pistol that shoots rockets. It's from the 1960s. Hardly call it sci-fi. There called Gyrojets. We could make a boltgun today. Just not very cost effective. So it isn't sci-fi.
@@murphy7801 by that standard most weapons on Spacedock's list aren't sci-fi. But they are, because they're guns in sci-fi settings, and your weirdly narrow interpretation is entirely ignorable.
@@murphy7801 dude if that’s your line of thinking about half the weapons on this list shouldn’t be there. Also given that 40K is very much in a sci-fi setting it should be there.
The impression I've gotten is that the people behind this channel don't like/cover 40K all that much, (though maybe that's just because I haven't watched very far back), so it makes sense that he not put its guns ohv this list.
@@murphy7801 the gyrojet part is real. The armor-piercing, internal explosive part is not (as far as handheld weapons go). So there are still parts of it that would fall under the sci-fi definition, therefore still fit in the criteria. And the others who have commented on how lucrative your criteria are would be correct
One that springs to mind is the FCA-26 Rail Driver from Red Faction. To me, this gun was simply mind blowing when I first tried it out. Shooting enemies through walls with the thermal sight was absolutely wild. It was incredibly satisfying to line up several goons and take them all out with a single slug. Insanely satisfying and unfair. Loved it.
I deeply love the Mattock as well. That gun made ME2 so much more fun when it was added especially for the solider class with max reflexes or adrenaline what ever that time slowing skill was called.
I love the chemrail, great pick. I am a huge fan of the M-99 Saber from mass effect 3. It is an even bigger badder Mattock and I just love the heavy industrial sound it has. The Saber just sounds like an industrial tool mixed with a M1 Garand.( no ping though )
Eh, I agree on the sound, but the Saber's problem (and that of the Mattock in ME3) is that it's neither fish nor fowl. If you want to pick off targets at range with a couple hits, there are sniper rifles that will do the job better (M-13 Raptor is basically a harder-hitting Mattock with an integral scope and slightly smaller ammo capacity, not to mention a lever-action reload) and up close they don't have the rate of fire or ammo capacity to compete with full-auto guns. As a full-auto Mattock the Harrier is devastating, although it runs out of ammo fast. In ME2 I agree the Mattock is a top contender.
I like the rifle and modified AK from Elysium. It's a cool mix between a regular rifle and a rail gun. It feels real like you could see this existing in real life.
The rail gun from the movie Eraser was the only reason many people bothered walking into the theaters for that flick. The numbers for it are dumb but it influenced the look of fictional rail gun for the next decade.
I'm a big fan of the SBC Cannon from Serious Sam, it is a cannon that's designed for two-handed use and can be charged to send a cannonball through an entire row of enemies before exploding moments later. It uses technomagic reversed engineered from the Alien invaders assaulting earth, which allows it to reload by teleporting cannonballs into it and the cannonballs themselves are filled with uranium.
The Boltgun. I mean, what could be better than a fully automatic firearm, that shoots rocket propelled grenades that are designed to explode INSIDE the target. Oh, and the recoil on the standard version will shatter a human's arm if they're dumb enough to fire it.
Mass Effect 3's multiplayer had me fall in love with the Execitioner pistol. Perfect for the Adept class. With how fast ability recharge times are all you need is 1 shot between cooldowns; may as well make it über powerful. I also love the lore behind the M-300 Claymore. Kickback is so strong only Krogan can wield it without cybernetic assistance. Otherwise, your arms are sure to break.
You've done so many of my favourites! For my own list I'd definitely have to include more than one 40k gun though: boltguns, sonic blasters, shuriken catapults, fusion blasters and gauss flayers would defo be in!
personally I love the uniqueness of AdMech weaponry. Arc weapons to fry your enemies with lightning, rifles that fire servitor shot made to hone in on targets, gigantic Anti-material Arquebus firing ultra-dense munitions, and my personal favorite: Radium weapons that actively irradiate the battlefield, the enemy, and the troops using them. oh AdMech, never change.
One of my favorite sci-fi guns from the 1980's was the Looker gun from the movie Looker. It fired a light pulse that hypnotized the target causing them to lose track of time. Another gun from that era was from the Tom Selleck movie Runaway where the bad guy played by Gene Simmons had a handgun that fired homing bullets that were programmed to people's dna.
The Farsight XR 20 from Perfect Dark was amazing! Sniper rifle that shoots through walls with a built in x-ray scope. And that reload mechanic was like nothing I've seen before or since!
Aaron Beck is one of my favorite sci-fi concept artists because of his work on the weapons of Avatar, District 9, and Elysium. They have a lot of thought put into them and each one has a unique moment where they shine on film by doing something slightly different than conventional weapons.
Wow, a Deep Rock Galactic honourable mention, i could not have seen that commig, Rock and Stone brother! Also, not my favorite from DRG, but I really like how the cryo cannon works. It freezes enemies and makes them more fragile, which combines with the driller's axes and drills. It can also shoot ice spears and snowballs for an instant freezing AoE, which I like very much, even though I prefer the sludge for sheer usefulness
Deep rock is great for extremely satisfying guns. They have missiles, lasers, plasma, grenades, miniguns, shotguns, and even an upgraded version of the M1 Garand that lets you levitate while aiming it.
How did you go through this video and NOT even mention Han Solo's DL44 blaster pistol? Maybe it's not a big deal in Disney Wars but in the original expanded universe it was a big deal. Almost as iconic as the Millennium Falcon. It was a powerful enough blaster to burn through Stormtrooper armor but compact enough to holster and still use as a pistol.
I think also some of the District 9 weapons deserve a mention here. Neill Blomkamp knows how to design weapons with business ends that are unambiguously nasty!
That was kind of fun to see the starting "basic piece of crap" rifle from ME1 come back as a near-gamebreaker. The only ME3 character of mine that didn't use it as a primary weapon was the adept, and only because I wanted to change up the loadout from my engineer build. Even on the soldier and sentinel builds I'd swap their N7 Typhoons out for it on certain loadouts (e.g., if I wanted my soldier to carry a thermal-scoped N7 Valiant and Venom).
@@Myomer104 The only real competition the Lancer had as an assault rifle was from the N7 Typhoon, which is much heavier and less controllable but comes with native armor/cover-piercing and some nasty bonus damage attributes. For other DLC guns, well, the Venom is pretty much a one-shot kill against anything short of a Banshee or Atlas on normal (and makes a mess of the general area) and the N7 Piranha in the hands of a vanguard (or Wrex and Grunt in Citadel) is just obscene.
My favorite sci-fi gun...probably the M31A1 from Cyberpunk 2020, which is more or less what the G-11 would have become if it was ever adopted. It's an assault rifle with both 3 round burst and full auto capability, a 150 magazine of caseless 14mm rounds and an integral pump-action 25mm grenade launcher (which can also operate as a 12-gauge shotgun). In short, it's the full package in barely 4.something kilograms.
Having tried to work through how I'd build a railgun the Chemrail is an awesome solution to the problem. You don't have to worry about spot welding the armature to the beginning of the rails if it's already moving fast when it hits them.
Back in the days when we had multiple railgun development projects in the UK, one laboratory built a 10mm round bore hybrid laboratory chemical/railgun system known as "Hyper". This reportedly achieved muzzle velocities up to about 4200 m/s. At the time, I was working on a 10mm square bore plasma armature railgun with no significant pre-injection velocity. The best this achieved was about 3000 m/s.
I always loved the Star Trek Next Generation type 2 phasers because they were deliberately designed to resemble a weapon as much as they do a tool in order to reflect Starfleets non-violent attitude. Their shape may not work as well for aiming in reality but they always did look very practical when used by characters in the show. In general, I am not very happy with New Treks tendency to go back to bolt shooting phasers again. I think it's a step back from the particle beams that would allow for much better aim compensation as you fire.
My favorite is the DOOM 3 Plasma Rifle. Because it's a plasma gun, a bullpup, the plasmoiods or bolts look pretty and it just had a really cool sound effect.
Geth assault rifle! Not because it's supper effective or something (though it can be made to work with flaming ammo, thus giving some AP capability to an already great SP gun), but mostly because of the alien-ess of its aesthetics and the sheer futurism it screams with. Also... there's something poetic about using the enemy's weapons against them!
My favorite weapon happens to be the Rail Drivers from the various Red Faction games. They may be slower-firing (or in the case of the original, single-shot), but they pack a heavy punch.
Point of interest: The FR-27, when broken open to reload, shows both front and rear sights remaining in the same relative plane to each other (and the barrel) the whole time. Ergo, no change to zero. Something like the FN FAL (or the L1A1 SLR), if it were to be reloaded the same way, might compromise zero because the rear sight stays put with the butt and the front sight is on the barrel so it pivots. Optics above the barrel, as long as they're forward of the latch, would likewise retain zero.
The beautiful Pfläger-Katsumata Series D 5223 that Rick Deckard uses in Blade Runner is a classic looking gun. Elegant and shiny- like a piece of artwork held in your hand
District 9 movie, only shown briefly in a firefight and once while being tested on a prawn. It fires some kind of lightning bolt and vaporizes flesh instantly, but has a significant recharge time.
The fact the Boltgun from 40k didn't get a mention is criminal... especially with the game coming out recently. Also, no BFG, Bowcaster ... and surely the StarTrek Phaser is iconic enough to get a mention?
Star Wars: Republic Commando's DC-17m blaster was awesome. It was completely modular, quickly switching different barrels, ammunition, and parts to make it usable for various operations in just a few seconds. Surprisingly, that's actually a more realistic concept for current infantry warfare that's slowly happening more and more as time progresses.
Not happy it didn't make the final list, but I am pleased that the ZX-1 from Fifth Element at least got an honorable mention. Who wouldn't want a gun with a self-destruct button?
My top ten: 1.) The pulse rifle from the aliens series. 2.) Judge dredds handgun. 3.) RoboCop's auto-9 4.) The chiappa rhino revolver used by the Martian colonial Marines in the expanse. I know the chiappa rhino is a real gun that already exists but that and the fact that it's used in a science fiction setting is why it's on my list. 5.) The br-55 battle rifle from the halo series. It's basically what would happen if you chambered an Israeli tavor rifle in a shortened but equally as powerful .375 h&h African safari hunting round. Its basically a select-fire elephant gun. 6.) The bolt gun from Warhammer 40k. It's a .75 caliber assault autocannon that fires rocket propelled high explosive bolts and it's comedically oversized and overpowered. 7.) The chemrail from Elysium. 8.) The kaentrel pattern lasgun from Warhammer 40k. It's a simple, basic, and reliable laser rifle that can do it's job well. 9.) The e-11 blaster rifle. C'mon it's the classic imperial stormtrooper gun. 10.) The lancer assault rifle from the gears of war series. Freaking chainsaw bayonet on a .50 caliber assault rifle. What more could you ask for?
If we're going to include video games too, then I'll say the fuel rod cannon from Halo 2 has always been one of my favorites. Also the guns they used in both TekWar and Babylon 5. And back to video games, the WarHeadLauncher from Unreal Tournament and the Shock Rifle, the Plasma Rifle from Doom 3 was probably my favorite take on any plasma rifle. If we include mods, then the ChaosUT mod had one of the best crossbows in any game, as you had the poison bolts that slowed enemies down, but the explosive bolts were so awesome.
my fave weapon is the early playstation2-era Oni game's scram cannon.. only 5 shots, but each shot is a cluster of about 10 micromissiles that fly randomly in roughly the direction you fired it until they track onto enemies, they then beeline those enemies.. loved sneaking up into a room, popping a shot, then quickly sneaking back off before the enemies in that game could do anything.. though my lot of characters largely use beamrifles or linear rifles/cannons.. nothing more than a nasty sounding whipcrack from the linear weaponry
One of my favourites is the humble bolter. They look cool, can use a number of specialized rounds and just the idea of explosive gyro jet rounds are cool.
