GRAVITY GUN – HALF-LIFE 2
The most essential weapon in Gordon Freeman’s arsenal was originally designed
for heavy lifting. The Zero Point Energy Manipulator, to give it its full name, uses a
kind of tractor beam to grab real-world items like crates, boxes and recycling bins
and lift them into the air, at which point, super-usefully, you can also bung them
at enemies. Towards the game’s climax, Gordon’s Gravity Gun gets supercharged,
enabling you to hilariously pick up Combine grunts and fire them off into the ether.
It’d be a nice companion to the Portal Gun, that makes portals in, um, Portal.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we could all just put down the knives and guns, and just pick
up physics-manipulating machinery instead?
PLASMA CUTTER – DEAD SPACE
We like nothing better in the OXM office than finding a different use for otherwise
mundane tools and household objects. We’ve been using the office iPad as a tea
tray for a while now, and we often use our rulers to flick spitballs at each other
when the bosses are out. So imagine our delight when we first saw plucky space
engineer Isaac Clarke repurpose a typical cutting tool into a crucial implement
for survival. You can use the viciously burning plasma beam fired by this handy
handheld laser to slice individual pieces off of Necromorphs, and you can even
rotate the beam so it fires horizontally or vertically for added precision. Don’t
worry about those shambling space zombies, they’re ’armless. Well, they are now.
MAGNUM – RESIDENT EVIL
Nothing is quite as satisfying as watching a zombie
head explode like an overripe melon with one well-
aimed shot from Dirty Harry’s favourite handgun.
The sheer power of its projectiles also forces even
the biggest of bioweapons back, which is handy for
crowd control. This sublime powerhouse of a pistol
frequently pops up throughout the Resident Evil
series, all the way from its debut up to the recent
Resident Evil 2 remake. It’s absolutely our favourite
weapon in the more action-oriented Resi games,
particularly in Revelations 2’s Raid Mode, where
effective zombie annihilation is the name of the
game. Watch out, though: ammo for this hand cannon
is usually sparse, so make those shots count.SERVICE WEAPON – CONTROL
Imagine a weapon that can be whatever you want
it to be. Aside from superpowers like levitation and
being able to throw office equipment with her mind,
Jesse Faden has a shapeshifting, multifunctional
upgradeable weapon. There are a couple of obvious
advantages here. She can fire the weapon like a
shotgun or rifle one-handed like a pistol, and it
saves on all that encumbrance created by having a
character hoik around rifles, bazookas, shotguns,
machine guns – all on their backs like they were
some sort of NRA-sponsored Buckaroo. What adds to
the Service Weapon’s mystique is that to be deemed
worthy to wield it, you have to hold it to your head
and, well... hope for the best.108 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE
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