Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Broseph Stalin]

Just had a discussion about how almost every video game shotgun is instakill from point blank range and at about ten feet becomes a way to gingerly wake your elderly relatives. What are some games and weapons that avoid this? What game has the BEST video game shotgun?

I'm going to put in my vote for the pump action shotgun in Red Dead Redemption. It's got fairly impressive range and damage without being overpowered. Sure, at a distance people might survive being hit but they stagger and sometimes collapse in a very satisfying way. Even when you're skirting the weapons maximum effective range you never lose the sense that you are wielding an instrument of death.

[Damiac]

Halo's shotgun might be the absolute worst.
Doom and quake's shotguns seemed pretty good at range.
Fallout 4 has shotguns have a pretty extreme spread, but they're still better than halo shotguns.

I think the problem is, in the ranges most firefights happen in video games shotguns would be incredibly powerful, so they have to shrink down their effective range to make other guns worthwhile.

[Ozyton]

Look at simulation-type games. I don't know if Red Orchestra or its mods have a shotgun, but if they did those would probably be good. That game likes to take those kinds of semi-auto guns and make you click to chamber another shell, which is a small thing that makes using them a little bit cooler to play with.

I think ARMA had decent shotguns after they enabl;ed firing more than one projectile at a time (Operation Flashpoint shotguns just fired 8 round bursts very quickly) but then they got nerfed again after they implemented body armor that can take multiple rifle rounds to kill somebody. They'll probably work wonders against unarmored people though.

Aside from that, most games either have engagement ranges where shotguns would be optimal, forcing designers to make shotguns have a much wider spread than they usually do to compensate. Or they're so situational that you might as well be using an assault rifle anyways.
E:

I think the problem is, in the ranges most firefights happen in video games shotguns would be incredibly powerful, so they have to shrink down their effective range to make other guns worthwhile.

Yeah, this is what I meant. Missed this sentence entirely.

[Sonlirain]

https://youtu.be/rEpfTfgzWp0?t=616
The shotgun from Deus Ex is obviously the ultimate shotgun.

And more seriously the shotguns in Planetside 2 can use slug ammo and be effective at sometimes ridiculous ranges.
And i think there was a modification that reduces the spread of the pellets.
Also the shotguns in Jagged Alliance (2 at least not sure how they fared in the first game) where you could get some mods in them that reduce the spread or make it more vertical or horizontal.

[Shadowlord]

That's so not the Deus Ex I thought you meant.

Hey, the Halo shotgun is great, kills shielded aliens and doesn't afraid of anyone!

[Arbinire]

I'd say the shotgun in Doom and the double barrel in Doom 2 were pretty much the go to guns when not using a BFG or Rocket Launcher.

Also, Torchlight 2's shotgonne's made for some pretty fun builds

[Shadowlord]

IIRC, the shotgun was better than the machine gun in Quake 3.

[Ai Shizuka]

In Battlefield 4 you can customize the shotguns with various attachments and slug ammo to make them usable at medium range.
And there are many choices, both pump-action and semi-auto. Also, some compact shotguns to mount under the barrel of some assault rifles.

[Fniff]

here are my contenders for, if not the best, the coolest videogame shotguns:
Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon (Only because you reload it by flicking the shells into the barrel)
Wolfenstein: The New Order (That thing felt so powerful I pelvic-thrusted every time I pulled the trigger - considering it's an automatic I did that a lot)
Bioshock 1 (You get it in one of the best weapon pick-up scenes in gaming. You grab it off a corpse lit by a spotlight, at which point the lights are killed. You hear shuffling and giggles in the darkness... Then the lights turn on again and you get attacked by horrific mutants. Terrific horror followed by an excellent introduction to the shotgun.)

[Radio Controlled]

Gotta wonder why they'd leave their shotgun-bait loaded up for their little ambush (unless they don't, and you find ammo some other way, don't exactly remember).

[Fniff]

I think it comes pre-loaded. Considering they're basically superpowered junkies, I could see them forgetting such a little detail such as 'making sure the shotgun isn't loaded because if it is then the whole plan is fucked and everyone is dead'.

[Radio Controlled]

I guess that's one of the advantages to making your antagonists buzzed on magic drugs: any flagrant mistake, no matter how damning, can be explained as the result of them being so high they're leaving the stratosphere.

[MrRoboto75]

IIRC, the shotgun was better than the machine gun in Quake 3.

Most everything was better than the machine gun in quake 3.

[Drakale]

Shotguns where great in soldier of fortune, with the locational damage. I don't remember how they did at longer distance however.

[Frumple]

Metal Slug [/thread]