Guns that don’t shoot bullets

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“Guns don’t kill people, bullets do.” But do they have to? Not at all, and in fact, this is all the destructive power you’re going to get out ofshooting bullets:

Pretty lame, but there’s more than one way to skin a calf: sharks, saws, lightning, ninja stars, things that are heavy, beams from satellites, dirty syringes, presumably clean syringes, black holes, hot lava, chemicals, harpoons, being too small, needles, cows, freezing, circular saw blades, engineering equipment, growing too fast, discarded cinderblocks and explosive discs are just a few examples of objects and effects you could be propelling from a firearm if our culture wasn’t so fixated with bullets and realistic physics. That’s why we’re glad that there are plenty of games that shirk society’s conformity to various hunting associations, the NRA and people for the safe handling of firearms’s cult of normalcy.

One of the most frequently emulated weapons ever, Half-life’s gravity gun revolutionized what we thought of as ammo. Before we were looking for tiny boxes labeled “shotgun shells” and “crossbow bolts,” but because of the fictional physicists behind this weapon’s development, we can now pick up paint cans, road signs, beer bottles, dead guys, rocks, kitchen sinks… whatever you want can be used as a lethal projectile. Shoot fish at your enemies with this gun.

As the name suggests, the black hole bomb shoots a localized black hole, which sucks in any nearby enemies and compacts them into an infinitely dense tiny space. Then, before sciencing out of control, the hole closes itself, derailing chain-reaction of greater and greater sucking that would quickly destroy the entire level. And then the galaxy.

A gun that shows up for only a single mission in Killzone 2, the electricity gun arcs auto-targeting bolts of lightning into your enemies, dealing extremely high damage and making it the most powerful gun in the Killzone universe. It holds an electric charge in the glowing bottles on the left side of the sidearm and can quickly recharge the massive amount of power it uses by turning a handle on the outside of the weapon, which generates an electrical charge by rubbing two pieces of carpet together. What you don’t see is how it causes its wielder’s hair to embarrassingly stand straight up.

One of the most dangerous species of shark, the Land Shark is able to burrow through the earth and attack prey on solid ground as well as in the ocean. Technically, though, being a saltwater shark, it can’t survive in freshwater lakes and streams. Armed and Dangerous is the first of what will surely be many games that combine one of nature’s most powerful weapons (the aforementioned Land Shark) with one of technology’s most powerful weapons (a gun), creating the deadly Land Shark Gun.

Anything you point this gun at will be highlighted by a very helpful red beam of light, like one of those laser pointers you might use to show your buddy what you’d like him to shoot at with his projectile-firing weapon or perhaps to show your cat where there’s a bug you’d like him to eat. However, if you’re above ground and it’s a clear day and the satellite hasn’t moved out of position, the red indicator eventually calls down a beam of burning hotness from the sky, bright enough to tear a hole through even the rockiest of Berserkers in Gears of War 2.

A gun capable of firing both orange and blue – the folks at Aperture science are quickly making scientific bounds through the color spectrum – and these colors create a “doorway” through a “surface” in “three-dimensional space.” Hey, we don’t know what we’re talking about either.

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