Care for ketchup?

Weapon Drops are short, sharp homilies to new, old and upcoming FPS weapons. If it blows shit away plenty good (and sometimes even if it doesn’t), you’ll find a corresponding entry here.

There’s a certain psychology to playing a survival horror game. It’s not enough merely to kill your foes – you have to truly butcher them, dispose of them in a manner vastly more unpleasant than the manner in which they might dispose of you, and thus in some way “cancel out” their scariness.

Good workmen shouldn’t blame their tools, but not every weapon is up to the task. Pistols are like little ice picks upon the alpine cliff of a zombie’s horribleness. Shotguns are agreeably messy, but it’s over in seconds. Sniper rifles are far too detached. Chainsaws though? Chainsaws fit the bill nicely…

Unlike most digital homages to Bruce Campbell’s spine-severer of choice, Left 4 Dead 2’s chainsaws actually have drawbacks. In a game which makes such tactical play of audio, brandishing a noisy internal combustion engine isn’t always the wisest move. You might have marginally more chance of taking down a Witch up close, but you’ll be less likely to detect the eerie little vocal sample which heralds her presence.

These home improvement tools cum massacring implements also take a few seconds to start up, so don’t swap to one when there’s a Charger inches from your nose. Although if you pay close (well, closer attention) you’ll notice that good old Valve has “accidentally” built in a work-around – melee attack while hefting the ’saw to skip the warm-up period.

Best used when defending a doorway or other chokepoint. Just hold down the trigger/button, sit back and watch the guts spatter till the fuel runs out.

Video tutorial below. Review this week.

Got a gun, machete, shark-crossbow hybrid or other weapon you’d like to see featured? Let us know. Thanks to John Walker over at RPB for the pic.

1. Weapon Drop: the sticky grenade Stick around....

"Can you smell burning?"

As the title pretty bloody obviously implies, Weapon Drops are short, sharp homilies to new, old and upcoming FPS weapons. If it blows shit away plenty good (and sometimes even if it doesn’t), you’ll find a corresponding entry here.

Halo is remembered for a lot of reasons. FPS Gamer history buff Kristan Reed has been known to gibber about its “groundbreaking AI and dynamic combat system”, while others might talk fondly of upwardly curving vistas, chunky physics-enabled vehicles or the way Covenant buildings shatter like lumps of purple meringue when you fire a rocket at them.

For my part, it was all about the Covenant plasma grenade, or “sticky grenade”.

The sticky grenade’s triumphs are twofold. First off, this cloying variety of handheld explosive threw open the process of grenade-throwing to the unwashed masses. No longer would amateur grenadiers have to worry about accidentally lobbing the device straight between the victim’s legs, or glancing it off his shoulder, or bouncing it off the wall behind and straight back into their faces. By dousing the grenade in glowing alien glue, Bungie had “democratised” it, transforming the weapon from holy tool of the moderately autistic elite to something any damn fool could use if he was capable of leading a target.

Secondly and most importantly, the sticky grenade is designed to encourage sadism.

Think of the many times you, dear reader, have been plugged by one. Worlds live and die in the second or two between contact and detonation. There’s the shock of the gaseous blue ball hurtling towards your torso, the frenzied instant of self-scrutiny, the horrible realisation that the other player is back-pedalling like mad, the desperate attempt to salvage a little honour by suicide-bombing the bastard, and the gloomy sight of your own corpse doing its very best Superman impression.

Now swap roles, and recall the satisfaction of seeing exactly this torturous thought process running through the eyes of another.

Good old Covenant know-how. Here’s some footage of a sticky grenade specialist in action.

Got an implement of warfare you’d like featured? Let us know.

1. Weapon Drop: Left 4 Dead 2’s Chainsaw I came, I saw, I chainsawed......
2. Halo 3: the best of Forge Manny dips into the cream of Halo 3's user creations....