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gemini09

Reinventing the wheel

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This thread is dedicated to the shotgun of Prey.

Whenever we play a new game, we´re excited about what weapons we get to play with and how they look and behave, and how they compare to weapons from other games we´ve played. I´m a bit of a shotgun fanatic, I love the SSG from Doom 2, and even though the Doom 3 shotgun sucks, the essence of the shotgun still gives me pleasure when running up close to a monster and splattering it to pieces.

Prey did a nice twist where you fire toxic spray that behaves like a shotgun, but it has a completely new, fresh aesthetic design. And I must say that it seems like a perfectly good evolution, and sort of makes the Doom 3 or Quake 4 shotguns look stupid considering they´re set in universes hundreds of years ahead, and yet have this antique piece of weaponry that behaves the same it did hundreds of years ago.

Let´s discuss, and feel free to comment other weapons as well!

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Well, that's how all of Prey's weapons work. Existing gameplay mechanics with a different aesthetic. Pretty much like the rest of Prey. :P

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well u didnt give me much to go on therezzzz.... and i disagree but i wont get into that

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I'll give acid spitting points for originally, but for a shotgun to feel right, it needs to be a weaponized "FUCK OFF". Squirting yellow goo on things just doesn't cut it.

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You got a point. The loud bang and the direct damage is something unique that possibly cannot be replaced.

But on the other hand, the subtle sound from this acid gun, together with the acid spray (that´s instant like a shotgun, and not a slow, gentle shower you can hop away from), and the damage points it does in the game, combine for a weapon that feels very good to use, especially when there´s been so little progress in this area throughout the many FPS games.

The shotgun from Unreal 2 was also very cool.

Also, it´s more than yellow goo when the corpse vaporizes like they do in the Doom 3 engine.

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I sort of liked the flak cannon from the unreal tournament series. It had a sort of shotgunish feel. Getting right up on someone and watching them explode into gibs from the impact of the weapon felt awesome.

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TheeXile said:


A full auto shotgun is hardly a "modern" development, considering how the first full-auto machine gun was designed in 1881 (Maxim machine gun) and the first semi auto shotgun (the venerable Auto-5) was already mass-produced in 1900.

Of course modern designs improve on materials, weight, reliability etc. but since the invention of the brass-casing cartridge, there have been practically no major breakthroughs in mass-produced small firearms, and they are not even foreseeable for the near-future (that means ~50 years from now, I don't think ready-to-use shells will be replaced by e.g. rechargeable packs for energy weapons).

And, in any case, a semi-auto or full-auto weapon is always less reliable and less powerful than a similarly chambered single shot or simple repeating weapon (that's one reason why e.g. they use special double-barreled rifles and not AK-47s for hunting elephants, unless of course we're talking about a platoon of poachers).

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But as far as I'm aware it's the first time a shotgun has been designed to be practical for automatic use via. its recoil reduction. I can't really see why you'd need a "regular" shotgun anymore, if the option exists.

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When I first saw the minigun in Unreal(1) I thought it was very original. It has a pair of 3 rotating barrels instead of 1 cluster of 6. A very simple modification but it gave the gun a whole new look.

It must be hard for the designers to come up with new ways to present things that have already been done a million times before.

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TheeXile said:

But as far as I'm aware it's the first time a shotgun has been designed to be practical for automatic use via. its recoil reduction. I can't really see why you'd need a "regular" shotgun anymore, if the option exists.


True, perhaps the AA-12 is the most usable of these due to recoil reduction (although it's also one of the bulkiest). However, there's still the reliability and power issue to address. An auto weapon will always tap some of the cartridge's energy for reloading itself (unless the whole firing and reloading process is motorized) and will always be more prone to jams, failures etc.

If reliability was an issue, I would not even choose semi-auto over simple repeating, let alone full-auto.

Plus, with the current magazine designs, pump-action and semi-auto shotguns can be partially reloaded between shots e.g. you can slide a couple of cartridges between shots, while full auto models require detachable magazines (or, even worse, drum magazines).

On the other hand, think about how much damage could Doomguy inflict even if he had a simple semi-auto ;-)

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The only real shotgun that any game should use has a wood stock and either a black or a shining, polished and engraved steel barrel.

Other than that, I don't care so much about what the guns look like (as long as they look like guns, not toys), but it's important that they have good sounds. No sissy tok-tok-toks, but loud BOOMs and BANGs. Make it feel like your guns got balls of their own.

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kristus said:
I really like the Shotgun in QuakeIV.

Uhhh, Can I ask why? I personally thought it was quite lame. The firing sound was weak and I don't think it could kill anything less then the lowest level strogg with less then 3 shots.

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Captain Red said:

Uhhh, Can I ask why? I personally thought it was quite lame. The firing sound was weak and I don't think it could kill anything less then the lowest level strogg with less then 3 shots.


I thought the same. It is powerful if you nail a headshot, though. And very effective against those big ones that carried a shield and fired a rail gun. But still a lame weapon, in my opinion.

I like weapon #4 in Quake 4. Pretty cool with the fast rate of fire, good amount of ammo in a single clip, and the fast reloading. Looks futuristic in first-person view, but when you find it lying around, you can see it´s mostly green - staying aligned with the current military look that´s so popular nowadays.

The Flak Cannon was very cool indeed, but they messed it up after UT2003/ 2004. UT3 as a whole was a huge disappointment... Cool minigun, though.

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There was actually an unfinished quad-barrel shotgun included with Unreal (just the model, nothing else). There was at least one mod that made it useable.

It was fairly novel as far as shotguns go - it had four barrels like a gatling gun. Firing it normally would just use one barrel and the gun would behave like a really slow gatling gun. However, by using the alt-fire you could load shells into the remaining barrels without firing them. Unloading all four barrels into something at close range was devastating, to say the least :)

I suppose the reason they didn't finish it was that it was too close to the flak cannon, which overall I think is a cooler weapon.

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david_a said:

It was fairly novel as far as shotguns go - .... Unloading all four barrels into something at close range was devastating, to say the least :)


An real 4-barreled shotgun exists: the FAMARS_Rombo, only chambered in .410 bore though, so it lacks the "manly magnum buckshot" factor somewhat. It is, however, able to fire all 4 barrels at once.

There's a cool pic of the breech here, along with other high-class shotguns and elephant guns for Great White Hunters.

BTW, Doomguy should try using one of those "big game" rifles with insanely powerful cartridges ;-)

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Another vote for the UT Flak cannon.

As for shotguns being old fashioned: a spray of lead pellets was devastating to a body at close range when shotguns were invented, it still is and it will be hundreds of years from now. I'm not saying that combat shotguns haven't changed in recent years with weapons such as the one on the vid, nor that they won't evolve further. However, the basic principle of a relatively low maintenance weapon that throws a lot of lead at a target in a single blast still seems a sound bet for a future weapon to me.

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To me a Shotgun in a fps is a staple. Its also the gun I will use 90% of the time. That is if the shotgun is good.

If I had to pick a newer game with a great shotgun I'd pick FEAR's shotgun. Up close the thing is a cannon. I love using it in multiplayer. Just stick to hallways, small corridors and splatter any one that comes close to you.

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