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Tuesday, April 29, 2014

The Most Inaccurately Depicted Weapons In Gaming

Your army does not use most of these the way you think they do.
Over the past few generations of gaming, firearms have dominated platforms. I mean really, whats not to like about virtually filling a virtual person up with virtual lead from your virtual weapon right? Well, in my effort to cater to the more historically accurate side of gaming, I did a little(hence "a little". I'm no bloody firearms expert) research on some of my favorite weapons only to find out how inaccurately depicted most of them were. Here's some the offenders.

Winchester Model 1887- CoD Modern Warfare
Terminator. All day. Every day.
What You've Seen: This lightweight shotgun is often characterized by a rather fast reload rate and the ability to dual wield them. Pure badassery.

In reality: Unless you were playing a game like Red Dead Redemption, the weapon would NEVER find itself on modern day battlefields. Modern Warfare 2's 1887 looked straight out of a spaghetti western and totally did not fit the game's time period. Modern Warfare 3 took it a step further and modernized the shotgun, tactical rails and all but it would still be totally impractical versus modern day semi auto and pump action shotguns. No to mention one handing the damn thing takes enough skill on it's own, two is a ticket to the emergency room with two broken wrists.

Heckler & Koch XM8- Battlefield, CoD Black Ops II
Melts in your hand. Not in your mouth.
What You've Seen: The XM8 has become the assault rifle of choice for world superpowers and it sees common use in near future battlefields.

In reality: Any chance of the XM8 ever being used in the years to come is actually not that slim. The gun is still a viable replacement to the M4 and could be adopted whenever. The only downside to this is the problems that plague this weapons design and the competition it faces from weapons like the FN SCAR, not to mention funding will most likely kill any chances that the XM8 will see widespread use(Malaysia somehow has some in service). The XM8 had major overheating problems to the point that the handguard would literally melt in your hands. While it sees itself right at home in near future games with it's sleek styling, it's probably not going to be in the hands of our troops any time soon. 

Pancor MK3A1 Jackhammer- Fallout 2, Battlefield
Street sweeping at it's finest.
What You've Seen: The Jackhammer is a full auto shotgun that's typically popular with the bad guys. Not to mention particularly good at killing muties in the irradiated heat of the desert.

In reality: The Jackhammer practically doesn't exist. There's only a some documents and blueprints and two known actual prototypes floating around on the planet and nobody has a damn clue who or what has them. There isn't even any old tapes of anybody firing one. The weapon itself wasn't very effective either, the gun was very cumbersome and being developed in the 80's, there was really no recoil dampening tech back then so it probably kicked like a mule. This one really takes the cake for being inaccurately depicted because developers just guessed how the damn thing operated, because nobody did know. What a shame.

Simonov PTRS-41- CoD World at War
Dude, did you just shoot through, a TANK?
What You've Seen: The PTRS often is portrayed as a scoped rifle, used for hunting men like deer, but at extreme ranges.

In reality: What a load of shit. The PTRS-41 is not a sniper rifle, but a anti TANK rifle. Yeah that's right, a Soviet rifle used to kill TANKS, and there is no record of one ever used a sniping weapon. You just need to glance at it to realize that any notion of using it with any mobility will end you up with a mangled spine. The PTRS is about 7 feet long and it weighs in at about 46 pounds, not to mention you can only fire it from a prone position on it's bipod without the risk of the recoil dislocating your shoulder. The Russians clearly stuck to good reason and went with scoped Mosins instead of this pig. Ignorance is bliss indeed.

Desert Eagle - Various Games
Try and hit something with it, then beg for your 1911 back.
What You've Seen: This massive Israeli pistol has become a staple in gaming for it's insane power. The Deagle has enough power to drop your foe in one shot.

In reality: The Desert Eagle is probably one of the most mundane weapons in gaming history and it's accuracy of depiction varies. The pistol in real life is an expensive, unreliable 4 and a half pound pig that fires .50 Action Express with enough recoil to snap your wrist in two. The only real reason why this pistol gained any recognition is of how intimidating it is, and that's all that really matter to developers. The time when you attempt to fire Deagle like you did in CoD 4 in real life is the time when you should question how informed you were when you shelled out $1500 for the thing.

Heckler & Koch G11 - CoD Black Ops, Fallout 2
Hey look mom! No shells!
What You've Seen: This futuristic looking 3 round burst assault rifle is often seen as a weapon of choice for spec ops forces and spies across the globe.

In reality: The G11 was part of 20 year project to develop an assault rifle that fired caseless ammunition, which meant the round was surrounded in propellant and no shells were needed. This allowed the rifle to fire burst so fast that the third round had already left the barrel before the user felt the recoil of the first. However, when the barrel heated up, it would accidentally ignite the propellant surrounding the ammo and the gun would fire uncontrollably until the magazine was empty. Combined with high costs, the idea was scrapped. The idea of caseless ammo however still lives on in the LSAT LMG, gun that's gradually gaining popularity in games as we speak.

Walther WA-2000 - CoD Modern Warfare 2
I'm bulpup. Your argument is now invalid.
What You've Seen: This unusual bulpup sniper rifle is seen in the hands of Ultranationalists and spec ops sniper teams often times in shooters.

In reality: The WA-2000 was developed in the late 1970s and utilized the bulpup configuration so it was fairly short compared to regular configurations, yet it was still very accurate. However, the weapon was expensive and rather fragile and only 172 are known to exist. And those 172 are sitting in some elitist collector's glass display case and on some rare occasion, an actual shooting competition but it's pretty clear the WA-2000 was never used by any military force, ever. But seriously, it's almost impossible to hate how the rifle looks with it's wood furniture and rather industrial box shape that unassumingly speaks of deadliness.

FG-42 - CoD World at War
Browning Automatic Rifle? Never heard of it.
What You've Seen: This standard issue German battle rifle with it's insanely high rate of fire is popular for gunning down masses of enemies easily

In Reality: The FG-42 like most people think off the top of their heads, was not a standard issue weapon and was used almost exclusively by paratroopers in very limited numbers. And yes, the gun did shoot very fast, but the recoil was immense due to how light the weapon was compared to lets say it's bigger brother, the MG-42. Thus, the gun was mostly fired in semi auto only so you wouldn't be left with terribly sore shoulder after riddling Allied troops with the weapon's 900 rounds per minute rate of fire. The gun was most likely included in WaW as an analogue to most of CoD 4's assault rifles. Because ya' know, screw historical accuracy.

UTAS UTS-15 - Battlefield 4, CoD Ghosts
Made of more plastic than a modern day celebrity.
What You've Seen: The UTS is a high capacity pump action shotgun that is perfect for intense close quarter combat without needing to reload every so often.

In Reality: The description above is true for the most part, the UTS-15 was designed to be "the ultimate police shotgun" alongside the likes of the KSG and the M1216 shotguns, that is, if the gun won't break after putting a few shots through it. The UTS-15 is notoriously unreliable and awkward to use, the weapon can get dirty easily, it has all the right switches in all the wrong places, and it's mostly made from plastic parts so various parts of it break rather quickly. Don't believe it? Watch FPSRussia go through THREE of them just film one video. Honestly, if a modern military was to ever use this gun, it would be a nightmare just to maintain the reliability of these weapons. Looks like the 870 still has a long ways to go.

So there you have it. Some of these guns you may have not even heard or seen of before and some of them you may have. Like I said I'm no gun expert so lets just say my 5 minutes of looking up quick bits of information on Wikipedia for each gun probably won't translate into 100% perfect information. But hey, the theme here is that game developers don't really care about real life accuracy, then again most of us don't anyways. It's all just fun and games.

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