FPS's Shotgun Edition #1

What's the gun with long barrel but it's meant to be close-range weapon? It's shotgun, of course. But there's some shotgun with short barrel, to be fair. Said pump-action usually exist in many First Person Shooters. Here the example:    

Bonegun - Painkiller Overdose (PC)

The visual design is really awesome and has 'Metal music' vibe all over it. The skull with hose/cable on bonegun's and the rib cages that form as base part of it are quite something. And i have to mention that it's ammo is bones as you can see in center. To quote Winston Crown from Corpse Killer "Radical, dude!". Bonegun shoots 16 bones at the time (at the cost of 1 ammo) with pattern of random and wide.  The pellets bones travel in the shape of cylinder with large diameter. There's quite strong blowback after each firing, suggesting that the blast from the gun is really strong. Of course, there's significant delay between firing, meaning rapid fire in succession is no go. There's secondary shoot in this gun which is: firing some mud/rock that petrify enemy who get hit. Despite the radical appearance, bonegun is certainly re-skin of shotgun in 1st Painkiller. Even so, it looks badass/badblood.

Stock/Standard Shotgun - Team Fortress 2 (PC)

(Source: wiki.teamfortress.com)

This one -from my knowledge- is quite legit Remington shotgun, which is quite common type of modern shotgun. The post-firing blowback is fairly strong. The barrel is smooth. Too smooth even that there's no front sight at the end. A bit of aiming apparatus will be nice, in my opinion. It fires 10 pellets in quite concentrated pattern but suffer huge damage loss over distance. The pellets travel in the shape of cone with medium diameter and slope between fairly shallow to medium. So it's really close to real-life shotgun that only good at short distance. It can hold maximum 6 shells and you have to insert the shell one by one into its chamber, to reload. This shotgun is weapon for Soldier, Pyro, Engineer, and Heavy. Soldier use it when engage enemy in close, preventing unnecessary damage to self when using rocket launcher. Pyro fire shotgun to finish off burnt escaped enemies. With the hitscan property of shotgun's shoot plus after-burn damage from flamethrower,  they most likely die. Any damage from shotgun no matter how small it is, will do the trick mostly. I call this technique "Combined Fire" the same name as the achievement unlock if you do that. Heavy use shotgun for sudden strike in close space but in my experience i seldom do that. Engineer use shotgun to provide fire support for his sentry. Use it on its own is a waste. I remember that i (as engineer) fight scout at Koth_sawmill map by using shotgun and i lose. the most reliable Engineer's weapon is sentry, afterall.   

   

Shotgun - Star Wars Battlefront II (2004/2005 - PC)

I consider SW - Battlefront 2 as first person shooter even though you can switch camera to third person or if you control the hero. It's astounding to me that in 'Galaxy Far Far Away' where laser weapon technology is really common, they still use shotgun that spray metal pellets instead of -you know- laser or plasma spray. Anyway, Clone Engineer uses this shotgun that more resemble to submachine gun than shotgun. I can tell that maybe because of the barrel and/or that side magazine. At least, there's tiny front sight at its end. About the mechanism: there's tiny post-firing blowback and significant delay between firing but no pumping motion by the engineer. It fires 8-10 pellets in rather concentrated group although there's slight deviation on said group from the targeting circle. But again, there's damage penalty over distance. The pellets travel in the shape of cone with not-so-small diameter and quite shallow slope.

As the shotgun mechanism is the same in entire game, i can only make further opinion on other shotgun's visual. Droid Engineer's shotgun is more like handgun with very long double-barrel which convinces me enough that this is shotgun. Although there's no pumping mechanism and there's that unused grip near its end. I can achieve killing spree with quite ease with shotgun hence i can say that SW - Battlefront 2's shotgun is more powerful TF 2's with slightly more accuracy.

 

But only strong enough to make teeny tiny scratch on AT-ST, obviously. What was i thinking? Pure idiocy, of course. Rebel smuggler's shotgun looks like oversized speed gun or barcode scanner and i don't like it. Plus there's scope on it. Yeah, scope for short range gun. Totally must-have! [Death-Star size sarcasm]. The only good thing in this shotgun is that small retractable stock, which seems reasonable design.

Sawed-Off Shotgun - Blood (DOS)

 

Next, we take a look at Monolith's retro FPS: Blood which is famous but not famous enough to me, not until 5 years ago. Anyway, this sawed-off shotgun looks like the real thing. It fires 10 pellets per shot. No pumping required and the shotgun is pushed backward after firing which represent fairly strong blowback. Caleb (the protagonist) can fire it in 2 ways: shoot from 1 barrel at once (primary fire) and shoot from all 2 barrels at once (secondary fire). After there's no shell on the shotgun, he (automatically) reloads it by simply putting 2 shells inside the barrel. The reload process is fast enough but he must pay attention to it and not let him trapped in dire situation defenseless while reloading. I don't think the real sawed-off shotgun can be fired from 1 barrel only. It's either firing both barrels or none. There's damage reduction if the shotgun fires from longer distance. Another sensible example of how real shotgun works. The pellet's grouping is fairly narrow in single shot and much wider in horizontal direction in double shot. Maybe the purpose of double shot is to hit larger group, where Caleb can hit more of the enemies compared to in single shot. In any shoot mode, the bones travels in the shape of cylinder with pretty small height.  

That's all about it. You can expect to see next edition which hopefully contain more of this shell-blasting guns. Later!