Discussion: what's your favorite video game weapon?

Games allow us to wield all kinds of weapons we never could in real life, either because physics would get in the way (lookin’ at you, Cloud) or because they’d be too expensive or too illegal. But of all the virtual weapons you’ve wreaked havoc with over the years, which is your favorite?

Xairylle: At first I wanted to answer Cloud’s Fusion Swords, but they only appeared in the movie Final Fantasy: Advent Children so I’m going for the next best thing: Cloud’s Buster Sword from Final Fantasy VII. This sword has a lot of history to it, as it also appears in Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII where it was passed from Angeal to Zack and finally to Cloud who all saw the sword to be—in a nutshell—a symbol of legacy, honor, and promise respectively. Of course, wielding something like this in real life will be quite impossible without injuring yourself and it does look like a giant cleaver with holes (Materia slots!), but I still think this sword is just that damn cool.

Mary-Anne: I don’t have a favorite weapon in particular but I do have a favorite type of weapon. Twin dual-wield blades whenever possible, baby! I favor hard-hitting frontline fighters wherever possible but there’s something about dual blades that always gets me. Maybe it’s the high DPS output, or maybe it’s because they just make any character look so damn badass.

Iain: The Sword of Sparda from the original Devil May Cry. Holy hell-swords this is the coolest sword in the video game history. It has an extendable shaft and rotating blade allowing it to turn into an axe, a poleaxe or a pike. In all my time playing games, I haven’t ever used a weapon so versatile or demanding. Use it wrong and you will die, but if you use it correctly, you can carve your way through enemies like a hot knife through butter. Or a giant demon blade through hordes of hellish entities.

Kuanyi: Your bare hands, or gauntlet weapons. I actually only play MMORPGs which feature monk or bare-fisted kung fu classes. There’s just something really cool about defeating a colossal beast with just your bare hands. Fist type special moves also tend to be the most powerful in video games; think of the Asura Strike from Ragnarok Online, or the Real Impact from the Devil May Cry series.

Charlie: The Zero-Point Energy Field Manipulator from Half-Life 2. That’s right suckas, the gravity gun. Physics-based FPS guns may be all the rage now, but this is the weapon that started that fire, and I’m not sure I’ve played with one quite as great since. Like the portal gun that would come later, the gravity gun can be used to solve all kinds of interesting puzzles. But unlike the portal gun, it can also be used to fire sawblades and other random detritus at zombies, or to play fetch with a gigantic robot dog.