I'm an avid gamer. My favorite genres are 1st-person shooters and survival horror games. I love games like Doom, Quake, Half-Life, and Silent Hill (I have yet to play Silent Hill 2: Restless Dreams). However, one gripe I have is that I've never seen one game that has weapons in it in which the weapons are portrayed 100% realistically. Half-Life comes close but is cut short by their depiction of the Franchi SPAS-12. I'm not talking about the graphics (with the high-definition pack, all the weapons look AWESOME!). I'm talking about the function. Whoever programmed the weapons for Half-Life believes that a .357 Magnum is more powerful than a 12 gauge. Also, the shotgun isn't chamber-loaded. With the high-definition pack, the Glock is changed to a Beretta 92 and the MP-5 is changed to an M-4 and is referred to in the manual as a "9mm assault rifle" even though, in the game, it takes the usual 5.56mm AR mags. THESE PEOPLE KNOW NOTHING! They should have kept the Glock and the MP-5 and just made them look better with the HD pack like they did with all the other weapons.

There's a Half-Life mod called 'Firearms'. It's pretty good but some of the weapon models are all screwey. There's a Benelli shotgun which is distorted to a point where it's almost all receiver. This is made up for by the inclusion of a Saiga 12-K (no reason to use the Benelli if you can use this detachable mag-fed wonder). Most of the weapons look and function realistically. One thing I can't stand, however, is the way the hand looks when holding a pistol. I've noticed this in many games (including Tomb Raider). The hand looks like a child's and is barely gripping the gun. The thumb is straight and parallel with the barrel and the fingers don't even wrap all the way around the grip! If you fired a gun like this in real life, it would fly out of your hand. I don't care how difficult it is to program a human hand-looking polygon into a game. Unreal Tournament is an exception. Not only do the hands that grip the guns look mostly right, but everyone wears snug-fitting black leather gloves (I have a thing for those).

And then there's my latest obsession, Quake III: Arena. The weapons are completely unrealistic but the game is just so damn fun that it almost doesn't matter...almost. My only real gripe is with the machine gun and the shotgun. Everyone starts out with an electrical saw blade gauntlet and a machine gun. The machine gun is reminicent of the chaingun from Doom or the super-nailgun from Quake. It has 4 rotary barrels. The only dumb thing is that the barrels are arranged so they taper, causing the gun to look like a huge drill with an oversized bit. What they did with the shotgun bothers me more. As with Gordon Freeman's SPAS-12 (which should function as an autoloader since video game guns never jam) from Half-Life, the Quake Arena shotgun is a pump-action that ejects it's casings as if it was an autoloader - and they eject BEFORE being pumped. It's also a double-barrel, so a casing ejects from each side (which is a cool idea). Some characters hold weapons with one hand. In fact, one of the characters, Tank Jr. (a human/Strogg hybrid cyborg with a metal beak), only has one hand! His other hand is some kind of blade which he only uses to make gestures with (all characters have a gesture). I think id Software should have made the Quake III shotgun function more like the Quake II super-shotgun. Also, none of the Quake weapons are reloaded. The make-believe weapons like the BFG, the plasma gun, and the lightning gun are okay because they're just make-believe. The rocket launcher would have been cooler if they'd made it a belt-fed like the one from Quake II. And the grenade launcher is fine the way it is. All the weapons would have been better if they functioned and were reloaded realistically.

Another thing I can't stand is when MAC-10s and Ingram M-10s are referred to as Uzis. Tomb Raider makes this mistake. Half-Life: Firearms doesn't. I was impressed by the akimbo Ingrams in Firearms. They even reload right!

I can catch every situation in movies and games in which a gun is portrayed or used wrong. I should be a freelance weapons consultant for video game companies!

*P.S.: I had to break this post into 2 parts because it was too large.

Try Operation: Flashpoint.  The most realistic thing I've ever seen...

Sometimes, I can't always get out to shoot the real things. Besides, it's more fun to waste frothing abominations, twisted monstrocities, and polygonal/digital jack-booted government thugs than to just plink at bottles and cans and put holes in paper targets.

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I have yet to experience Operation: Flashpoint but I'm looking forward to it. I'm also looking forward to Hunter: The Reckoning even though I don't have an Xbox (my friend does, though).

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Another gripe I have is with the shotgun from the original Silent Hill. It's a sawed-off side-by-side that functions like as 6-round single-barreled autoloader! EXPLAIN!!