Ten Gaming MisGUNceptions

I don't claim to be a gun expert, however, one thing that annoys me is when gamers label certain first and third person shooters as being realistic. They may indeed be more realistic than other games that use guns, but let's get this straight, there is no such thing as a 100% realistic shooter in gaming when it comes to guns.

That's why it annoys me when some gamers knock a game for "not having realistic gun physics." Most arm chair warriors have never even seen a real gun in their lives let alone fired one. Yet they'll try and tell you how much more realistic On game is over another. Shooting a bb, or paintball gun isn't exactly comparable to firing a real gun which makes me truly question their expertise on the subject.

So to try and set the record straight on certain areas where games get it wrong, I decided to list ten gaming misGUNceptions. Once again, I'm more on an enthusiast than an expert, but I have shot my fair share of firearms in my time.

MisGunception number 10- Rocket/Grenade Launchers

OK this isn't exactly a gun myth, but something important to keep in mind.

How many times in a game have you been standing behind a teammate in an only match when he was launching a rocket at an enemy? Did you get harmed in any way? The answer is a definite no. In reality, rocket launchers have a dangerous back-blast that can injure or even kill anyone unfortunate enough to be standing behind it. Remember, it is launching an explosive projectile at high speeds

here's a better explanation I found On www.military-sf.com:

A rocket launcher is basically an explosive charge propelled at the enemy by explosive gases. The explosive gases give the round velocity and help accelerate after it leaves the barrel or launcher. A bullet uses explosive gases to push the projectile out in a single explosion. A rocket burns fuel in flight to give the charge additional range.

So essentially, unlike a bullet leaving a rifle, a rocket launcher vents it's explosive gasses out the back. Anyone standing behind it when it's launched would be in for a big surprise. It is also not suggested to use a rocket launcher in an enclosed area.


There is also a big misconception about grenade launchers in games. How many times in a game have you been killed by an enemy launching a grenade at you in close range? In reality, there is a certain distance the grenade projectile has to travel before it's armed. If you take a grenade to the gut at point blank, the projectile would still, no doubt, fly through you, but it wouldn't blow you up.

Here's what anarticle I found on globalsecurity.org had to say about the matter:

The M386, M397, M397A1, M406, and M433 rounds arm within 14 to 27 meters (46 to 89 ft). The M361 and M441 rounds arm within 2.4 to 3 meters (8 to 10 ft).

So next time you get fragged by an opponent who launches an exploding grenade at his feet, feel free to call shenanigans.

I'm not even going into the fact that the M203 grenade launcher is capable of hitting area targets at around 350 meters, but can only shoot twenty feet tops in most games, and that in reality, you can't bounce grenades around a corner to get a kill. Those ones should be obvious, however.

MisGunception number 9- Guns never Jam

Throughout the course of many games, you can quite literally put thousands of rounds through a single firearm without so much as a single jam up.

In reality, a gun is a mechanical device, and as such is at times prone to malfunction if not properly maintained.

Even so, I know from personal experience, even the most well maintained firearms still occasionally act up. A bullet is essentially propelled via a miniature explosion. Over time carbon, copper fowling from the bullets themselves, and even unburnt powder can build up in the firearm, and can cause a jam.

There are actually a number of other reasons for jams as well such as faulty magazines causing a miss-feed, corrosion, a defective weapon, or your gun just doesn't like that specific brand of ammo seeing as not all ammo is equal. However, the main reason for such malfunctions usually comes from a dirty weapon.

In games, you don't exactly take the time to maintain your firearm, and yet you never have to anyways. Your gun fires the same every time without any problems. The closest thing that I've seen to a jam up is when you fail to get the fast reload in Gears of War.

Lets not also forget that the rounds are mass produced, and on occasion, you will come across a dummy round or two.

MisGunception number 8- The Reload

Some games have become smart to this, but others are still clueless. If you'll notice in most games when you reload your weapon, your character chambers a round every time. However, if you reload a firearm before you've depleted the previous mag, that actually leaves a live round still in the chamber. This would then eliminate the need to chamber a new round every time you reload assuming that you didn't fully expend all the rounds from your previous magazine. This would just require the simple action of inserting the new mag into the firearm, and then you could continue firing. Like I said, some game developers have become smart to this lately, but it should soon be more common place in games.

There is another personal annoyance I have with reloading in games that should be remedied as well. Say you're in the middle of reloading, and you get as far as putting the new mag into your rifle, and then suddenly an enemy comes out of nowhere, and you butt-stroke him. Upon returning to your reload, your character then restarts the reload. If you got as far as inserting a new magazine into your rife, then all you would have to do is either chamber a round, and then you're good to go, or if you already had a round chambered, you wouldn't have to do anything.

Instead, you're stuck redoing the entire reload animation which can draw out the reload enough to get you killed if you have to butt-stroke multiple enemies. My second point, however, isn't so much a misconception as it is laziness on the developer's part.

MisGunception number 7- Auto Filling Magazines

This is another one I find amusing in "realistic" shooters. Every time you pick up a magazine from an enemy, you ammo magically gets pooled into a large lot, and magically fills all your magazines. Every time you reload, you'll have a full mag regardless.

Realistically, if you fire off 20 rounds in a 30 round magazine, you're still going to have 10 rounds left in the mag when you come back to it. The Socom series has always gotten this right. In Socom, you carry into battle a set number of mags which you can reload at any time. Those magazines, however, do not refill. Mismanagement of your magazines can get you killed if you leave one or two rounds in a mag, and later reload it back into your weapon in the middle of an intense firefight.

Call of Duty still uses the same system that dates back as far as Goldeneye if not farther. It doesn't pool all the ammo into on giant clip like Doom did, but it still magically pools that ammo into full mags for the player. In truth, you'd have to take the time to individually load each mag.

MisGunception number 6- Penetration

This is another one that games are finally starting to come around too. Despite what the movies have taught us, if you stand behind drywall, and an enemy shoots at you, their bullets can and will shoot though the drywall thus injuring or killing you.

Even many of the smaller handgun calibers can easily penetrate through most walls. In fact, I constantly see news reports in my area where people get injured or killed by stray bullets penetrating the walls of their homes. This is also why shotguns are ideal for home defense, because their spray pattern, depending on the ammo and choke you choose, spreads out and loses momentum faster than the standard bullet will. Even a full metal jacket 9mm round can easily penetrate through the walls of a the average house.

As stated, many games have become smart to bullets penetrating walls, but many of them still allow you to get cover behind items in the environment like wooden crates, and metal barrels which would also easily be penetrated.

MisGunception number 5- Silencers

Having a silencer on your gun instantly means that no one will hear or know that they are being shot at. Right? Well, bullets break the sound barrier, and as with an F-15 fighter jet, they too produce a sonic boom. It's not quite the same noise as the sonic boom of a jet, because part of the boom in a jet's sonic boom has to do with the noise of the jet engine itself. Bullets do produce a "crack" sound when they break the sound barrier.

The crack a bullet makes when it breaks the sound barrier also produces a distinct whooshing sound that sounds similar to the noise a car makes driving down the road. In fact, when I go shooting at an outdoor gun range, it actually sounds like there is a busy highway behind me despite the fact that the range is out in the middle of the Arizona desert. This means that a target would know he was being shot at, but not necessarily from where.

There is an exception to this rule. They actually design sub-sonic rounds. These are rounds who's bullets fly slow enough to not break the sound barrier, and thus do no produce a sonic boom. These are ideal for close range assassinations with a silenced weapon.

MisGunception number 4- Buttstroke

The M1 Garand is a battle hardened rifle with a thick wooden stock. It's heavy duty and you could easily split a person's skull with it. In fact, many battle rifles from the WWII era and earlier would deliver devastating blows to the recipient of their butt-stroke.

The modern battle rifle, however, is a different beast altogether. Most are designed to be light weight, and compact. While these rifles are extremely versatile in combat, they are not made with hand to hand combat in mind. Butt-stroking an enemy with a modern rifle like the M16 or it's variants, or even the AK-47 (which has a wooden stock that is merely bolted on to the receiver) or it's folding stock variants runs the risk of actually breaking your rifle. Despite the devastating effects that buttstrokes have in games, many guns featured in games wouldn't have nearly as devastating an effect on your opponent.

It's the same with handguns as well. The Colt 1911 is a heavy duty steel gun that would easily straighten up on anyone getting pistol whipped by it. However, as with most modern rifles, modern pistols are light weight, and most are a mixture of polymer (plastic) and steel. A Glock is a perfect example of this. The only part of a Glock that would be good for the old pistol-whip would be the top of the gun where the steel slide and barrel are. The frame of a Glock is too light and too soft to do any real damage to your opponent.

Buttstrokes are extremely overpowered in games as it is, but that doesn't mean they are all realistic in damage.

MisGunception number 3- Scopes

You may be a badass sniper in Call of duty, but I'd hate to burst your bubble there buddy, that means jack dookie in real life. Scopes are quite a bit more complicated than just aiming and shooting with them. Almost every game in existence is completely unrealistic in their treatments of a rifle scope. Yes, even the great Call of Duty is way off.

I've often seen topics show up in the forums about what kind of rifle they would take into battle, and the majority of the mislead gamers said a sniper rifle so they could pick off enemies from a distance. I actually wondered if these forumers actually believed that using a scope was as simple and easy as lining up a target with their sights, and having the bullet go straight to the target they are aiming at every time regardless of the distance.

Scopes take exact precision and sometimes even a little bit of math (depending on the wind) to sight in for the perfect shot. A scope sighted on at 200 yards will shoot high at 100 yards, and low at 300 yards. Despite what you may think, gravity effects even bullets in mid flight. There is a bullet drop over long distances. Wind also has an effect on a bullet in mid flight and over a distance can push the bullet way off course. At close range the wind is less of a factor, but push it out to a few hundred yards, and we're talking missing your target by feet, and not inches.

In a game like Call of Duty, the scoped rifle will shoot as perfectly straight, and on target from 10 feet as it will at 100 yards with absolutely no adjustment. In reality, the sniper would have to adjust his aim in order to get an accurate shot off at an opponent or he would run the risk of completely missing his target, and possibly giving his position away.

What's true for scopes is also true for iron sights on a rifle. They too, at times, require adjustments for shots at varying distances. That or just some good Kentucky Windage.

Keep in mind I'm not even going into the various types of ammo (as some types of ammo will shoot more accurately out of your rifle than other), powder loads, bullet weight, and etc. In fact some guys take years working up the perfect load for their rifles.

The game I've played that is most realistic to using a scope is a game called Sniper Elite on the PC, PS2, and Xbox. It also appears to have a Wii port in the makings, but don't quote me on that one until it actually happens.

MisGunception number 2- Shotguns

Shotguns are the most misused and misunderstood weapons in video game history. The movies teach us that every shotgun sprays like bird shot coming out of a sawed off shotgun. In reality the shotgun is one of the most versatile weapons in the arsenal of man.

For starters, shotguns shoot more than just buck shot. You can practically shove anything into a shot shell from buckshot pellets, to slugs, bean bags, to grenades, to even bolo rounds. Anything that can fit into a shotgun shell can be fired from it with the right wadding.

Shotguns do have a spray pattern with buckshot and bird shot, but what games and movies never seem to take into account is the barrel choke. A sawed off shotgun doesn't have a choke, and would, no doubt, spread out and disperse rather quickly. It would be devastating up close, but extremely ineffective at a distance. Shotguns however have barrel chokes at the end that give them a specific spray pattern, and can give the gun a more effective range. Think of a choke like a nozzle on a hose. If you turn your hose on without a nozzle, the water doesn't go particularly far on it's own. When you put a nozzle on the hose, it pushes the water through a smaller opening giving it more pressure and a farther and more concentrated spray over a larger distance than having no nozzle at all. Chokes essentially do the same thing with the shotgun pellets. They determine the pattern of the pellets being shot out of the shotgun, and how close they are grouped together at different ranges. For a better explanation of shotgun chokes, GO HERE.

I've seem various claims about the effective range of a shotgun firing buckshot, but on average I hear that most shotguns have an effective range of 20 to 40 yards from the target. Some sources say even up to 50 yards. It probably depends on the shogun, the choke and the ammo load. Either way, if you're standing on the goal line, and you enemy is on the 50 yard line, you'll at least injure him at that distance. It sure beats the 10 foot range of the average shotgun in gaming.


I haven't even gotten into rifled shotguns yet. The average shotgun is what they call smooth bore. Unlike something like the M1-Garand a smoother-bore shotgun doesn't have rifling inside the barrel to give it the accuracy of a rifle. To give clarity on what rifling is, the Mariam Webster dictionary definition is: a system of spiral grooves in the surface of the bore of a gun causing a projectile when fired to rotate about its longer axis . Those groves give the bullet it's spin which give it the accuracy needed to hit what you are aiming at. Think of it as the difference of throwing a football straight without a spiral, and then throwing it with a spiral. Or for a geek reference, the beginning of every James Bond movie shows the rifling of a gun that is being pointed at Bond before he turns and shoots the would-be assassin. I'm willing to bet that some of you thought it was a camera.

They have shotguns now that have rifling in their barrels that give them up to 100 yards of accuracy when shooting slug rounds. Some people can reportedly hit targets at up to 200 yards with a lot of practice. As shooting technology increases and the science of shooting improves, I have no doubt that the accuracy and range of shotguns will also improve.

I reality, if games were to accurately portray shotguns, there wouldn't be a need to use any other weapon, because they would be extremely devastating, and unbalancing in online play. The shogun would be dubbed the ultimate noob tube.

MisGunception number 1- Games train kids how to be be marksmen

I've heard it said at times from uneducated people that the shooters at Columbine trained for headshots by playing Doom. That is the biggest bit of bulls*** I've ever heard.

Never mind that even the most realistic shooter games of today aren't even close to being comparable to the real thing, but Doom with it's auto aim, and no reloads is especially not the game to train kids how to use a firearm. You can't even aim for headshots in Doom.

I will say this, modern games can intellectually teach people how to load and actuate a firearm. They even intellectually teach gamers how to aim in certain games like Call of Duty (never mind that the back post of a lot of rifles in such games isn't properly lined up with he front post due to the need to be able to see what you're shooting at in game). That being said, the only real thing that teaches someone how to use a firearm effectively is the proper training and experience.

Shooting firearms well is a learned skill, no different than any other skill people develop. Some of the best shots in the world have had guns in their hands since they were able to walk. It takes years of practice and experience to get good at using a firearm.

Pressing a button, or even pulling a controller trigger like on the 360 controller and having the controller vibrate is no substitute for the feel the kick of a real rifle. I takes years to get aiming, breathing, recoil anticipation, trigger pull, adjusting your sights, and every other aspect of accurately firing a real firearm down pat. Sure, anyone can fire a weapon, but not everyone can fire it well. The idea that games train kids on how to accurately shoot a gun is idiotic in my view.

Video games don't train kids how to use real guns, because as you can see, they don't even properly use them to begin with. That's why we have so many innocent bystanders getting shot in the many gang wars being waged across our country, because those idiots just spray and pray like they see on TV, and in video games.


In Conclusion: So what does this all mean? The answer is, nothing. A game that was an accurate sim of shooting a weapon wouldn't be fun for the majority of gamers out there. In fact, they would probably hate it. A game has to be playable and usually as uncomplicated as possible. They have to stress playability over reality which is OK with me. What it also means is that gamers need to shut up about one game being more realistic than another game to shooting, because no game is realistic. Games are a form of entertainment anyways. If you want a real experience of shooting a weapon, then hit up your local gun shop, and then your local range. As for the rest of the arm chair warriors, just enjoy your games, and don't stress over the reality of things in games.

NOTE: I again reiterate that I don't claim to be an expert on guns. What I've presented here is from my own relatively limited (by comparison to many people who have been around guns longer, and have a ton more experience than I do) experience with shooting. I've shot a wide range of firearms, and enjoy shooting as recreation, but again, I am no expert on the subject. There are a plethora of informative sites out there from real professionals who know a lot more than I about the subject, and I would suggest looking them up if you want more in-depth reporting on the various subjects I have presented in this blog.

My Perspective on Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, and Timesplitters

This is a vid of me rambling on about my perspective of Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, and Timesplitters. Again, these are my views, and I don't expect people to share them. It's weird, whenever I turn the camera on, It's like I forget what I'm going to say. I made a few corrections, but I still caught a few places where I made some mistakes. Like when I said a number of Ex-rare employees, when It was only three or four of them like the guy who made the music, and David Doak (for those who may remember Dr. Doak in the facility level in Goldeneye whom you have to mean up with). As for saying "Blow Me," I'm not sure where that came from. I was on the spot when a simple Kiss my ass would have worked. I don't think I've ever even used that phrase but a few times in my life which makes me wonder why it was the first thing that came to mind, but what's worse, is I said it twice. What the hell? But yes, Timesplitters is easily the continuation of the Goldeneye/Perfect Dark series. It captured the feel, and vastly improved the formula to the point that I have little need to play GE, or PD by comparison. Timesplitters really is that good. I liked Perfect Dark Zero, it had some good stuff to it, and some good bot matches, but Timesplitters was much better. I'm also not sure why I pronounced it like Mult-I-player instead of mul-tee-player. Also, Perfect Dark does technically have a mode that will run without the expansion pak, but it's only multiplayer, and you don't have access to the single player, so you can play A mode without the expansion Pak, but the rest of the game is held hostage unless you have the expansion Pak. Turok 2, and Turok 3, let you play the full game and the multiplayer regardless of whether or not you have the expansion pak or not.

My Snes Collection

This is just a vid showing my Snes collection. As usual, I am streaming an old analog camera through my capture card.

Later in the vid, I noted that I have been playing Final Fantasy since 1993 with the first one, when I watched my vid again, it almost sounded as if I was saying that FF came out in 1993.

Also, I know my opinion on OOT isn't a popular one, but despite how much I loved LTTP, OOT just had some nagging issues that annoyed me when I first played it in 1998, and when I still play it today. That being said, I have probably played through it around 5 or 6 times over the years, so my opinion on the game is not coming from someone who hasn't played it. It has grown on me over the years, but the GC Zelda games fixed a lot of the annoyances I had with OOT. I'm not saying that OOT sucked in any way shape or form, I'm just saying I was sort of disappointed with it.

A Quick Look at the Colecovision and Atari 7800

Shaky and low quality with muffled sound, but it does the job well enough. My Coleco is rather dirty, is has always been dirty since I have owned it. I have only on rare occasions pulled it out to play it over the years.

Annoying Gaming Cliches: Forced Training Modes

This is my first poor attempt at reading something I wrote. Not the best, and the way I get audio files is still laughable.

In some ways this is a response to video from user Elbryan42 who recently blogged his 15 biggest pet peeves. Check out his video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQEKQnGdVgs&feature=plcp

If you have never come across his playthroughs of games, you should know that his throw-away runs are better than my best runs in games, so do him the honor of subscribing.

I decided to show footage of Tomb Raider II for this vid, to show a game where completing the training is almost required to understand the game, and get the hang of the controls. I forgot to make a note about how older, more complex 3D games, like TR, or even Half Life never forced you into training, but left it as optional.

Here is a transcript of what is being said:

Training modes, since the advent of 3D gaming they have been around in one form or another. The problem is, they used to be optional. Nowadays, there are a number of developers who have decided to take optional out of the equation, and have decided to force these modes onto unsuspecting gamers.

Did you ever have a teacher in high school that would talk to you like an idiot, because the rest of the class was full of idiots? Essentially, that is what developers are doing to gamers. Just because some of the people who are playing, may be new to gaming, or may only game casually, they decided to treat all of us as if gaming was something we discovered yesterday.

I would just like to know, WHO THINKS THIS IS GOOD DESIGN? Does it really improve the game at all when you take a mode, that used to have a separate option on the title screen in games, meaning it was optional, and then force gamers to go through a tedious training mode, sometimes after you already let them play through the first level of the game. Are gamers so stupid that they cannot figure out how to press buttons to find out what they do? Press "A" to jump. Really? Because I never would have thought to press a button if you had not told me to.

Forced training modes are tedious enough, however, what I like to call simon-says training modes are the absolute worst examples of training modes, and the best example of bad game design there are. "Press "A" to jump." "Oops, you punched, failed. Let's start again. Press "A" to jump." Oops,You tried moving, FAILED. How dare you try to do anything else but what I have commanded you to do."

One very good example of the worst kind of forced training mode that has stuck in my head is in Spiderman 3. I borrowed the game from a friend a few years back, and by the time I got done with the training mode, I was already done with the game. You even get scolded by Bruce Campbell for trying to press buttons to skip through the talking. I finished the training, mode, stopped playing the game, and gave it back to my friend. I want to play a game, not be forced to jump through hoops before I ever get to play the actual game. By the time I am done with these modes, I have usually lost complete interest in a game, and just move on to the next one. If you can burn me out of a game before I ever actually play the game, then you've got talent, or lack there of.

Gears of War was a huge game, and the great thing about Gears is that it gives the player the option to forgo training. Mirror's Edge starts out in a training mode, but by pausing the game, you have the choice to skip the training. These are great examples that other developers should be following. Why, especially if you have already played through the game multiple times, are developers still forcing this horrible design idea on us? When did it become, in developer's minds, a good idea to make an optional mode mandatory? This is what bad design looks like, and forced training modes need to be taken out of games. If fighting games, who are one of the few game genres that I see the need for an in-depth training mode due to their complexity, and for the good ones, depth of play, do not force a training mode on you, then what makes developers think their game, who's gameplay is already watered down for mainstream appeal needs one?

In the end, forced training modes need to be taken out of gaming for good. Either make them a separate option in games, or use hint messages that can be turned off to tell us what the buttons do. And by hint messages, I mean ones that pop up on screen during the gameplay, not ones that pause the gameplay to tell you something.

But for the sake of argument, and the possibility of there being one person out there who thinks that forcing training on gamers is a good design choice, I would love to hear from you. How does one justify it as anything but bad design? Let me know.

My Sega Genesis Collection

Oh yes, I did it again, I did use an old analog camera and stream it through my capture card. So yeah, bad quality. I do have a Flip HD camera, but the computer I have is too crappy to run it.

My bro had an ebay business going for a while there, and in one of the big game lots he acquired a bunch of Sega Genesis cases. Some with the artwork, and others in just plain black cases, so he gave me a bunch of cases for my Genesis games.

I also say we a lot, because a number of these are games I have had since childhood, and my memories are between my bro and I collecting a number of these. We used to have a shared collection, but he ended up giving me the entire collection of games.

I still feel like I'm missing a few games here and there, but overall, this is the majority of my collection. It certainly isn't the greatest Genesis/Mega Drive collection in the world, but it's a respectable one. My collection for my older consoles isn't as good as for my newer consoles, because kids don't usually have the kind of money to buy a bunch of games. I rented the hell out of games in the 16-bit era, but I didn't start buying heavily until the end of the PS1's era when a bunch of games were in the bargain bins, and, being older, I had more money to buy them.

If only I was cool enough to be a geek today

Something has been brought to my attention again that I forgot about. I realized, after watching a few news videos from some popular gaming websites, that I'm suddenly not cool enough to be a gamer anymore. After watching their news vids, which usually feature some douchey guy (who is the only one who finds himself funny) or some blond-haired bimbo, neither of which know their heads from their asses in real gaming, trying to be funny and entertaining, I suddenly realized how ignorant the mainstream is.

Now that gaming has become "hip," and by hip, I mean phony, shallow, mainstream-hip, I'm not cool enough to fit in with a bunch of wannabe geeks. I guess I'm just saying f*** the watered down mainstream gaming crap, and f*** trying to be a "cool" geek. We real gaming geeks know who we are, and we don't need acceptance from a shallow crowd in order to be considered "geek" enough for them. I guess I'm neither douchey enough, nor ignorant enough to be a gamer anymore. I generally despise the mainstream of anything, but I really despise it in gaming.

I miss the days where gaming editors (I do not consider them journalists) had standards. Sure, the gaming magazines of old sometimes made some questionable reviews here and there, but at least they took their jobs seriously. They weren't trying to be cool.