9 Video Game Guns That DON'T Kill
Guns don't kill people, players do.
Ever since arcade goers in the 1960s shot their first light gun at a screen, games and guns have gone hand in hand.
From the symphonic boom of Doom II's Super Shotgun to the rat-a-tat of Halo Infinite's absurdly overpowered Battle Rifle, gamers have been enjoying killing friend and foe alike with some of the finest virtual weaponry ever created.
Which is all well and good, but (to paraphrase Edge magazine's infamous Doom review) what if you could pacify these creatures instead? Well, it turns out games have been letting players do that for years!
In this list we'll be looking at some of the many guns in videogames that shun conventional ballistic violence in favour of more creative solutions. After all, why shoot your foe dead when you could turn them into sheep, summon demons, or send them into euphoric bliss?
So throw away your ammo belt, pack up your tranq darts/beanbags/healing beams and join us in celebrating gaming's greatest non-lethal firearms.
9. Anti-BT Handgun - Death Stranding
Even for a Hideo Kojima game, Death Stranding is deeply, deeply strange. It's a game where babies in jars, antimatter ghosts and medically inadvisable amounts of Monster Energy drink consumption all come together in what turns out to be a cross-country delivery-man simulator.
Naturally, that level of mind-boggling weirdness extends to the game's arsenal. The most efficient way of battling those ghosts mentioned earlier? Shooting them with a handgun powered by your own blood.
The Anti-BT handgun is one of Death Stranding's "hematic" weapons, and uses blood bags as ammunition. If that wasn't creepy enough, if you run out of bags the gun leeches blood from the protagonist's body and fires that at enemies instead.
Crucially for this list, while the handgun exorcises the already-dead spirits wondering the world, the living remain completely unaffected by it. Well, as unaffected as anyone who receives a faceful of Norman Reedus' life-blood would be.
Also, while it's not a gun we just had to mention Death Stranding's EX grenades. These are explosives powered by, according to the in-game database, "...bodily fluids, excrement, and other waste products".
Never change, Kojima.