If you want to rack up a truly genocidal body count in a videogame — and who doesn't? — you need a BFG. A BFG is a big fucking gun, a ludicrously oversized, overpowered weapon that reduces foes to giblets. The first use of the term was in id Software's 1993 game, Doom, the granddaddy of first-person shooters, and the arms race continues to this day with Halo Reach. Destin Legarie, an expert in virtual ordnance, dissects the latest BFGs on his Web videoshow, the Armory. We asked him to describe five of his all-time favorite spleen-splitters.
The BFG 9000 (Doom, 1993)
The design doc for Doom envisioned a "horrible hallway-scouring weapon." They came up with a massive gun that unleashes a toxic blast of green plasma. "It was one of the first guns that turned everyone you aimed it at into puddles of gore," Legarie says.
The Cerebral Bore (Turok 2: Seeds of Evil, 1998)
"It's awesome that somebody thought, 'What about a gun that burrows into your enemy's face?'" Legarie says. Fire it and the brain-seeking ammo zeroes in on its prey and sucks out their spinal fluid. Then — boom! — a headless corpse.
Land Shark Gun (Armed and Dangerous, 2003)
"It's a gun that shoots Great Whites," Legarie says. "How cool is that?" Pull the trigger and an ominous fin appears, slicing through solid ground until it surfaces to devour your foe. And here you've been shooting bullets all this time. How quaint.
The Experimental MIRV (Fallout 3, 2008)
Players of this postapocalyptic action game got a suitably destructive weapon: a hulking device that launches miniature H-bombs. Eight of them. Simultaneously. Result? Eight tiny mushroom clouds. "You fire, everything dies," Legarie says.
The Type-52 Guided Munitions Launcher/Explosive (Halo Reach, 2010)
This egregious piece of arm candy spews four bolts of doom per trigger- squeeze. The projectiles are homing grenades that stick to foes. Grab it and watch your enemies blow up.
