Not All Weapons Are Created Equal
From the earliest 8-bit brawlers to today's sprawling open-world epics, weapons have always been central to what makes video games exciting. Some are so inventive and powerful that they define entire franchises and get referenced in gaming culture for decades after their debut (think the Energy Sword from Halo), while others leave you wondering why they were even made to begin with. With that said, let's take a look at 10 of the most underwhelming weapons in gaming, followed by 10 of the most impressive and creative ones players can use.
1. Deku Stick – The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
The Deku Stick looks like a dry twig and has the durability to match: use it in combat and it breaks after a single hit, while lighting it on fire starts a short fuse before it burns away entirely. Its most practical role in Ocarina of Time is as a makeshift torch for lighting flames and burning webs, especially inside the Great Deku Tree. The funny thing is that it’s not actually weak—it delivers more damage than the Kokiri Sword—but as a weapon it’s so disposable that every swing feels like you’re spending inventory just to bonk something once.
2. Lip's Stick – Super Smash Bros. Melee
Lip’s Stick, inspired by Lip’s flower wand from Panel de Pon, is one of those Super Smash Bros. Melee items that sounds more dangerous than it usually feels. A hit plants a flower on the opponent’s head, causing gradual damage over time, and repeated hits can make the flower grow larger and last longer. But as a K.O. tool, it’s underwhelming: it’s technically a battering item with some damage and knockback, but its real gimmick is slow chip damage rather than launching, stunning, or decisively stopping an opponent.
3. Pepper Spray – Saints Row 2
Saints Row 2 is known for its spectacularly over-the-top approach to weaponry, so it takes a special kind of ineffectiveness to stand out as one of the series’ lamest offerings, but the Pepper Spray manages it all the same. It can briefly stun enemies at close range, and that’s about the full extent of its threat; it won’t kill anyone, won’t help much in a firefight, and equipping it in any serious combat scenario is essentially a declaration that you’ve given up on surviving.
Keiron Crasktellanos on Unsplash
4. Wooden Sword – Minecraft
Minecraft's progression system is built on the idea of working your way up from nothing, but even within that framework, the wooden sword is a pretty rough start. It deals minimal damage, breaks quickly, and swinging it at the zombies and skeletons that show up on your first night gives you a very immediate sense of how outmatched you are. The good news is that upgrading to a stone sword takes only a few minutes, so the wooden sword's reign of mediocrity is mercifully brief.
5. Mini Mushroom – New Super Mario Bros.
The Mini Mushroom shrinks Mario down to a fraction of his normal size, and while it does allow access to certain small passages that regular Mario can't fit through, it's difficult to consider it a useful power-up from any combat standpoint. Enemies that would normally be stomped with ease become a much bigger challenge when you're barely visible on screen, and a single hit from almost anything sends you straight back to your base form. It functions better as a navigation tool than a weapon, and you'll probably want to steer clear of it in any situation where powerful enemies are nearby.
6. Newspaper – Dead Rising 2
Dead Rising 2 gives players an enormous creative toolkit for building and wielding improvised weapons, which makes the humble rolled-up newspaper one of the more embarrassing additions to that list. It’s exactly what it sounds like—a crude paper baton that you can technically swing at the undead—but its real value is less as a weapon and more as a component for something better, since combining it with whiskey creates a Molotov. Swinging it at a crowd of zombies produces less a feeling of power and more a feeling of creeping dread about your own survival prospects. Considering you’re fighting for your life in Fortune City, you’d really hope the nearby shops have something more substantial in stock.
7. Fork - The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim lets players carve through bandits, dragons, and undead horrors with everything from enchanted greatswords to Daedric artifacts, which makes the humble Fork one of the more embarrassing weapons in the province. It deals a single point of base damage, can’t be improved at a grindstone, and swinging it around is probably not going to be threatening to anyone. Still, there’s something undeniably funny about charging into battle with cutlery in hand...
8. Toy Knife – Undertale
Undertale places a Toy Knife in your path early on, and the name really does say most of what you need to know: it’s a plastic child’s weapon with an attack stat that barely registers. It’s an upgrade over the Stick you start with, but only just, and the moment you find something better to equip, the Toy Knife is likely to get retired to your inventory as a relic of your earliest and most vulnerable moments in the Underground.
9. Bamboo Spear – Dragon Quest
The Bamboo Spear has been part of the Dragon Quest series since the very beginning, and in terms of combat effectiveness, it doesn't have much to recommend: it's one of the weakest starting weapons in the franchise, dealing minimal damage against even the lowest-level enemies you'll encounter in the opening hours. It's immediately outclassed by the first equipment upgrade available in the nearest town, which is a pretty clear signal from the developers that it's meant as a temporary placeholder rather than a serious option. That said, the Bamboo Spear has carried enough nostalgia over the decades to earn a footnote in JRPG history, even if you wouldn't want to keep it in your inventory for long.
10. Clean Copy Ability – Kirby's Dream Land 3
Among all of Kirby's copy abilities, the Clean ability in Kirby's Dream Land 3 stands out as one of the most underwhelming options available, arming the lovable pink hero with a broom that produces a small gust of air in front of him. The damage output is low, the range is short, and in a game full of abilities that let Kirby breathe fire, wield a sword, or hammer enemies into the ground, sweeping the floor feels like something that belongs in a different game entirely. It's a charming domestic touch, but Kirby's opponents aren't going to be deterred by a light sweep.
Now that those 10 weak weapons are out of the way, let's jump into the second half of the list we're all excited about: the 10 coolest, most impressive weapons.
1. Portal Gun – Portal
Valve's Portal Gun doesn't fire bullets or launch explosives; instead, it shoots two linked portals onto any compatible flat surface, letting you step through one and emerge instantly from the other regardless of where in the level they've been placed. It completely redefined what a weapon could accomplish in a first-person game, shifting the focus from raw firepower to creative thinking about space and physics. Even years after Portal's 2007 release, the Portal Gun remains one of the most inventive and widely celebrated tools in gaming history.
Pikawil from Laval, Canada on Wikimedia
2. Gravity Gun – Half-Life 2
Few weapons in first-person shooter history have fundamentally changed how a player interacts with the environment the way Half-Life 2's Gravity Gun did. Whether you're hurling a cinder block at a Combine soldier or sending a saw blade spinning down a corridor, it turns nearly every loose object around you into a potential projectile, opening up an enormous range of combat options in any given encounter. Its upgraded form toward the game's conclusion pushes things even further, letting you pull enemies and heavy objects toward you from considerable distances.
Pikawil from Laval, Canada on Wikimedia
3. Leviathan Axe – God of War (2018)
Kratos's Leviathan Axe set a new benchmark for melee weapon design in action games, combining a freeze mechanic that slows and stops enemies with the ability to throw it at range and call it back to your hand on command. The satisfying sound of it snapping back into Kratos's grip became one of the most recognizable moments in the game's marketing campaign, and the actual experience delivers that same tactile satisfaction every single time. It also scales well throughout the adventure, so by the time you reach the final boss, the Leviathan Axe has grown into a truly fearsome weapon that rewards every upgrade you've put into it along the way.
4. BFG 9000 – Doom
The BFG 9000 might be the most appropriately named weapon in all of gaming, and its track record across the Doom franchise speaks for itself: a single shot fires a massive ball of energy that obliterates nearly everything in the immediate area, making it the definitive option for when a room is completely overrun. First appearing in the original 1993 Doom, it has carried over into virtually every subsequent entry in the series, consistently earning its place as the game's most powerful and cathartic offering.
dalvenjah from USA on Wikimedia
5. Lancer Assault Rifle – Gears of War
At first glance, the Lancer Assault Rifle might seem like a fairly standard automatic rifle, but the chainsaw bayonet fixed to the underside of the barrel changes everything about how you approach a close-quarters fight. When you've run out of patience for exchanging fire from behind cover, you can rev up that chainsaw and charge directly into your opponent for one of the messiest and most viscerally satisfying finishing moves the franchise has to offer. It's a weapon concept so straightforward and so effective that it became synonymous with the series almost from the moment the first game launched.
6. Cerebral Bore – Turok 2: Seeds of Evil
Turok 2's Cerebral Bore is a weapon you're unlikely to forget once you've seen it in action, and it earns that reputation through sheer grotesque effectiveness. Fire it at an enemy and the projectile homes in on their skull, drilling into it with a high-pitched whirring sound before detonating in a burst of considerable gore that leaves nothing standing nearby. It's unabashedly brutal, and for many players who grew up with Turok 2, it's the single weapon that made the game unforgettable.
7. RYNO – Ratchet & Clank
The RYNO (short for "Rip Ya a New One") is the most devastating weapon in the Ratchet & Clank series and a reward reserved exclusively for players dedicated enough to track down every last hidden collectible. Depending on which entry you're playing, it either fires a barrage of missiles capable of clearing an entire screen of enemies or does exactly that to the tune of Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture," which somehow makes it even better. It's expensive, it's rare, and it's absolutely worth every bolt you scrape together to obtain it.
8. Plasma Cutter – Dead Space
Originally engineered for industrial mining operations aboard deep-space vessels, the Plasma Cutter was never designed as a weapon, which makes it one of the more inspired design choices in survival horror history. Its rotatable firing modes let you target individual limbs with precision, and since dismemberment is the most effective strategy against the Necromorphs infesting the USG Ishimura, the Plasma Cutter becomes the most dependable tool in your entire inventory. Many players go through Dead Space from start to finish without swapping it out for something else, which says a lot about how well it was designed for the game's specific demands.
Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash
9. Mega Buster – Mega Man
Mega Man's built-in arm cannon has been the defining weapon of one of gaming's most beloved platformer franchises since 1987, and it earns that status by doing far more than just firing basic plasma shots. The real appeal lies in Mega Man's ability to absorb the weapons of defeated Robot Masters, effectively expanding the Mega Buster into a customizable arsenal that changes with every stage you clear. It's been iterated on and redesigned across dozens of sequels and spin-offs over the decades, and the core concept has remained as compelling in recent entries as it was in the very first game.
10. Energy Sword – Halo
There are few moments in Halo multiplayer quite as thrilling as picking up an Energy Sword off a fallen opponent and watching the rest of the lobby immediately reconsider their approach. Its glowing blue plasma blades cut through Spartan shields and armor in a single lunge, and both the visual design and accompanying sound effects make every successful strike feel explosive in the best possible way. It's appeared in nearly every major entry in the series, and decades into the franchise, players still scatter the moment they spot that unmistakable blue glow heading in their direction.
