Crowbar from Half-Life, or something for direct encounters. Genre-defining weapons – what every shooter needs
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Today, it may seem almost unthinkable, but in the days of yore, it was quite common in FPS games to run out of ammo. Back then, a weapon of last resort came in handy, available in virtually every game from the genre's first wave. In Wolfenstein 3D, we were able to use a knife, which unfortunately turned out to be effective mainly against dogs, and in Doom our Marine had to rely on his own fists – until he found a chainsaw, of course! The device so characteristic of this game did not go down in its history as much as the iconic BFG 9000, and the most iconic melee weapon is probably the usual crowbar from Half-Life. Effective and always at hand – the famous item is an attribute of Gordon Freeman, and the tool itself has had countless references in other games.
With the development of the genre, melee gadgets have been replaced by attacks with a rifle or pistol butt. The first game to offer such a solution was GoldenEye for Nintendo 64. In this game, after acquiring a sniper rifle, a rather weak hit with a bare hand was replaced with the sight of the butt of this weapon, thanks to which we could hit our enemies more effectively. A smooth transition to the attack with the currently held weapon was introduced in 2001 by Halo: Combat Evolved, and this technique was perpetuated by the subsequent installments of Medal of Honor and Call of Duty. The blade, known from Wolfenstein 3D, remained forever in Counter Strike and the Battlefield series (in Vietnam it was replaced by a machete). The aforementioned Call of Duty introduced the knife in the Modern Warfare miniseries.
