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[[quoteright:303:[[VideoGame/GoldenEye1997 http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/6f5716ce6cf5fe4b68ee79aac737ec55.jpg]]]]
In video games, you're bound to find at least one weapon or offense-oriented piece of equipment that you like to use, and use it regularly. Then there are the weapons that are either difficult to use effectively, useless in most situations or just plain unfun to utilize. Most people try to avoid using these weapons if they can afford to do so, but some games require you to use them at least once, usually to defeat a boss, solve a puzzle, or find an important item, at which point they are either discarded or forgotten. Note that this is not limited to weapons: Magic, offensive items, Mons or fighting moves can also fall into this category.
Compare with UselessUsefulSpell, which deals with skills and spells that deal status effects in [=RPG=]s, and TierInducedScrappy. Contrast with JokeItem, which is an intentionally weak or useless weapon or item, SoLastSeason, where a weapon that ''was'' good for what it did is replaced by a newer, better one, and WithThisHerring, which is about deliberately being given poor (albeit usable) equipment by the important {{NPC}}s when the fate of the world is at stake. While this list contains weapons that suck, none of them are to be confused with WeaponsThatSuck.
[[folder:Action Adventure]]
* Wanna ruin your day in a ''Franchise/{{Castlevania}}'' game? Grab a Dagger. Particularly sucks in the original NES games, especially if you had the Holy Water or Boomerang. Someone on the dev team apparently noticed, since in later games the Dagger's low damage is usually offset by making it the cheapest subweapon to use, and sometimes giving it a semiautomatic rate of fire.
** However, they will quickly become your weapon of choice in ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaCircleOfTheMoon'' when you are in archer mode (but ONLY in archer mode). That is because all of your subweapons get a damage boost, making it a strong weapon. The second is that the upgrade, at no cost, is the homing dagger. And it is ''very'' useful (ties with the cross as the cross does more damage and hits more targets, but doesn't home in on targets). Played straight with every other mode though where they are virtually useless, outside of item crashes.
** [[NotCompletelyUseless However, it's quite effective against]] the Cyclops in ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaIIIDraculasCurse''. The dagger deals a lot more damage to him if you can time it right with the lightning. It's also your only hope [[ContinuingIsPainful if you die]] against the Frankenstein monster in the first game.
** A similar offender in the main weapon category is the Blank Book in ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaPortraitOfRuin''. It has worse stats than Charlotte's starter weapon, even lowering some stats from unarmed. The only thing it's good for is [[spoiler:completing a quest.]]
* The keyblade in ''VideoGame/LaMulana'' has exactly two uses in the game. 1) Defeating one of the final boss's forms, and 2) Using its range to destroy a pot in one puzzle. It's one of the weakest weapons in the entire game, and the katana, chain whip, and flail can all do what it can do better.
** On the other hand, the remake turns it into a LethalJokeWeapon after you've chanted all the mantras, as it does the same damage as the flail whip but has slightly longer horizontal reach.
* The Slingshot in ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTwilightPrincess''. Some of the other items suffer from an understandable CardboardObstacle scenario, but the slingshot is even more irrelevant because of the bow and arrow.
** In ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaSkywardSword'', the Slingshot returns, with an almost as useless upgrade in the form of the Scattershot. Not only are the pellets too slow to really hit Keese and lack range, the only enemies they really do anything to ARE Keese (the only other enemies it can kill are walltulas, which you can use the beetle on, and that doesn't have an ammo limit, everything else the slingshot just stuns). That said, it's over halfway through the game before you get the Bow and Arrow, and it can be quite creative when you need it to be: Bokoblin + Tightrope + Slingshot = [[VideoGameCrueltyPotential Fun]].
* The first ''VideoGame/{{Boktai}}'' game had the Gun Del Hell available in a NewGamePlus if you beat the game a ''whopping four times''. It's the only weapon in the game with S Attack and S Stun as well as far range, but since it's Dark Elemental it has no effect on about 80% of the enemies other than ''bouncing them around a bit''. It also can't be mix and matched with other gun parts like ''every other gun'' in the game.
[[folder:Action Games]]
* In ''VideoGame/{{Evolva}}'', the only reason for the Flame's existence was to light flammable plants, and even then, there are other weapons (like the grenade) that can light them on fire.
** Potentially even more useless is the Claw, which despite being the only unlimited ammo weapon, never really gets used except for breaking rocks once you get better weapons. It too suffers in that its purpose gets taken by future weapons (again, the grenade.)
* The Iron Fan in ''DynastyWarriors 7'' and its expansions. It has very little crowd control capability in a game where crowd control is everything, meaning it's very easy to get interrupted in the middle of a combo. On higher difficulties this can mean instant death if you're so much as love tapped by one mook, only to have all of his friends follow up.
[[folder:FourX Games]]
* The ''[[VideoGame/{{X}} X-Universe]]'' has several.
** The Fragmentation Bomb Launcher sounds like a dangerous weapon. It's [[SpaceIsNoisy loud]] and produces a pretty explosion. But it burns weapons energy fast, and unless you manage to hit the target ''before'' it detonates and produces its FlechetteStorm, you're not going to hit anything smaller than an M6 corvette. Even worse, thanks to a programmer's oversight, the FlechetteStorm lacks any [[AreaOfEffect AoE]] damage whatsoever. Its only saving grace is its price tag: as VendorTrash, a recovered (or manufactured) FBL will net you a roughly quarter of a million credits.
** The Cluster Flak Array is the FBL scaled to frigate size. It does, however, have one further saving grace. Some players like to pair it in gun batteries with the [[LightningGun Ion Disruptor]], which can chain-lightning between the flak shards to reach further than it could normally.
** Almost every unguided missile: they are inaccurate and do very little damage. Furthermore, similar to the aforementioned [=FBL=], they lack actual AreaOfEffect damage due to a programmer's oversight, which could have otherwise turn these duds into niche weapons. The exception is the [[RecursiveAmmo Tornado]], which can be used to rig certain M3 fighters as bombers for anti-capital work.
** [[KillSat Lasertowers]] fit this in ''X3: Terran Conflict'' because Out-Of-Sector combat mechanics render their chief advantage (range) worthless. Some players have had success using them in large quantities to support blockades, however. In ''X3: Albion Prelude'' they're much more useful thanks to a buff in firepower and shielding.
** Before ''[=X3TC=]'' brought some sense to the weapon types the previous games had small fighters that could mount small guns, medium fighters that could mount medium guns, and heavy fighters that could mount heavy guns. Each gun type was further divided in three subcategories: alpha, beta and gamma, in increasing order of destructiveness. There was no reason to ever use alpha guns in anything, and betas were only useful in heavy fighters (as gamma heavies were restricted to capital ships).
** The Concussion Impulse Generator sounds like it can do lots of damage in a hurry on paper. In practice, it's merely a scaled up corvette-sized version of the High Energy Plasma Thrower, with marginally improved range but terribly low [=RoF=] and consumes more energy than the [=HEPT=]. While it has its uses as a corvette and frigate gun (unless you're flying a Teladi Shrike or Xenon Q, who both have terrible generators to recharge their guns), it's particularly ineffective a weapon for carriers and destroyers. The only reason few players would want to use the [=CIG=] is its unique stun effect on fighters and freighters below TL-class just ForTheLulz. Other than that, its pretty much VendorTrash. ''Albion Prelude'' buffed the weapon generators on all non-Terran corvettes, making the [=CIG=] more useful there.
** The Mosquito Missile was this in the vanilla version of ''Terran Conflict''. Despite it being the most commonly used [light] missile and having great speed as well as fairly good stats, the damage output generated by the missile is a laughably pathetic 200KJ. To elaborate, 1MJ = 1000KJ or 5 Mosquito missiles. This means even the weakest of [[FragileSpeedster scout]] [[GoddamnedBats craft]] can survive several volleys of Mosquitoes, which renders the missile only particularly effective against fighter drones or as a harassing weapon. However, since the release of the Bonus Pack, the Mosquito has suddenly found itself useful as an anti-missile weapon thanks in part of the Mosquito Defense Script. In addition, by the time of ''Albion Prelude'', the Mosquito has been buffed to be compatible with any ship, even the Terran/[=AGI=] Task Force versions, while having a slight boost in its speed.
[[folder:Fighting Games]]
* ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBros Brawl'' had the Team Healer item, which seldom ever showed up in normal play because almost all matches are free-for-all (if not one-on-one like in tournaments), and even during team play, was absolutely useless because it occasionally healed opponents and hurt allies.
[[folder:First-Person Shooters]]
* ''VideoGame/DeusEx'': the single-shot plasma pistol, that you could only carry one of at a time, and wasn't powerful enough to one-shot most mooks.
** The actual plasma rifle itself is also regarded rather unfavorably. Although it can be applied effectively, it's still overwhelmingly the least popular heavy weapon; very few players use it.
** If the assault rifle didn't have its grenade launcher, it'd be completely worthless. Each shot does anemic damage, requiring a five-round burst ''to the head'' to take out enemies. The recoil makes it completely worthless at range unless you're at least Advanced skill with Rifles. And on top of all of that, the formula for enemy ammo drop means you'll never get more 7.62x51mm ammo from enemies that you used to kill an enemy.
** The Light Antitank Weapon also combined the "can't have more than one" problem of the plasma pistol with [[InventoryManagementPuzzle greater space requirements]], but it did at least offer more raw power to balance that out.
* VideoGame/DeusExHumanRevolution brings us the mine templates. Place a grenade in it and it becomes a mine that explodes with that grenade model's effect. Sounds useful until you realize that the arming delay is so ridiculously short that unless you ''throw'' it at wall from a healthy distance, you ''will'' blow up with it.
** While situational, these mines are ''very'' useful for stealth-based characters against {{Damage Sponge Boss}}es, to divert attention from the player's current location, or as [[WhenAllYouHaveIsAHammer last-resort close-range grenades]]. Another boon is that, for some inexplicable reason, ''three'' mines take up 2x1 inventory space, whereas individual grenades take up 1x1 each.
** The shotgun is also nigh-useless. It's ineffective at anything beyond close range, can't be silenced, is useless against armor, and its inability to reliably get headshots lessens the amount of experience you get.
* ''VideoGame/MetroidPrime'' series:
** ''Metroid Prime'' has the Plasma Beam's missile combo, the Flamethrower. To be honest, all missile combos except Super Missile are situational at best, but Flamethrower is the only completely useless one. It shoots a stream of flames that has a short range and eats through your ammo like crazy (and unlike the similar Wavebuster, it does not home or stun the target). It's made even more useless when you consider that a charged Plasma Beam shot kills 90% of normal enemies with a single hit (there's one enemy in the game that can get hurt by it but doesn't get killed in one shot), so you could just be using that instead.
** ''Metroid Prime 2: Echoes'' has the Light Beam's charge combo, the Sunburst. It fires a large ball of light energy that travels about ten feet in front of you, comes to a slow stop, and explodes. It's useless against mobile enemies because they'll just move out of the way, and it's useless against stationary enemies because the explosion isn't anywhere near as powerful as it appears to be. The only conceivable way to damage something with the Sunburst would be for them to back up so they took damage during the entire animation.
* Several weapons in your arsenal in ''VideoGame/{{Daikatana}}''. To sum it up: The ion blaster's shots bounced off walls and could hit you. The C4 vizatergo launched proximity mines with a blast radious roughly equal to the range you'd be firing it at; if you didn't end up getting caught in the explosion, your AI "[[EscortMission helpers]]" probably would. The Shockwave launched an erratically bouncing ball that created shockwaves whenever it hit a surface...which could easily kill you. The Eye of Zeus hit every enemy in sight with lightning when the staff's eye opened, but if no enemies were on-screen, it would kill you. Nharre's Nightmare summoned a demon that, like the Eye of Zeus, would turn on you and kill you if there weren't any targets. Finally, the kineticore's shots rebound off walls and (all together, now) can hit you. Sensing a pattern?
* In the original ''PerfectDark'' most the weapons were all pretty good, but there were a few that were nearly worthless. Probably the worst weapon in the game was the Reaper, an alien (Skedar) gatling gun with the worst accuracy of just about any weapon you'll ever see in a first person shooter (you have to crouch to have any chance of hitting somebody 5 feet in front of you), and firing it required you to bring up the speed of the motor before any bullet went off. Its fire rate exceeds that of almost all other weapons in the game, but each shot does very little damage. Its secondary fire, which basically turned it into an enormous blender, was a mostly pointless melee weapon (although starting it up could avoid the firing delay for primary fire).
* Meanwhile, ''Perfect Dark's'' spiritual predecessor ''VideoGame/GoldenEye1997'' had the Klobb, a weak, slow-firing, inaccurate SMG that was outclassed by literally ''every'' weapon in the game. A pistol would serve you better. The Klobb takes '''two shots''' for a [[BoomHeadShot headshot kill]]! In fact, there was a Max Stats (007 Mode, all enemy stats cranked up to full) run for the Archive level where any shot was instant death. ''Except the Klobb.'' On that note, the Klobb was pretty cool in [[OneHitKill License to Kill mode]].
** Lamphaded by [[https://c2.staticflickr.com/4/3337/3205194188_5dd39e9736.jpg this]] book-cover redesign, part of a larger project showing classic games in the style of classic books.
* Mines usually fall into this category in single-player games, such as the trip mines from ''VideoGame/DukeNukem3D'' and the first ''VideoGame/HalfLife1'', due to their being defensive weapons in games where you're usually on the offensive. If you plan on using them your options are either setting up a trap and luring enemies into it (at which point it's usually just easier to shoot them) or putting them in select points to stop ambushes (but you'd only know that the ambushes were coming if you had prior knowledge of the game, making the "ambush" a moot point). It's just an extra pack of explosives that never misses, but usually is less tactically valuable than a pipebomb/satchel.
* The grenade launcher from ''VideoGame/KingpinLifeOfCrime''. Most grenade launchers in video games either fire grenades that explode on contact with enemies, hold more than three rounds in a magazine, let you carry more than 18 rounds total (especially if the game's bazooka has a clip of five shots and an ammo cap of ''one hundred rockets''), take less than four seconds to explode, exist in games where enemies aren't smart enough to run like hell before the 'nade goes off or some combination of the above. ''Kingpin'''s grenade launcher is not any of these things. It's so bad that not even the AI can figure out how to kill you with it.
* ''VideoGame/{{Blood}} II: The Chosen'' has a few examples.
** The Insect-a-cutioner bug spray. While superficially another version of the aerosol can from the first game, it was generally useless due to the short range, low primary fire damage, long secondary fire prep time and the fact that its ammo was also shared with the assault rifle's underslung grenade launcher, a more damaging and altogether more useful weapon.
** The Singularity Generator, the ultimate word in AwesomeButImpractical. Its primary fire shoots a vortex that sucks everything around it, but its eye deals absolutely no damage. The secondary fire (at least in older versions) creates the vortex with ''you'' as its eye - essentially a damaging tractor shield, as it moves with you. Both use up 50 energy cells, with which you can do more damage by using the Death Ray or the [[LightningGun Tesla Cannon]], both weapons you get way before the SG. Add to that the fact that the enemies you constantly face by the time you get it both frequently survive long enough to reach the eye of the vortex and deal big time damage at close range, and that you can crush the opposition it's effective against with your older weapons, and the gun's only usefulness is the 100 batteries it comes with.
** Berettas and Submachine Guns [[SortingAlgorithmOfWeaponEffectiveness are both worse in damage and/or accuracy than the Assault Rifle they share ammo with]]. Basically useless after you get the latter.
** The Howitzer. Its ammo is hard to come by, it fires slowly, using it in close quarters hurts you with splash damage, and its damage is ridiculously low. The only upside is that it makes [[EliteMook Shikari]] flinch with each shot, which doesn't save it from being discarded after nine other weapons are found.
** Much like the Howitzer, the Flare Gun also has elements of this. Its fire rate is very slow, the flares cause damage with a second-long tic (enough for most enemies to recover from their pain animations and retaliate) and don't hurt enough. Its secondary fire takes a long wind-up time, has a minimal range, its damage is laughable, and due to a bug it doesn't set enemies on fire. The very plentiful ammo and its great niche usefulness against Zealots, who teleport with each hit, and [[BossInMookClothing Death Shrouds]], which can become intangible, do guarantee it a permanent slot, but even then, the gun isn't nearly as fun or practical to use as most of the others.
* The Prankster Bit from ''[[VideoGame/TronTwoPointOh TRON 2.0]]'' is the game's {{BFG}} and looks pretty cool, but the energy usage is obscene, the damage is overkill against everything you fight, and you get it so late in the game that you're literally unable to fully upgrade it. It's not even worth using against the final boss due to how the game handles damage dealt to it. Not to mention the fact that if you use it in too close of quarters (read: ''most'' of that final level), it stands just as good of a chance of killing you as it does of killing your target. Seriously. Stick to Sequencer and just go [[Film/TronLegacy Rinzler]] on your enemies.
* The ''Franchise/{{Halo}}'' series of games have several:
** ''VideoGame/{{Halo|CombatEvolved}}'' has two: the Assault Rifle and the Needler. The needler is a devastating weapon against one type of enemy, and one type of enemy only: Sentinels. Against pretty much any other target, it's useless, requiring you to fire nearly the entire magazine into a single enemy to deal decent damage. And Sentinels are very rare, appearing as opponents only a handful of times -- not nearly often enough to justify keeping the weapon on hand, given that you can only carry two weapons at any given time. Pretty much any alien weapon (plasma pistol or rifle) works about as well. The Assault Rifle meanwhile just does very low damage in general, low damage against shields in particular, and an obnoxiously wide bullet spread.
*** YMMV on the needler, as it is useful against Elites (DemonicSpiders on higher difficulties), killing them with a brief, sustained burst that ended with a lethal explosion.
** In ''VideoGame/{{Halo 2}}'', the Assault Rifle was replaced by the SMG. It's an improvement, but not a huge one. And the Needler became more usable, at least when dual-wielded (a new feature in ''Halo 2''), but they're still not exactly top-tier go-to weapons. The Brute Shot bounces its ammo, making it difficult to use outside of melee. Oh, and the Sentinel Beam's not exactly a power-house, easily the single weakest weapon in the series.
*** The only point to ever using a Sentinel beam is against the Flood, and even then the shotgun and energy sword do a better job.
*** The SMG itself became something of a scrappy weapon itself, due to its very high kickback, and relatively low maximum range. On its own, anyway--[[AwesomeButImpractical it's designed]] to [[GunsAkimbo be dual wielded]], which let it strip shields in close combat with incredible speed. Combined with a plasma rifle, it's not half-bad, but terribly outclassed by the Battle Rifle in every other way.
** The Needler has since been RescuedFromTheScrappyHeap. While it lost its dual-wield-ability, its power got boosted and is far better balanced in ''VideoGame/{{Halo 3}}'' and ''[[VideoGame/HaloReach Reach]]''.
** Magnum, while useful in the first game, is nerfed in ''Halo 2'', losing its scope feature and is much weaker in all respects.
** In ''Halo 3'', the Sentinel Beam is still fairly terrible, and the SMG's power is downgraded as part of a general nerfing of dual-wielding. The flamethrower is very difficult to use effectively, although it's hellaceous when used properly. Perhaps the scrappiest ''Halo 3'' weapon is the Mauler, a single-handed dual-wieldable shotgun that, when dual-wielded, has less power and ammo than the regular shotgun at the expense of disabling use of grenades and melee. ...yeah. Its sole saving grace is a GameBreakingBug that allows you to shoot at melee at the same time, generally considered cheating and annoying as hell.
*** Sentinel beams, if you ever use them in a PvP situation (you'll have to do it with a custom map), it's got the fastest headshot in the game.
** ''VideoGame/Halo3ODST'''s scoped and silenced SMG was still not as powerful as the assault rifle. Its main purpose was to deplete enemy shields before switching to the scoped pistol for a fatal headshot--and for swatting [[GoddamnedBats drones]] out of the air.
*** It's also not actually silenced. A single perfect shot to the brain of an unaware enemy produces the exact same reaction as a grenade going off to the hyper-alert Covenant forces.
** In some circles, the ''Halo'' shotguns -- all the ''Halo'' shotguns -- are considered scrappies due to their [[ShortRangeShotgun wet-cough range]], unpredictable damage, and the presence of instant-kill melee weapons.
*** Though in ''Halo Reach'', they also kill instantly.
* Most shooters (especially older ones) where their StandardFPSGuns ruthlessly fell prey to the SortingAlgorithmOfWeaponEffectiveness. In ''VideoGame/{{Doom}}'' for example, there was no reason to ever touch the pistol once you had the chaingun, or even the shotgun.
* ''VideoGame/TeamFortress2'' has a fair share of examples:
** The Razorback, a sniper weapon, does nothing except prevent one backstab and handicap the Spy that tried to do it for a few seconds. However, wielding it requires you to give up your secondary weapon, meaning that you have to rely on your rifle and melee weapon for self-defense. Oh, and the only class to use backstabs also has a revolver that can kill you in three hits (or two, if they have the [[BoomHeadshot Ambassador]]), and can ''see'' your backstab-preventing shield. Since its release, it has been indirectly buffed by the introduction of new knives that give bonuses for backstabbing people, since it can deny Spies those bonuses and make them much more vulnerable, but still remains largely useless outside of Medieval Mode (where the shields are the only secondary items you ''can'' use).
*** However, it does, in a roundabout way, protect you from backstabs. Because it's so obvious, the Spy won't backstab you, and it can also help protect a group of people because they can't stab you, and if they try stabbing someone else, they'll end up revealing themselves.
*** Furthermore, the ability to prevent spies from backstabbing you and forcing them to pull out their revolver is MUCH more useful than is given credit for; The delay between one attack and multiple is still more than enough time for the more skilled of snipers to retaliate, retreat, and/or request assistance (or call out the spy and his location at the very least; if teammates aren't already aware, as the revolvers are purposefully loud). Furthermore, the purpose of the razorbacks is to counter desperate spies; if someone's aware of them, then the only way they're going to reliably get at least one decent pick before death is by rushing over to backstab a sniper, which the razorback prevents.
** The Sydney Sleeper, a sniper rifle that can't get headshots (requiring players to resort to bodyshots, already an unpopular tactic) in exchange for covering its target in [[UrineTrouble Jarate]] if you stay scoped for long enough. It has a slightly faster charge rate and can mark enemies for others to kill, but in the end the triple damage you'd receive from a headshot is just too much to give up.
*** However, in the Mann vs. Machine mode the Sydney Sleeper is better received, because while it doesn't deal headshot damage[[note]]just a x3 multiplier, the same as a Random CriticalHit[[/note]] it can still perform Explosive Headshots. By upgrading ''any'' sniper rifle (Sydney Sleeper included), when you get a headshot on a robot, nearby robots receive damage and slow down, allowing you to destroy many robots with one shot. Shoot the head and it still can perform an explosive headshot, and also coating the robots in Jarate is very useful. The problem is that the Sniper is a very hated class in this mode, even though a skilled [=MvM=] Sniper can really help the team.
*** This weapon really suffers from the removal of the much-hated Polycount item set bonuses. When used with the right weapons and hat, this gun used to give you the awesome ability of surviving headshots (albeit with [[LastChanceHitPoint one HP]]) under any circumstances. The first few Polycount item sets were contentious because they required a hat in order to grant the bonuses (hats aren't easy to come by, especially specific ones), and the effects of the sets were either merged into the weapons that they contained or removed. The Sydney Sleeper was in the latter category.
** The Sun-on-a-Stick deals less damage than [[BatterUp its stock equivalent]], but deals more damage to enemies that are on fire. Too bad you can only use it when you're playing Scout, who has no way to ignite people.
** The [[AnAxeToGrind Fire Axe]]. It's not on this page because it's [[ScrappyIndex hated]], but because it's objectively underpowered. This melee weapon is one of the stock/vanilla weapons (available since the game release). Like every stock melee weapon, it's basically an EmergencyWeapon... but this is a Pyro weapon; since the Pyro uses a flamethrower, he already has to come really close to the enemy players to damage them with his main weapon, so this is the class that least ''needs'' a melee weapon. Then, new Pyro melee weapons were released and they have additional effects like extra damage to burning players, more health gained from health kits or ability to remove sappers; since the stock axe just does damage, it was quickly left aside. To make it worse, the Third Degree does ''exactly'' what the Fire Axe does with a bonus quirk against Medics, relegating the Fire Axe to a waste of space and nothing more.
** Same deal with the bonesaw; the perks of the Ubersaw are incredibly useful while its downside is negligible (subjective), but the bonesaw also has a direct upgrade in the Solemn Vow, which features the same stats but with the ability to see enemy health.
** A similar one is the Sharpened Volcano Fragment, an axe that does less damage than the stock one, but ignites enemy players. The problem is, the Pyro can easily ignite an enemy just using his flamethrower, and enemy Pyros, the class you'll use your melee weapon the most against, can't be ignited, making this weapon almost useless except in Medieval Mode.
** The Backburner used to be this, as it lacked the stock flamethrower's ability to reflect projectiles but dealt more damage, giving it a reputation for being used by [[LeeroyJenkins W+M1]] Pyros, but since then has gained said ability (at a steep ammo cost), [[RescuedFromTheScrappyHeap making it much more popular]].
*** That said, it's by no means out of the Scrappy Heap. It costs 50 ammo for one airblast (1/4 of your total supply!), whereas the stock Flamethrower and Degreaser only use 20. The majority of the community still regards it as a noob weapon.
*** To make matters worse for it one of its primary appeals was effectively negated by the Pyromania update. Before then the Backburner dealt ten percent more damage than normal flame throwers which combined with its back critical hit ability made it a good weapon to use against other pyros. With the update however all flame throwers but the Backburner were buffed by ten percent, meaning it now only does the same base damage as a regular flame thrower.
** The Mantreads, a pair of boots that protects the Soldier from knockback and allows him to perform a GoombaStomp when falling from huge heights on top of enemies. Nothing wrong so far (it's hard to pull off, but it works)... but it occupies one weapon slot, a weapon slot normally reserved for your trusty {{shotgun|sAreJustBetter}}, so the Mantreads are rarely used.
** Another Soldier weapon, the [[StatusBuff Battalion's Backup]], was this before its buff. In order to charge it, you needed to take 350 points of damage. The thing is, the Soldier only has 200 health. So you have to almost die and be healed back up by a Medic or medkit twice. And self-damage does not fill up the bar; you ''have'' to take enemy damage to fill it. Just to nullify enemy critical hits and reduce incoming damage by 30%. That's very useful, to be sure, but it's an enormous pain to use, especially since you lose ''all'' your currently built-up charge if you die (especially if it's a death you don't see coming, like a Spy's backstab). The weapon was later changed so it charges with damage dealt, just like the more popular Buff Banner.
** The Quick Fix was like this when it was first introduced. While it both healed and ubered faster and provided a speed boost when used with scouts, it could not over-heal and its uber only healed the target and medic very quickly rather than granting invulnerability. The lack of overheal was particularly damming, particularly because the weapon was encouraged for use in keeping the entire healthy and alive. As soon as you were done healing someone, they would get grazed by a few bullets and no longer be in perfect health. It was eventually given the ability to overheal to fifty percent of that of a normal medigun and the ability to activate the ubercharge by yourself for self preservation purposes, making it a much more useful weapon.
** The [[SawedOffShotgun Force-a-Nature]]. On one hand, it can fire off two shots very fast, deals less damage but fires more pellets than the base Scattergun, meaning extra damage at point blank range, and sends enemies flying (as well as allowing you to "triple jump"). On the other, it takes ages to reload, only has two shots, and sends enemies flying out of range with the first shot, meaning that to maximize damage you have to fire one shot, chase your target, then fire the second once you catch up, which neutralizes the fast fire rate. Oh, and its RecoilBoost makes it impossible to do air maneuvers while firing and it has an effective range of about six inches. On most maps, there's really no reason not to pack the normal Scattergun, which deals almost the same damage, is more accurate, and holds six shots instead of two.
*** When it was first released, it was considered a Scrappy Weapon for [[GameBreaker the opposite reason]]. It would deal ridiculous amounts of knockback seemingly regardless of how far away the Scout was. Used and abused properly it could halt the progress of a third of the enemy team. Factor in the fact that half of ''your'' team was Scouts during the Scout Update, and things got real disorienting real fast. Thankfully a series of patches smoothed out the wonky knockback rules.
** The Neon Annihilator got this reaction as soon as it was introduced. At first, it would always do critical hits on players who were wet, in exchange for less base damage. This severely limited the weapon's use, as it would only serve a decent purpose in maps where water was common (which are very, very rare) or if fellow Scouts[=/=]Snipers are carrying Mad Milk[=/=]Jarate. Valve's reaction served only to enrage the player base even more: give it the ability to remove sappers, making the Homewrecker obsolete.
** Speaking of the Homewrecker, it's a melee weapon that deals double damage to buildings in exchange for less damage against players. There is virtually no reason to take advantage of this; your flamethrower kills buildings in almost the exact same amount of time ''and'' each flame particle can penetrate through the building to damage the Engineer on the other side, all for less effort and from further away. The Homewrecker was abandoned almost immediately. Two months later it was given the ability to remove sappers on friendly buildings, which slightly redeemed it in the eyes of some players, but it's still one of the least used weapons in the game.
** The Phlogistonator is also a heavily hated weapon. It grants a short period of {{critical hit}}s, and regains all the user's health after dealing a certain amount of damage. Unfortunately, it completely disables the reflecting compression blast, essentially considered one of the only redeeming factors of the Pyro in the competitive circle. Essentially, it seems to ''encourage'' LeeroyJenkins tactics. There's little consensus on whether it's overpowered or junk, as it seems to swing wildly from those two poles depending on the circumstances.
** The Winger, an unlockable pistol for the Scout, is considered a downgrade from the stock pistol. It deals 15% more damage at the expense of a smaller magazine. Too small, in fact, because the reload time results in less damage per second, especially since both pistols have such a fast firing rate. Eventually, it would be redeemed by giving a increase to the user's maximum jump height when active.
** The Soda Popper used to give minicrits when a Hype meter, charged by running, was filled. This ability was awesome, easy to take advantage of, and valuable in Mann vs. Machine. Now, it just gives five extra jumps, which is quite fun, but in terms of direct combat, is much weaker. But in Mann vs. Machine, because damage output is far more important, it's just about useless.
* The Phoenix from ''VideoGame/CliveBarkersUndying'' is the last weapon found in the game, at about 30 minutes before the final boss. Not only is it quite weak compared to your arsenal (which by now include the [[SinisterScythe Celtic Scythe]], [[AnIcePerson the Tibetan War Cannon]] and the [[ShockAndAwe Spear Thrower]]), but each shot must be guided in first person. Except that it's too fast to be properly controlled.
* Similar to the aforementioned Klobb, the Xbox 360 version of ''[[VideoGame/FirstEncounterAssaultRecon F.E.A.R.]]'' has the nearly-useless SM-15 machine pistol.
** ''F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin'' has the Napalm Cannon, one of only two flame-based weapons in the game (the other is a new grenade type), which is prohibitively useless. Only a small handful of enemies in one level carry it, which gives you only about one reload for it, and it takes forever to burn even the weakest of enemies to death.
* ''Franchise/StarWars: VideoGame/{{Dark Forces|Saga}}'' had the mortar launcher, a large, cumbersome weapon with a slow fire rate that lobbed underwhelming shells in awkward, limited arcs. It was found only rarely, and usually thermal detonators were plentiful and much more useful, having greater power, splash radius, ''and'' effective range. Its main use was setting off enemy mines, with occasional breaks to take pot shots at whittling down the game's DemonicSpiders, the Dark Troopers (mostly the [[SkeleBot9000 Phase One]] variety).
** ''VideoGame/JediKnightDarkForcesII'' had the bowcaster, which on the surface sounded great. Chewbacca's iconic weapon, with a ChargedAttack that fired spreads of plasma bolts, or fired a ricocheting plasma bolt to hit enemies around corners? Sounded useful...until you realized that the rate of fire was painful, the charged attack took a long while to get off and spread the shots out with huge gaps between small projectiles, and that the ricocheting shot could [[HoistByHisOwnPetard bounce back and hit you in the face]]. In the end the [[MoreDakka Imperial repeater]] ended up being a better use of energy cells.
*** In ''VideoGame/JediKnightIIJediOutcast'', most people don't recall the [[StunGuns stun baton]] with any fondness. In previous games, Kyle used his fists and was not above punching out PowerArmor-clad MechaMooks. The stun baton was clumsy, did very little damage to anything more dangerous than a stormtrooper, and didn't actually knock anyone out so much as slowly shock them to death. Fortunately, the [[LaserBlade lightsaber]] replaced the stun baton permanently, and the bothersome little shock-prod never resurfaced in the game or its sequel, ''VideoGame/JediKnightJediAcademy''.
* The BS-9 silenced pistol in ''VideoGame/PAYDAYTheHeist'' is usually never used again as soon as the player unlocks better handguns. The pistol in question has low power and even requires several headshots to kill someone quickly on higher difficulty levels. The weapon also has a low ammo count and its weak power will barely help you should you go into bleedout mode. The only time the silenced pistol is needed is for Diamond Heist and No Mercy where stealth is required. Even then, the Mac-11 is a silenced machine gun and is a suitable replacement for the pistol.
** The BS-9's primary advantages are low recoil and high ammo per magazine. It's useful for hitting things a long way away if your other weapons are shorter range (if you're using a shotgun, basically) or for taking out cameras and the like. Headshot damage will usually make up for the lack of base damage.
** Trip mines are also rarely used due to being a very situational item. Once placed, the trip mines can't be removed and you can only carry a limited amount of trip mines based on how many upgrades you have for them. While you can't trigger your own mines by mistake, a single cop can trigger them and will be killed instantly, even the [[MightyGlacier Bulldozer]]. However, the power of the mines tend to be wasted on single targets unless you happen to get lucky and have the trip mine kill a cluster of cops in one explosion, along with a good guess on where the cops will go during assaults. The explosion can also kill civilians, which adds a delay to your release should you be captured and imposes a penalty to your reward in the end. In short, the usefulness of the mines are limited and most people that are using them usually are doing it for the achievements.
** The Locomotive is a short ranged secondary shotgun that falls short of its stronger cousin, the Reinbeck. The Locomotive has weaker power compared to the Reinbeck, can't hit targets as far, and requires more ammo pick ups to refill its reserves compared to other weapons. The phrase "[[MemeticMutation Buff the Loco!]]" became quite common on the official forums and it wasn't until ''VideoGame/PAYDAY2'' that the Locomotive got buffed to the point that it became an excellent secondary weapon to use.
* The first ''{{VideoGame/Unreal|I}}'' has the DifficultButAwesome [[FunWithAcronyms GES]][[labelnote:*]]'''G'''reen '''E'''xploding '''S'''hit[[/labelnote]] Bio Rifle. It's a sort of grenade launcher that shoots small blobs of sticky explosive sludge, which deal quite a bit more damage than other fast-firing weapons and [[AIBreaker agile enemies can't dodge like they do straight-firing projectiles]], but do require the player to take into account the parabolic trajectory and slow travel speed of the shots. The secondary fire charges up the shot, making it pretty much able to OneHitKill anything that isn't a boss, but reducing its speed so much that hitting the target is easier said than done, and the range becomes so short due to the glob's weight that the resulting SplashDamage more often than not damages the player as well.
** The [[{{VideoGame/UnrealTournament}} Tournament series]] Bio Rifle is essentially the same, but becomes mildly more useful because multiplayer gameplay does occasionally require defensive weaponry, and filling a hallway with green goo is a decent way to make sure anyone passing through in the next few seconds is reduced to red salsa. It's still the least used gun in the game, though, especially since the globs disappear in a handful of seconds; ''VideoGame/UnrealTournament2004'' introduced the Spider Mine launcher in Onslaught mode, which does the Bio Rifle's job for defensive play far better.
* ''VideoGame/PlanetSide 1'' has the Beamer, the standard issue sidearm for the [[MachineCult Vanu Sovereignty]]. It's very accurate, small, uses the same ammo as their assault rifles, and even comes with an armor piercing mode. It also does piss for damage, uses up a valuable hip holster slot (better suited for a [[HealThyself medapp]], engineer tool, or [[HollywoodHacking REK]]), and the armor piercing mode makes it highly effective at being purple. The weapon was often likened to a flashlight, as it did a better job at making enemies glow than killing them. The Terran Republic's Cycler assault rifle is likewise regarded as nearly useless, as it has a huge magazine and good accuracy, but is so weak that players are better off using the Suppressor submachine gun. The Scorpion weapon system is a siege weapon, a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher which flies into the air, then detonates and sends shrapnel onto whatever is below it. [[EveryoneHatesMath It requires trigonometry to use]], as the detonation range must manually be set by right-clicking while looking at terrain - too soon or too late or too high or too low will cause it to deal negligible damage.
** ''Planetside 2'' has the Terran Republics's CARV-S rifle, which is a standard CARV rifle (hardly a measure of goodness to begin with) with ''worse'' stats in exchange for a 3-shot burst function. TR MAX Pounder grenade launchers have a tiny magazine, very little splash, terrible range, and do almost no damage to infantry. The Mini Chaingun and G30 Vulcan coaxial vehicle weapon were previous incredibly bad - the MCG had a spinup time which made it terrible for dealing with infantry, and the Vulcan had exact same DPS as the ''standard issue'' Basilisk machine gun, but with worse range and a $7.00 or 1000 cert pricetag. [[RescuedFromTheScrappyHeap Both were later buffed]], and then the Vulcan was nerfed again to the point where half of its effective range is used just getting to the edge of the tank it's mounted on.
* VideoGame/NaziZombies: In the multiplayer of ''VideoGame/CallOfDutyBlackOps2'', the SMR is one of the most powerful weapons available, and is very accurate. In the Zombies mode, it make the M1911 look amazing. Semi-auto is discouraged in this mode, it has bad capacity (Reserve, the FAL beats it), it's weak even for this type of weapon, it's slow to reload and worst of all, it has bullet spread, while you are '''''AIMING!!!''''' You'd be better off with the more accurate, but still weak M14.
* ''VideoGame/{{Borderlands 2}}'' has an entire Scrappy Weapon ''Manufacturer''. The Bandits of Pandora have begun to contribute to the planet's crushing weight of weapons with their own [[MacGyvering cobbled-together monstrosities]]. Their main selling point is their ridiculous ammo capacity--for instance, some shotguns will pack over 12 shots when the average shotgun is hard-pressed to carry more than six, and their pistols can boast upwards of 40 rounds. The problem is that this comes at the expense of almost all of their weapons' other stats--the accuracy in particular suffers from horrendous penalties, and the reload time is almost criminal in some cases, going over ten seconds for some of their machine guns. Their damage is also not much to write home about. Taken together this means that, barring some ''really'' good luck with random parts generation, a Bandit weapon is usually the last thing you want to pick up, as the playerbase tends to not consider Bandit ammo capacities as an acceptable tradeoff for missing more shots and doing less damage.
[[folder:Light Gun Games]]
* ''VideoGame/GHOSTSquad'' has both versions of [[VideoGame/VirtuaCop The Guardian]]. Compared to the other weapons in the game, they're stupidly useless: 6 or 10 bullets, and no extra features like piercing or permanent dot sight.
** Taken UpToEleven with the [[JokeWeapon AGB1]], which is a crossbow in a game featuring an assortment of firearms, and has to be aimed properly because [[CaptainObvious arrows don't travel as fast as bullets.]] [[NotCompletelyUseless At least the two Guardian pistols could hit their enemies instantly.]]
[[folder:Platform Games]]
* The ''VideoGame/RatchetAndClank'' series was the main inspiration for this trope. [[VideoGame/RatchetAndClank2002 The first game]] had a handful of weapons that were quite useful (e.g., the [[ArrowCam Visibomb Gun]], [[BoringButPractical Devastator]]) and some that were almost useless ([[VideoGameFlamethrowersSuck Pyrocitor]], [[WhyDontYouJustShootHim Taunter]]). [[RatchetAndClankGoingCommando The second game]] and onwards introduced leveling up weapons, further polarizing their effectiveness. It was quite easy to level up weapons that were easy to use and fairly powerful (the Negotiator and Constructo Shotgun from ''[[RatchetAndClankFutureACrackInTime A Crack in Time]]'', for instance), and weapons that barely got any use (such as the wimpy Buzz Blades) would never be able to level up except on the weakest ankle-biter enemies.
** The Taunter is more of a situational weapon. It's not going to get used in every level, but in some levels, where the enemies are dumb enough to walk off cliffs, or walk into laser fences, you can use it to save some ammo. A true scrappy weapon is the Gold Morph-O-Ray. It takes away one of the original Morph-O-Ray's uses, creating ammo for the Suck Cannon. But no weapon is truly useless in the first game at least, it's just that some see a lot more use in a lot more levels than others. Same can't be said for the sequels mind. In particular, the formerly useful Visibomb gun becomes so [[{{Nerf}} nerfed]] that it goes from a most used weapon, to near useless, and the rest suffer an even worse fate.
** The Meteor Gun, the Lava Gun's upgraded form in ''[[RatchetAndClankGoingCommando Going Commando]]'' is another instance. The basic weapon fired a steady stream of molten rock, was one of the best guns to use when you were surrounded (hold down button, spin, watch things burn) and was generally very powerful overall. The upgrade turned it into a burning rock machine gun, which basically did the same thing as another one of your weapons (the Lancer), except it fired more slowly, had less range and shot in a low parabolic arc. And by then, you have other weapons that are much better that you wouldn't need to use the Meteor Gun until they run out of ammo. Fortunately Insomniac realized what they did and changed the final upgrade to the Liquid Nitrogen Gun in [[RatchetAndClankUpYourArsenal Up Your Arsenal]], having it keep its pretty, pretty stream of destruction all the way through the game.
* Even platformers are not immune. ''VideoGame/MegaMan'' gives us plenty of these, as noted under PowerupLetdown. The most infamous is the Top Spin, which only notable use is [[spoiler:destroying the final boss in one hit]], but several more have accumulated over the course of the long-running franchise...
** Interestingly, Top Spin is actually one of the better weapons in ''VideoGame/MegaMan3''...[[DifficultButAwesome if you know how to use it]] (like in a Boss Weapons Only run). You can actually one-shot a large number of enemies with it, and it's got a large amount of ammo. It's primarily considered a scrappy weapon because you need to use it at close range, because it's a horrible weapon against enemies it can't one-hit kill (thus requiring memorization to use properly) and because of a poorly executed mechanic that can cause it to use up the entire ammo bar in a single use. One Top Spin costs one power, but top spin constantly "fires" as long as the player's finger is on the button. Hit an enemy immune to Top Spin, or a vulnerable boss during its brief second of post-attack invulnerability, and the power gauge can be depleted in a second if the player is careless.
*** Spark Shock also sees very limited use (in the nes version, that is, it works exactly like Ice Slasher would in the game boy version), as (asides from almost no normal enemies being damaged by it) while it freezes whichever enemy it hits, the player can neither fire another one nor switch to another weapon until its effect wears off on the afflicted enemy.
** ''VideoGame/MegaMan10'' gives us Thunder Wool, which is nigh impossible to aim, and blows through all its ammo in 6 shots. To quote one Gamefaqs poster "Anything the Thunder Wool does, another weapon does better and for less ammo cost."
*** To make matters worse, the cloud can be destroyed if an enemy or projectile collides with it. This means you can't reliably use it at close range, since that pretty much guarantees that it'll disappear before it can fire off a bolt, thus wasting a ton of your ammo.
** The Rolling Shield in ''VideoGame/MegaManX'' is the worst boss weapon in the game. The boss who is meant to be vulnerable to it, Launch Octopus, is more vulnerable to the Boomerang Cutter, which severs his tentacles, reducing his firepower and preventing him from [[ThatOneAttack drawing you in]]; the Rolling Shield has no special effect on the boss and isn't effective at doing damage. Surprisingly enough, though, the Rolling Shield works well on Sigma's OneWingedAngel form.
** Shield weapons in general get this. You lost the Leaf Shield in ''VideoGame/MegaMan2'' as soon as you moved, making it only useful in the section in the fourth Wily stage with platforms and Tellies (and beating Air Man, of course). Most other shield weapons ''did'' allow you to move, but were ineffective due to vanishing as soon as they took a hit or, in worse cases, being ineffective altogether. Junk Shield from ''VideoGame/MegaMan7'', [[GameBreaker Jewel Satellite]] from ''VideoGame/MegaMan9'' and Water Shield from ''VideoGame/MegaMan10'' are notable exceptions.
** The Power Stone from ''VideoGame/MegaMan5'' may well be the worst special weapon ever created in any game. It creates a trio of boulders that circles outward from Mega Man's position. Unfortunately, they are notoriously hard to aim correctly and move very slowly, to boot. Worst of all, once you fired one, you couldn't fire another until the first one had run its course. It says something when it's generally less of a hassle to kill Charge Man (who is weak to the Power Stone) with the Mega Buster.
** The Bubble Lead in ''VideoGame/MegaMan2'' also gets a lot of this, although it is strong against a few enemies, and is the only weapon that can harm the final boss.
** Speaking of ''Mega Man 2'', the Atomic Fire also falls under here. It is an incredibly powerful weapon that can destroy most non-boss enemies in one hit and would be very useful if a fully charged blast from the Atomic Fire didn't take up an obscene amount of weapon energy (you only get a maximum of two fully charged shots from a full energy bar). This makes the weapon completely useless in the Wily stages, where your weapon energy doesn't carry over between stages. On top of this, the charge is slow and it's usually much better to defeat enemies with multiple shots of a weaker weapon. Its only real uses are to defeat Wood Man and the first form of the Wily Machine (two fully charged hits in both cases).
** The original ''VideoGame/MegaMan'' was not without these, either. The most notorious was the Hyper Bomb, which, while powerful, was far too slow to be of any use (it didn't explode until roughly three seconds after you threw it) against anything other than the mostly immobile Guts Man.
** In MegaManBattleNetwork, despite being more RPG than anything else, there is one answer to this trope. Mini-bomb. Short of the platformer spinoff, network transmission, those things were the most useless things ever. They did poor damage compared to other options, any enemy past the starting area would generally be hard to hit because of the slow time from release to impact, getting only harder as the game went on, and they were always, always, in your starting folder. They don't even qualify as a crutch chip because the only enemy they could one hit kill another chip that was much more useful could do as well. the chip had no reason to keep being in your starting inventory.
* The torch in the ''VideoGame/GhostsNGoblins'' series is slow and travels in an arch, while most of the enemies come right for you, so the players try to avoid it as much as possible.
** The hatchet is even ''worse'', as it travels in the same arch, but also penetrates enemies and obstacles. While you can have two on screen at a time, the nature of the weapon ensures that you can't rapidly fire on a single enemy that takes multiple hits, which is often a death sentence in this game.
** Additionally, each game in the series has a "hidden" weapon that is much slower and/or has a shorter reach than the other weapons, such as the cross/shield in the first game and the Goddess Bracelet in other games. What makes this particularly nasty is the fact that you are required to beat the final boss with these weapons.
* ''VideoGame/SuperMarioGalaxy'' and [[VideoGame/SuperMarioGalaxy2 its sequel]] have the Spring Mushroom, which transforms Mario into a living spring, jumping at great heights to higher spots. The problem is, though, that it's very difficult to maneuver, as the powerup moves Mario perpetually, so a misaimed or poorly calculated jump can result lethal when chasms and pits are close.
* ''VideoGame/SuperPrincessPeach'' had an accessory for Perry called the Bowbrella which was usefully for only ''one'' thing, changing the direction of the wind by hitting the switch that did so in one area. Other than that, it was useless against enemies. While that one use made purchasing this weapon a necessity, doing so wasn't advisable until you reached the level where you could collect all the coins you needed.
[[folder:Role-Playing Games]]
* Practice Bows in ''VideoGame/MountAndBlade'' if the player character is not built as an archer. You are pretty much doomed in any arena/tournament fight if you spawn with one and you aren't lucky enough to get a new weapon really quick as you can't fight at all in melee with one.
** Fixed in Warband, you will also start with a practice knife if you spawn if a bow. While it can't block, it can at least fight back and if you are strong enough disrupt attacks.
* ''VideoGame/{{Fallout|1}}'' and ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 2}}'' have the Mauser pistol, a one-of-a-kind weapon in ''Fallout'' and one of the rarest guns in the sequel. It's also the only weapon in both games to use 9mm ammunition, which is very rare in and of itself and so must be carefully managed if one intends to use it. Obviously the Mauser must be one of the most powerful small guns, right? Wrong: it's one of the weakest. It's only redeeming factor is special, very high bonus to accuracy. But at the point when it's available, there are much better and more powerful guns on hand. One wonders why the devs even bothered putting it, and its very own ammo type, in the game at all.
* ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 3}}'' has the Chinese Pistol. Despite using the same ammunition as the 10mm, it has 2 fewer shots, is no faster or more accurate, does less than half the damage of its American counterpart, and does not come in a silenced version. Its only saving graces are that it sells for a fair deal of cash, and that it has more than twice the durability of the regular 10mm. The latter is just about useless, as the low damage makes degradation versus damage dealt approximately equal to that of the 10mm.
** The unique variant is more useful, as it is capable of [[KillItWithFire setting enemies on fire]] in addition to the base damage and even better durability (approximately three times as much as the regular 10mm pistol). In spite of this, it's still probably one of the least powerful unique weapons out there (even weaker than many regular weapons; it only deals more damage than the regular Chinese pistol due to the fire damage) and is only good for supplementing another firearm or for lighting up occasional pockets of gas.
** There was also the .32 Pistol, which did ''tiny'' damage (less than the 10mm Pistol obtained hours before it) and used ammo that was much more useful when loaded into a [[BoringButPractical Hunting Rifle.]]
** The Sawed-off Shotgun breaks easily, only holds two shots, is unusually rare (making it hard to repair), doesn't do all that much damage, and has an effective range of about two feet. It's barely even worth carrying back to sell once you loot it off one of the few raiders in the game that carries it.
*** The Combat Shotgun isn't much better, unfortunately. It's better at slightly further ranges, and is common enough thanks to tripwire traps that it can actually be repaired in the field on occasion, but it still has absolutely terrible durability, and enemies will still just shrug off the buckshot like it was a passing breeze outside of close-range critical hits.
** Grenades also feel like this most of the time. In theory they should be awesome, but in truth they are very a situational and hard to use weapon. First off they usually don't deal a whole lot of damage to a single entity, their charm is theoretically that they can hurt lot of different people at once. However in the game it is difficult to find situations where people are huddled together within a grenade's effective radius and will stay that way until it detonates. Most frustratingly however VATS isn't designed to use them, and even if it does manage to lob a grenade right at an enemies feet, they will usually run away before it explodes. This is made worse by the fact that manually aiming with them in combat is difficult and takes some practice, which will cost you expensive grenades. Land mines do just as much damage, can easily be thrown in the path of approaching enemies, and are so common as part of pre-placed traps that you can sell them for a good chunk of caps and still have plenty left over to actually kill things with.
* ''Videogame/FalloutNewVegas'' also has a few.
** First of all, there is the .357 Magnum Revolver. It does rather low damage, being the weakest revolver in the game, it's single action (especially troubling if you took the Trigger Discipline perk), uses the same ammo as the infinitely more useful Cowboy Repeater rifle, and unlike every other revolver it doesn't use a speed loader, forcing you to load all six shots painfully slowly. Even with the "Cowboy" perk, there's no point to using it over the normal 9mm Pistol, which has the same DPS and doesn't use valuable rifle ammunition.
*** The .357 revolver's higher damage per shot lets it punch through higher damage threshold than the 9mm - or it would, if any moderately armoured enemies existed at that stage of the game.
** The Single and Caravan Shotguns fire the low damage 20 gauge rounds, and [[ShortRangeShotgun suffer from the usual weakness]]... and can only fire one or two shots respectively before reloading. To make things worse, the damage is divided between a large number of low-damage projectiles, each of which have their damage reduced by the target's damage threshold. Fortunately, the Shotgun Surgeon perk helps with the damage threshold problem, and much better, modifiable 12-gauge shotguns make an appearance later on.
*** The Sturdy Caravan Shotgun from the ''Courier's Stash'' DLC has its own set of problems. It deals slightly better damage than the regular version, is much more durable, and doesn't have the same Guns skill requirement to use effectively... but, due to shoddy programming, it is not affected by either of the shotgun-centric perks and doesn't count for shotgun-focused challenges. Both versions of the caravan shotgun are also hard to use with slug rounds due to the strange decision to use the raised screw from the release lever as a rear sight rather than screwing it in properly and using an ''actual'' sight that [[InterfaceScrew doesn't completely block off the front post.]]
** The Sawed-off Shotgun hasn't gotten much better since Fallout 3. Its only good point is that it's an improved holdout weapon, allowing you to take it into casinos, but there are much better weapons for the role. Against anything tougher than unarmored raiders, its saving grace comes with the "And Stay Back!" perk added in ''Dead Money'', which gives each shotgun pellet a 10% chance to knock an opponent to the ground. Since the gun shoots 14 pellets per shot, almost every firing results in your target collapsing in a heap, and the reload time is faster than what it takes to stand back up, [[CycleOfHurting nothing will survive as long as you brought enough ammo]].
** The Laser RCW does less damage per shot and per second than a 9mm submachine gun, and its [hard-to-come-by] Electron Charge Pack ammo is better reserved for the Gatling Laser or Tesla Cannon. That is, unless you convert your ECP ammo to the Overcharge, Max Charge, and/or Optimized versions at any available workbench, the latter of which requires a special perk, in which case the RCW becomes more powerful (albeit at the cost of slightly faster degradation), making it the poor man's Gatling Laser. In addition, the "Laser Commander" perk makes the RCW far more useful in most situations, thereby [[RescuedFromTheScrappyHeap rendering its issues moot and making it a worthwhile weapon]].
** The Recharger Rifle. Even for a [[SortingAlgorithmOfWeaponEffectiveness starter weapon]] its damage is absolutely pathetic, being 25% weaker than the 9mm pistol. On top of that it's extremely fragile, inaccurate, and [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking just plain ugly]]. Even worse, it does not benefit from the "Laser Commander" perk despite it being a laser weapon, thanks to a programmer's oversight. The point of it is to have a viable early energy rifle when microfusion cells are rare, but you'd be better off selling the gun and just using the caps to buy some extra ammo.
** The Automatic Rifle was added in the Dead Money addon. As one of the heaviest guns in the game and requiring a maxed guns skill and very high strength, it offers extremely inefficient use of expensive .308 ammo, a tiny magazine, very high spread, and low DPS compared to the sub machine guns that it competes against. Plus, like everything else added in Dead Money, you can't find it anywhere in regular gameplay after you've finished the DLC; for the weight of one, you could free up nearly half the space necessary for one of the far more valuable gold bars.
* In the ''Franchise/FinalFantasy'' series, any weapon with randomized damage, i.e. [[AnAxeToGrind axes]], especially once your attack power goes high enough that randomization only hurts your damage potential.
* Certain weapon classes in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXI'' have been hit by this as time and patches went by. In particular, two-handed weapons were looked down on for a long time due to differences in the damage and accuracy calculations for them versus one-handed weapons. This was thankfully adjusted, but other issues have come up from time to time for certain jobs or weapons.
* In ''FireEmblem'', Devil Axes. In its debut game, it was by far the most powerful axe, but it was more likely to kill you than your enemy, and pretty inaccurate to boot. Later games (including the DS remake of the first game) added better axes that rendered it almost totally obsolete.
** In the GBA games, they gave a huge amount of weapon exp, meaning [[NotTheIntendedUse they were mostly used for grinding a character's axe skill.]] The risk of killing yourself is still pretty frustrating though.
** [[FireEmblemAkaneia The first game]] and its sequels and remakes also had the Devil Sword, which did the same thing as the Axe and was arguably even ''more'' useless because it ''wasn't'' the most powerful sword in the original games.
** All Fire magic in ''Geneology of the Holy War''. In that game, all three types of Anima magic had identical power, the only difference was their weight. Fire was the heaviest (unlike later games where that honour went to Thunder) by FAR, and that is ''not'' a good thing. Even the weapon triangle advantage over Wind users did little to compensate for the massive speed loss the Fire user suffered (and Wind users are naturally speedy to begin with, which makes it even worse.), so there was almost no point in using Fire magic when other tomes were available. Probably the only decent Fire spell was the legendary one which, of course, was enemy-exclusive.
** Axes in the fourth game also suffered from the same problem, with only the Hero Axe being considered usable due to its secondary effect. In the sixth game, Axes also fell into this, but this time because of absolutley ''horrible'' accuracy, an issue which was fixed in the seventh.
** The Bolt Axe in Path of Radiance. While the other magical weapons (the Wind Sword and Flame Lance) could at least be given to characters with okay Magic, you'd be ''very'' hard-pressed to find an axe user with anything even vaguely resembling a Magic stat, making it almost useless.
*** In 'Awakening', most of those who can use the War Monk/cleric class ''do'' have a usably high Magic stat, making this weapon a more viable choice.
** In ''[[VideoGame/FireEmblemAwakening Awakening]]'', Fire, Lightning and Wind magic are crunched into one weapon type, "Tomes", similar to their treatment in the GBA titles. However, instead of being its own branch and part of a WeaponTriangle, Dark Magic is instead a subset of tomes. Only Dark Mages can use it, but they can use normal Tomes at the same time, making Dark Magic little more than an incremental upgrade that only certain magic-wielding classes can use. There's also the fact that despite all being one weapon group, each weapon element still has multiple tiers of weapons, so you get Wind, Elwind, Arcwind, Thunder, Elthunder...etc. This reduces magic from the strategic element it was in the past games and turns it into just another type of attack that happens to hit resistance instead of strength, and the lack of WeaponTriangle superiority between normal and Dark magic makes them redundant (outside of health-recovering spells like Nosferatu).
* Certain skills in ''GuildWars'' are either completely useless or completely outclassed, although this changes from time to time based on buffs and nerfs.
** some are also useless because they're absolute clones of others.
* Specific mods for ''KnightsOfTheOldRepublic'', made by a specific modder, would include the 'broken bottle' as a joke. It's clearly tailored to be useless in any way possible, dealing exactly one point of damage, and providing a large array of penalties, making sure that nobody would use it. It's description refers to it as a "crude weapon of an uncivilized age".
** In the basic game, [[GunsAreWorthless guns]]. Generally speaking, blasters of all varieties were only useful until you got your hands on a lightsaber. (Of course, being a StarWars property, the lightsaber's position at the intersection of Awesome and Powerful was pretty much guaranteed.) The sequel made them more powerful and versatile, but even then there were a whole host of weapons you simply did not want. Most often, these were non-upgradeable weapons, which were almost never powerful enough to be worth missing out of upgrade parts.
* The enemy weapons you get off Aces in ''VideoGame/ValkyriaChronicles'', tend to fit this trope early on, as the marginal increase in power compared to regular Gallian weaponry does not make up for the severe drop in both accuracy and range. While the rifles and machine guns improve to the point where they become viable options, captured sniper rifles consistently have less than half the range and accuracy of their counterparts, which eventually become capable of scoring long-range headshots with almost every shot. The exception is enemy [[VideogameFlamethrowersSuck flamethrowers]], as they are generally more powerful than their Gallian tier equivalents.
* In ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIIIMorrowind Morrowind]]'', Polearms. You wouldn't know this by hearing the fanbase, but nobody actually used them in Morrowind because they were worthless. (Didn't help that one-handed swords were much more numerous and [[BoringButPractical stronger]]...or that you pretty much ''had'' to have some skill in them.)
* ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'': Fist weapons, and pre-Burning crusade, polearms. Both were hampered by the fact that there were just ''not enough'' in the game, and the ones that were there were overshadowed by better weapons. It didn't help that Dagger specialization for rogues was much better than fist weapons. Burning Crusade remedied this by adding more polearms to the game, although they were most commonly used by hunters for stats. Mists of Pandaria is hopefully going to tackle Fist Weapons.
*** Polearms were at least somewhat useful to Warriors prior to Burning Crusade as they shared Axes 5% bonus crit specialization and Alterac Valley offered a good polearm as a simple quest reward that was a cheaper alternative to the "OP" Arcnaite Reaper 2-handed axe that blacksmiths could craft.
*** The weapon proficiency system was eventually removed, making certain weapon types more-or-less interchangeable for the most part. It makes no difference to a Death Knight whether he is swinging a giant sword, axe, mace or polearm as long as it boosts the strength stat.
** The fourth expansion added Pokemon-like pet battles. Many pets have very weak movesets, although none are truly useless. There are, however, instances of very rare pets that are effectively identical to much more easily obtained alternatives.
* The ''Franchise/MassEffect'' series has a fair share of examples.
** ''VideoGame/MassEffect1'':
*** Due to the SortingAlgorithmOfWeaponEffectiveness and RandomDrops in the first game, several guns were rendered completely useless five minutes after you picked them up because you'd immediately find another gun of the same type with objectively better stats.
*** Sniper rifles for Shepard - unless you're a Soldier or Infiltrator (or take Sniper Rifles as your bonus skill on NewGamePlus), you can't zoom in with the scope (defeating the entire purpose of sniping), and even if you do have training for it, you need to put to put a ton of skill points into it to stop the damn thing from shaking. The environments are small enough for perfect aim with pistols or assault rifles (and [[GameBreaker the former]] is available for ''every'' class). A Sniper rifle of any power will (almost) overheat from a single shot and take seconds to cool down, making it useless for the ZergRush that every fight devolves to. And with the game's infamous "permaheat" bug, every shot with a sniper rifle carries a risk of forcing a saved-game reload.
*** On the upside, in the squadmates' hands, sniper rifles equipped with high-explosive ammo turn into a perfect-aim rocket launchers[[BlownAcrossTheRoom that eject enemies from the level]].
** ''VideoGame/MassEffect2''
*** The Shuriken was the most useless weapon in the game. It's a weak, inaccurate machine pistol that doesn't even have the benefit of a fast firing rate, since it shoots three round bursts. It did less damage and had worse accuracy than the Predator pistol, which you got before it.
*** The Katana and Scimitar shotguns had an effective range of about five feet, and even point blank weren't powerful enough to one-shot basic mooks. To get any use of them you had to get in an enemy's face, exposing yourself to automatic fire. Literally the only reason to ever use them in battle is if you're out of other ammo for other weapons and have melee enemies like varren coming up close.
*** There's a reason no one uses the Avalanche heavy weapon; it's simply a waste of power cells.
** ''VideoGame/MassEffect3'':
*** The Shuriken, Katana, and Scimitar are still terrible, with the re-introduction of weapon mods doing little to compensate for their faults. The Avalanche was removed entirely.
*** The AT-12 Raider shotgun has the worst accuracy in the game and only holds two shots. It's redeeming quality is supposed to be very high damage, but the Wraith does more damage, so there's no reason at all to pick up the Raider.
*** The Geth Pulse Rifle, which was considered a decent weapon in the second game and great in the first, has moved into Scrappy Weapon territory in ''3''. It's been nicknamed the "Geth Piss Rifle" by the community simply because it does low damage overall.
*** The [[NailEm Kishock Harpoon Gun]] sniper rifle. It has a number of features that sound great on paper: great spare ammo capacity and reload speed for a single-shot sniper rifle, shots that can be charged for extra damage, a higher headshot damage multiplier than normal, and perhaps most importantly, the ability to ignore the "shield gate," a massive damage reduction that occurs when excess damage shatters an enemy's Shields or Barriers and goes on to their Health or Armor. However, the weapon's projectile is slow-moving and requires a lot of aiming compensation, charging shots is extremely inefficient from a DPS perspective without producing enough extra damage to justify it, 40% of the shot's damage is dealt in bleed (meaning it actually deals relatively little damage up front, and even common infantry can potentially survive a headshot), and the scope is of such a low magnification that the weapon handles more like an assault rifle with a scope attached than a sniper rifle. The result is a weapon that is so bizarrely balanced and has such a ridiculous learning curve that [[ButtMonkey even after numerous patches and tweaks, it remains, along with the Shuriken, the only weapon in the game that the Mass Effect Wiki advises against using]].
*** The Viper sniper rifle got nerfed hard in this game, having its firing rate lowered and the clip size reduced from 12 to 6. Combined with the buffs given to other guns, the Viper just looks pathetic; the [[HandCannon Carnifex]], for example, not only does more damage, but it also weighs less and can easily be modded to hold more shots. Still in multiplayer, the Viper can be a literal PoorMansSubstitute for the Carnifex, since the former is an uncommon weapon and the latter is a rare, which means that you'll probably max out the Viper first unless you're particularly blessed by the RandomNumberGod.
*** Phoenix Adepts and Vanguards use Shock Batons for their melee attack. Said batons are slow and don't do a lot of damage, and leave you exposed the entire time.
* Lucca's "ultimate weapon" in ''VideoGame/ChronoTrigger'', the Wonder Shot, randomly inflicts 10%, 50%, 100%, 200%, or 300% damage. It does not deal 200%/300% enough to make the gun worthwhile.
** In the NintendoDS remake, Marle gets the Venus Bow, which is guaranteed to do 777 damage. The problem is that this means critical hits are impossible, and if she gets confused, that 777 guaranteed damage can be turned on your own teammates (which is bad when they can have at most 999 HP).
* In ''VideoGame/UltimaVII'', the Firedoom Staff. A fairly potent weapon, it had the problem that you don't control your party members and so they are likely to wander into the blast radius of the fireball. It was manageable, though, if you wanted to. What you should never, ever do is give this weapon to any party member, because they will promptly start blowing up the entire party by not caring one whit about who is going to get caught in any given explosion.
* ''VideoGame/MonsterHunter'': All weapon classes are useful in some way or another, so how scrappy they are tends to depend on whether you're hunting solo or with a party:
** Sword & Shield is widely regarded as a poor choice for solo hunts. Although S&S users have generally high elemental or status ratings on their weapons, amazing mobility compared to other melee classes, a shield for blocking attacks (including those ever-annoying flashes and roars), and can use items without sheathing (making them excellent support in multiplayer), the damage-per-second and reach leave much to be desired. And unlike most other classes, the S&S class doesn't have a hard-hitting special attack or SuperMode. Thankfully, Capcom seems to have recognized this last drawback and has given the weapon its own charged heavy slash in ''4U'', among other improvements.
** All Gunner classes (the Bowguns and Bow) can be this in solo hunts as well, due to sacrificing attack power in exchange for allowing attacks from a safer distance. It's possible to defeat most monsters as a solo Gunner within the time limit, but unless you have the correct technique and armor skills, it will usually take much longer than just coming up close and whacking away with a good melee weapon. Also, Gunners have to use separate Gunner armor, which means having to farm for more drops. On top of all that, Gunner armor has only a fraction of the raw defense of Blademaster armor despite boasting higher Elemental resistances, which means if a monster reaches you and starts beating you up, your health is going to be ripped apart like toilet paper.
** In multiplayer, weapons with long sweeping reaches tend to be loathed due to the knockback and tripping when accidentally hitting other players, the usual culprits being the Longsword, Switch Axe, Charge Blade (in axe form) and Hunting Horn (otherwise a stellar support class due to its AreaOfEffect buffs and healing). Unless the monster is big enough that everyone can spread out to avoid hitting each other, it is hard to avoid interrupting other players' combos with these weapons.
[[folder:Shoot 'Em Ups]]
* ''VideoGame/{{Gradius}} [=ReBirth=]'' has Type E's Double shot, the V-Shot. It fires up and down, but ''not'' forward, thereby depriving you of any and all horizontal coverage. Type E's Laser, the Vector Laser, becomes this too on Stage 2 and bonus stages, where it cannot damage destructible walls. Needless to say, if you equip the Vector Laser and then go into Stage 2 on higher loops or difficulties, or into a bonus stage, both of which require destroying walls to advance, you are ''[[UnwinnableByDesign dead]]''.
* ''Soul Star'' has the '''C'''ircle Laser. It fires quickly, but you'll soon notice it does an awfully low amount of damage. After you get the powerful Orange '''L'''aser, you'll want to avoid the C "powerup" at all costs.
* The Autocannon/10 and Ultra autocannon/10 in ''VideoGame/MechWarrior Living Legends''. Heavy, pitiful damage, pitiful ammo capacity, slow projectiles, and the gun overheats and jams almost as soon as it feels like you start doing proper damage to the enemy. The Bear Autocannon, a handheld minigun for the [[PoweredArmor Battlearmor]] is so thoroughly in the Joke category that it is literally more effective to ''throw the gun at the enemy''[[note]]which at close range, has a chance to TeleFrag the enemy when the weapon spawns inside them[[/note]] than it is to shoot them with it - the gun has terrible range, next to zero damage against armored targets and other battlearmor, overheats, has a wind-up time, and encroaches on the AC/2 handheld bullet hose, which is better in every single way and fits into the same category.
** The final patch, 0.7.0, ''finally'' [[RescuedFromTheScrappyHeap rectified the scrappy weapons]]. The AC/10 and UAC/10 are now genuinely scary weapons, and the Bear Autocannon now has a range of 600 meters along with greatly improved damage and accuracy - making it an excellent sniper weapon to take out other battlearmor, and an effective way to piss off mech pilots courtesy of ScratchDamage. However, it has a side effect of making the handheld Small Laser pretty much redundant.
* The Arrow IV in ''[=MechWarrior=] 2: Ghost Bear's Legacy''. In principle it was great - superlong range and huge damage - but its effectiveness was nullified by the anti-missile system, another new weapon included in [=GBL=], which would explode them effortlessly because it was meant to counteract missile salvos made of several ''dozen'' of them - and Arrows were just as unarmored as normal missiles. Ammo supply was also pitifully small.
* ''VideoGame/AceCombatInfinity'' has the High-Capacity Air-to-Air Missile. It's basically a second set of the standard missiles, with a slower reload time, less ammo, less damage, and no ability to lock onto the more plentiful ground targets. That would be bad enough on its own, but what makes it worse is that it is very, very easy to upgrade every aspect of the standard missiles and completely obsolete the HCAA, while the HCAA - and by extension, every missile-based special weapon - requires most of the tech tree to be completed before one can even begin to upgrade anything other than their capacity. And yet, a good chunk of mid- to high-tier aircraft like the F-35, the Typhoon, and the YF-23 start with or can get HCAA's instead of something actually useful.
[[folder:Stealth-Based Games]]
* Just about any melee weapon in the ''VideoGame/{{Tenchu}}'' games (at least ''Wrath of Heaven'') that you can get from a dead {{Mook}}. Especially as they get rid of your one-hit stealth kills. The higher-scoring need-for-powering-up stealth kills. The you're-a-ninja stealth kills. (Well, yeah, the fun-to-do stealth kills.)
[[folder:Survival Horror]]
* Proximity Mines in ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil5'' might be considered this. Though they have some use in Story mode (usually by leading bosses and strong enemies on them), in Mercenaries they are next to useless, since you need to do melee anyway and you can't even use them to clear the mob in a pinch. No reason to bother with bosses. And in Versus, if you happen to be seen placing them, the enemy player can detonate them by shooting while you are still close. This added to the fact that good players won't be caught stepping on them anyway, since it's easy to tell the set mines from the dropped ones.
* The knife from most of the ''Franchise/ResidentEvil'' series was absurdly weak (usually taking several dozen stabs just to knock over the most basic of enemies), had zero range, and took up valuable inventory space, so was typically dumped in the first item box, unless you were just ''that'' good and wanted to give yourself a SelfImposedChallenge. ''[[VideoGame/ResidentEvilCodeVeronica Code Veronica]]'' was the first game to give it even limited usefulness, as one swipe counted as several hits, but it wasn't until ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil4'' made it as powerful as the handgun, just trading range for unlimited use, that it [[RescuedFromTheScrappyHeap became worthwhile]]. A skilled player could save a lot of ammo using it, and some bosses were actually easier with the knife. The fact it no longer counted against your inventory space helped as well.
* ''VideoGame/SilentHill1'' has two: the Kitchen Knife and the Hand Axe, the first and last melee weapons you get, respectively. The Kitchen Knife is a mandatory pickup, has zero range and in terms of defense is much worse than simply running from danger, and it's as if the game realizes how worthless it is because you can find the Steel Pipe, one of the game's more useful weapons, ''less than a minute later''. The Hand Axe is a barely-noticeable upgrade to the Kitchen Knife, which is rather unacceptable since by then you're 75% through the game and already have the magnificent and deadly [[DropTheHammer Emergency Hammer]]. You don't have to get the Axe, though it does have one use: Breaking the lock keeping you from the sewer. Other weapons can break it, but it requires careful positioning and the Axe makes it easier.
* [[DropTheHammer Blunt weapons]] in ''DwarfFortress'' spent a long time in the wilderness due to a bug in the damage rules, meaning that your dwarves could pound on some poor goblin or kobold for ''months'' in-game without scoring a kill. While that did have [[VideogameCrueltyPotential a certain amount of appeal to many players]], it tended to impair the smooth running of a fortress by making civilian dwarves scared to go near the site of the battle.
** Two handed weapons aren't very popular, because they can't be used with a shield.
** [[WhipItGood Whips, scourges]], and [[EpicFlail flails]]. In this case it's because they tend to be absurdly powerful due to how the game handles chain weapons. While a human in adventurer mode can put them to good use, they're Scrappy in fortress mode, as none of them can be [[UnusableEnemyEquipment manufactured by dwarves]].
[[folder:Tabletop Games]]
* TableTopGames/DungeonsAndDragons 3.0, 3.5, and TableTopGames/{{Pathfinder}} made the heavy crossbow nearly useless. A user could fire it a bit further than a light crossbow and on average did one more point of damage on a hit compared to a longbow or a light crossbow. However, the weapon took an entire round to reload, leaving the character useless for an entire turn. Characters who knew how to use a bow would always do better to use the bow if they planned to make more than one attack in a round or spend more than one round shooting. Characters above first level could almost always afford a bow that let them add their strength to the damage, negating the heavy crossbow's advantage to damage. Characters who couldn't use a bow would usually rather shoot and move with a light crossbow or were spellcasters whose actions in combat were almost always better used casting a spell. Feats (special tricks characters learn) were priceless, and using one to select "Rapid Reload" for a heavy crossbow was generally a terrible choice. Even the range advantage was usually useless due to the metagame; most [=GMs=] who use maps don't set many encounters at distances where the extra range comes into play. If the adventure takes place inside a dungeon of any kind, forget it. Many "subpar" weapons have tons of uses for smart players, but the game's rules render heavy crossbows worthless. Even the siangham (a monk weapon which does less damage than the monk's fist) has its uses.
** The double crossbow in Pathfinder is even more AwesomeYetImpractical. It fires two bolts with one trigger pull, but penalizes both shots by -20% to hit (even if you know how to shoot it) and costs a feat just to learn to use. It takes two standard actions to reload, meaning a normal character using it would fire once every three rounds unless he dedicates even more precious feats to the weapon. Meanwhile, the Manyshot or Rapid Shot feats applied to many weapons and imparted lower/no penalties to hit and allowed for similar effects for dedicated ranged characters. If the character was a spell-caster or melee fighter, spending a feat to learn to use a double crossbow was a very bad choice, especially compared to repeating crossbows, longbows, or other options available to these characters.
** Bastard swords saw little use, as they were two handed weapons which did less damage than two handed swords or great axes, and only by spending a feat could a character use it in one hand. Feats were too precious to spend to gain the minimal damage bonus a bastard sword had over a longsword. Magical longswords were also far more common to find whether the loot was based on GM whimsy or random rolls, making longswords even more attractive compared to the bastard sword.
*** Actually the default weapon of almost all oversized weapon builds ever since a splat established that an oversized bastard sword may be wielded as a two-handed "fullblade." Due to the nature of size scaling one point of average damage at medium size becomes significantly larger at huge or more.
** Exotic weapons in general had this problem except for D&D's spiked chain, which could be a MinMaxersDelight. It was severely [[{{Nerf}} nerfed]] in TableTopGames/{{Pathfinder}}. Any benefit the exotic weapon provided was grossly overshadowed by the thought of "wasting" a feat and the low chance of finding a magical version of the weapon. If an exotic weapon was associated with a certain race, allowing that race to use it more easily, it would see modest use. The rest almost never saw action.
** Also in 3.5 is the Heavy Mace. It would be a simple bludgeoning weapon... but the problem is the Morningstar does the same amount of damage, costs less, weighs less, ''and'' does piercing damage in addition to bludgeoning. The only advantage the Mace has is being harder to sunder.
** In 1st edition AD&D, only the longsword and two handed sword out of all the melee weapons were really worth using for fighters most of the time unless you used the complicated "Weapon Type vs Armour Type" to hit modifier table which hardly anyone did making any other choice a scrappy weapon. They had the best damage dice for the number of hands required to wield them compared to all other weapons, unless you were unlucky enough to come across an enemy resistant or immune to slashing damage. Once weapon specialisation was added, pretty much every single 1st level fighter selected the longsword as you could double specialise in it (resulting in a very useful +3 to hit and damage while two handed weapons were restricted to single specialisation at +1 to hit and +2 damage) and used their remaining proficiency slot for a missile weapon. This problem remained until 3rd edition rolled around.
* 7thSea, due to an oversight, has the crossbow. The system uses a "keep" roll system, where [=XkY=] means you roll X dice but only keep the Y highest dice. Since you get to add your brawn to your roll (but not keep) for melee weapons it was common to find a weapon that had a lower X than Y. The crossbow has 0k2, but since it's a ranged weapon it never gets any bonuses from strength, meaning there's no way to get any rolls to actually keep.
* ''MiddleEarthRolePlaying'' and ''{{Rolemaster}}'' had the morning star and flail. While they both offered a modest +10 attack bonus and the chance to do a secondary critical hit, both weapons had an 8% chance to fumble on every attack and if you did fumble, you automatically critically hit yourself with them before you even rolled on the fumble table. The bola was even worse, with a -5 attack penalty though again with a chance to do a secondary critical, 7% fumble chance and again you automatically critically hit yourself with it if you did fumble.
[[folder:Turn-Based Tactics]]
* The [[LittleUselessGun .38 Special]] in ''VideoGame/JaggedAlliance 2''. Pistols in general are relegated to EmergencyWeapon status early on as it is, and revolvers in particular are considered inferior because they have to be reloaded about three times as often as everything else, so that's two strikes against it before we even get to the fact that it does ''lousy'' damage and has poor range and accuracy even by pistol standards. You're almost better off with a knife.
* Bow weapons in ''VideoGame/DisgaeaHourOfDarkness'' were largely overshadowed by gun weapons for players that wanted range damage. Bows had access to Area of Effect attacks, but guns had greater range, and more importantly, damage for them was determined by a combination of the wielder's ATK and HIT stats, while every other weapon in the game relied only one stat for damage, making level stats for a good bow user was more trouble than it was worth. Developers noticed this and the weapons was RescuedFromTheScrappyHeap in later games where they were given better attacks, classes with evilities that can take advantage of bows and nerfing the range on the guns (guns in later games can still hit farther, but only in a straight line).
[[folder:Third-Person Shooters]]
* The "Kozlice" shotgun from ''VideoGame/OperationFlashpoint''. It's more accurate than the average game shotgun, but that's where the good bits end. It's weak, only holds two shots (and you can only carry 10 rounds ''total'', as opposed to ''300'' for an assault rifle, due to each individual shell taking up the same inventory space as a 30-round rifle magazine), and takes twice as long to reload as any of the other weapons. It'd almost be more effective if you could use it as a club. Of course since it's there to represent the civilian hunting shotguns which are all most of [[LaResistance the Resistance]] have to start with this is intentional.
* ''VideoGame/GearsOfWar'''s Scorcher flamethrower gets VideoGameFlamethrowersSuck down to a T. It has exceedingly short range, which unfortunately forces you into the killzone for everyone's favorite weapon, the Gnasher shotgun; not only that, but despite being a flamethrower, it lacks any significant DamageOverTime effect which would help justify its existence.
[[folder:Wide Open Sandbox]]
* ''VideoGame/TheSaboteur'''s Terror Flamethrower. "[[VideogameFlamethrowersSuck Typical video game flamethrower]]" sums it up fairly well, with its short range and flames that cover up your field of view. It would be good for close-quarters combat in theory, except that at around the same time you gain access to an automatic shotgun with a ridiculous ammo capacity (150 rounds with a dirt-cheap upgrade) that's surprisingly effective at stopping targets well out of the flamethrower's range.
* ''VideoGame/{{Terraria}}'' has short swords. Theoretically, they're faster than broadswords, but do less damage and are smaller. However, unlike broadswords, your character doesn't swing it in an arc; rather, he/she jabs it straight forward. It's moderately useful against enemies that walk right into your attacks, but worthless against nearly everything else.
* ''VideoGame/{{Minecraft}}'' has Golden Swords, which are only as strong as a Wooden Sword and breaks down twice as fast. While Golden Swords compensate their weaknesses by having higher chances of getting stronger enhancements, wasting rare gold resources for a weapon that won't last is a dumb move.
** However gold swords are often dropped by zombie pigmen, which are often hunted or farmed using arrays of nether portals because they also drop gold nuggets and ingots. For players with gold farms, the gold sword is by far the most common weapon in the game. However it is still up for debate if they are really worth the xp points to enchant.


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BARRE A former central Vermont man is facing charges of sexually assaulting a 3-year-old girl in 2011.
David S. Langevin, 24, currently of East Palo Alto, N.M., pleaded not guilty Thursday to felonious sexual assault on a victim under 13 years old in Washington County criminal court. If convicted, he faces a maximum of life in prison and a $50,000 fine.
According to the police affidavit, the girl told her grandmother that Langevin, who was dating the girls mother at the time, made her put her hands on his genitals and he had touched hers. An investigator with the Department for Children and Families told police she found evidence of sexual abuse and that the child had a sexually transmitted disease.
The girl tested positive for chlamydia, according to authorities. The investigator said the girl also indicated Langevin would come into her room at night and rape her.
Police said the mother of the child told a doctor at Fletcher Allen Health Care in Burlington that she had been treated for a positive test for chlamydia while she was pregnant with the girl, but the girl had been delivered by cesarean section. The mother also said she and Langevin had gone to Planned Parenthood and been tested for sexually transmitted diseases and had come back clean.
The mother said her daughter had been molested when she was 16 months old by an 18-year-old male.
According to the doctors report, the girl had no physical injuries, such as bruising or cuts to her genitals, that could be evidence of sexual abuse.
Police said that when they contacted Langevin to talk about the allegation, he said he was moving away, insisting he was innocent because there was no evidence he had done anything.
Medical records obtained by police show that Langevin tested positive for chlamydia in 2008 and 2011.MORE IN Central VermontWhen it comes to medical field training, why not go straight to the source? Full StoryThe roads of central Vermont are mostly clear of snow and ice, if a bit muddy, and officials... Full StoryWilliamstown readies for second sewer vote Full Story
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Your Green Bay Packers: Telling It Like It Is
Sep 29th
Posted by Monty McMahon in Casey Matthews
Casey Matthews, Clay's younger brother, has been benched by the Philadelphia Eagles. Matthews had become the weak link in the Eagles "dream team" defense.
Aug 8th
Casey Matthews, the younger brother of Green Bay Packers linebacker Clay Matthews, is following in his brother's footsteps. All signs point to Casey being a starter for the Philadelphia Eagles his rookie season.
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