People who play shooters know that there is one thing their bullets could never penetrate: walls. You could try all you want, but that virtual sheetrock might as well have been constructed out of 10-inches of solid steel.

Bazookas, grenades, 30 caliber rounds and high-powered lasers usually just make a nicely shaped black blemish where a gaping hole should be. That’s why our # 7 entry goes to Rare for inventing the Farsight XR-20, a weapon that screams, much like Ronald Reagan before it, “Tear down this wall!”

Surely you’ve lost points before due to an obnoxiously placed barrier. See if this sounds familiar: You find a great sniping spot, you’re prone and waiting for signs of life, when suddenly you see an oblivious noob making his way through an empty courtyard. You take a deep breath, slowly raise your sights to frame his soon-to-be-splattered cranium and prepare to propel his gray matter all over the texture-mapped grass.

Then, disaster. A distant grenade blast sends the spooked rookie hurdling like a gazelle to the nearest cover. Your opportunity is gone. A single tear streams down your face as you hear the far-off gunfire of a teammate stealing your kill.

Well, if you were playing the 2000 N64 game Perfect Dark, that situation never would have occurred. Why? Because the XR-20 made irritating walls a thing of the past. The XR (X-Ray, get it?) gave players the ability to see through walls, making it a breeze to locate the enemy. As if that wasn’t good enough, this baby also had the ability to pierce anything that stood between you and that MVP title in team deathmatch. One shot, one kill. Snipers rejoiced.

While it was slower to aim than other weapons and reloads were conducted at a snail’s pace, the auto-targeting feature more than made up for this. The XR-20 was a sharpshooter’s wet dream and it added a great new element to multiplayer – one that continues today.

Infinity Ward’s new release, Call of Duty 4, tweaks ballistics to make it possible to penetrate annoying drywall. And DICE’s 2008 release, Battlefield: Bad Company, promises to bring environmental destruction to new heights. So all you casual shooter fans, take heed. You can run, but you can’t hide.

Top Ten Most Badass Weapons List: 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1

Tags: Farsight-XR-20, Perfect-Dark

• Top Ten Most Badass Weapons in Gaming History – # 9 The Blades of Chaos
• Top Ten Most Badass Weapons in Gaming History – # 6 The Railgun
• Top Ten Most Badass Weapons in Gaming History – # 4 The BFG 9000
• Top Ten Most Badass Weapons in Gaming History – # 5 The Chainsaw Bayonet
• Top Ten Most Badass Weapons in Gaming History – # 3 The Gravity Gun
• Top Ten Most Badass Weapons in Gaming History – # 1 The Cerebral Bore
• Top Ten Most Badass Weapons in Gaming History – # 8 Cloud’s Sword
• Top Ten Most Badass Weapons in Gaming History – #2 The Darkness

1 Comment » Lem on December 29, 2007 9:02 pm One of the fun things with this was when you were using the auto-aim everyone would watch your screen. Was funny watching people just dodge around trying to stay out the site rather than watching their own screen. RSS feed for comments on this post. Comment Now Note: Commenting on Ripten does not currently require registration, however to be eligible for contests on the site, you must be a registered user. Name (required) Mail (will not be published) (required) Website Commenting Rules: No hate speech allowed. If you must argue, please debate intelligently. Comments containing selected keywords or outbound links will be put into moderation to help prevent spam. Ripten reserves the right to delete comments and ban anyone who doesn't follow the rules. Thanks. Notify me of followup comments Tired of the Goomba? Upload your own custom comment avatar.