Cracked.com, web presence of the popular magazine, gives us a list of 5 crazy sci-fi weapons that are actually in production. Some of them aren’t too surprising but others feel like they’re straight out of a videogame. Once you hit the jump, you may never feel safe again.

The patriotic folks at Boeing, the giant aircraft manufacturer and defense corporation, are developing an advanced tactical laser that will be mounted onto transport planes. The laser will be silent, invisible, and be able to strike up to 100 targets in rapid succession from 10,000 feet up and nine miles away. Each beam will be 10 centimeters wide and have the heating power of a blowtorch, making the laser capable of slicing through metal.

Anybody who has ever played a sci-fi FPS or watched Battlestar Galactic knows what a railgun is. It’s a weapon that’s able to fire a metal slug at incredible speeds through the use of electromagnets. To get into specifics, the rail gun that’s being developed by the U.S. Navy can fire a slug over 230 miles at Mach 7, with a velocity of Mach 5 at impact. The plan is to install these babies on Navy ships for the purpose of putting a few holes in the enemy fleet.

Oh, and for an awesome bit of trivia, the air friction created by the fast-moving slug creates a fireball. Hadoken, bitches. Navy rail gun video below.

We’ve all know for a while now that children aren’t are future, robots are. Using robots in hostile situations is nothing new. We have robots mounted with assault rifles, robots that can defuse bombs, robots that can vacuum even the dustiest apartment – robots can do anything.

iRobot, the company that makes the aforementioned Roomba, is well aware of the power they wield so they’ve teamed up with Australian weapons company Metal Storm to produce Warrior, a robot fitted with Firestorm weapons system. The Firestorm uses electrical impulses to fire off 4,000 40mm grenades per second. The best part? Warriors are being given advanced software so that they can perform certain battlefield functions autonomously. Johnny Five is alive and he will wreck your shit.

What do you call an orbital weapons platform that drops telephone poled-sized tungsten rods at 36,000 feet per second that strike with the force of a tactical nuke? You call it “Rods from God.” The theoretical weapon would involve two satellites in orbit, one for targeting and one for launching space darts at the Earth. With nothing to propel them but gravity, the darts would travel at over 7,000 MPH, roughly the speed of a meteor. The US Space Command suggests that we keep an eye on the sky starting in 2025.

Modular Disc-Wing Urban Crutise Munitions. Sounds boring, right? How about remote-controlled frisbees that explode in a shower of armor-piercing shrapnel? Not so boring anymore, are they? These little babies are being developed for the Air Force by Triton Systems. The idea is to guide one of these devices into a heavily defended area and then detonate it, allowing us to destroy our enemies without getting our hands dirty. The explosive devices can also be rigged to form a single-targeted explosion in order to destroy heavy vehicles.

And there you have it! Before I’m dead I should see exploding frisbees, invisible Death Star lasers, railguns capable of puncturing steel ship hulls, robots that fire a bajillion grenades, and telephone poles supposedly thrown by the lord.

The future looks bright.

Sources: Cracked, Global Security, Live Science

The recent PC update for Team Fortress 2 was a welcome addition to the already excellent gameplay, and it looks like our friends on the Xbox 360 will be able to enjoy the same delights soon enough.

The PC downloadable content included the new game type ‘Payload’: this tasks the attacking team to move a mine cart containing a huge bomb through the level and into the defending teams base, where it goes boom.

According to Valve’s marketing director Doug Lombardi:

We’re looking at bringing the Goldrush and the new achievements and stuff out to the 360. How and when is still sort of being determined, on pricing and that kind of stuff. On the PC it’s sort of wide open, you can release stuff whenever you want. On the console there’s a little bit more of a pathway.

What we’ve been waiting for is until we had a critical mass of new content to put out, so we feel like we’re kind of there now. We’ll probably be making some announcements pretty soon on what will happen with the 360 stuff. I don’t know that–unfortunately I don’t know that any of that will make it to the PS3.

The PC pack also included new maps and the first slew of unlockable weapons, which is sure to change TF2’s gameplay dramatically. Hopefully more news will be rushing towards us for both the 360 and PS3 DLC plans.

Source: Shack News

It looks like Rare is interested in shaking up the Banjo formula with the next game in the franchise for the Xbox 360. Titled Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts, vehicle creation and component collection will play big roles.

Rare may be aiming for a more open-world, sandbox style of play for the new Banjo Kazooie. A large part of gameplay will revolve around the creation of vehicles from 1,600 parts throughout the game’s six levels. These parts include weapons and can create various things from gliders to monster trucks and bikes that have multiple uses and abilities.  Some possible creations can be seen in the following gallery:

Traditional platforming will still play a role, as will the collection of puzzle pieces and musical notes. Notes in particular will be used to buy blueprints for vehicles.

Levels themselves sound substantially larger than before, with the first area called Showdown Town being described as 16 times larger than anything Rare has done before.

Information on multiplayer is scarce, but Gamereactor experienced a few duels at Rare’s recent press day:

The first was a kind of ‘King of the Hill’ where we had to keep inside a circle that constantly moved. Two others were races, [the last being] some sumo-wrestling, where we had to push each other out of a ring. After we first had played the games only using the pre-made vehicles, we then were given the opportunity to create our machines, our own ultimate weapons, in an attempt to win the levels.

Seemingly headed for a release this year, it shouldn’t be long before we start hearing a lot more about a game that Microsoft will surely want attention for.

Source: Game Informer (June 2008) via Neogaf, Gamereactor via Videogaming247

Whether you’re dosed up on Nectar or fighting for the Promised Hand, the following visual aids will be just what you’re looking for.  Pay close attention to these new pictures that show some of the battles you’ll encounter, the weapons you will exploit and the vehicles you’ll utilise. 

For more information on your friends, enemies, weapons and vehicles, make your way over to this link.

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Voice actor John DiMaggio, the raspy voice of Gears of War lead man, Marcus Fenix, was recently interviewed by IGN. During the course of the interview, DiMaggio revealed that Gears of War 2 will feature Brumak, who first debuted as a villain in the PC version of the original Gears of War.

He goes on to reveal that Dom’s good buddy, Franklin, will be returning as well, and then lets the following tidbits roll off his tongue:

Oh man, dude – there’s new weapons, new beasts, there’s a couple of new characters, and it’s just badass.

When asked about the sequels overarching plot, DiMaggio states:

“The storylines are really cool and the relationships of the guys in the game – the sequences that explain things that are going on – they’re a lot deeper.”

Note to self: We really need to start interviewing more videogame voice talent.

Source: IGN