History AwesomeButImpractical / VideoGames

* The Planet Buster in Spore, which [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2BpW8TQWS4&feature=related destroys a planet]], but makes all nearby empires hate you. If you're going to use it, be ready for war. Many. many wars.

* ''{{Gradius}} [=ReBirth=]'s'' Type E powerup configuration has the Vector Laser, which pierces through any object, even structures, is as wide as the Ripple laser, and looks cool. Unfortunately, not only is it weaker than the other lasers, but it cannot destroy the regenerating walls in Stage 2 or the destructable dot walls in the bonus stages. Which means if you enter a bonus stage or get caught behind a solid regenerating wall in Stage 2-2 or 3-2, you're [[{{Unwinnable}} fucked]]. The only way to circumvent this once you've gotten the Vector Laser? Switch to the Vertical Shot, which is probably the [[SoBadItsHorrible worst Gradius]] [[PowerUpLetdown powerup ever]]: it shoots upwards and downwards, but not ''forwards''.

** An item in Episode III called Seven Moons brings the character back with full HP and EP. Unfortunately it can sometimes crystalize the character you use it on. At that point, they're out for the rest of the battle.

** In ''TwilightPrincess'', you can eventually purchase 3 different varieties of bombs, the third of which is bombchus, which crawl along the ground and then explode. However, they're more expensive per-bomb and you can carry fewer of them than of the other varieties, and there aren't really any situations in which they're actually any better than regular or water bombs. Most players will fill a single bomb bag with bombchus just for variety, and then never end up using any of them.

**** Farore's Wind is actually very useful in some places. See, it lays the portal at the last door you passed through. Know that room in the Fire Temple with the very narrow bridge that drops you way too far back? Two shots and your back at the bridge, without having to pass through the dungeon. And that part where you have to push the block onto the lava spout and then jump onto the block gets old fast.

* ''[[TheLegendOfZeldaMajorasMask The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask]]''. The Fierce Deity Mask requires you to get all the masks in the game, and then beat the boss. The boss is made incredibly easy with the FD mask, and then its only usable in boss rooms after the end. And the Giant's Mask, incredibly awesome concept (giant Link!), but only usable against one boss. Which could have been shrunken. And to top it off, considering it didn't even have to be there, it slowly drains your magic! It's necessary for the boss, but COME ON.

* ''TheLegendOfZeldaMajorasMask''. The Fierce Deity Mask requires you to get all the masks in the game, and then beat the boss. The boss is made incredibly easy with the FD mask, and then its only usable in boss rooms after the end. And the Giant's Mask, incredibly awesome concept (giant Link!), but only usable against one boss. Which could have been shrunken. And to top it off, considering it didn't even have to be there, it slowly drains your magic! It's necessary for the boss, but COME ON.

** Nayru's Love In ''OcarinaOfTime'', while theoretically would have been the MOST useful of the three spells, comes so late in the game that chances are you'll never actually use it.

* MachinesWiredForWar gives us the eradicator, a small unit that can wipe out entire sqauds with a controled gravity collopse. Unfortantly its slow, weak and could wipe out severalof your own units(and the units itself)if it tries to defend itself. See also, the Bee bomber, nuclear missle and spy.

* Emperor Doviculus of BrutalLegend fights with a guitar with ''four necks''.

* SuperMetroid has (arguably) two of these, one of which is [[AllThereInTheManual only shown in a demo upon completion of the game]]:

* The lightning in Medievil. Powerful (if slow) distance attack, but when you're out of ammo, it's gone forever; it can't be wasted at all.

* In many {{Bleach}} fighting games, Soi Fon has an attack in which she can use her Suzumebachi to, as in the anime, get a two hit KO - if she hits an opponent with the attack twice in one round, they instantly die. The impractical part comes from the fact that the attack is usually slow and hard to hit with, uses up a ton of spirit pressure, or both; and that the first hit usually does no damage. At best, using this attack can serve as a sort of alternate fighting style, as using it can be an [[DeathOrGloryAttack all-or-nothing strategy.]]
* Nukes in ''Cyber Nations''. Using one on another nation inflicts massive damage to its military (including the loss of all defending soldiers), destroys massive amounts of land, tech, and infrastructure, and inflicts instant [[NonLethalKO Anarchy]] (citizens take a massive drop in happiness, resulting in far lower collected taxes) for 5 days. Unfortunately, they're very expensive (and get even more so with each purchased nuke) and have strict requirements, one of which is having your nation be ranked in the 95th percentile or better. On top of that, every nuke launch is reported onto a publicly available page for all players to see, so if, outside of an inter-alliance war, you nuke a nation that's in an alliance, or are part of an alliance and fire a nuke without permission from superiors, you will be in ''very'' deep trouble.
* Red Ivan, the trigger-happy explosives expert henchman in Game/EvilGenius. His bazooka attack is one of the deadliest weapons in the game, but unless you micro-manage him during an attack, he'll probably end up doing as much damage to your base and your minions as to the forces of justice. Arming your mercenaries with flamethrowers is ill-advised for the same reason.
* Pirates: Legend of the Black Buccaneer likes to play with the player's idea of the usefulness of certain abilities. One ability that you receive after the first dungeon is the ability to summon zombies that fight for you. The problem? They drain your health, can only be summoned at certain spots (justified, as they're probably graves or voodoo ritual spots. They can be found nearly everywhere, so thats good), can only be summoned one at a time, and move so slowly, that by the time they can actually be useful, you will have lost half of your health to the enemy, and half your health as price for the slow moving zombie. The exact opposite happens when you fight through a huge hell-like arena, killing demons, and your reward is the ability to cut down plants. Seriously, except its an extremely useful ability, due to the amount of plants around the early parts of the game.
* 'Spore' has the [[EarthShatteringKaboom Planet Buster]], which is [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Exactly What It Says On The Tin]]. However, buying even one of them is ridiculously expensive, and actually using it - even on an uninhabited planet - is against the Galactic Code and can instantly spark a war with every empire within several hundred parsecs. Besides, it deprives you of a planet to conquer, which is usually the reason you'll be attacking the planet in the first place. It's pretty pointless, really, unless your objective is to get certain Acheivements or to make a YouTube video with an epic conclusion.
* In the Facebook flash game King of Kung Fu, the skill "Pet Charm" is quickly becoming this. It allows you to control one of your opponent's pets (many of which are quite powerful). However, the three most commonly used pets are immune to it, and most of the others are simply not worth the use of it taking up one of your 18 skill slots.

* The Tricobalt torpedo in StarTrekOnline is the most powerful torpedo weapon in the game. Fully skilled up and with weapon consoles that boots its damage, the torpedo can hit for 30,000-40,000 damage in a single shot; most fully skilled Cruisers(tanking class) only have 40,000+ hull hitpoints and 8000 shield points. The drawback? The torpedo takes 30 seconds to reload, compared with 6 seconds for a Photon Torpedo and 8 Seconds for a Quantum Torpedo, it cannot be overloaded with special weapon powers that can be done with other torpedoes, and unlike most other torps, it's incredibly slow flying and you can shoot it down with beam weapons, making it useless against a player with a good eye and fast reflexes. [=NPCs=] shoot them down fairly regularly too. Another problem is that torpedoes do about 10% of their normal damage on shields, so if the shields are up, you may do 3000 damage with it if you're lucky, and that's less than half the shield strength of a target ship.

* DeadRising - The Megabuster and Z-Saber both count, as getting the Megabuster required you to basically spend an entire playthrough killing zombies while the Z-Saber could only be acquired by going through survival mode and lasting five days.

* ''PlantsVsZombies'' has the Chomper, a plant which can OneHitKill any zombie that enters its range. The only problem? After it eats a zombie, it takes [[{{Understatement}} forever]] to chew it, leaving it open to attack during that time. You could put some Wall Nuts in front of it, but because of the Chomper's short range, any more than one will render the Chomper unable to attack. Thus, it'll likely only be able to eat one zombie before it's dead [[strike:meat]]vegetable matter.

* The Flamethrower in ''[SaintsRow Saint's Row] 2''. Sure, it sets your opponents [[KillItWithFire on fire]], which will normally kill them, but it has limited range, when combined with the fact that enemies [[CollisionDamage running into you]] while blazing will catch you as well, maybe torching that bastard isn't the best idea.

* {{Daikatana}}'s[[IncrediblyLamePun Daikatana]]. Yes, you know the game is SoBadItsHorrible when the '''TITLE WEAPON''' sucks. The sword Always leaves your opponent on 1hp. In theory, this would allow you to deliver the finishing blow, but in practice, the opponent would often slice you to pieces before you could deliver a second strike. Not to mention that it blocks the screen, and, when fully leveled up, starts sparkling simply to block the screen more.

* Newbies to ''FinalFantasyVI'' like to proclaim Locke as the best character in the game, as he is the only character who can hit the damage [[{{Cap}} cap]]. With a Valiant Knife, an Atma/Ultima Weapon, a [[DualWielding Genji Glove]], and a Master's Scroll/Offering (quadruples the number of attacks), Locke can attack for 9999 damage eight times in a single turn. What the newbies ignore is that this is only possible at extremely high levels (at which point enemies have long since ceased to pose a threat), and is therefore more of a parlor trick than anything.

* ''GoldenSun: The Lost Age'''s best Djinn Summon can only be acquired after confronting the strongest BonusBoss in the game, and that can only happen after you get halfway through the final dungeon. And using the summon costs a full complement of Mars Djinni and half of your Mercury Djinni -- a hefty cost that, depending on your class setup, can deprive you of your best healing for a few critical rounds.

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