History AwesomeButImpractical / VideoGames

* Some of the Buster attacks from ''VideoGame/DevilMayCry4'' are dangerous enough in crowds that using standard attacks is safer and more effective. Then there's Nero's 'Showdown', which is almost impossible to pull off without getting screwed yourself. Showdown is a powerful multi-hit attack that takes an exorbitant amount of time to wind up, and if you miss the first strike then it takes an equally crippling amount of time to wind down. However, it does have a saving grace that all of Nero's sword attacks tend to have extremely wide swing radii and Showdown is a Devil Trigger attack (so your BFS wielding spirit is also in effect), so if it connects then all enemies within a few meters almost certainly ''will'' die..
** Showdown is useful for killing De Cloaked [[DemonicSpiders Fausts]] and [[MightyGlacier Mega Scarecrows]] fast, just so long as you stun lock them with Summoned Swords during the wind up animation.

* The Field Shutter in ''Zanac'', which is a shield that protects your ship from frontal attacks. Sounds good until you discover that it pisses off the AI and [[DynamicDifficulty makes it throw more enemies at you]].

* In ''Moonwalker'' on the UsefulNotes/SegaGenesis, you can perform a special move that makes everyone on screen dance themselves to death. Unfortunately, it costs half your life.

* If you beat all the races in ''Dethkarz'' with all the car classes you're given the Templar, an awesome-looking secret car with all the stats maxed. Which means it's ''very'' fast... so much that it's ridiculously hard to control it.

* Doing barrel rolls in the ''Afterburner'' games. You can dodge a number of missile swarms this way, but there are some frames of vulnerability as your bird comes out of it, so you can still get nailed if you aren't timing it right. If you're skilled enough, standard juking is better.

* Every weapon in ''Iridion II'' that isn't the normal shot or the search laser. Thanks to the game's [[ScrappyMechanic accuracy-based scoring]], the latter two are the only weapons that can be used to get a high score; the radial gun, for instance, fires a needless amount of bullets in a sweeping pattern, which means your shot accuracy is going to go out the window if you use it.

* 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.

* In rail-shooter ''Left To Survive'' from My.Games, all the Special Weapons except perhaps the miniguns suffer this. While powerful, they all share the same disadvantage of needing to charge up by killing enemies first unlike your normal weapons. Additionally they have only a miniscule amount of shots, with the [[GatlingGood exception of the minigun weapons]] which have a ton of shots. Especially disadvantageous is the automatic pistol ''The Jolly Roger''. It's very stylish looking being a double-barrelled revolver with two spinning chambers - one within the other and it's [[MoreDakka rate of fire matches a minigun]]. Unfortunately it only has 6 shots so most of the time, it's used to dump its shots on a tough target and then automatically revert back to your normal guns.

* About 90% of the available Plasma Blade combos and almost all of the Boosters in the 3-D ''Franchise/{{Castlevania}}''-styled action game ''Nanobreaker'' serve no real purpose other than to put on a (somewhat nifty) laser light show for your opponents. For that matter, if it doesn't hit all around you or deliver a quick instant kill, it was essentially useless against the game's swarming Orgamechs.

* ''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.
* ''{{VideoGame/Plantasia}}'':

** The [[RevolversAreJustBetter Broken Butterfly]] has ludicrously high damage when fully upgraded, but those final two upgrades only come in the third-to-last chapter of the game. Until you get that last upgrade it's weaker than both the Killer7 and (in most versions of the game) a fully upgraded bolt action rifle, the latter of which also uses the vastly more common rifle ammo. Fully upgrading it is also ludicrously expensive, costing about as much as ''fifteen'' RPGs before it becomes any better than the alternatives.

* The nuclear grenade launcher in ''Take no Prisoners'' makes a fairly large boom, but the radiation of its projectiles hurts ''you'' too every time you fire it.

* In 10tons's ''Tesla vs Lovecraft'', the Epic perks -- Theseus Paradox and Tesla's Deathray are interesting but very disappointing. The first lets you create a clone when teleporting, but they're too weak while the second gives you a strong weapon for early on. Problem is that it takes time to reach an enemy and it can't be improved by anything. In addition to those, there's the Ball Lightning Gun. This is the final weapon available on normal mode and without the [=DLC=]. It shoots a lightning ball that sends a stream of lightning at enemy near its path, making it great for crowd control. It takes a while to reload and it only has 1 shot in its magazine. Now with the [=DLC=], having low ammo is actually good as there's a number of powerful new perks that only work when reloading. Unfortunately the Ball Lightning Gun is unique in that the reloading perks does not affect this weapon, making this weapon inferior to the Grenade Launcher and {{BFG}} (Big Fusion Gun) that come after.

* The final unlockable car in ''Tokyo Xtreme Racer Zero'' is an extremely powerful Nissan Fairlady Z... but just like its inspiration, the Devil Z from the ''VideoGame/WanganMidnight'' series, it's a challenge to drive.

* In ''Wacky Races Starring Dick Dastardly & Muttley'', there is The Crimson Haybailer, which it possess the ability to fly without a power-up, however, it also possess NO Grip, which forces you to use a power-up to stand on the ground so you could make a turn without having to stop your car/plane, The Crimson Haybailer, however, is specially useful in tracks that have water sections (One of them have a really large shortcut, which no other car, except for The Crimson Haybailer can take).

* ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil5'' has two character-exclusive bonus weapons that fall under this umbrella. Chris gets a gatling gun that shreds anything in its path; however, it takes several seconds to spin up, leaving you wide open to attack, and the aim reticle constantly wanders, making it extremely hard to hit anything at range; not to mention it has a huge ammo backpack that blocks a big chunk of the screen, making it harder to spot dangers and even aim other weapons (though on the upside, it can also block some enemy bullets). Sheva gets a longbow that deals a whopping 1500 damage a hit (on level with most of the sniper rifle weapons)... but it has no aiming reticle at all, so good luck hitting anything with it. In both cases, you're much better off saving your 50,000 bucks and just maxing out your favorite base-game weapons so you can purchase the infinite ammo upgrades from the Bonus Features menu.

** Few things encompass this quite like Der Freischütz and his weapon. You can pay energy for them to fire a bullet across the facility. While there are situations where it's useful, far more often it causes more collateral damage than it's worth, and if you rely on it too much or don't work on him for a meltdown, he'll just fire it at random, almost guaranteeing collatoral damage. His weapon in an agent's hand isn't as collateral damage inducing, but it's also the only weapon in the game that doesn't care if what it hits is friend in foe. Sending in agents with the gun alone or with people who can tank its damage is generally the only way you'll get use from it, [[ThisLooksLikeAJobForAquaman but it's the best weapon for dealing with Amber Ordeals by far]].
** Item Abnormalities are incredibly useful, but tend to have some sort of Caveat. Mis-using them can cause the Agent to die or go mad on the spot. And those are the nicer ones. But proper use can cause agents to handle much tougher challenges than would be reasonably possible.
** Aleph abnormalities range from Hard but reasonable to manage to this. Alephs give the most energy out of all abnormalities, but all of them are capable of breaching and causing their own kind of hell. The ones that are reasonable have clear guidelines on who not to send to work and what kind of work to avoid, but the absolute worst ones are capable of breaching because the game hates you more than usual today.

** Little Red Riding Hooded Mercenary can be contracted to fight other abnormalities. As a Waw class, she can total a lot of monsters in the facility. However, if things are bad enough that you need to actually use her, chances are it's better to just restart the day. She's also worthless against anything that resists Red damage and Aleph abnormalities will generally no-sell anything she does without proper support. And all of this isn't taking the possibility of you having [[BerserkButton Big and Will Be Bad Wolf]] into account, as even on duty she's much more interested in killing that than anything you sick her on, even if it's still in containment. On the other hand, if the wolf howls near her room, she'll go after it for free, and she always wins without outside help. Which is good, because her attacks hurt your people in the process and it's thus better to go in an elevator off to the side until it's over.
** The Queen of Hatred will actually break out to assist your facility, fighting breaching abnormalities or ordeals and healing your people in the process. However, she only does this during Second Trumpet situations, where either far too many dangerous things are out for her to handle, or a lot of your strong people are dead already. Also, she'll lose her shit and become part of the problem if too many people continue dying.
** The Knight of Despair will bless the first person to get a good result with her for the day. They take half damage from all sources except Pale, which does double damage instead. Pale damage is deadly without the damage boost, but rare enough that it's usually not too much of an issue. If the blessed person dies anyways, Knight of Despair will go on a rampage of revenge. She's also very strong as far as Waw abnormalities go and is one of the few sources of said very deadly damage.
** Melting Love grants whoever works on it in any way besides repression a regenerative heart. Useful under certain circumstances, but the person with it is effectively a patient zero that spreads a virus that turns people into slime minions. Managed well, it's not too big of a deal, but an inattentive manager can end up with a facility full of people slowly turning into slimes. If it spreads too far, Melting Love will just breach, taking its Patient Zero with it, in a rampage across the facility. Oh, and with most other benefit giving abnormalities, it still breaches if whoever it blessed dies. She's also [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast an Aleph class]], and while easier than most Alephs she still won't be easy to put down.

** ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTheMinishCap'': The Pegasus Shoes, typically a top tier item in the games it appears in, are really only useful for crossing swamps and bumping into things. The roll maneuver is almost as fast, requires no charge time, is safer to use and is easier to control. The Pegasus Shoes also require an item slot in this game, making it almost a {{nerf}} relative to the rest of the series.

*** The Shagohod from ''Snake Eater'' is the grand-daddy of Metal Gears, and also [[UpToEleven hideously impractical even by the standards of Metal Gears]]. It cannot walk as it has no legs (a screw assembly provides locomotion) and it has all the handling qualities of an oil tanker. And to use the nuclear weapons on-board as intended requires a 4.8km (3 mile) stretch of runway that faces your intended target. An RPG barely scratches the paint on the armour and a surface-to-air missile launcher and a ''100 barrel volley gun'' provides a lot of punch, but it's just a glorified tank at that point. Ironically in some respects it's actually BoringButPractical compared to REX or RAY.

*** The Spider Camo, which can be acquired by defeating The Fear non-lethally, keeps your camo level '''absurdly high''', even whilst walking/running, but it comes at the cost of eating through your stamina at a very quick pace, so using only when absolutely necessary is the smart thing to do whenever utilizing it as the effect stops completely once your stamina is fully depleted.

*** The Spider Camo, which can be acquired by defeating The Fear non-lethally, keeps your camo level '''absurdly high''', even whilst walking/running, but it comes at the cost of eating through your stamina at a very quick pace, so using only when absolutely necessary is the smart thing to do whenever utilizing it.

* In the ''VideoGame/DwarfFortress'' player community, ''[[Administrivia/TropesAreTools this is a desirable quality]]''. Especially if it involves magma. Your dwarves are [[UnwinnableByDesign all going to die horribly anyway]], why ''not'' make it as spectacular as possible?

* In rail-shooter ''Left To Survive'' from My.Games, all the Special Weapons except perhaps the miniguns suffer this. While powerful, they all share the same disadvantage of needing to charge up by killing enemies first unlike your normal weapons. Additionally they have only a miniscule amount of shots, with the [[GatlingGood exception of the minigun weapons]] which have a ton of shots. Especially disadvantageous is the automatic pistol ''The Jolly Roger''. It's very stylish looking being a double-barrelled revolver with two spinning chambers - one within the other and it's rate of fire matches a minigun. Unfortunately it only has 6 shots so most of the time, it's used to dump its shots on a tough target and then automatically revert back to your normal guns.

** The Supernova again in ''VideoGame/JakXCombatRacing''. It's the strongest weapon in the game (of course), destroying everyone in front of you and delaying their respawn for 3 or 5 seconds depending on whether your car is boosted by Dark Eco. However a) it is incredibly rare occurence to obtain it and b) when you ''do'' obtain it you have 10 seconds to fire it, otherwise it blows up your car, so you can't even reserve it for best moment. And of course, there are possible moments when you overlook you got it and only notice after your car blows up.

** Lars Halford is a leader so inspirational that people who have just met him will gladly march to their deaths beside him, but he's also completely incapable of managing the day-to-day recruitment and logistics of an army in the field. This where protagonist Eddie Riggs comes in, because his job as a roadie makes him the perfect man to handle day-to-day operations and lead the troops during battles.

* ''Cover Fire'' from Viva Game Studio has the Kriss Vector, FN-P90, Rail Gun and [[LightningGun SIG-556-LB]] which look good on paper but are disappointing in-game. The Kriss Vector and FN-P90 both have damage bonuses and critical hit bonuses (the FN-P90 having a larger critical hit bonus of the two) but because both guns uncontrollably burst out so much ammo that they keep hitting someone already dead and quickly run out despite having large magazines. Additionally the FN-P90 has an awful reload time. The SIG-556-LB has bonus to penetrate but enemies seldom line up - it'd be much better to have a damage bonus instead. As well the electricity stream is somewhat inaccurate and doesn't always hit where your crosshair is, still it is a pretty decent weapon. The biggest disappointment is the Rail Gun, it has the highest hitting power for weapons for Assault characters (equal to the starting AWM sniper rifle) and its penetration bonus is so high it'll always penetrate enemies. Having enemies line up is rare and it's even worse for the Rail Gun, it takes time to fire and despite having a bonus to ammo capacity it only has one shot. So you have to reload each time it fires and that takes a while.

* Getting a screen-clearing Yosumin in ''Yosumin!''. Yes, you're wiping the ''entire board'', and it's great if your target goal is removing a certain amount of colored Yosumin, but they don't count as Super Sets ''or'' Square Sets despite easily fitting the criteria for both, which means if the level goal revolves around sets you're better off clearing ''almost'' [[DoWellButNotPerfect the entire board.]]

** ''VideoGame/TouhouEiyashouImperishableNight'''s [[FanNickname Malice Cannon]] does absurd amounts of damage, but requires you to focus and unfocus constantly in order for it to work. This makes dodging harder than it normally is. And considering that the series as a whole is [[NintendoHard intense even on Normal]]...

*** Walloper is a boxin' glove that produces an electric shock in front of Ratchet. It is quite strong and does not use any ammo, but Ratchet stays immobile for a brief period of time after it is used, and considering this is a ''melee'' weapon and there is rarely only one enemy, it is quite difficult to be used.
*** Drone Device seems neat in theory, but it rarely blocks incoming fire and can take out only 6 enemies with each 'shot' when used, which is problematic when used in zones with ankle-biters that die from one wrench whack. That is not good considering it holds only 10 ammo.

*** The Synthenoid surrounds you with 4 killer robots that automatically shoot anything nearby. Sounds cool, until you realize it is quite weak, technically it holds only 3 ammo (which cannot be found in crates) and it is extremely difficult to upgrade.
*** The Hoverbomb shoots strong remotely controlled floating mine, with its upgrade shooting instead a Mine field of 5 mines, not to say the Mega version is even stronger than R.Y.N.O II or Zodiac. The mines have unlimited range. The catch is, unlike [[ArrowCam Visibomb Gun]], the camera stays focused on Ratchet, making it difficult to know whether the mine has reached the enemy or no, you cannot move while controlling it (and mine explodes when something hits you) and it holds only 10 ammo. If you're good at estimating of that or use it on enemies while hiding behind corner, however, [[DifficultButAwesome it becomes purely awesome]].
*** The Zodiac costs a ridiculous 1.5 million bolts, with ammo costing a further 10 thousand bolts a shot (though thankfully it can be found in crates). The weapon itself takes two seconds to charge, before vaporizing all (non-boss) enemies on screen. However the weapon can only hold four shots. Much more effective is to let rip with your 100-round, rapid-fire R.Y.N.O. II, for just a mere one million bolt purchase, and a hundred bolts a shot. Considering the amount of enemies ever on screen, the R.Y.N.O. II can take out what the Zodiac can in almost the same amount of time.
*** The Tesla Claw from the first game becomes this. The ammo capacity is boosted even beyond the first game's healthy supply, but it can't be leveled up or modded, and the shift in gameplay style toward a heavier shooter emphasis between games means that you'll be facing a lot more opponents that are just too far away for the Tesla Claw to touch them. Thus, the wicked awesome crab claw that shoots lightning that saw a lot of use in the original game -- to the point that the gold version renders nearly every other weapon superfluous -- will probably spend most of its time sitting unused in your weapons list. Visibomb Gun suffers similar fate here.

*** Infector is a weapon that infects enemies so they would be fighting for you. Nice, except the smaller enemies get easily killed by the weapon's direct damage and big enemies are hard to infect, and the effect lasts few second at most anyway. It is much more fun to destroy them directly.
*** Holoshield glove is mostly just useless at beginning. With upgrades it becomes this, because while it does get very useful effects such as LifeDrain and CounterAttack, the former requires the enemies to be close for it to work (while the shield is supposed to protect you, you know, from ''ranged'' attacks) and the latter is too weak to matter. It ''is'' useful in arena challenges however due to limited space, if you need to replenish your health (especially in resident MarathonLevel).

*** In a gameplay-related example, your final choice in the game can unlock the Single Action Army for use in your next playthrough. It's undoubtedly fun -- you can spin it on your finger and ricochet shots off background objects like Ocelot does -- but its damage isn't noticeably better than your standard M911A1, it can't be silenced, it only holds six shots and you can't move while firing it. You also can't CQC with it equipped (only pistol-whip), which puts you at a disadvantage in short-ranged combat.