History ScrappyWeapon / FirstPersonShooter

** Despite killing everything in one hit, the Crossbow is so awkward to use that you're quite likely to miss every shot and be stuck waiting through its incredibly slow reload; and killing enemies quickly isn't exactly a premium ability, anyway. Even worse, it suffers from a glitch where aiming at the sky messes up the trajectory of its bolts; the level design in the air base mission practically ''screams'' for you to notice this flaw, so it's a wonder how the developers didn't. It could've had more niche uses, but it's only available in 2 out of 21 missions, and one of those is a cryptic secret. Its sole advantage is for non-lethally taking out neutral guards, who would fail the mission if killed, but even then, you get a remote controlled drone with a tranquilizer that does the same exact thing but safer. The only other time it's semi-useful is in the combat simulator, where you can use it as a Hail Mary against the twitchy, durable enemies and hope for lucky kills.

* The ''VideoGame/{{Unreal}}'' series has the [[FunWithAcronyms GES]][[note]]'''G'''reen '''E'''xploding '''S'''hit[[/note]] Bio Rifle, an AwesomeButImpractical 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 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.\\
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In the first ''{{VideoGame/Unreal|I}}'', the alternate fire wasn't used as much due to the glob being fired prematurely, leading to self-damage and even suicides, while the primary fire wasn't as damaging.\\
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In the ''VideoGame/UnrealTournament'' series, the weapon 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 just disappear in a handful of seconds.\\
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The ''[[VideoGame/UnrealTournament2004 200X]]'' games and ''VideoGame/UnrealChampionship'' sped up the rate of fire and the speed of the projectiles to give them better range than "hugging distance", but ''2004'' also introduced the Spider Mine launcher in Onslaught mode, which does the Bio Rifle's job for defensive play far better, and is still decent for actual offensive play against other players since the spider mines automatically track other players when they're close enough; the weapon only appears in the vehicle-based gamemodes, though.\\
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The weapon was combined with the Grenade Launcher (in what was called the "Canister Gun") for ''VideoGame/UnrealChampionship2TheLiandriConflict'', where the alternate glob gained a tracking feature, though it often took a backseat to other energy weapons such as the Shock Rifle and the Sniper Rifle.\\
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It took until ''VideoGame/UnrealTournamentIII'' to finally and truly [[RescuedFromTheScrappyHeap rescue the weapon from the Scrappy heap]], due to changes to the weapon's alternate fire, namely that it now can stick to a player, damaging them until the receiver dies or the globs disappear, whichever comes first, helping prevent self-damage in the process, [[DifficultButAwesome requiring the player to be at either close or mid range to his opponent in exchange for an almost guaranteed frag]].

* ''VideoGame/{{Doom}}'': The [[LittleUselessGun pistol]], in all its incarnations, tends to fall prey to the SortingAlgorithmOfWeaponEffectiveness and see very little use unless it's the only ranged weapon you have, or to shoot distant switches. The standard shotgun fires seven pellets that each do the same damage as a pistol shot in a fairly tight spread, so once you have that -- which can be as early as the first room on higher difficulties --, you have no reason to use the pistol other than to save on shells. Then, once [[GatlingGood the chaingun]] shows up, the pistol becomes flat-out obsolete: it has a far faster fire rate and can stunlock most enemies, and tapping the fire button fires it in a perfectly accurate 2-round burst that can be repeated at a speed that the pistol cannot match. And these weapons are considered the reasonable BoringButPractical options -- next to the heavy-duty hardware like the rocket launcher or the plasma rifle, or the super shotgun in ''II'', the pistol may as well be a popgun. The fact that the pistol, out of all the guns, is [[ContinuingIsPainful the only weapon the player has when respawning after death]] is a major part of why trying to start a level without weapon carryover ("pistol-starting") is considered a SelfImposedChallenge, with many maps, fanmade and official, starting off the player right next to a shotgun just so they don't have to use the pistol for long. Other games have tried their best to give you ''some'' reason to use the pistol (saving the chaingun for later, decoupling its ammo pool from the chaingun, giving the pistol infinite ammunition ''and'' a ChargedAttack), generally with little success, as its core problems of low damage and sluggish firing rate remain intact. By ''VideoGame/DoomEternal'', the series seemingly gave up on the pistol altogether in favor of simply letting you start with the shotgun.

** The flashlight makes for an awful weapon. It swings terribly slowly and with range no greater than that of the fists (in the case of the PC version, ''even less'' range than them), to say nothing of the horrendously off-centered beam. And [[WhoForgotTheLights thanks to the graphical design of the game]], you ''have'' to keep switching your gun out for it, leaving you unprepared when you inevitably get ambushed. Once you have a flashlight GameMod like the famous "{{Duct Tape|ForEverything}}" or Sikkmod's headlamp and NightVisionGoggles, it has no practical use, and it wasn't really missed in the [[UpdatedReRelease BFG edition]][[labelnote:+]]that replaced the handheld flashlight with an armor-mounted lamp that is equally as off-centered and [[TenSecondFlashlight only works for a little while before having to shut down and recharge]], but at least lets you keep a gun ready[[/labelnote]] either.

** The shotgun gets a lot of this. ''DOOM'' as a franchise tends to make the shotgun the JackOfAllStats, but ''3'' plays ShortRangeShotgun painfully straight. The spread on it is so ridiculous that you won't hit half the pellets unless you shove it right up a monster's nose, and the damage is slightly randomized on top of that. You can fire it at an imp standing ten feet away three times and still not kill it. And to add insult to injury, [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard the version used by the shotgunner enemy has an actually reasonable spread.]]

** The game has a variety of melee weapons, with each of them having different reach and swing speed to differentiate them (since they all one-hit kill regular zombies). The crowbar is the worst melee weapon in the whole game; it has poor reach, swings very slowly, and has bad hit detection, which makes it possible to hit a zombie and ''not'' kill it. Similar weapons like the frying pan and the axe hit zombies more consistently. The pitchfork that was added in The Last Stand update is even ''worse'' than the crowbar due to how the weapon swings; every melee weapon swings from side to side, which can help you clear out a crowd of zombies in front of you. The pitch fork makes a jabbing/thrusting forward motion, which will ignore any zombie that's off to the sides.
** The Hunting Rifle was already not well-liked in the first game, being that it's slower, with less ammo and overall harder to use than the shotguns and [=SMGs=]/assault rifles. Then the sequel introduced a second weapon in its category, the Sniper Rifle, to which the Hunting Rifle is inferior in in every way except moving accuracy (which doesn't matter much for weapons you're ''not'' going to be moving and shooting with) and reloading speed (which the Sniper Rifle makes up for with twice the capacity). In addition, using the scope removes all movement recoil anyway.
** The ''VideoGame/CounterStrike'' weapons were implemented in the German version of the game to make up for the censorship the game had to go through and they were eventually made available to everyone with The Last Stand update. The Steyr Scout and Accuracy International AWSM are sniper rifles that high penetration, power, and accuracy, but their rate of fire is so laughably low that most players don't bother using them unless there's nothing else to use. In a game where zombies swarm you and you have [[EliteMook Tanks]] gunning for you, it's preferable to use any other weapon since they have a better rate of fire.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Doom}}'' the pistol, in all its incarnations, tends to see very little use unless it's the only ranged weapon you have. This is due to it falling prey to the SortingAlgorithmOfWeaponEffectiveness, and doing so very quickly: the standard shotgun fires seven pellets that each do the same damage as a pistol shot in a fairly tight spread, so once you have that (which can be as early as the first room on high difficulties), you have no reason to use the pistol other than to save shotgun ammo. Then, once [[GatlingGood the chaingun]] shows up, it flat-out obsoletes the pistol: it has double the damage (literally, it fires two bullets for every round of pistol ammunition spent), a far faster firing rate, and its one downside of potentially high spread can be negated simply by tapping the button rather than holding it down. And these weapons are considered the reasonable BoringButPractical options--next to the heavy-duty weapons like the rocket launcher or the plasma rifle, or the super shotgun in ''II'', the pistol may as well be a popgun. The fact that the pistol, out of all the guns, is [[ContinuingIsPainful the only weapon the player has when respawning after death]] is a major part of why trying to start a level without weapon carryover ("pistol-starting") is considered a SelfImposedChallenge, with many maps, fanmade and official, starting off the player right next to a shotgun just so they don't have to use the pistol for long. Other games have tried their best to give you ''some'' reason to use the pistol (saving the chaingun for later, decoupling its ammo pool from the chaingun, giving the pistol infinite ammunition ''and'' a ChargedAttack), generally with little success, as its core problems of low damage and sluggish firing rate remain intact. By ''VideoGame/DoomEternal'', the series seemingly gave up on the pistol altogether in favor of simply letting you start with the shotgun.

** The stealth pistol is usually considered a worthless downgrade to the standard 10mm pistol; though it holds more rounds by default and comes with a free silencer, its damage is noticeably weaker, almost half that of the normal pistol. This counterintuitively makes it ''worse'' at staying quiet unless you spend the time and effort getting your pistol skill to Master, since your first shot, even to the head, will inevitably only wound the target, aggroing them and everyone near them in such a way that they will instantly know where you are.
** Due to a bug with the Game of the Year Edition patch, plasma weapons had their base damage massively reduced - they were supposed to be made weaker specifically for the multiplayer, but these reduced values were accidentally applied to the campaign as well. The plasma rifle itself ''can'' still be applied effectively, but it's still overwhelmingly the least-popular heavy weapon; even heavy weapon-specialist players usually pass on it, as most such players usually carry only one heavy weapon, and it's hard to give up the GEP gun. The [=PS20=] plasma pistol, however, is just completely useless, unable to even one-shot a mook with a close-range headshot, compounded by the fact that it only holds a single shot and you're arbitrarily restricted to carrying a single one.

** 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 even with a close-range headshot.
** 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. Even heavy weapon-specialist characters would pass on it, as their size means almost no character will carry more than one heavy weapon (and it's hard to ignore the GEP gun).

** The shotgun is also nigh-useless. It's [[ShortRangeShotgun 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. Not helping is that unarmored enemies are ''much'' less common after just 20% of the way through the game. A PEPS is probably a safer bet, being more effective all around.

** The Klobb (or the Spyder on the manual), a weak, slow-firing, inaccurate SMG that was outclassed by literally ''every'' weapon in the game. A pistol would serve you better. The Klobb does 1/2 the damage of average normal gun damage that it 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 [[OneHitPointWonder a shot from any weapon was instant death]]. ''Except the Klobb.'' On that note, the Klobb was pretty cool in [[OneHitKill License to Kill mode]]. And its reloading sound is pretty sweet, too. As well as the design, which is based on the CZ Skorpion.
** Unarmed slappers. This does the the least amount of damage in the game. Unlike most shooters at this time, you start every level with a set amount of weapons and can't carry over weapons per level. The idea of saving ammo may sound tempting, but enemies (not bosses) in general have the same health and are subdued quickly. Plus, every enemy in the game leaves weapons and ammo when dead. Slappers may sound useful for stealth missions, but you already have the silenced weapons for that. Levels where you have only slappers only have better alternatives such as the Throwing Knife or a weapon right in front of you. Later levels where silenced weapons are no longer available contains enemies expecting your arrival and/or respawn at various points.

* Tripmines from ''VideoGame/DukeNukem3D'' and ''VideoGame/HalfLife1'', due to their being defensive weapons in games where you're usually, if not always, 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 (which by nature only makes them useful if you already know the ambush is coming, which requires either having already beaten it once, thus already knowing which weapons you like and are good with, or an obvious HoldTheLine segment, which has its own problems). It's just an extra pack of explosives that never misses ''if'' it gets set off normally, but usually is less tactically valuable than a command-detonated pipebomb or satchel. Compounding the issue is that game designers seem to intentionally prevent them from ever being useful: for instance, both ''Duke Nukem'' and ''Half-Life'''s tripmines can be shot and detonated without the laser being triggered, so it'd make sense for players to be able to toss them at the feet of a bunch of enemies and then expend a single firearm round to blow them up, but the games insist on only letting you use them as intended by deliberately placing them on a wall or floor. If you ''can'' toss them from a distance, then there will invariably be an arbitrary arming delay of several seconds, more than long enough for your opponents to get past it unless you either stick so close you end up taking SplashDamage, or see the enemy from so far away that the only reasonable excuse for why you're using that instead of just shooting them is that you're completely out of ammo. About the only kind of game where they're really any good in the player's hands are StealthBasedGame[=s=], and even then only for messing around with a patrolling guard (and probably forcing yourself into a confrontation, since the AI [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard usually cheats]] and automatically knows where you are once you alert any of them).

** The Howitzer. It eliminates the need to lead a target like with the other explosive weapons, but this was apparently seen as such an overly-advantageous gimmick that every other aspect was pounded into the dirt to make it useless: ammo is hard to come by, it fires slowly, using it in close quarters still hurts you with splash damage, and its damage is ridiculously low. The only upside is that it makes [[EliteMook Shikari]] flinch with each shot, but even that doesn't save it from being discarded as soon as another weapon comes along.

** Despite killing everything in one hit, the Crossbow is so awkward to use that you're quite likely to miss every shot and be stuck waiting through its incredibly slow reload; and killing enemies quickly isn't exactly a premium ability, anyway. It could have had more niche uses, but it's only available in 2 out of 21 missions, and one of those is a cryptic secret. Even worse, it suffers from a glitch where aiming at the sky messes up the trajectory of its bolts; the level design in the air base mission practically ''screams'' for you to notice this flaw, so it's a wonder how the developers didn't. The only time it's semi-useful is in the combat simulator, where you can use it as a Hail Mary against the twitchy, durable enemies and hope for lucky kills.

** Berettas and Submachine Guns [[SortingAlgorithmOfWeaponEffectiveness are both worse in damage and/or accuracy]] than the Assault Rifle they share ammo with. After picking up the rifle, there's no reason to ever pull them out again; the only purpose they serve after that point is to pick up [[UniversalAmmunition bullets from dead enemies' guns]], since they're a fair bit more common but you don't actually get ammo from them if you don't have one on you, and even that's not imperative for long before far more efficient ammo boxes (which give you a hundred bullets at a time, compared to 12 per pistol and 20 per SMG) start dropping everywhere.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Doom}}'' the pistol, in all its incarnations, tends to see very little use unless it's the only ranged weapon you have. This is due to it falling prey to the SortingAlgorithmOfWeaponEffectiveness, and doing so very quickly: the standard shotgun has ''seven'' times the damage if all the pellets hit and a fairly tight spread, so once you have that (which can be as early as the first room on high difficulties), you have no reason to use the pistol other than to save shotgun ammo. Then, once [[GatlingGood the chaingun]] shows up, it flat-out obsoletes the pistol: it has double the damage (literally, it fires two bullets for every round of pistol ammunition spent), a far faster firing rate, and its one downside of potentially high spread can be negated simply by tapping the button rather than holding it down. And these weapons are considered the reasonable BoringButPractical options--next to the heavy-duty weapons like the rocket launcher or the plasma rifle, or the super shotgun in ''II'', the pistol may as well be a popgun. The fact that the pistol, out of all the guns, is [[ContinuingIsPainful the only weapon the player has when respawning after death]] is a major part of why trying to start a level without weapon carryover ("pistol-starting") is considered a SelfImposedChallenge, with many maps, fanmade and official, starting off the player right next to a shotgun just so they don't have to use the pistol for long. Other games have tried their best to give you ''some'' reason to use the pistol (saving the chaingun for later, decoupling its ammo pool from the chaingun, giving the pistol infinite ammunition ''and'' a ChargedAttack), generally with little success, as its core problems of low damage and sluggish firing rate remain intact. By ''VideoGame/DoomEternal'', the series seemingly gave up on the pistol altogether in favor of simply letting you start with the shotgun.

** The Magnum is a very slow gun in a game where great automatic weapons are a dime-a-dozen, and its power just isn't enough to compete with them. On Perfect Agent, human enemies can often survive a chest shot from this thing, yet will go down almost instantly to a burst from any submachine gun - and a headshot is a one-hit-kill with nearly all weapons, so it doesn't have that niche, either. Combine that with an annoying pre-fire delay that makes aiming a lot tougher, and on one of the few guns you can't afford to miss with. It also penetrates through enemies, yet can only hit each target once - meaning that if an enemy's arm blocks a headshot, it only counts as an arm shot, despite the bullet technically continuing on a path through their head.
** The Shotgun has the same problems of slow speed and not enough power to make up for it, but also adds a pathetic attack range, with a pellet spread so unreliable it can completely miss from five steps away. Its sluggish reload animation is also strangely finnicky, sometimes interrupting you from shooting when you have some shells loaded.
** The Hand Grenade, being the typical unwieldy, time-based bomb in a game where you don't need that much firepower to take out enemies, and it's not present in the missions that have much sturdier enemies. Adding to the scrappiness is its alt-fire, 'Proximity Pinball', where it bounces off walls at high speed and detonates when it gets near anyone - hilarious, but usually just as dangerous to you as it is to others. There are several alternatives that make the weapon worthless, such as the two Grenade Launchers, the Mines and the N-Bomb, which have several advantages like an explosion that's much easier to control, a faster attack rate, several times more ammo, etc. The last kicker is that enemies in the campaign cheat when they use these grenades, as theirs explode the moment they hit the ground instead of after 4 seconds, resulting in a shockingly effective instant-kill attack that you get very little warning for.

* 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 — which in both games you can acquire within a minute at worst. ''VideoGame/Doom2016'' tried to compensate by giving the pistol BottomlessMagazines, and ''VideoGame/DoomEternal'' just dropped the pistol entirely, in favor of letting you start with the shotgun and chainsaw. Many user-made maps for OG Doom also just give you a shotgun right away so you don't have to bother with the pistol at all.

* Some of the Missile power-ups in ''VideoGame/MetroidPrimeTrilogy'' have this problem:
** ''VideoGame/MetroidPrime'' has the Plasma Beam's missile combo, the Flamethrower. While all missile combos except the default Super Missile are situational at best, [[VideoGameFlamethrowersSuck 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 in on or stun the target). It's made even more useless when you consider that a charged Plasma Beam shot is the single most powerful weapon in the game — there's only ''one'' enemy in the game that can get hurt by it and isn't killed in one charged shot — so you could just be using that instead.
** Averted with the Wave Beam. True, the Power Beam fires as fast as you can press the button and gets the BoringButPractical Super Missile upgrade, the Ice Beam synergizes with Missiles to one-shot anything that can be frozen, and the Plasma Beam combines the speed of the Power Beam with devastating damage per shot. The Wave Beam fires slowly, and the charged shot's stun effect only lasts for about a second or so. The Wave Beam's missile combo, the Wavebuster, devours missiles too quickly to warrant using it on regular enemies and isn't great on bosses either. Aside from puzzles and opening purple doors, there's no real reason to use the Wave Beam once you get something better... until you realize the Wave Beam's stun effect [[StunLock lasts just long enough to charge up another shot]].
** ''VideoGame/MetroidPrime2Echoes'' 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.
** ''VideoGame/MetroidPrime3Corruption'' has the Hyper Missile, the game's replacement for the Super Missile and its elemental cousins. While in theory it appears to be a very powerful missile attack powered by Phazon, it's useless against enemies that are already immune to the standard missile shots. It also requires a huge amount of energy from the Energy Tank that is in use during Hypermode. Its only practical utility is to quickly drain Phazon when Samus's Hypermode malfunctions from being active for too long, to prevent her total corruption.