Top Five Best and Worst Halo: Reach Weapons!

This installment of Top Ten is a half-n-half, that's right it's the Top Five Best and Top Five Worst Weapons in Halo: Reach!  I'm rating the Top Five Best on how useful, powerful, and downright badass they are.  These are the weapons you want to spring for right away at the start of every match.  For the Top Five Worst, these are the ones you can pretty much forget about using effectively in any gametype, mostly because they're weak, their firing pattern is useless, or because they're ineffective.  Lock 'n load, because this is The Mad Gamer's Top Five Best and Worst Halo: Reach Weapons!

#5. BEST

Fig. 1: M392 Designated Marksman Rifle

DMR

The DMR is basically Reach's Battle Rifle, only 11,000,000x better.  The reason for it being eleven million times better is because an average Joe the player person can actually use the damn thing effectively.  In Halo 3, I had trouble day in and day out playing Slayer BRs with kids because it took only the greatest of Halo players to use the thing well, and when they did, they tore you a new one.  Now, the DMR only fires one (1!) bullet at a time instead of the scattering 3 round burst of the BR, but its firing rate is improved so you can pull off several rounds quickly and still get your headshots.  It's more precise and it packs a greater punch, making it my new favorite gun in Reach.

Fig. 2: H-165 FOM

#5 WORST

TARGET LOCATOR

Yes, this does undeniably kick some serious ass.  You can paint a lot of targets red with blood by just looking at them with this thing, but come on.  These things are extremely rare and on a few occasions I've run into one while playing Firefight.  You can easily score a Killtrocity or higher, depending on how many Covies you can fit into the circle, but using it right away when everybody's going for some big kills, almost makes you look like a douche.  And plus, you can only use it in Campaign and Firefight.  I would LOVE to unleash this bad boy on all of my friends in a sweet Custom Game, but no, I can't.  And THAT is why this is #5 worst.

#4 BEST

NEEDLE RIFLE

Fig. 3: TYPE-31 RIFLE

This weapon makes its debut in Reach.  It's #5 best because of its vast improvements over its Halo 3 counterpart, the Carbine.  It's essentially the Covenant's DMR, but it kicks so much more ass, as do many Covenant weapons.  The Needle Rifle comes standard with bigger mags, a better firing rate, and, the best part, it's basically a Needler too!  That's right, 3 shots into your opponent's unshielded flesh and the rounds burst just like the Needler, making this thing way more deadly than the DMR, basically eliminating the need to line up headshots to be effective.  However, because of its easy firing rate, you can still pull off headshots to pwn some n00bs too.  The only downside is that it takes 6 shots instead of the DMR's 4 to deplete your enemies shields.  But, once those shields drop it's only 3 more shots and the bad guy goes *blam!*

#4 WORST

Fig. 4: Type-52 Special Applications Rifle

FOCUS RIFLE

God, the Focus Rifle.  This is really not the best weapon in the Reach warehouse.  I'm not sure if it's supposed to be a sniper-type weapon like the Beam Rifle was in Halo 3, if it's supposed to be an anti-vehicle weapon like the Spartan Laser, or if it's just for fun like the Sentinel Beam in Halo 3.  The only place where I know it spawns is on Powerhouse, near the cliff, but I can't ever seem to use the damn thing right.  Trying to fry enemies from across the map doesn't work because they run faster than the beam can keep up with them, and it takes forever to drain their shields and eventually kill them.  In the beta, this thing kicked ass!  I could sit on the high roof on Powerhouse and get people coming out of the powerhouse all day because this thing was way more powerful, but it's been seriously dumbed down since then.  I say, stick to the Rockets, Shotgun, Grenade Launcher, or even Gravity Hammer for on Powerhouse.

Fig. 5: M45 Tactical Shotgun

#3 BEST

SHOTGUN

Once again, this is my go-to gun in Reach.    

It's got low accuracy and a low range of fire, but that doesn't matter.  You really need to be up close and personal to use it, and that's how I like it.  It's more powerful than in Halo 3, and if you're behind in a game of Slayer, especially Doubles Arena, you can combo this thing really well with the cloaking or sprint abilities, as you can either sneak up on someone or get right up next to them quickly to kill them efficiently.  The shotgun's awesomeness can be best summed up by a quote by Sarge from Red vs. Blue: "To kill your enemy, you want to look in his eyes so he knows you're the one that beat him to death!"  And with the Shotgun, you can.

Fig. 6: Type-52 Guided Munitions Launcher/Explosive

#3 WORST

PLASMA LAUNCHER

I haven't played too many Big Team or Invasion games to get fully acquainted with this weapon, but from what I've gathered from it is that the best (and possibly only good) use for this weapon is blowing up vehicles.  This thing takes forever to charge up a shot against an enemy, and by the time the enemy is stuck and ready to die, you're already dead.  The overall time from acquiring a human target to eliminating it is far too long in a game of Slayer compared to other weapons that get the same job done.  Yes, it's fun to shoot plasma grenades at people and yes, it's handy that they home in on their targets, but for man-to-man combat you'd be better with just a plasma grenade than trying to warm this guy up.  I only recommend it for vehicles, which is a large crutch in any Halo game.

#2 BEST

Fig. 7: M319 Individual Grenade Launcher

GRENADE LAUNCHER

This weapon right here will drive the bad guys back and will let the multikills come rolling in.  If you've used this and used it well you know what I'm talking about.  This might be one of the more versatile weapons in Reach.  You can either fire a direct grenade shot that will blow groups of enemies down to nothing, or you can hold the trigger and the grenade will remain live until you release the trigger, allowing you to bank it around corners or to use the resulting EMP to disable vehicles!  Yes, you can get serious multikills and then disable vehicles on top of that with this weapon.  In Firefight, this is one of the best weapons to start out with in a regular Firefight game, as you can be standing all the way across the map and clear out dozens of Covies with your long-range capabilities.  This weapon is invaluable and it is always welcome in my arsenal.

Fig. 8: Anti-Vehicle Model 6 Nonlinear Rifle

#2 WORST

SPARTAN LASER

Oh, the Spartan Laser, how far you have fallen.  In Halo 3, this was one of my better weapons, but unfortunately, this suffers from the same crutch as the Focus Rifle now does: it's horribly inaccurate when used by average gamers trying to pick off several infantry.  True, you can get better at it with practice, as I was able to in Halo 3, but at best I could only get maybe one or two kills with this thing before wasting the other three or four shots.  But now, in Reach, there's only four total shots instead of five!  WTF?  What happened to the other shot?  C'mon, Bungie, you can do better than that.  I don't see the point as to why they would take out that last shot...but I digress.  This weapon is best saved for vehicles, but if you can manage to hit infantry with it, well, more power to you...or, actually less, since there's one less shot...oh well.

Fig. 9: M41 SSR MAV/AW

#1 BEST

ROCKETS

This thing is back in Reach, and with a vengeance.  What once was powerful in Halo 3 has become even more so in Reach.  The Rockets have been equipped with an automatic vehicle lock on, perfect for taking down Banshees or Falcons.  It also has faster rockets, meaning they'll get to where you want them to be a lot faster.  The splash damage has also increased, so you can take out more bad guys in a group with one shot than ever before.  The only major downside to this weapon is its reload time and its ammo capabilities;  you only get four shots and it takes almost five seconds to reload the magazine.  Still, the satisfaction that comes from using it never gets old, whether it's jet packing high up on Powerhouse and getting an Extermination thanks to one well placed shot, or it's from taking out 7 (or more) Covies in a game of Rocketfight with one well timed rocket to where they land.  It's still got that appeal and destructive power, and that's what makes it the best weapon in Reach.

Fig. 10: A hand.

#1 WORST

MELEE

This "weapon" has fallen farther since Halo 3 than the Spartan Laser.  The melee in Reach has been dumbed down from an epic punch that could kill to a dinky little move that you can try to do on others.  I guess the problem with the melee could either be blamed on the melee itself or the shields you now possess, as if your enemy still has any bit of shields left on him, it will absorb the melee and you'll have to do it again in order to kill him.  In Halo 3, there was a threshold where if you meleed someone and they had low enough shields, it would kill.  But now, your move in the clutch and last-ditch effort to stay alive is gone if the shields are still up.  So is it the shield's fault or the melee's?  Well, obviously it's the melees, because if it could do it in Halo 3, why can't it do it in Reach?  "Pop the shields, then go for the melee!", they say at Bungie, but if you're in the heat of battle with your back to a wall, and there's a bat-out-of-hell, kamikaze type soldier coming at you with the shotgun and all you have is the assault rifle, the last thing you'll be able to do is back up and try to deplete the rest of his shields before placing your trust in a melee that might not work.  In that situation, the only reasonable response is to shoot as much as you can at him, and then when he's close enough, melee to kill, but unfortunately, in Reach, that won't save you.