a friend and I were playing C.O.D. 2 versus the other day,i have an M1,he a shotgun.and those of you who are fans of the M1 Garande know that it makes a certain noise when it's being reloaded. my friend hears this, leaves cover,and comes charging at me.i whip out my revolver and shoot him in the head.a side arm won me a game. does anyone else have a story like this?if you do,please share them.

Does knives count as a side arm cause I always just use a flash grenade and stab my opponeent in COD 4

apmpnmdslkbk:
Does knives count as a side arm cause I always just use a flash grenade and stab my opponeent in COD 4

there not a kind of rifle,so i geuss.

In Rainbow Six: Vegas, multiplayer, I was jumping out of a window to rappel up to the roof, when some sneaky prick starts shooting me in the back. I whip around fast as I can with my crappy little handgun, with no actual illusion of being able to kill him before he kills me (I just wanted to put some holes in him, at the very least), but through some mad fluke, my first shot hits him in the head. Instant kill. I could barely even SEE the guy over my characters shoulders and through the window, but I managed to waste him in one hit anyhow.

But apart from that, all side-arms I've ever used have caused me more harm than good.

Pistol kills in multiplayer are the most satisfying. It's like a David v. Goliath thing.

Pistol's are a man's weapon. The bigger and louder, the better. Especially if it's a revolver.

Screw your silenced scoped assault rifle. There's nothing personal about that. Pistols have character.

Alot of games seem to get handguns wrong or underpowered, sidearms in Counterstrike were always very satisfying for me. The Golden Deagle in COD4 is another nice one.

In Halo 1, the Magnum is the single best weapon IMHO, and I covet the thing over all other guns. In that one VERY annoying level where you must unlock the whatever with Guilty Spark, I do trade my pistol to have Shotgun and Rifle, but any other time in the game, I will use the pistol even over the sniper rifle or missile launcher. Oh, and it is by far THE BEST weapon for taking down Hunters.

UFO:Extraterrestrials made Pistols the lazy-man's levelup weapon. XP is awarded by hit and kill, every kill shot is worth 100% of the target's XP, every hit that ISN'T the final blow is worth 20% of the target's XP. As such, autoshot from a basic slug-thrower pistol at point blank to an enemy that has more HP and Armor than an Abrams can skyrocket noob troops to elites in no time... That is, provided you don't draw reaction fire from the alien, and end up looking like you were at ground zero in Chernobyl.

meatloaf231:

Screw your silenced scoped assault rifle. There's nothing personal about that. Pistols have character.

As someone who exclusively fights through a scope... i find this offensive, the sidearm is the snipers friend also, nothing like having some cocky shotgun wielding fool think his chain of painful deaths is at an end only to have his head opened by a pistol while i creep away to a new location.

In Timesplitters: Future Perfect, I used to use the basic pistol all the time. Its secondary fire was a silencer with a built in scope, so that was even more fun.

meatloaf231:
Pistol's are a man's weapon. The bigger and louder, the better. Especially if it's a revolver.

Screw your silenced scoped assault rifle. There's nothing personal about that. Pistols have character.

I hear that!!!

Metal Gear Online - I was jumped by an enemy point-blank. I was armed with a Sniper Rifle. I emptied my entire mag and failed to kill him (Sniper Rifles aren't meant for point-blank work...), so I quickly switched to my pistol half-way through the reload action and took him down.

meatloaf231:
Pistol's are a man's weapon. The bigger and louder, the better. Especially if it's a revolver.

Wrong. Shotguns are a man's weapon.

Once someone creates a hybrid of a shotgun and an axe, it will officially be the manliest thing ever.

I was playing a relatively old build of the Insurgency mod, the one in which sniper rifles were completely broken. I was playing as an Insurgent using the bolt action rifle (is it an Enfield? I can't remember), and saw a Marine running about 20 feet ahead of me with his knife out, trying to reach a capture point. So, I shoot him. Nothing happens. I shoot him again, still nothing, and by this point the sound of me firing has got his attention, so he turns, and runs at me, still with his knife out. By this point I start to panic a bit, so I run backwards, firing unscoped at him, hoping I'll get lucky. I run out of rounds when he's about 4 feet away from me, so I switch to my Makarov and fire. He died.

One of the scariest things that's ever happened to me in an online FPS.

A good pistol is a sniper's best friend.

I ran out of ammo completely in the enemy titan's core room (bf2142) once. No grenades, pilum shots, or smg rounds, and the last pistol round I fired destroyed the core.

Plus what Zemalac said.

I admit its a lot cooler to kill with a pistol. For this reason I spec into improved handgun in Metal Gear Online and it has saved me so many times, the best being when I was jumped from behind and thrown to the ground, landing in a prone position on my back. Rather than try and get up to use my P90 or even try and take them out with CQC I aimed from the ground and took out both of my would be assailants with two well placed headshots. Unfortunately, it was probably a fluke and something on such a level of awesomeness that I will never be able to achieve it in any videogame ever, in fact I'm still suffering withdrawal from that day.

I never carry side-arms. I usually drop them for something more useful. Unless it's in a game like Half-Life where you can carry more than two weapons at once.

Pistols are godlike in COD4. They're the quickest to aim, they're dead accurate, and in hardcore it takes 1 to 2 shots to kill. I use the silenced USP for almost everything in that game.

When I read the title at first I thought you were talking about in reality LoL.

when im playing single player games i try to stick to the pistol for as long as posible. same online. it just feels meaty and theres nothing like getting that head shot from many many yards away (gears is a great example of this).

the protaginist:
a friend and I were playing C.O.D. 2 versus the other day,i have an M1,he a shotgun.and those of you who are fans of the M1 Garande know that it makes a certain noise when it's being reloaded. my friend hears this, leaves cover,and comes charging at me.i whip out my revolver and shoot him in the head.a side arm won me a game. does anyone else have a story like this?if you do,please share them.

Last stand with a Golden D.E. won me the game in CoD4 :D

Also, in WWII games, they need some way to let you take empty clips of a garand and throw them on the ground so it makes the signature noise, so that the enemy pops their heads out.

Playing Republic Commando on the section Deus Ex. I'm reloading my DC-17 when Trando hops out in front of me. I switch to my pistol and whack him in the face just as hes charging me. He staggers back, and I nail the exposed bit of jetpack. He rockets off as I laugh.

5 kills in in last stand in CoD4. That's just one last stand and I had slight of hand otherwise I probably wouldn't have been able to do it. Overall I got 8 more kills in last stand that game. HBrutusH, how thehell did you do that? you can't carry a pistol, smg, and pilum

There was a moment in Halo, but the Halo 1 Pistol doesn't really count as a side arm, being a miniature sniper rifle and all that.

lol the amount i use my p!sto1s, my r!f1e would be considered a s!d3arm!
i have such semi-auto skills that my friends keep wondering what SMG i'm using. nothing says 'goodbye' like a hail of hot 45s in quick succession from a 1911.

(hey sry bout the semi-1337 i keep using, but i dunno what words my company filters for)

Medal of Honor Allied Assault, in an Objective map. I started out with a sniper rifle. Team got decimated by the grenade spam the Germans tossed at us, leaving me stuck in a corner, against 6 Germans, all closing in on me.
Got 1 guy down with my sniper rifle, took his MG, got another one with that, then ran out of ammo (the server had really bad ammo settings). I was in a house with doors on each side AND a basement, stuck with a pistol that had 15 bullets. Killed 3 Germans with that pistol (had to melee the last guy due to lack of ammo), then took one's rifle and finished off the last remaining opponent with it.

Oh, and that one time I hit a sniper with my pistol from the other side of the map. I still have no idea how that happened, but it was awesome.

I love you, pistols <3

Cod 4 hardcore mode is so much fun! I usualy grab a silenced beretta or USP, and the fun thing is, I sometimes headshot people over nearly the intire length of the map! Even if you don't score a headshot, the beretta still is very leathal when you can click the mousebutton fast enough. Low recoil, very good controlability, only drawback is that you can't zoom in.

The '.357 falcon' from far cry is also sweet, but that's more because it actualy feels and sounds like you're weilding a hand cannon, something I miss in a lot of games.

And then there's Max Payne 2, but you'll nearly fight exclusively with side arms... if you're up for a bit of a challenge.

Why do sidearms always have to be pistols? I always suprise people by emptying a rifle, watching them pop out of cover and then blast them to bits with the biggest gun available.

I'm currently doing a hard run-through of Mass Effect with just a pistol and biotics. And the Mako, when I'm forced to use it.

Exterminatus:
Once someone creates a hybrid of a shotgun and an axe, it will officially be the manliest thing ever.

Been done, have pictures, but they're at home buried in my /b folders somewhere. I love my Shaxegun.

My local LAN centre. Counter-Strike: Source. Assault map. I'm on T. Through a series of coincidences, I find myself having climbed the stairs to the area that overlooks the entrance to the ventilation shaft. I spot a CT - the last living one - on the roof. My machine-gun is useless at this range, so I swap to my Dual Elites.

From the other room, I hear "He's never gonna hit with those."

My usual method of firing bullets faster than should be physically possible isn't gonna work, so instead I decide to fire off single shots.

One shot. One kill. Headshot. Terrorists win.

Utter. Silence.

Khell_Sennet:

Exterminatus:
Once someone creates a hybrid of a shotgun and an axe, it will officially be the manliest thing ever.

Been done, have pictures, but they're at home buried in my /b folders somewhere. I love my Shaxegun.

Awesome. I need one of those.

Dualling pistols or any light handgun is the way to go. You just feel so badass running down a hallway headshotting everything that moves with a Mauler. :D

That, and the magnum from Half -Life, if ammo wasn't so freakin hard to find for it on hard :p