Doom Musings: The legacy of the chaingun

Well well well, what am I thinking of today? My brain is so wired with just about everything I know it Doom maps that I should probably check out something else. How about a weapon? You know, everyone already knows how badass the berserk fist, super shotgun, and BFG9000 are, and can appreciate the rocket launcher and plasma gun for crowd control and other stuff. But you know, the chaingun really doesn't get the amount of love that any of these other weapons have. I wonder why?

The chaingun, when you fire it, fires about 8 bullets for second. Seems pretty chaingun-y right? Well, not really. The chaingun in Doom cannot really be compared to chainguns or miniguns in other first person shooters. Wolfenstein's own chaingun has a higher rate of fire than Doom's chaingun, while the Build engine games with their respective rapid fire weapons also have slightly higher firing rates (especially Shadow Warrior's Uzis and Blood's Tommy Gun). Heck, even Doom's plasma gun has a higher rate of fire and more damage per second at the expense of being a projectile weapon more or less.

But Doom's chaingun really shouldn't be underestimated. While the fire rate is much less than other video game chainguns, it's great for spraying fire against multitudes of enemies in a line. Even though it'll take quite a lot of bullets to fell anything from a cacodemon up, it's still capable of stunlocking most of these foes. You eat up the ammo, but usually clips and boxes of ammo aren't that rare in most levels. And of course, they can be refilled by finding zombiemen clips or just taking out chaingunners and getting their weapons. Then, there's the incredibly strange mechanics of the chaingun itself. You see, the tapping the fire button will let out two shots minimum, but these are on target every time. Holding fire down sprays the bullets horizontally with small inaccuracies. This means that the chaingun is the ideal sniping weapon in Doom, as the player can position themselves far away from an enemy and basically burst fire until they're gone. Since it's a hitscan weapon, these bullets hit instantly, and are more viable for faraway targets that move often.

I've apparently learned that the chaingun is a surprisingly cheap weapon for deathmatch because of that sniping thing in particular. It can explain why the chaingun is less used in deathmatch when compared to the other weapons, including even the BFG. Of course it may depend on the level layout; the bigger the layout, the cheaper the chaingun could get if found and used. In any case most deathmatch maps forgo the chaingun or make it a rare find like the BFG usually is and focus on SSG/rocket launcher/plasma gun deathmatch. Very interesting how the odd sniping mechanics of Doom's very own chaingun end up being cheap for certain deathmatch playstyles and levels. No one really hates Doom's chaingun all that much, they just don't use it nearly as much as other weapons due to them simply being better. Though, any weapon with a good niche will always be used as some point or another. Give the chaingun some love.