Pistol in Doom - its usefulness

[TheMightyHeracross]

It's a starter weapon. It serves its role IMO.

[MetroidJunkie]

If there's a life system, though, I think you should respawn with all your weapons, at least as much as you had when you died. I'll give Doom credit, you can respawn endlessly so the whole losing everything isn't as bad. If you know you're screwed after dying once and save and load to prevent it, what good is a life system? You aren't going to want to lose ANY lives because you're finished the second you lose one.

[DoomRater]

That logic makes no sense, anyway. Oh, did you just die fully equipped? We'll restart and only give you the weakest weapon in the game, I'm sure you'll do much better this time. The only way this could possibly help you is if you were on the verge of death when you started the level.

My experience with Sky Shark on NES in a nutshell. There were times I literally restarted the whole game when I died because resetting my firepower every time I died was too harsh a punishment.

[NeuralStunner]

This is a thing in Major Stryker as well. You don't even have to die, getting hit while you have any weapon powerups will kick you back to the single gun rather than kill you, but you'll likely die soon afterward because the single gun sucks. Fortunately you only have to restart the current level, thanks to the save system.

[The Ultimate DooMer]

Half-Life instance of pistol is a great example of useful pistol until late game. Little to no spread at all, rate of fire is how quick you click and headshot bonus. Even with more high tech weapon found later, I found myself keep using pistol to take out smaller or humanoid enemies.

It also works underwater. (the only other is the crossbow)

[shotfan]

AND Red Faction 1's pistol is underwater-capable too (tailor made for hunting Mars-mutant-ultrawaves-hurling dolphins ). Other than that, it is not a slouch either - you can fire it REALLY fast, has decent damage and accuracy, and also has a suppressor available by default. Still though, that game is a interesting case regarding arsenal succession: you get that 10 or so weapons early on, but about 2/3 into the game enemies become replaced with a completely different set (mercenaries instead of corporate guards), whom bring along their own weaponry. And this weaponry is so deadly, you pretty much have to adapt to it exclusively, discarding everything you had until that moment, including the pistol (among those new guns is the infamous railgun that ALWAYS one-shots you - not that was unrealistic ). I cannot recall any other FPS that did something like that.
Red Faction 2's pistol, in contrast, is weaker and inaccurate (and with no suppressor, but there is another silenced weapon), but you can dual wield them now... still significantly worse than the original, since the only weapon worth going dual with is this Nano SMG you get a pair of towards the end of the game (Mac 10 sized, and holding 64 7.62 mm NATO rounds each... WTF ).

[shotfan]

Double posting because of something somewhat related that happened yesterday:

The modern UV+ Ironman Tyson run pretty much?

On the another note: past week an update for SnapMap was released, and with it a new version of the Pistol. How does it fare compared to the one from Campaign?