We can take a pure aesthetic joy in aspects of games that might be ethically troubling if transferred to the real world. The most obvious of these is the field of weapon design. The pleasure of finding a new type of gun and trying it out before rounding the next corner is the morally neutral, childlike delight of playing with any new toy.

Of course, in a videogame, a gun is never just a gun. In many sorts of game, it is the primary means by which you interact with your environment, and the primary means by which you gather information about it. No doubt some media-theory academic has already elaborated a psychosexual theory depicting Quake III players as permanently tumescent: the shotgun is held out stiffly before the player as a penis, used to probe the darkness of a maze of vaginal tunnels.

If that seems risible, it is certainly still true that the weapon is a sensitive organ: it tells you as much as you tell it. The targeting reticule of Deus Ex differentiates between enemies and allies; the threat detector of the K7 Avenger in Perfect Dark alerts you to autogun emplacements; the Farsight lets you see through walls; and so on. And if some ingame weapons are attractive for purely cosmetic gizmos - the satisfying clunk of a reload animation, or spectacular trails of smoke and fire - there are other types that cleverly strike a balance between utility in the fictional gameworld, and extra-contextual utility to the player. For example, the red laser sight on Metal Gear Solid’s assault rifle both looks pretty, and is an elegant solution to the problem of aiming in a third-person perspective.

Weapons are also simple semiotic chips in the poker game that exists between you and the challenges of the videogame environment. Through the acquisition of new weapons, we feel a new surge of power, and the odds turn in our favour. Perhaps the fact that ordinarily our left hand is a phantom limb in the gameworld - never seen, never used - contributes to the bliss of suddenly wielding double Uzis in Goldeneye. The relations of force between you and the enemy are suddenly changed. Come and get some now, you bastards…

Good weapon design depends of course on a subtle balance of aesthetic considerations - the way it sits in your virtual hand, the rumble or bang or surgical whirr of its firing sonics, and the effect it has on enemy flesh. We lovingly remember the first time we tried out the Storm Arrows of Heretic II, or the first time we unleashed a Redeemer in Unreal Tournament.

But most of all a good weapon offers a new mode of interacting with your surroundings. Here, as in other areas, videogames have the advantage over movies. The Farsight is clearly modelled on the EMP Gun in the Schwarzenegger flick Eraser - but Perfect Dark actually builds what was only imagined before, and lets you use it to negotiate a solid world. The recoil physics of Quake’s rocket launcher made possible the new FPS paradigm of rocket jumping. And there are few more gleeful game moments than being pursued down a maze of corridors by a horde of Datadyne goons, only to turn the tables by slapping a laptop gun on the wall as you round the next corner. Hearing its bursts of fire behind you while you go about your work is superbly satisfying - this gun is not just an inanimate tool; it’s your friend.

Sometimes, however, imagination can override functionality to negative effect. The Cerebral Bore of Turok II, for example, is a wonderfully sadistic aesthetic idea, but its impractical sluggishness rapidly becomes - well, boring. And other weapons simply don’t transfer to the digital sphere in a satisfying way. Perfect Dark’s crossbow, for example, ought to be a great weapon, but using it feels like chucking toothpicks. Videogames are good at showing kinetic energy - the ballistic spray of bullets, a speeding rocket. But potential energy - the coiled-up power in a crossbow, which we can taste or feel in the air in real life, owing to our knowledge of the way wood and iron behave - is lost in a polygon world.

Quality of weapon design, moreover, is never enough in a videogame: quantity is essential. We need guns. Lots of guns. And a vast array of weaponry brings up the question of “balance” in weapon sets. Is it really such a good idea? The concept that someone waving a pistol ought to be able to go up against a rocket-launcher and have a good chance in the fight seems absurd. And storming down the corridor with twin Reapers is so much fun precisely because you know that, for the time being, you are better armed than anyone else in the game. If all weapons are effectively the same, with brute power offset by slowness, and remote operation offset by vulnerability, then there is no reason to want to find one weapon rather than another. In effect, you might as well all be firing peashooters.

Free Radical’s superb TimeSplitters demonstrates that once you’ve got a nearly rock-solid 60fps and a bunch of good environments, it really is all about the weapon design. The game’s different time zones ensure a wide range of weapon types from the somehow hilarious blunderbuss and sundry standard M15s and pistols, to a pleasing set of futuristic energy guns. The sound design for each weapon is viscerally true, the discovery that the Sci-Fi Pistol can bounce its bullets off the wall makes the player grin stupidly, and the inclusion of a brick is nothing short of genius. But Free Radical have not bogged themselves down with an anal concept of weapon balance. Once you have a rocket launcher or the Sci-Fi Autorifle, you want to keep it as long as possible. For power only means anything when there are people less powerful to use it on.

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