Best | Shotgun Becomes A Sniper Rifle (Call of Duty: Modern Warfare)
It might not be a glitch in the strictest sense of the word, but the ridiculously overpowered 725 Shotgun is my favorite unintended developer ‘bug’ — a weapon that absolutely did not function as it was meant to. Since the first week of release, this shotgun has undergone four (or five?) nerfs, rapidly weakening the raw brute power and range of this double-barrel shotgun. Slap a Sniper Scope on this shotgun, and players were scoring chest-aimed 1-hit kills on running enemies while camping on skyscrapers.
In-real-life, shotguns are pretty dang accurate. But in a video game, they’re normally stuck to close-range roles. That goes especially for double-barrel shotguns. Usually they’re not designed with long-range in mind; but this Shotgun worked better than a Sniper Rifle. Headshots not required, and the pellet grouping made it so you didn’t even need to be that accurate. A totally ridiculous weapon all around. It’s good the developers rebalanced, but it was fun while it lasted.
Worst | Game-Breaking Singleplayer Servers (Gears 5)
Like a lot of games, Gears 5 suffered a big hit on Launch weekend as everyone piled onto the servers all at the same time. It’s understandable for multiplayer — but for some reason, Gears 5’s campaign progression was also closely tied to the server. This turned out to be a very, very bad idea. Anyone attempting to play the Gears 5 singleplayer story in the first week experienced constant bugs and lost progress as autosaves would simply never, ever actually save. You’d be stuck in limbo, forced to restart at random intervals, and sent back to previous checkpoints with little rhyme or reason.
It was a horror show, and one of the worst gaming experiences I’ve had in a very long time. One day I’ll return to Gears 5 with fresh eyes and an open heart, but until that day, I’ll just remember an train driving over an invisible bridge while the game world crumbles all around me. Thanks for all the memories, Gears 5.
Get the rest of our best & worst glitches of 2019 on the next page.
