Jun 17, 2010
In the this column, Mine Magnet and other contributors , will be writing up weapons from the real world that make an appearance in the Call of Duty series.
The Toy Gun and his Little Friend
For this first column I have been asked to cover the M16 family and the M203 40mm Grenade Launcher.
The M16 is a gas operated rifle, usually chambered in 5.56mm x 45NATO, however it has been chambered in variety of other calibers and has a gas piston conversion available. The design process began in 1954 at ArmaLite under the guidance of Eugene Stoner. When you hear me refer to a Stoner Rifle, I’m talking about a rifle of the AR 15 family of rifles, not a device used by hippies to force feed themselves chili cheese fries. It went into full production and fielding in 1967 and is still in service today in spite of the fact that it can be an extremely high maintainance weapon system. The 5.56 fired from the M16 and M4 are most assuredly a mixed bag when it comes to terminal performance.
M4 with M203 attached.
I’ve heard stories of headshots not subduing the target, the bad guy doing the deadman’s dance for two blocks after taking 100 hits. I’ve also heard of a guy taking a single round in the ass, which ricocheted off of his pelvis, ruptured his aorta and lodged in his brain, dropping him instantly. In the end, the real world equivalent has taken a lot of bad guys out of play, but it’s not the sure thing that it is in Modern Warfare.
The M203 is a 40mm Grenade Launcher which attaches to another weapon, in this case the M16 or M4 Carbine, via the handguards. It has a variety of munitions from the usual High Explosive to Flares to Buckshot. The M203 came into service to replace the M79 40mm Grenade Launcher, which was quite similar to a break barrel single shot rifle.
One of the great joys of video gaming is that the painful annoyances of real life seldom exist in the video game world. There’s no after action cleaning sessions, no cutting off a piece of your t-shirt for a quick wipe down on the fly, no failures to feed or extract, no warped barrels, no set magazine springs, no kabooms and especially no ‘pop, no kicks’ (this is caused by a faulty cartridge in which the charge doesn’t get the bullet out of the barrel, you hear the round fire, but there isn’t any recoil). I could pick apart the differences between reality and Call of Duty for days, but that’s another story for another day.
