Weapon Arsenal

Explore the comprehensive Weapon Arsenal in Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War. Understand the strengths, weaknesses, and upgrade paths for every gun, from the RPD to the Ray Gun.

It is critical to understand the differences in the various guns, their strengths and their weaknesses. This section will list all of these things. With the exception of the flamethrower, all of the old guns are back. The biggest thing to note is that weapons can be upgraded from their base strength. This occurs in two different ways, both of which will be discussed here and in the Item Pickupssections.

1. Picking up the same weapon already equipped

2. Picking up a Max Ammo powerup

• RPD LMG (Standard gun) — This is the gun you start out with by default. Pretty standard rapid fire gun. Contains infinite ammo and works fine against zombies in the early going. Against tougher brutes and in later rounds, you will want to seek something a little more powerful.
• Death Machine — Basically an upgraded version of the LMG. With upgraded weapon power it fires even faster and more powerful bursts.
• M79 Grenade Launcher — A short distance grenade launcher that will wipe out groups of zombies with ease. The grenade launcher works wonders well into the higher rounds and even against the toughest of monsters. Use this weapon wisely in short bursts. A fully powered grenade launcher equates to devilish destruction in tow.
• Gallo SA12 Shotgun — A spread-fire shotgun. Easily the weapon of choice for taking out large groups of zombies from all distances across the map. As the distance increases, so does the range of the spread. Add a chicken or two (or more) for utter mayhem. Even better, watch this thing in action when fully powered up to purple gun power. One new added disadvantage appears to be some weapon kickback which forces you to fire the weapon in bursts as opposed to just holding down the trigger button.
• Ray Gun — Fires powerful precise green bursts. It has devastating power and potential, especially when powered up all the way. The purple Ray Gun no longer fires reflective blasts that shock the enemy on impact anymore, but it still tears through enemies fairly easily. Still one of the best weapons in the game when powered up.
• Pila Rocket Launcher — Fires straight rockets at enemies with ease; killing almost anything in a single shot. This gun is ideal for killing a group of zombies from far across the map (or those golden cows/bulls.) Unfortunately, the rate of fire was reduced for this gun and you can no longer kill a straight line of enemies as the rocket now explodes on impact. If you manage to power this baby up with purple gun power though, it transforms into a rapid fire, triple homing rocket launcher! Behind the Ray Gun, this is the second best weapon when fully powered up. Otherwise, I recommend avoiding it as accuracy suffers.
• Saw Blade Shooter — If you have ever wondered what it would be like to be Metal Man, you will soon find out. Replacing the flamethrower in this version of DOA is the Crossblade. This weapon fires powerful, yet slower blades which make short work of the enemies. When powered up all the way, the blades will bounce off the wall much like the purple Ray Gun used to do in DOA2.