Highlights
- Grenade launchers in gaming, like the M203 from Modern Warfare, are feared for their ease of use and explosive power.
- Other variants, like the Demoman’s grenade launcher in Team Fortress 2, need more skills from you.
- The Witherhoard in Destiny 2 is a fan-favorite for its unique ability to stick to enemies and cause damage over time.
Grenade Launchers occupy an interesting role in video games. With their explosive power and ease of use, they’re often a power-up from standard armaments. However, they still fall short of true heavy hitters like rocket launchers.
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Though seemingly stuck in a middle place, these weapons are still very effective at what they do, to the point that they’re sometimes derisively called “noob tubes” for their ability to get kills just by aiming at the enemy’s general direction. Of course, some also call it the “pro pipe” for the same reason (but with skill). Whether they’re noob tubes or pro pipes, these are some of the best grenade launchers in gaming.
7 M203 Underbarrel Grenade Launcher – Modern Warfare 2 Classic
Rating: Noob Tube
The original noob tube, the M203 attached to most assault rifles and allowed you to fire a fast-moving explosive, which almost guaranteed a kill if it exploded near an enemy — even with the potential to do collateral damage. If you hit with the round directly, it was immediately lethal but didn’t explode.
This attachment earned its moniker for its sheer ease of use, to the point that you could fire it across the map at your enemies’ general direction and conceivably score a kill. If you miss with your one grenade, then you’d still have your chosen assault rifle to spray at your enemies, allowing for great flexibility at no cost.
If you brought the Scavenger Pro perk, you could even get your grenade shot back in the same life!
6 Demoman’s Grenade Launcher – Team Fortress 2
Rating: Pro Pipe
TF2’s Demoman is best known for the explosive mayhem he rains on the battlefield, at least when he’s not moonlighting as a swordsman. To this end, he has his trusty Grenade Launcher (and to a lesser extent, his Stickybomb Launcher) to blow apart his enemies. This death machine isn’t a fire-and-forget deal though.
While it doesn’t suffer from damage falloff because of range, meaning that each direct hit always does its full damage, there are still many factors to consider. Direct hits on enemies go boom, but missed shots need a few seconds to explode. However, skilled players can use this to their advantage, going for bank shots to catch out-of-sight enemies. True elite can even use it to gain air much like the Soldier’s Rocket Jump.
5 Witherhoard – Destiny 2
Rating: Noob Tube
Introduced during the Season of Arrivals, all the way back in late 2020, the Witherhoard is still in contention for the best Grenade Launcher in Destiny 2. And the damn thing has earned it. Unless it’s incompatible with your build or you’re just bored of winning, there’s really no reason not to pack this thing.
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The Witherhoard is a non-traditional Grenade Launcher, firing blobs of Taken energy rather than explosive shells. These globs irradiate an area, dealing damage over time around where it lands. If where it lands is on an enemy, then it sticks to them, dealing damage in an area around that enemy as well as the enemy itself. You can stick a couple of rounds on a boss and watch its health whittle down. Single-target damage, AoE, is there anything this thing can’t do?
4 GL-21 Grenade Launcher – Helldivers 2
Rating: Pro Pipe
The GL-21 is the thinking man’s Stratagem, an early explosive option that is a step up from the Machine Gun in terms of power, but seemingly falls short of heavier hitting options like EAT-17, Recoilless Rifle, or Autocannon.
However, its strength doesn’t lie in its raw power, but in its sheer utility. This weapon is a rapid-fire way to deliver explosives, and while it doesn’t hit as hard as its more powerful siblings, it also lacks their long reload times and more limited ammo.
This means that you could use the GL-21 to quickly clear away swathes of little guys, fire a few shots to take out medium enemies, and with the proper knowledge, even make a dent in bigger baddies. You could also use it to take out Bug Holes and Bot Fabricators from range, with ease.
Rating: Noob Tube
Grenades are a powerful tool early on in any XCOM 2 campaign. With their decent damage often outright killing weak early enemies, severely wounding middling threats, and shredding the armor of any unit caught in the blast.
Many new players have had their early campaigns carried or even saved by grenades, and the Grenade Launcher from the appropriately named Grenadier class allows you to fling them farther and gives you a bigger blast radius. As the enemies get tougher, you’ll have to rely on this tool less and less, but their ability to deal a chunk of guaranteed damage and remove armor over a large area never completely goes out of style. Plus, it never loses a very important utility: destroying cover.
2 Deepcore 40mm PGL – Deep Rock Galactic
Rating: Pro Pipe
The default secondary of the Engineer class, the 40mm PGL seems like a fire-and-forget weapon when you first get your hands on it, but as powerful as it is, you still have multiple things to consider in using it.
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When you first get it, it fires a grenade that explodes in a small area, good for taking out a few little guys or dealing a chunk of damage to big guys and destroying their armor. However, as you power up, you can modify this workhorse to specialize in different things: bigger blasts, direct hit damage, fire damage, stuns, and more. You can truly make this thing your own and specialize it to your liking.
However, it’s a projectile that travels realistically, so you’ll have to account for things like the arc of the shot, or the gravity you’re in. Also, it will always have to reload after every shot, so make them count so you’re not caught out on reloads.
1 M319 Individual Grenade Launcher – Halo: Reach
Rating: Pro Pipe
The original Pro Pipe, the M319 is a powerful weapon, provided that you have the skill to wield it. While the M319 isn’t as obviously strong as the other power weapons, if you knew what you were doing, you’d get much more uptime out of it, since it has way more shots. Its primary fire launches a grenade that can kill in one or two clean hits, bounce off surfaces, and explode on a short delay.
However, its alt-fire is what makes it devastating in the hands of a maestro. Holding down the fire button allows you to control when the blast triggers, causing it to explode when you release the trigger. This blast instantly shut down enemy shields and vehicles, and you could use it to catch enemies behind cover or go for a one-two punch with a precision weapon for an instant kill.
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