VoodooLabs

Have you seen the Portal game that may be included with Half-life : Episode 2? It’s snazzy. It’s basically the game Narbacular Drop ported into the source engine. The crux of it is that you can create two portals, one leads to the other and the other way around. These portals can be used to walk through, jump through and pass objects through. In the linked movie some of these cool things are shown.

Is it just me or have cool weapons taken an increase in games?

Take the E3 Crysis Video. A couple of minutes in you will see the in-game customisation of his weapon, you can add a silencer, flashlight, grenade launcher, change ammo and change the scope. This is awesome.

We have also had the gravity gun in the original Half-life 2.

I like making lists of things I would like in my game, things I think are cool enough to copy. Here is the starting of one such list. If you have anything to add to this list feel free to comment. This is particular to weapons, but anything is good.

Force Discharge Gun
Notes: Reloads with a twist of the weapon ‘charges up’. Distorts the air. Makes objects and people fly away.
Source: Minority Report - the protagonist uses this non-lethal weapon against the men in black. Blue barrels fly everywhere.

Gravity Manipulator Gun
Notes: Generates a force field around the item and holds it up. Can either release or fire the item. Pulls an object towards you on manipulate.
Source: Half-life 2

Portal Gun
Notes: Two portals, left mouse chick is one portal, right mouse click is another. Instant fire. Objects and the player can move through the portals.
Source: Portal - bundled with Half-life 2 Episode 2

Nail Gun
Notes: ‘Nails’ people to the wall.
Source: Armacham HV Penetrator - from F.E.A.R.

Sonic Grenade
Notes: Creates a audio silence before detonating. I like this idea because it’s scary. You are fighting away and all the sound goes… uh oh… run!.
Source: Star Wars Episode 2, Jango Fett’s ship has these grenades.

Explosion
Notes: A nearby explosion causes a white screen (if a flash grenade) or a red screen, ringing noise and muted environment sounds for a period of time.
Source: Halflife 2, Call of Duty

In-game Weapon Customisation
Notes: The avatar pulls up the weapon with tags on each of the modifiable sections, the player can then modify the weapon with the mouse.
Source: Crysis

Slow Motion Explosions
Notes: An explosion that kills you goes off, you ragdoll and time slows down to a stop, the camera pans around and it’s game over. Could also happen with all deaths - the bullet stops just in frount of you.
Source: Bennabis

Kill Cam (replay)
Notes: When you die you see a replay from the perspective of your assailant, how they killed you etc.
Source: Call of Duty 2

Edit: The way the portal gun works may have been wrong (or this one is wrong). Left mouse chick is one portal, right mouse click is another. (was each succesive shot removes the first and creates another.)