Specialized ammo, that is. My preference for RPG mage-dom aside, there’s something incredibly satisfying about (virtually) vanquishing your enemies with the (usually graphically) impressive effects of burning fire or frigid ice. And with so many games currently dipping into the melting pot of cross-genre trends, I can now enjoy tormenting my foes with the extreme effects of bad weather (among other things!) with my guns too. Here’s a rundown of a few of my recent favorites.

Bioshock 2: There are different ammo types for each weapon, and the Power to the People stations allow you to upgrade your weapon, adding capacity, increasing damage, and the like. But the funnest options were Heated Rivets (giving each rivet a change to set enemies on fire), and Electrified Shells (giving each shotgun shell the change to electrocute your enemy). Now you might say, “But Dope, you already have these effects in the Plasmids you get to use while exploring the underwater city of Rapture, isn’t it a bit superfluous to have your guns have these effects too?” NO. Heck, no. The fact that I can stack these effects with the glories of Cyclone traps, telekinesis, and hypnosis just makes everything that much more devastating. In the case of Bioshock, more definitely means better.

Mass Effect 2: I really don’t want to get caught up in a genre argument regarding what type of game Mass Effect is and what it isn’t. That said, I play it more like a shooter, that’s just my style. What can I say, I’m a girl and I always over-pack, and when it comes to packing heat, I like to play with all the guns. Playing as a Soldier in Mass Effect 2 provided some wonderful options not present in the first game, most especially the various ammo types. Call me cliche, but incendiary and cyro ammo were my BFFs; their effects were both, well…effective and fun to use! Shattering frozen enemies never gets old, but what does get old are the constant and overdone screams of my foes on fire. Can’t my enemies just suffer their deaths a little more gracefully while I’m having so much fun?

Borderlands: Elemental Effects. Two simple words, yet so many wonderful flavors of destruction. Whether you like melting your enemies with poison, blistering their skin with fire, exploding their very flesh off their bones, or zapping their armor to their bodies with electricity, Borderlands has the gun for you. Or a hundred. Er, a few thousand. Okay, there’s a lot of guns. But I played a Siren, she favored the SMG and was built to use it. Add an overpowered Hellfire SMG to that mix, and oh the fun I had tearing through enemies like butter. Call me a pyro, but playing with fire in this game was funner than running around campfires with marshmallow torches when I was a kid.

Okay, so I just did that last year, sue me.