What are the best Retro, Magical and Sci-Fi Game Bows Ever?

Last Updated: July 13, 2018

Who doesn’t love the good old bow and arrow in a video game? From Zelda to Crysis there’s a bow and arrow featured on just about every platform imaginable.

Retro games have bows, sci-fi games have bows, there’s magical variants and just plain weird bows. There’s a host of crossbows and there have been many attempts to make archery a fun sport on both consoles and PC’s.

The folks at targetcrazy.com have compiled a list of the best 50. If you want to see the whole list and the winners in each category, take a look at the full article here, but scroll down to see a neat graphic that shows their top 20 overall.

The Sacred Bow – Kid Icarus – The Retro King?

The favorite bow from older games is the enhanced Sacred Bow wielded by Pit in Kid Icarus. While he starts out wielding a short-range bow, the Sacred Bow lets him fire arrow much faster and farther. Pit has an unlimited supply of arrows and can use Fire Arrows to deal more damage. By the time Pit returned in Kid Icarus: Uprising, the bow was only one of many weapons he used, but in the original two games, it was his primary weapon of choice.

BioShock – Wield the Top Crossbow

Do crossbows count? They are bows, after all, some might say not really but the top pick for the crossbow in a computer game is BioShock. Not only is the crossbow in BioShock one of their favorite video game crossbows, but it’s also considered by many players to be the best BioShock weapon.

It deals excellent damage with multiple types of ammunition, it is powerful at both short-range and long-range, and a headshot from the crossbow will kill a Splicer in one hit on any difficulty setting. If that’s not enough, its bolts can often be recovered intact (and you can upgrade it to make this more likely), which means it’s an incredibly powerful weapon with a ready supply of ammo. It doesn’t get much better than that.

SciFi! – Predator Bow – Crysis 3

You can’t beat an auto-loading compound bow! The Predator Bow from Crysis 3 is a fan-favorite, with three draw weights you can switch between and four different types of arrows to fire: carbon-impact, electro/shock, airburst fragmentation, and super-thermite. In single player, it has its own weapon slot, and it is also the only weapon you can fire while Cloaked without using energy. In short, the Predator Bow is one of the best bows in video games–science fiction or otherwise.

QuiVR – Archery in VR

QuiVr is a multiplayer wave shooter designed specifically to be a fun, and accurate archery game. Your trusty bow will let you take down wave after wave of enemies, with physics designed to feel like actual archery. QuiVr isn’t the fullest gameplay experience out there yet, but if you want to feel like you’re wielding a bow and take down enemies at the same time, this is the VR bow we like the most.

 

The top 20….

20 of the Best Video Game Bows Ever
Source: targetcrazy.com

Longbows from Age of Chivalry….. The Best Overall?

If you’ve never played it, Age of Chivalry is a free mod for Half Life 2 that totally changes the games into a one based on medieval combat between 2 opposing sides. If you don’t remember it you may have come across the game the developers eventually made called Chivalry : Medieval Warfare.

In the game you can fight with a longbow, a crossbow or a javelin but the longbow archery in this game is pretty realistic which is why it gets the top spot!

Have you ever played Age of Chivalry or Chivalry Medieval Warfare? Do you think it’s the best bow action to be had in a game?