Before I uninstall Dead Space, I went back to an old savegame and tried some of the alternate weapon paths.
At the beginning of chapter 11, if I sell everything, can buy 1 weapon + ammo + 12 power notes worth of upgrades. For most weapons that’s at least 75% of the upgrade tree. I focused on damage and capacity when I could. These are my thoughts after playing the beginning of chapter 11 (bring up artifact from cargo bay) with each upgraded weapon. Lots of combat, against a tentacle and 6-12 of the different shambly guys.
Can’t target limbs. Goes through ammo quickly. No real range. Doesn’t seem to do much burn over time damage. Alt-fire is a giant puff of flame. Pretty much a waste of time like I thought.
This was the only weapon that did almost as well as the default gun, though it does tend to eat up a lot of ammo due to rapid fire and “shake” when firing. I really liked the 360 degree over-the-head alt fire, which is definitely useful if you’re being swarmed. This one seemed doable, but ammo consumption and lack of accuracy concerns me.
No ranged attack whatsoever, can’t sever limbs very well. Alt fire is a grenade ball. Totally friggin’ worthless, except perhaps if you’re getting swarmed and want to push enemies back.
Pretty much a rocket launcher. Does LOADS of damage, but ammo is expensive to the point that every time you miss your target you’ll wince. Might be nice as an alt gun for larger enemies (the tentacles, the big bear guys, etc) where massive damage is your #1 concern, not blowing limbs off.
Aiming the remote sawblade (not all THAT remote, since it’s maybe 10-15 “feet” in front of you at max range) is awfully fiddly to me, and again, makes it hard to sever limbs reliably. Fun to use, of course, but seems impractical. Alt mode, firing the blades, seems even more wasteful relative to the damage it does
Another fun gun to use, as it slices enemies apart with a horizontal beam. Could be effective if you have several enemies attacking in a row, as it’ll slice through all of them. However, this is yet another weapon which is sort of hard to slice limbs off with. Low capacity, though, and slow movement of the projectile makes it hard to “line up” reliably. (Alt fire is a weird landmine I forgot to try in combat, was having too much fun slicing things up like luncheon meat.)
So, my initial experiments were proven right: pretty much all the Dead Space weapons are crap, except the default one you start out with (with upgrades).
This might be the first FPS I’ve ever played where the gun you start out with is the best gun in the game.