Heavy Pulse Rifle: the 200,000 credit weapon exclusive to Dead Space: Sabotage

The Heavy Pulse Rifle is a weapon exclusive to Dead Space: Sabotage, and it is the only gun in that game that can be bought from the store rather than found. The price is 200,000 credits, which is the point: it is a purchase decision as much as a weapon.

What is the Heavy Pulse Rifle?#

The in-game store describes it as an extremely powerful but somewhat inaccurate weapon with a high rate of fire and infinite ammunition, and every part of that description carries real weight in how it plays. The infinite ammunition is genuine. The weapon overheats instead, and during the cooldown it cannot be fired at all, which is the real ceiling on its rate of fire.

It looks and acts like a light machine gun rather than an assault rifle, going by the way it is held, its size and its rapid low-accuracy fire. It is the first military-grade weapon Vandal carries in Sabotage.

How should you use it?#

Treat it as crowd control and nothing else, because the damage output is enormous but the accuracy is bad enough that most shots miss anything at long range. Close-up Necromorphs are the target, not distant ones. Swarms and small groups go down fast, and tram battles and other tight areas suit it, as do the Endless and Survival modes. Like the ordinary Pulse Rifle from the other games, it is not really built for dismembering, so anything that has to come apart limb by limb wants a different tool. Its other use is economic. Firing it until it overheats conserves the ammunition in the player's other weapons while still doing considerable damage in a short window.

The overheat trick#

There is a way to keep firing without ever shutting down.

The overheat warning sound beeps three times before the final overheat tone lands. Pressing the fire button on that final warning returns the overheat indicator to blue and lets the weapon continue, and repeating the input each time the warning cycle comes round keeps it running.

Buying it#

Reaching 200,000 credits takes either a great deal of play or money. The DLC store sells credit packs through iTunes, and the 500,000 pack is the one usually recommended for the purchase. The alternative is the Credit Module from the same store, which makes Necromorphs drop credits more often and in larger amounts.

One oddity closes the story out. The Heavy Pulse Rifle is not available on Android devices at all, despite the advertisements on the Android app store showing Vandal using it.