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Nerf Longshot

The Nerf Longshot is the bulkiest of the three rifles. Like the Longstrike, it also comes with a barrel extension. With the extension, it only measures a few inches shorter than the extended Longstrike. The Longshot’s barrel extension features a handy bonus: a single-shot dart gun under the muzzle. Whether the extension is mounted or loose, you can fit a dart in a sub-barrel below the muzzle, pump the barrel’s handle, and fire with the separate trigger.

While the Longstrike is built to look like a sleek sniper rifle, the Longshot looks more like a heavy anti-tank gun. While not pictured above (due to an ill-advised modding attempt on my part), the main gun features flip-down bipod legs that stabilize the gun when deployed and give it more bulk when folded up. It also comes with a sniper scope that clips onto the rifle’s handle. Like the Longstrike’s iron sights, the scope is useless.

The Longshot is easily the most powerful rifle. It shoots farther both with and without the barrel extension, and can be relied upon to fire 25-30 feet when just firing the main gun. The secondary gun on the barrel extension is much weaker, and feels more like an afterthought than a dedicated weapon.

With its power and intimidating profile, the Longshot more easily justifies its $30-35 price tag than the Longstrike. It’s bigger, shoots harder, and unless you really like sniper rifles, looks cooler than the Longstrike. It can be a bit harder to find online, especially in its previous blue-and-orange and current yellow-and-orange color scheme. Fortunately, Hasbro recently released a Wal-Mart exclusive red version of the rifle that you can pick up for $30.

Nerf Raider

This deceptively plain-looking rifle features the highest ammunition count and fastest rate of fire of all the non-automatic Nerf guns. It comes with a Thompson machine gun-like drum magazine that can hold 35 darts, and it’s built to fire those darts fast.

Unlike the other two rifles, the Raider can be fired simply by holding down the trigger and pumping the handle. Nerf calls this “Slamfire” mode, and it’s a great way to spray a lot of darts very quickly. It’s also entirely optional; if you want to just fire one at a time, you can use the standard pump-then-shoot method of the other Nerf guns. While you can’t buy additional drum magazines separately, the Raider can handle regular 6-dart N-Strike clips if you want to keep more ammunition on-hand.

The Raider isn’t as powerful as the Longshot, but its huge magazine and higher rate of fire make up for it. It still shoots further than an extended Longstrike, as well. It might not have any accessories or a cool-looking rifle design, but its overall speed and performance make it the best all-around rifle of the three.

Next week we bring out the big guns with a bazooka, a machine gun, and the return of Sasha!

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