Why it matters: Video games are one of the main ways new shooters first meet firearms, and the industry's largest channels now cover new game releases. Garand Thumb's latest episode compares the guns in a month-old shooter with the real ones, and spends most of its time on whether the game handles them correctly.
Garand Thumb posted "We Tested the Guns From WARDOGS in Real Life" to YouTube on October 11. In the episode, host Michael Jones and co-host Sawyer take most of the guns from Wardogs, a tactical multiplayer shooter in which three private military factions fight each other, to an outdoor range. They fire each one, compare it with its in-game version, and walk through the reload. Wardogs entered Steam Early Access on September 10.
Jones introduces himself as a former Air Force special warfare operator who retired after breaking his neck, and says video games were how he got into guns. Sawyer, he says, has put "too many hours" into Wardogs. Jones credits the developers with "a lot of really cool things" and says the team disagreed with some choices, adding that "realism kind of sucks, so we understand." Throughout the episode he says his own guns differ from the game models because "my guns are just cooler," and he flags each difference as he goes.
Wardogs assault rifles: Tavor, Galil, AK and M4 at the range
Jones begins by defining assault rifle as a military term for a select-fire, magazine-fed rifle in an intermediate caliber. He notes that YouTube's rules keep the channel from showing automatic fire. The three starting rifles in the game, the KH2002, the A-91 and the Bushmaster M17S, are not on the range. Jones calls them "extremely rare, eclectic weapons" and says only the M17S can be bought in the United States. He shows photographs of each instead.
He rates the game's Tavor reloads as accurate, both from empty and with rounds still in the magazine. His one complaint is that suppressed guns in the game "sometimes sound pretty dumb." With a short Galil, he confirms the game's 35-round magazines and optic rail and shows that the rifle does not lock open on an empty magazine, so a reload ends with a pull of the charging handle. For the AK section he uses a Krinkov-pattern carbine in 5.56 and an AK-105 in 5.45 to show the side-mounted optic and the game's Elcan Specter.
The M4 is the one rifle he faults on appearance. He says the game removes the front sight post when an optic is mounted, where a folding front sight would be more accurate. He calls the in-game reload "a little amateur-ish" because the character slaps the bolt release instead of thumbing it. He describes the game's FAL, which starts as an L1A1-style rifle with wood furniture and gains a railed handguard with attachments, as a good job.
Wardogs submachine guns and pistols, from MP5 to Desert Eagle
The submachine guns include an MP9 converted from a TP9, an MP5, a PP-19 Vityaz with a muzzle device that Jones says works as both a flash hider and a partial suppressor, and a Kriss Vector fitted with a SilencerCo Osprey. His main reload complaint is about the MP5. In the game, a mid-magazine reload seats a fresh magazine with the bolt closed. Jones says that with a full 30-round magazine this can damage the feed lips or the bolt, and that the correct technique is to lock the bolt back first. He calls the Vector "one of the worst guns in real life" for reliability; on camera it ran.
“The scorecard Garand Thumb keeps on Wardogs is mostly about reloads and sound, not looks.”
Tess Marlowe, The ReticleThe pistols are a Glock 47 fired with and without a suppressor, a Glock 18, a World War I-era 1911 that Jones puts at more than 110 years old, and a Desert Eagle in .50 Action Express that he says is "not really used in real life." For automatic fire from the Glock 18 and the submachine guns, he points viewers to Pepperbox, a subscription video service run by gun creators.
Marksman rifles, shotguns and the M249 SAW reload
With a Mosin-Nagant and a Russian SKS, Jones objects that the game loads both rifles one round at a time rather than with stripper clips. He loads the SKS by hand on camera to show that the bolt has to be held open for each round. He also says the game makes the SKS's 7.62x39 "sound so powerful" when it is not. He calls the Kel-Tec RFB, which he calls the best marksman rifle in the game, "not a good rifle at all in my opinion," and notes that it ejects forward and takes FAL magazines. In the shotgun segment he fires full-power buckshot through a suppressed shotgun to show that the in-game suppressor is real but, by his account, badly voiced.
The longest critique concerns the M249 SAW. Jones says the game models the gun well but shows the reload "terribly." Because the SAW fires from an open bolt and a hot barrel can set off a round on its own, he says gunners look away while opening the feed tray cover and check it before loading. He says the in-game character skips both steps, presses the belt down when a catch holds it in place, and makes a mechanical sound on charging that the real gun does not.
The episode closes with Jones repeating that games got him into guns and telling viewers who have never shot that guns are "pretty cool" and "your right." He also renews an open invitation for the Wardogs developers to record audio from the channel's guns. Primary Arms, G-Code, Bravo Company USA and Last Shot Arizona are credited as sponsors.
For context
- Wardogs is a tactical first-person shooter developed by Bulkhead and published by Team17. It entered Steam Early Access on September 10, 2026, and versions for PlayStation 5 and Xbox are planned for 2028.
- Since June 18, 2024, YouTube has restricted videos showing automatic weapons and suppressors to viewers 18 and older, which is why many gun channels cut automatic-fire footage or post it elsewhere.
- The Bushmaster M17S, a bullpup designed in Australia, was made under license in the United States from the early 1990s until Bushmaster dropped it in 2005.
