REVIEW: Nerf Mega Magnus

Magnus, son of Centurion

It's that time again. We sit at our slightly dented and cracked computer to painfully tap at a keyboard that is now missing several lttrs. That is because we've been testing another new Nerf blaster and, as ever, have really gone out of our way to shoot each other with it as often as possible during the course of the review. And so, with welts and bruises in places only our doctors know about, we present the Nerf Mega Magnus.

The little brother of the Nerf Mega Centurion (which we reviewed here) the Magnus is a pint-sized warrior that packs a punch like the big boys. Ever grateful to RED5 for sending it through to us, we loaded up on Nerf Mega Darts, yanked back the spring and got with the blasting.

Dressed up in the new Mega colours of red with white lettering, the Mega Magnus looks pretty good next to its older, bigger sibling. Comparisons with the Mega Centurion don't stop there either, as the two seen to have a similar style grey handle and chevron-like grips on the underside. The width of the orange-ended barrel is also the same, but that is to accommodate the Megas' own kind of oversized dart.

Speaking of which, you get three darts with the Mega Magnus. Although we first thought the blaster would be single loading, with you having to load each dart separately before firing, we were happy to see that all three fit inside the Mega Magnus' clip. Simply crank back the loading arm and insert all three darts. Just like the Mega Centurion the firing mechanism requires a good yank back to prime the blaster, unlike the battery-powered flywheel of the Nerf Rapidstrike CS-18.

The feel of Mega Magnus is a little strange in your hands. Obviously it is a big pistol, but the elongated barrel makes it very front heavy. In smaller hands (and we always tend to forget that Nerf is actually for kids) the Mega Magnus is more a smaller two-handed blaster with the underside neatly accommodating another hand for support. We found that while playing around shooting each other, it was far more comfortable to lay another hand on top of the Mega Magnus to pump at the loading mechanism, helping to fire those three darts in just a couple of seconds. A very similar technique was used to good effect on the Nerf Retaliator.

Handily, there is also a tactical rail running on the underside of the Mega Magnus, although we're not too sure what you'd put under there. There is thankfully a sight on top but now that we're a bit more experienced with Nerf blasters we've learned never to bother using them and instead just aim "over there". But that brings us to range...

Across the board our range tests revealed that Nerf Mega Magnus achieved an average of around 50 feet. Pretty impressive for a pistol and about two thirds the distance achieved by the Mega Centurion. We were less impressed by the accuracy of the Magnus, but as you can see in the pictures the barrel is about an inch long, as opposed to the Centurion's 1000 inches (ish). Although a lot of the shots went oddly wide of the target, in closer situations (which is where you should be using a pistol blaster anyway) that didn't matter as much.