M404 Heavy Rifle

The M404 Heavy Rifle is a weapon in Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

Background
The M404 Heavy Rifle is a 5.56mm multi-barrel heavy machine gun with high rate of fire, employing Gatling-style rotating barrels, manufactured by Mustang Arms.

Characteristics
The weapon uses special 5.56x45mm "Flüssig Kühl- Effekt", Liquid Cooling Effect to increase barrels cooling. This minigun is gas-operated like Russian Gatling guns and doesn't need an electric motor or an external power source. Due to the fact that this minigun does not need an electric motor, the weapon is much lighter but two 5 kg counterweights each are mounted at the rear to better absorb the huge recoil of the weapon. The M404 feature a high capacity cylindrical helical feed magazine hung below the weapon.

The M404 must spin up before shooting, but it offers a higher rate of fire than the other automatic weapons, the FR-27 and TMP-18. The weapon can overheat, at which point it becomes inert until the barrels can cool down.

The Ammo provides another problem for possible M404 users. As the gun's ammo reserve takes up 6 spaces (The largest ammo in the game) it may not be feasable to carry both around. Players may instead choose to load it's 100-round magazine and drop any additional ammo.

Behind the scenes

 * It was probably inspired by the Russian Shipunov GShG-5.45 four-barreled rotary machine gun.
 * The M404 has changed drastically since the first concept art. Although at first it was produced by Kaiga Limited, and had several notable features such as an unprotected barrel and no charging handle, after release the Rifle was given a much simpler appearance including a handguard around the barrel that the player uses to hold it, and a much simpler reciever with a charging handle.