Control is a shooter with a single gun. That would be worrying if that gun wasn’t a paranatural object able to transform at the user’s will. So that’s lucky. Meet the Service Weapon, the hand cannon that marks a Director of the Federal Bureau of Control, and lead character Jesse Faden’s best friend for her journey through The Oldest House.

The Service Weapon resembles a regular (if enormous) pistol, but look closer and you’ll see pieces of it trembling and reconfiguring. That’s because it can transform into five different forms, two of which can be swapped freely between at any one time. Its ammo is infinite, but every form comes with a limit of bullets you can fire before it needs to be recharged, not unlike a plasma weapon overheating in Halo.

You’ll earn forms throughout the game, with new ones becoming available to purchase with weird, scavenged materials throughout the story. All five forms can be individually modded too, buffing damage, steadying recoil, extending ammo and more. And, like most things in Control, they don’t all work quite as you’d expect. Here’s every Service Weapon form in action, and how they work:

Grip

This might be the first and most expected of your Service Weapon forms, but that doesn’t make it the least useful. Grip functions more or less exactly as you’d expect a handgun to, firing like a semi-automatic pistol. Aside from Charge, it’s probably the most reliable form while levitating, with far fewer accuracy and recoil problems over long range than the others, making multiple headshots far easier while on the move.

Spin

This is essentially burst-fire mode (in fact, it reminds me most of Machine Gun mode on the massive pistols of Time Crisis) - you fire a lot of bullets, very quickly, with not a great deal of accuracy. It’s best used when up close and personal with a spongier foe - slam their shields off with a telekinetic Launch, evade up close and pump them full of whatever eldritch metal it is that the Service Weapon fires.

Shatter

It’s easiest to think of Shatter as your shotgun, but it’s not quite as simple as that. This is, again, about getting close to your enemies, and fires multiple bullets in a single shot (with not a lot of ammo available before a recharge). The twist is that its spread is a little strange, firing practically horizontally - aim too high and you’ll end up missing entirely. It can take some getting used to, but it’s a neat trick to line up three weaker grunts and take them all down in a single shot. Unlike Grip and Spin, Shatter can also, well, shatter enemy shields, which makes it a very useful second-choice form.

Pierce

My personal favourite, Pierce is best thought of as a combination sniper rifle and railgun. It’s comfortably the most powerful form of the Service Weapon, but requires a second-long charge-up before it’s ready to fire. If you hit, you’ll watch most enemies crumple to the floor. If you miss, you’ve used up half your available ammo. It’s a lovely bit of risk-reward design. As the name suggests, the Pierce form’s slugs will travel through flimsier surfaces before coming to rest in the nearest wall, so try luring crowds, single-file, through a door to knock over a few in one go.

Charge

The last weapon form is probably the oddest. Charge is something like a rocket launcher, but not as you’ve come to know it. For a start, it comes with just three projectiles in the chamber, which can either be fired individually or fired all at once with a short charge-up. Secondly, those projectiles don’t explode so much as implode, taking half a second before a satisfying phwoomph of damage. It’s designed as an area of effect weapon (as mentioned above, it’s particularly useful while levitating), but doesn’t do a great deal of damage as a result - you’ll hit a lot of enemies at once, but it’ll likely take a few attacks to finish them off.

Joe Skrebels is IGN's UK Deputy Editor, and he had to get special dispensation to show that shot of Pierce going through all the computers. Worth it. Follow him on Twitter