The Machine Gun Arm is made from the Long Barrel and the Broken Model Gun, and is acquired very early in the game; along with the Homing Missile, it's the first offensive weapon you can obtain. The low upgrade cost of 266,000z is pretty nice as well, allowing you to get this upgraded pretty early on.

Performance-wise, the Machine Gun Arm fires small bullets straight ahead in a rapid fashion, similar to its predecessor from the first game. As a nice visual touch, empty shells drop out of the weapon when it is being fired, which is pretty cool. The shots are pretty quick; it's the fastest shot in the game aside from the Buster Cannon, so they will hit their target pretty quickly. The shots themselves aren't too powerful on their own, but the damage can add up with concentrated rapid-fire. The energy stat is pretty generous as well, as you are given plenty of shots to work with.

The versatility of this weapon is its best quality, as the ability to use it while running is always nice, and allows you keep on your toes while firing. It's also pretty useful when you're protecting the Parabola from the missiles; the quickness of the shots allows you knock out the pesky projectiles effortlessly. Its range is pretty decent as well, so you can hit quite a few things with this without having to get too close to anything dangerous.

There is a massive weakness to this weapon that prevents it from being anywhere near as useful as it was in MML1, however: recharge time. While the recharge time on this is pretty fast, you really have to wonder why Capcom thought it would be a nice idea to give a machine gun recharge time in the first place. This effectively prevents you from rapid-firing anything for over a second, and makes the weapon suffer. You literally have to stop firing in order to get the rapid-fire back again (which runs out in less than 2 seconds), which can make using this thing a headache.

The Machine Gun Arm fails to re-create the awesomeness of the Machine Buster. A potentially nice weapon is hurt drastically by the fact that some genius gave it recharge time (where's my clue mallet?). The Machine Gun Arm gets a 2/10; nice idea, bad execution.