User blog comment:Arbington/DLC Theories/@comment-1800566-20101009074331/@comment-217683-20101009074645

I dunno about a "sniper assault rifle". To me, the Mattock simply seemed like an old-fashioned semi-auto rifle, like the M1 Garand or something. After all, it's really nothing like a sniper rifle. It simply has longer effective range and better accuracy than an assault rifle, at the expense of automatic or burst fire. In other words, it's pretty much like comparing a semi-auto rifle like the Garand to a modern assault rifle. It's much less out-of-whack than a sniper rifle that acted like a shotgun would be, and unlike the "shotgun sniper rifle", it's one that actually appears to be based on real-world firearms.