Single Player[]
It has the highest ammo capacity of all the shotguns in-game, holding 12 shells in its cylinder. Like the M1014, it fires semi-automatic single shots, though this is due to a revolver mechanism rather than gas-operation. The Ultranationalists use it as their primary shotgun. It is only found with or without a Red Dot Sight, and sometimes a Woodland Camouflage. It is also possible to find a Woodland Camouflage Striker when the enemy deploys smoke screens on "Loose Ends", as a matter of fact, it can be very rarely found in the other camouflages in "The Enemy Of My Enemy" and "Of Their Own Accord". In "The Gulag", one of the Russian soldiers before the breaching wall at the shower room in will occasionally hold a Striker with Woodland Camouflage. Kiril used a Striker during the Airport Massacre in "No Russian".
In the campaign, the Striker is found frequently, especially in the later missions of the game. It is a wise choice to pick one up off of a dead enemy, as it has good power and can be used in the tighter spaces of the levels, such as the office buildings in "Second Sun" or the White House in "Whiskey Hotel".
Multiplayer[]
The Striker is unlocked at Level 34 in multiplayer.
The Striker is great for short-range combat, if used correctly. It needs its rather large 12-shell cylinder because it rarely kills with one shot at medium distance; the player should fire two or even three shots as quickly as possible instead. With a Grip, the Striker has almost no recoil. Without a Grip, the Striker has very predictable recoil which goes up and to the right.
Stopping Power works well with the Striker, essentially giving it more "range" as the few pellets that hit at larger distances will do more damage. Some believe the Striker is better at getting multi-kills than the AA-12 due to its larger ammo count and controllable rate of fire.
The Striker features one trait no other secondary shotgun features; for every shot fired, only 6 pellets are fired as opposed to all other shotguns which fire eight. Combined with a low range versus other shotguns, this makes one shot kills much more unlikely than with other shotguns, meaning multiple shots should be fired when using this.
The most prominent disadvantage of the Striker (albeit very poor damage) is the very long reload. Each shell is loaded by hand and the cylinder is wound for each shell, so the length of the reload is dependent on how empty the weapon is. Reloading all twelve shells takes an inordinately long time (about 7.5 seconds). The long reload can be mitigated greatly by Sleight of Hand. Pressing fire while reloading waits for one more, or the current shell to load then cancels and does not fire until fire is pressed again. As such, switching weapons or sprinting are quicker, more effective ways of cancelling a reload. Another good tactic is to always reload after killing an enemy, especially if the player has only fired one shot.
The Striker is the only shotgun that suffers very little range reduction from equipping a silencer, thus being the best shotgun for said attachment. When fired without a silencer, the Striker creates a cloud of opaque smoke. This only obscures the target when aiming down the sights, however.
As with all shotguns, aiming down the sights actually increases the spread of the shots to equal or wider than the weapon fired from the hip without Steady Aim. ADS does NOT increase the range of the weapon.
Even though the Striker has a grip already on it, the Grip attachment is still available. The stock grip, however, doesn't have the same effects as the actual attachment.
To maximize the firing rate of the Striker, one should press the firing button in a steady rhythm, rather than just tapping it as fast as one possibly can.