I've seen many games where the characters always wield very impractical weaponry (such as Cloud Strife's enormous sword in Final Fantasy 7, and for some reason, swords do more damage than guns lol. The gunblade in Final Fantasy 8 is pretty cool though, it's a sword with a gun on the handle which, if done at the right time, helps do more damage before you strike with the sword).
Ultimately, I wouldn't worry about it too much (heck, my main character wields a katana, and yet he's a fighter pilot lol. However, he's not always in his ship, and his backup pistol only holds so much ammo, and he prefers the katana to a smaller dagger), if you can make it interesting, then it should work (but yeah, try not to have a red headed vampire wield that weapon in your story lol). Regarding that specific weapon you mentioned, I don't think it really ever existed (although it does look kind of cool), but like Richard said, it doesn't look very practical, nor is it entirely unique on its own.
Heck, in Resident Evil 4, there is a monster that busts out some forearm blades that strongly resembles the claws of Wolverine from the X-men comic. The catch though is that the creature is blind, and finds you largely by listening to where your footsteps or gun shots are coming from, and those blades hurt like heck when they do pummel you with it (what I find sillier with that game is that there is this one boss who almost uses a combat knife exclusively. It's funny how you can get bashed with a spiked flail in that game and survive it, yet one knife attack by this guy during some scenes in the game will insta kill you (and all other times, they hit hard as heck, knocking about 1/2 your life bar per hit). Conversely however, he's weak to knife attacks your character does. I tried shooting him with a shotgun at point blank range, as well as a Magnum, yet this guy can take many, many shots to his body, and the knife, which is largely useless throughout the rest of the game, does the most damage to him lol (He's much easier to beat with an infinite ammo Tommy gun you can buy after beating the game once and when you restart .
If you want to make something cool, have your character dual wield weapons (preferably swords, although make sure it's not two 2-hand swords lol. A short blade on his offhand, and a main, larger weapon on his main hand would be great). Characters wielding two weapons are always a plus for me (one of the villians in one of my stories dual wields in fact).