Things aren't any easier for Lara Croft in Rise of the Tomb Raider. She has bigger tombs to traverse, more ferocious fauna to fight, and more determined mercenaries to pepper with arrows. But she's a bit harder herself, as we saw in an exclusive preview session with the game, and she'll have a lot more room to express her sharpened talents this time around.
No more of those tiny little secret tombs - Lara will spelunk her way into massive, ancient structures in Rise of the Tomb Raider, and she'll have to use her wits and her acrobatic prowess to make it back out. That's assuming she doesn't try to fight a bear with no weapons at the start of the game, anyway - a bad call there could cut the whole thing a bit short. You can hear our experiences with the upcoming title in the new video embedded below, and make sure you click on for more details after that.
Lara Croft's explored so many exotic locales, racing to beat nondescript bad eyes to magical treasure, that 'thwart supernatural scheme' probably shows up right before 'buy milk' on her weekly to-do list. Rise looks to stick with that tradition, sending Lara to the frozen tundra of Siberia to discover the secret of immortality. I'm not sure if that comes in solid, raidable form, but if it does I'm calling right now.
A setting like Siberia definitely ups the ante in terms of survival. Say what you will about Yamatai and its population of murderous cultists, at least it was warm. The unforgiving weather Russia's northernmost parts is bad enough, but throw in hungry bears intent on having Lara for breakfast and it seems like everything's going to want her dead. More than normal, even.
At the start of Rise's E3 trailer, Lara's in therapy, talking through the trauma inflicted by her fun-filled excursion through Yamatai. Or rather she's not. She's sitting sullenly under the shadow of a hoodie. But don't fear that this is going to turn into a David Cage-style introspection simulator. Amid the conversation we get flashes of her next escapade, and it looks like it might be even darker than the first one.
Lara's questionable state of mind seems to be a big focus for Rise, if Crystal Dynamics' handling of her story in the meantime is any indication. The currently running both make a big point about how the trauma she experienced at Yamatai is still affecting her, while also showing the lady of tombs jumping off cliffs and exploring abandoned ghost towns. While we can certainly expect Rise to delve more deeply into Lara's PTSD, don't expect her to spend the entire game at the doctor's office. She's got stuff to do.
We've seen Lara leaping toward sheer rock faces before. By now she's no stranger to the old 'jump at a wall and stab your axe in at the last minute so as to not die' trick. But we haven't seen her do that while hurling herself over what looks like a half-mile deep mountain chasm, after being chased off a cliff by a giant marauding bear. We're still uncertain how much platforming will feature in the gameplay itself, but if it's anything like that little stunt, it looks like the platforming genre itself may be getting a gritty reboot.
In addition, though we haven't seen much of Rise's puzzle-solving aspects yet, it seems to be a priority for the team at Crystal Dynamics. Noah Hughes, Creative Director of Tomb Raider, noted in an that "The most important thing to us is really to live up to that promise of tomb raiding." Given that one of the main criticisms of the original reboot was that it lacked a proper selection of crypts to plunder, a renewed focus on the thinky-bits Lara's known for is nothing but good news.
As you may remember from the small fan-based nuclear explosion that detonated last August, Rise of the Tomb Raider will be Xbox One and Xbox 360 exclusive when it releases this holiday season. However, , though it's not yet confirmed how long it will last or what other consoles it might touch down on in the future.
While this is a frustrating move for anyone that doesn't have ready access to a box of X's, there is hope yet that the exclusivity window will be short. And hey, who knows? Your patience may be rewarded with a .
So that's everything we know about Rise of the Tomb Raider for now. But expect fo to start pouring out like the brains of so many arrow-perforated mooks very soon indeed. Keep an eye on this article, and we'll update it with every fact that arises as we move towards the game's Holiday 2015 release.
And while you're here and snuffling around for E3 info like a pig looking for video game-scented truffles, check out some of today's other reveals. Like .
The Academy Awards season is a great time, when proles can watch - bleary eyed in your underwear, if you’re a lucky European - as dull but ‘worthy’ films get slap-headed gold lads chucked at them, in lieu of films that people actually find entertaining. Just try and tell me The English Patient wouldn’t have been improved by a Predator.
Anyway, I digress. Main point is, I thought this a good time to shine the spotlight on a cinematic genre that’s always (ALWAYS) ignored by the gong-giver: video game movies. Why are they so consistently overlooked at awards ceremonies? Because they’re largely, well, piss. However, one man’s piss is another man’s Um Bongo, and given that this site is called GamesRadar+, goddamnit, it’s about time we saluted the best this genre has to offer in the Video Game Movie Oscars. You know, before we watch the real show and throw an indignant wobbler on Twitter about the fact that John Wick didn’t get nominated for anything. Idiots.
*cue emotive music, applause, and Jennifer Lawrence wackily falling down some stairs*
Other nominees: Christopher Lambert (Mortal Kombat), Karl Urban (Doom), Sean Bean (Silent Hill), Udo Kier (Lars Von Trier's Katamari)
It was a toss up between the late Raul Julia and Christopher Lambert as Raiden in Mortal Kombat, but as Lambert himself always said in the stellar Highlander 2: The Quickening, 'There Can Be Only One.' Raul is that one. The one who made M. Bison the most charismatic bad guy since Charles Manson ran rings around Geraldo Rivera in that prison interview ages ago. Julia gave Street Fighter's despotic beefcake a narcissistic edge, with a penchant for Boris Vallejo-esque artwork featuring himself riding tigers and fighting. For him, it was only Tuesday, but the day I first saw his performance was most important day of my life. I'd buy that for a Bison dollar.
Other nominees: Rosamund Pike (Doom), Kylie Minogue (Street Fighter), Kristana Loken (Bloodrayne), Kate Winslet (Lars Von Trier’s Quake)
Milla Jovovich in interviews is a vivacious, endlessly charismatic and entertaining person who’d be bloody wonderful to have at a party. It’s to her credit as an actress that we have no idea about this side of her in Resident Evil movies, as her character Alice could turn milk sour just by pouting at it. Not one smile threatens to put a dent in her expertly held frown throughout the series, unless you watch the cock ups on the DVD extras menu. We’ve spent five films now with the frumpy zombie killer, and we still know absolutely nothing about her. She’s good at kicking people though, so that’s worthy of a Voscar.
Other nominees: Eeeeer… No, seriously, eeeeeh... Also, Lars Von Trier’s Bubsy
Of all the video game movies, Hitman is genuinely the one that has some actual appeal to those who aren’t blighted by our disgusting hobby. In fact there is irrefutable evidence for this, as my mum and dad watched it one night on TV and said it was, and I quote, ‘quite good.’ That’s a box quote right there. They’re not wrong either. The Hitman film (despite idiots moaning about the brilliant Timothy Olyphant playing 47) turned out to be a really fun, pleasantly violent and stylish action caper with some really well done set pieces. Bore little resemblance to the games, like, but it was alright. If Luc Besson had directed, and Jason Statham starred in it, people would be falling over themselves to call it a misunderstood classic. Probably.
Other nominees: Doom, Super Mario Bros., Lars Von Trier’s Fez
Uwe Boll has been the greatest patron of the video game movie for over a decade, and he constantly pushes boundaries. The movie that pushes the furthest is Postal. Boll has always revelled in winding people up, so his doing an adaptation of the notorious, bad-taste shooter series actually made a great deal of sense. Anyway, because I grew up watching Bottom (for the violence and poo jokes, the existential nihilism subtext came later) and Attitude Era WWF, Postal legitimately killed me in places. If you’re thick skinned and/or have absolutely no empathy or sensitivity, it’s the closest video game movies have to a comedy classic.
Other nominees: Doom, Resident Evil: Apocalypse, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, Alone In The Dark, Silent Hill, Lars Von Trier’s Bishi Bashi Special
‘Why not Silent Hill??!!’ I hear you plebs cry. Well, while Silent Hill (which basically pilfered music from the games) was indeed pleasant on the old lugs, The Mortal Kombat soundtrack is frankly, peerless. The theme tune is just as iconic as John Williams’ opening fanfare for Star Wars. Actually it’s better. You don’t get some lad screaming ‘STAAAAR WAAAARS’ over the Star Wars music like the fella bellowing ‘MORTAAAAAL KOMBAAAAAT’ in Mortal Kombat. Mortal Kombat also has Fear Factory playing during the Johnny Cage/Scorpion Fight. It’s the greatest use of music in a movie since Kenny Loggins in Top Gun.
Other nominees: Doom, Super Mario Bros., Hitman, Lars Von Trier’s God Hand
Think of all the iconic movies you've seen. Think of all the iconic lines uttered by the stars. 'What you got?' 'Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn.' 'Rosebud.' To this illustrious company, we can now add 'I've seen that tattoo before, on a robot and a woman.' Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, like most of the greats (such as Blade Runner and Freddy Got Fingered) was wildly misunderstood at the time, and it's only now that its dadaist attack on cinematic convention can be truly understood. It's actually a sharp satire of video games writing, where all dialogue is hokey exposition, trite cliche, and borderline offensive stereotype (witness Jax's happy-go-lucky 'Cole from Gears of War' demeanour). At one point Sindel tells her long lost daughter Kitana 'Too bad you will die.' Thankfully, this film's power never will.
Other nominees: Paul W S Anderson, Christophe Gans, Simon West, Lars Von Trier’s Lars Von Trier
There could be no other. Like all the greatest artists, Boll is misunderstood in his own time. A subversive, counter-culture pariah. Reviled, even. In a world of backslapping luvvies, he’s a man not afraid of nuking bridges, let alone burning them. He’s thrown shade at everyone, wound up overly serious gamers something rotten, and frankly, I love him utterly for it. Boll makes the video game movies that the genre deserves, because let’s face it, if The Order: 1886 is new-gen’s most prominent claim of narrative art, then maybe we’re pretty shagged. Boll knows this, he’s not stupid (he’s got a doctorate), and I genuinely hope he gets to direct Metal Gear Solid and Assassin’s Creed one day. He’s our Ed Wood, only he’s better than Ed Wood, as Ed Wood never offered to twat Michael Bay.
So there's my run-down of the games movies and game movie folk who mandatorily deserve tiny shimmering muscle men. But how about you horrible lot? And more you reckon need a bit of recognition? Should we go the whole hog and give Boll a life time achievement award, now that he's not done any game movies for a few years? Let me know in the comments.
Video games require a lot of suspension of disbelief, more so than movies or books. And that’s totally fine. We’re in no rush to trade in balletic aerial throwdowns atop fighter jets, sword battles with dragons, or the punching of gods in the face. This is not an article in support of the dull mundanities of the real world. That said, there are plenty of times when things in videogameland don’t even make sense within their own fiction. And if games have taught me anything, it’s that the best way to find out whether something works is by trying to blow it up and seeing how well it holds together.
So, here are eight devices that, when you really think about them, are about as incongruous as a window box on a submarine. That have less point than a nail with a head at both ends. That fall apart faster than ACME flatpack furniture. I wouldn’t change most of them for the world, you understand, but poking holes, and a little fun, won’t do these games much harm. Shall we?
Pokemon
No, not for the reason you’d think. If I can buy into the TARDIS, I can live with unspecified technology capable of shrinking a monster the size of an office block into a tiny sphere. What just doesn’t scan is how this tool of the monster hunting trade ever got out of RD. Every trainer knows that even the puniest Pokemon can bust out of a ball before it’s been weakened, with a tiny capture rate based on blind luck. Oh sure, maybe the very first Pokeball thrower got lucky before he was pecked to death by a rabid Pidgeotto, but remember that they were lobbing a hollowed-out Apricorn, not even one of Silph Co’s weaksauce starter models. It’s unlikely.
So what do you use to weaken Pokemon to get them inside Pokeballs? Why, Pokemon, of course. In Pokeballs. Which got there how? It’s the chicken and the egg all over again, except the egg is a white-and-red gacha capsule and the chicken can shoot lightning from its cheeks. People bang on about how Pokeballs are a dark, prison-like concept, but they’re a sunshiny picnic compared to thoughts of early trainers in the long grass toting baseball bats covered in Rattata blood from all the, ahem, weakening they’ve been doing. Brrr.
Halo
Oh no! The Flood are infesting everything in sight. However shall we stop them? Why, by building a bunch of gigantic death-rings in space, slaughtering every thinking being in the galaxy so the Flood starve to death, and then starting over. Obviously. But you know what, mass extinction of all life just seems so callous and wasteful, so let’s also use those death rings to study Flood specimens, where they won’t suffer any harm when we murderise all the other, not galaxy-threatening, sentient life. What could possibly go wrong?
Not only is this the worst plan in history - like trying to put out a forest fire while coating all your fire engines in napalm - but even the Forerunners didn’t totally buy into it, building a master ring to rule them all (OK, it has petals too) outside of the galaxy, where they could take key species to survive the whole inconvenience of extinction. Its great defenses are anonymity and distance, so what do the geniuses at the Forerunner council cook up? That’s right, a portal that takes you straight there. At which point, you might as well paint ‘Guys, we totally left the keys in the ignition in case you needed a climactic battle over the fate of the universe. Hugs!’ on the side of thing and have done, no?
Lego Indiana Jones
OK, it’s hardly TT Games’ fault, but this iconic cinematic moment makes even less sense when subject to the clumsy fingers of players. And that’s from a base level of making no sense whatsoever. If you’re designing an elaborate mechanism to protect a priceless golden idol, by all means throw in pressure plates and poison arrows and spike traps before any light-fingered rogues can lift the thing off its pedestal. I don’t envy you the cleaning bill, or the smell, but objective achieved. Far less sensible is placing a trap trigger after the thief is making off with your precious statue. I'm pretty sure having to climb down into a spike pit to retrieve an idol is the dreaded fast-food chain career of the pre-industrial world.
The boulder trap, however, doesn’t just risk damage to the idol. It ensures it. Assuming it even works. What really is the plan here? To give successful thieves a bonus cardiac workout? And is that worth rolling your nice, soft, golden cave-candy into a spectacularly ugly plate? Imagine having to explain that one to the gods. Gulp.
Call Of Duty: Advanced Warfare
Forget the three-in-one grenades that ensure exactly 66.66 per cent of each one is wasted. Forget the sound suppression charge that stops enemies from being alerted to your presence by creating a highly noticeable absence of sound. Nope, Call Of Duty: Advanced Warfare’s least plausible technology is these magnetic gloves. Because why? Why do men wearing Exo suits that can rocket jump them into the air suddenly need to haul themselves up very specifically constructed buildings? You know, ones made of sheet metal, not the much more common stone or brick. Are they... CLONG! Are they for...CLONG! Aretheyforstealth? CLONG! Nope, they’re clearly not for fricking stealth purposes either.
Look, I get there hasn’t been a decent Spider-man game in bloody ages. And kudos, really, for trying. But if rubber-faced Kevin Spacey wants to turn this whole Atlas thing into an earner, he might want to can the mag gloves and look into supplying grappling hooks. I mean, even the Sentinel Task Force seems to have worked that one out, and it’s not like they were particularly smart when it came to shutting down a certain, obviously evil private military company leader before he went rogue...
Dead Space
Isaac Clarke is many things. Engineer. Man of action. Handy with a Plasma Cutter. Delusional. Paranoid. But Mr Fantastic he is not, and it’s therefore a bit of a stretch (if you’ll pardon the pun; please do, it was awful) to see why RIG suits only put their wearer’s health read-out on the spine, where everyone but the occupant can see it. Developer Visceral knows this. That’s why a little searching in Chapter 7 will turn up a poster emblazoned “Watch each other’s back! Safety begins with teamwork.” Cute, but it explains so very little.
There’s something incredibly disturbing about a society that's totally comfortable with indiscriminately broadcasting the exact, current welfare of its individual citizens, and something almost sadistic about putting critical information, such as the amount of stasis power you have left, so tantalisingly out of reach. Still, while as a feat of industrial design the RIG is something of an own goal, Isaac is an engineer. A couple of well-placed bathroom mirrors and a few bolts, and he can start soiling himself just as much as we do when that comforting cyan spinal column starts changing colour faster than an LED mood light.
Metroid
Samus’s Power Suit is a thing of wonder. Arm cannon, Grapple Beam, missiles… this thing has the works. It also has the curious ability to do, er, something to its user that prevents them needing a swift trip to AE and a wheelchair for life when it wraps up them up into a ball. Another cheeky nod from the developers here: in Metroid Prime, there’s a lore entry about the Space Pirates attempting to reverse-engineer the Morph Ball. Let’s just say it didn’t end well for the mangled test subjects.
Still, the real question is not how it doesn’t kill Samus, but why it’s part of her arsenal at all. What use does an incredibly weaponised suit of powered armour have for the ability to roll through tunnels, when you have enough firepower on your wrist to clear out a planet? You seriously couldn't make the hole a little wider with a little click-click, boom-boom? Or, you know, crawl, with a far lower profile than a thigh-high ball could possibly offer. Real-life spleunkers manage to wriggle through tiny gaps with air tanks on their backs, so the obviously limber Samus shouldn’t have too much trouble getting through, even with those shoulder pads. Yes, the Morph Ball can jump (how can it jump?), and drop bombs, and is very cool, but with everything else the Power Suit can do, it's just over-engineering on a grand – well, one-thirds – scale.
BioShock Infinite
Ah, the friendly skies. So peaceful. So serene. So pant-wettingly terrifying when you’re 30,000 ft above the ground, suspended only by a thinnish rail and an open, sharp-enough-to-cut-a-face-apart blender attached to a wooden brace. Even assuming that everyone in the world of Columbia has downed a vigor capable of giving them the grip strength of a silverback gorilla (I imagine the bottle would be an Art Deco clenched fist with ice on the knuckles), it’s a terribly unsafe way to travel. What if you sneeze, or there’s standstill traffic on the rail? There’s no way to switch arms when one grows tired. And while the Hook itself may be magnetised to ensure a good lock, sweaty hands seem like an awfully obvious point of failure.
Fictionally, of course, the first rail riders are daredevils, not proles. But when you start giving these things out at public fairs, you’ve got to question exactly who is going to want to go shopping, say, with a Sky-Hook taking up an entire arm? It’s not like you could carry anything home without drastically increasing your chances of becoming a human pancake in the very near future.
Resident Evil
Look, I love the Resident Evil REmake, but the Spencer Mansion’s security system is properly bonkers. And of all the mad ways to protect Umbrella’s questionable research, none is quite as insane as the fun little set-up George Trevor creates for the armour Key. You see, the thing about the armour trap is that it’s a two-parter. Part one is far-fetched enough, involving summoning an undead dog with a whistle, then removing its collar. Assuming all the Umbrella employees handle this like Jill or Chris, the company would be getting through a whole lot of hounds a year just to enter some old rooms.
Still, in a roundabout way, this eventually gives you a fragile imitation of the required key, which – if the intern doesn’t accidentally try it in a lock and break it forever, leaving ol' Spencer in quite a bind – can then be used to deactivate the second part of the trap. Part two means removing the real key from a pedestal, activating a whirligig bladed suit of armour on rails, and then plopping the fake in place to reset the deadly knight before it turns the workie kid you sent to do this into salami. The flaw in this master plan, bar the easily ruined imitation? Any patient thief could take the imitation to their local key cutters and bypass the possibility of inglorious dicing. Maybe stick to key cards next time?
Time to remove my fingers from the light socket of the universe and go and find a good comb. But I’m certain that can’t be all the video game gizmos that unravel faster than a Bubsy game. Call out the ones you’ve noticed in the comments below. Between us, I’m sure we can turn up more madcap gadgets than even Q could store in a lab.
And while you're musing upon that, why not check out some of our related, bad-science features for inspiration? May I recommend ?
Remakes and remasters are a fun facet of modern gaming that allow old games to feel fresh. They give new players a chance to enjoy retro titles in the HD era, while older fans can play the titles of their youth without digging up a CRT television. But what about the opposite? What happens when more recent games get redone as pixelated adventures? That’s how you end up with demakes.
Demakes are clever tributes to the games of today that reimagine them as if they were on the consoles of bygone eras. Whether by the developers themselves or inventive fans, these jokey prequels let you celebrate your love of retro games in a whole new way. And these have to be the most clever demakes out there...
Speaking of Capcom, after Platinum’s staff left the company, the publisher went in a number of new directions. Not all of Capcom’s experiments were successful - for every Dead Rising, there was a Dark Void. The jetpack-based action game wanted to be a serious AAA contender, but it’s a dreadfully boring game, and it doesn’t have half the spirit and sense of fun as its jokey spin-off, Dark Void Zero.
Starting as an April Fool’s goof by the developers at Other Ocean Interactive, Dark Void Zero fast became a reality. The silly 2D download purported itself to be a Playchoice-10 game, because that was one of the earliest dual screen arcade machines that the DS could replicate. A mix of old Metroid, Castlevania, and Contra, this game started as a promotional tool for Dark Void proper. Now Dark Void Zero, a fictionally forgotten game, is the only thing people remember about the series.
A lot of these demakes stick with the warmer, friendlier worlds of 16 and 8-bit gaming, while Halo 2600 heads back to the truly primitive days of Atari. The aged system’s games ruled the United States in the early ‘80s, and are the gaming equivalent of cave paintings today, which is just the feel is going for. It molds Master Chief into the hero of second gen classics like Adventure or the catastrophically bad E.T. game, only you’re the one killing extraterrestrials this time.
It’s a cute way to kill your free time, but it’s also noteworthy for being more connected to the source material than most fanmade freeware. The game is credited to Ed Fries, who older gamers may recall as one of the earliest Xbox bosses. He worked hard to get developers like Bungie on the console, so that explains his connection to the Halo franchise. Halo 2600 came out a few years after he left Microsoft, proving that even if he doesn’t collect an Xbox paycheck, he couldn’t give up on the Chief.
The most recent, faux-old entry is a cute bit of fanservice from Platinum Games. The Osaka, Japan team is known for hiding dense Easter eggs in its games, and the same can be said for Platinum’s website. If you find yourself on the , you’ll be treated to a simple game that recasts company star Bayonetta as a 16-bit angel slayer in a pixelated shooter.
The Flash game obviously lacks the depth of a proper Bayonetta battle, but it’s a cute treat nonetheless. The graphics and chiptune soundtrack feel like a labor of love from fans who dig their own work. I’d happily buy a downloadable offering of a much fuller game. It has the unmistakable vibe of a SNES-era Capcom game, which isn’t surprising considering more than a few Platinum employees were with the company back then.
This demake may have the weirdest backstory and the strangest shift in gameplay styles of all. Fallout has always been a very Western-centric series, but with Fallout: New Vegas, publisher Bethesda had a clever plan for introducing the title to a new audience. When you headed to New Vegas’ , a version of Fallout would boot up that looked suspiciously like a 8-bit RPG.
Turning Fallout into Dragon Quest is a cute trick, and perhaps I could’ve soaked in more of the cleverness if I could actually read Japanese. As it stands, the pixelated world and turn-based action is an adorable way to introduce fans of JRPGs to the long-lived postnuclear roleplaying series. Hopefully this radical strategy convinced at least a few fans of old school Dragon Quest to take a trip down to New Vegas.
Now this here is a pretty passive-aggressive demake. The indie dev team behind Super Meat Boy were resistant to porting their game to iOS. Mainly because the two Meat Boy creators felt that phone games lacked any real depth, and that mobile titles were the current day equivalent of those crummy Tiger Electronics ports from decades ago. Then, to prove their point, the developers literally created a .
As the devs put it, the crappy on-screen controller is both true to iOS gaming and the terrible LCD screens of the early ‘90s. The platforming is intentionally terrible, going along with developer Tommy Refenes' belief that iOS controls of the time But, as intentionally poor as the gameplay and graphics may be, Super Meat Boy Handheld is a humorously ironic lark, and now it feels extra special because the game has since been removed from the App Store, with an actual Meat Boy iOS game coming soon.
Retro City Rampage on the surface feels more like a nostalgia-rific tribute to the games of the ‘80s and ‘90s than a true demake. A bit like a mix of Grand Theft Auto, Mario, Metal Gear, Contra, and a stoned afternoon watching Back to the Future, Retro City Rampage is also a Cinderella story for the makers of unlicensed demakes. More than a decade before its final release, RCR began as one fan’s attempt to make an NES version of GTA3.
In 2002, developer Brian Provinciano had thought it’d be fun to build his own dev tools for the NES, eventually crafting a homebrew title called Grand Theftendo. The top-down action and inventive use of graphics became a cult hit in the indie community, and Provinciano decided to go all out in expanding the cute tribute into a full game. By 2012 Retro City Rampage came out, packed with more references to Generation X than anyone can handle in one sitting.
AM2’s Virtua Fighter games broke boundaries for 3D fighters, and the series was also on the forefront of demakes. While so many other entries in here are postmodern throwbacks, the Genesis/Mega Drive version of Virtua Fighter 2 saw release around the same time as the Saturn version. And because Sega’s 16-bit machine could scarcely handle polygons when porting Virtua Racing, the Genesis version flattened the perspective to make the premiere 3D fighter .
Unless you were still a dedicated Genesis owner in 1997, you likely missed this game, but that’s no great tragedy. It’s a slightly above average 2D brawler that halfheartedly recreates most of the characters and moves of its three dimensional sibling, though the sound is atrocious. The music and SFX are the noise equivalent of pouring an exquisite wine through a dish rag. My heart goes out to any kid who asked for Virtua Fighter 2 as a gift and got this version.
I have strong nostalgia for the Game Watch handhelds of the early ‘80s, though advocating for them sounds like I’m saying, “Ditch that car for a horse and carriage. Sure, it’s out of date, but the buggy whip is outstanding.” Nintendo’s clock combos have simple action akin to the cheapest of today’s iOS games, and you can get a pretty accurate feel for them in , a unique tribute to God of War.
Invented by fans for the granddaddy of Flash gaming, Newgrounds, Greek Wicked takes the Hydra boss battle that opened up the first GoW and makes it as lo-fi as possible. The characters may be flat silhouettes, and the noise beeps ‘n boops, but it’s still a faithful recreation, right down to the QTE conclusion. And just like in classic Game Watch releases, you can beat Greek Wicked in minutes, and are expected to repeat it endlessly until your character dies. Truly, this version of Kratos is worthy of GW’s legacy.
That’s a diverse set of tributes, including a number that are more than a little official, but am I missing any? Drop some links in the comments, because I’m always ready for another dose of faux nostalgia.
Ah, Dragon Age. You came and conquered, with your dragon slaying, templar defiling, open-world, giant nug-riding immensity. So why, after 100 hours of my lazing-on-the-sofa-doing-nothing devotion, ending my journey in the deadly peaks of Emprise du Lion with ruins to spare, do I feel a little less than loved? Don’t panic, I still worship you, but that’s not going to stop me from dissecting you. Sorry!
Because, in spite of our admiration for Varric’s chest hair and Iron Bull’s mighty breasts, in the end, BioWare could still do something to improve you. Or eight somethings, actually. So here are the improvements I dare to suggest, nestled within the heart of Dragon Age: Inquisition’s crucial RPG components. Beware, mild spoilers ahead!
Upon first seeing the colossal Skyhold, the Sims-obsessed part of me trembled with glee. My very own castle. A dungeon! Even a wine cellar! Mine … all mine! The possibilities of personalisation seemed endless.
Endlessly functionless, that is. Most of Skyhold’s customisable faucets are void of purpose, aside from being a visual feast. The biggest nuisance is the lack of an inventory chest in the unnecessarily enormous, private quarters, rendering repeated visits to sell unwanted loot a continuous annoyance. Such simple, functioning aspects would be a welcome addition to our personalised castles; taking post dragon slaying naps in my inquisitor-sized bed for example. That’d be just lovely.
Undeniably, BioWare delivers fantastic, non-human companions, with Iron Bull’s irresistible voice, Solas’ unhealthy relationship with demons, Varric’s wit and… we won’t talk about Sera. So, Dragon Age: Inquisition isn’t just about humans, right?
Wrong. In conversation and lore, BioWare tells us about the turbulent political status of the dwarfs, elves and the qunari. The key word being ‘tells’, given that, besides the companions, rarely do we interact with other races. There’s a pathetically small Dalish camp, some token ancient elves and rebel dwarfs, but that’s it. It leaves a huge qunari-less hole in the game. So, perhaps in future DLC, BioWare could integrate volvement with the other races, because humans are, well, really boring.
Especially prevalent in the second half of the game, the strong bond between Inquisitor and companion seems to become slack. If, like me, you develop a relationship with your companions early (they’re just so damn lovable), conversation options dry out quickly. It’s not quite as bad as listening to Garrus’ obsession with finishing his calibrations, but it’s getting there.
Consequently, it’d be great to see some additional loyalty quests, to bolster character development and to strengthen relationships between us and our favourite companions. While I revel in making imperative decisions for my friends, the aftermath of stale chit-chat leaves me feeling a little cheated.
Everyone loves dogs, with their floppy ears, wet noses and unshaken loyalty. Unless you don’t… then maybe you should move to the next slide. Nonetheless, considering BioWare provides your inquisitor with a castle and boyfriend/girlfriend/godfriend, it seems rather cruel that man’s best buddy doesn’t make an appearance.
A mabari war-hound would be a valuable companion on the battlefield. Instead of the search feature, we could make use of a Fable-esque mabari nose-radar, on top of an extra pair of teeth in battle. The beloved mabari companion was a hit in Dragon Age: Origins, so why isn’t it here?
BioWare delivers an engrossing story, with edge-of-your-seat twists married with badass inquisitor moments. However, for all the completionists out there, main quests are too few and far between, in consideration of the vastness of Inquisition’s thirteen areas.
Truthfully, there are only so many fade rifts, fetch quests and who-put-what-invaluable-treasure-where mysteries a player can do before the pace simply loses momentum. Dragon Age: Inquisition could certainly learn a thing or two from games like Divinty: Original Sin or Skyrim when it comes to a much needed injection of engrossing fillers, preventing our minds evaporating through repetition.
The sheer thrill of executing a final blow at the end of difficult battles in Dragon Age: Origins is unforgettable. Especially after being bludgeoned way too many times by an extraordinary foe like Flemmeth, swinging around the beast’s head and performing a finishing mid-air strike, Final Fantasy style, makes me cackle with vicious pleasure.
So, why isn’t this mechanic included in Dragon Age: Inquisition? Without this final gratification for our gruesome efforts, the aftermath of epics battles falls a little flat. We could say that removing cinematic kills endorses a sense of realism, but we’re talking about dragons and giant nugs here. Besides, who doesn’t need more slow-mo action shots in their lives?
Shards. Shards everywhere. I hate shards. But using them to open the Temple of Solasaan proffers just rewards, so as much as I hate to say it; they’re worth searching for. This mind-bogglingly boring quest is easy; find the Ocularum, spy the shards, go fetch.
But we are deceived! See that reachable shard peaking at you on the hill? It’s not reachable. Instead, you have to jump, scramble, and fall to find a passable route to the golden ticket (50% of the time anyway). Please BioWare, if you’re going persecute us like this, at least incorporate fun ways to interact with the environment. Far Cry 4 and Divinity: Original Sin put you to shame in this respect.
If you explore every area before completing Dragon Age: Inquisition’s finale, you may find yourself finishing the ultimate stages of the controller-gripping story arc more rapidly than you’d hoped, as a consequence of your over-powered party. But you’re not to blame!
The desolate Hissing Wastes and red lyrium-infested Emprise Du Lion have a plethora of extra side quests and striking landscapes to discover at higher levels. Sadly, we’re punished for that extra gameplay, since Doom Upon All the World is recommended for levels 16-19, rendering our death match with Corpyheus, after extra adventures, easy. Raised difficulty levels would be advantageous here, or dare I say, adding an extra main quest?
So that's my current list of things that could quickly improve Dragon Age's latest and greatest. But how about you? Any particular tweaks you'd like, or do you think it's already perfect as-is? Let me know in the comments.
And before you go, why not check out some of our related features? Our .
At a very young age, I longed to play the board game Trivial Pursuit, but I was too young to have the knowledge needed to succeed. From then on I worked hard to collect all the useless knowledge I could in the hopes of one day being the ultimate trivia game champion. That hasn’t really worked out so far, but a handy side effect is I have a ton unnecessary information on subjects such as games, and that information demands to be shared.
Still, in a long career of compiling lists of errata, you end up with a lot of unexpected strangeness that doesn’t really fit anywhere else. But all these little nuggets of unlikely gaming knowledge need a space for recognition as well, so I’ve collected them into one weird place. Ones that will make people go, “Really?” before Googling their veracity. But, believe it or not, these bits of off-the-wall gaming trivia are all real...
The directional pad (D-pad for short) is such a constant in the gaming world that it seems weird that any one company could lay claim to it, but Nintendo did just that for decades. Created for an early portable recreation of Donkey Kong, the cross-shaped input method felt superior to just about any other control at the time, and it’s still a standard for 2D movement. In honor of that achievement, Nintendo was awarded an Emmy to further cement the d-pad’s legacy. That may seem strange, as Emmys are mainly known as awards for television, but the d-pad’s award falls under the ‘science’ section of The National Academy of Television Arts Sciences. Officially Nintendo won it for “” back in 2007, and I think it’s a wasted opportunity that all future controllers didn’t have ‘Emmy Winning!” on the packaging.
The Xbox had a ho-hum debut in 2000, so Bill Gates needed a People’s Champion like The Rock to make Microsoft’s first game machine ‘the People’s Console.’ With no real stars of its own yet, Xbox certainly needed The Rock’s fame to spread the word - way more people had heard of the wrestler than some green dude called Master Chief. So, when people got their at the final version original Xbox and its huge controller in early 2001, the WWE champion was right next to Bill Gates talking up such advanced features as “broadband” and “DVD playback.” Trust me, that was much more impressive back then, especially when you see The Rock towering over the richest guy on the planet.
Jen Taylor is one of a number of voice talent that work on countless games, even if many gamers don’t know her by name. Jen appears in titles as diverse as Left 4 Dead and Guild Wars 2, but her contributions to two of gaming’s biggest series is her real claim to fame. Ms. Taylor spent close to a decade playing Cortana in Halo and Princess Peach in nearly every Mario game, the first ladies of their respective consoles. Jen last played Peach back in 2008, but remains the voice of Cortana, and will likely stay that way until a real-life AI replaces her in 2234.
Pizza Hut is a totally adequate fast food chain many North American gamers have likely consumed at one point or another, perhaps without knowing that there’s a behind-the-scenes connection to games. Prior to his tenure as the United States Nintendo boss, Reggie Fils-Aime worked for Pizza Hut. No mere delivery guy, Reggie was Senior Director of National Marketing for the chain, and oversaw the creation of the radical ‘90s foodbeast, . Reggie also spent time at VH1 when the cable channel had the successful Pop-Up Video series. Between those two jobs, he basically ran about 60% of what I ate and watched in the 1990s.
As illuminated in the 2014 book Console Wars, Sonic’s birth wasn’t an easy one, with a lot of give and take between the Japanese developers and the American executives. The original idea for Sonic (surely no relation to the singer of the same name). The blonde woman in a tight red dress added some sex appeal to the game, something Sega of America executives weren’t really looking for in a game for kids. After some tense discussions, Madonna was booted from the series, and Sonic’s developers would have to wait until 2006 to make their human/hedgehog pairing a reality.
I like this fact because it’s so mathematically perfect. Nintendo loved emphasizing the 64-bit power of its black plastic console, going so far as to put the numeral in the name. But it went much deeper than that. As , the square N logo the system used had 64 sides and 64 vertices. Yes, that could just be a polygonal coincidence, but knowing how precise the Nintendo developers are, and how much they love hiding secrets like this, I’m betting it’s no accident.
The late Steve Jobs is regarded as a genius businessman who changed the way people use technology. But once upon a time he was a techy nerd in Northern California helped expand Atari's burgeoning game catalog. Jobs and dev partner Steve Wozniak were given the assignment to make a single player version of Pong. The resulting game was 1976’s Breakout, which paved the wave for dozens of clones and loosely inspired hundreds more. The proto-shooter netted Jobs some much-needed cash for his next project, though the future tech baron also asked if Atari founder Nolan Bushnell would be interested in investing. Nolan turned him down, giving up a possible 50% stake in Apple Inc. that I'm sure in no way haunts his every waking thought to this day.
NBA fans know Dennis Rodman is as weird as he is talented, so this odd story is par for the course. From the beginning, Dead or Alive featured a character who looked and dressed a lot like the Chicago Bulls champion. Eccentric fighter Zack was part of the roster since Dead or Alive began, but when the character took a leading role in the libidinous Xtreme Volleyball, the fighter started sounding more like Rodman as well. Yes, Dennis became the voice of his own parody, showing either a good sense of humor, or the keen business sense to make a quick buck off a silly tribute to him. Rodman only played Zack that one time, and now that Dennis was recently seen hanging out with a certain North Korean dictator, I’d say Zack’s life of private islands and volleyball contests seems the more normal one these days.
Baseball is regarded as an all-American sport, but when Seattle, WA was in danger of losing The Mariners, the city had to look outside of North America for help. Nintendo's US branch has been headquartered just outside of Seattle for years, so in 1992 Nintendo’s top man, Hiroshi Yamauchi, chose to buy the team as a sort of favor to the town. Nintendo still owns The Mariners to this day - explaining all those Ken Griffey Jr. games - and when Yamauchi passed away in 2013, many sports journalists billed him as ‘Mariners owner’ instead of ‘guy who saved the North American video game industry’ - admittedly, the latter takes up way more space in headlines.
Ed Boon has been serious about Mortal Kombat ever since he co-created the series with Jon Tobias. One such sign of Boon’s devotion to the series is that, even as it enters its third decade, Boon still voices MK poster boy Scorpion. Boon voiced him in every installment until 2011’s Mortal Kombat reboot. Scorpion’s new voice was Patrick Seltz, but his catchphrase ‘Get over here!’ was still shouted by Boon. As strange as it may sound for Scorpion’s voice to subtly change in battle, it’d be hard to hear anyone else shout that famous line.
Those are the most randomly weird facts I could cobble together today, but if you have anything else to add to this, make your case in the comments below!
Open-world games made some of game design’s most significant leaps forward last generation. We saw established open-world franchises take their biggest, boldest steps, and saw genres we thought of as set in stone (read: a bit boring), like driving games, try their hand at the formula. There’s something about setting off to journey through an open landscape, constrained only by a developer’s imagination, that instantly captures ours - not to mention quells any of those pesky urges to leave the house, learn to cook or create beautiful music. Ugh.
Which is why it’s all the more surprising to see some of the new generation’s biggest games abandoning the formula. Dragon Age, Metal Gear Solid, No Man’s Sky and more are all becoming more compartmentalised hub games, chopping out the cross-country travel to leave behind smaller, fully-explorable areas connected only by loading screens. But why? It’s enough to have you wishing for an eight-slide gallery feature that explores that very phenomenon. Oh look, here’s one now!
Remember that tropical beach in Skyrim? And what about the fully explorable English countryside village in GTA V, complete with a quaint, family-run post office to burgle? You haven’t had a catastrophic brain event, I made them up. Joke’s on you, it was all a ruse. But, like all the best ruses, it contains a lesson in game design at the end. While a traditional open world offers a huge swath of land to look around, it’s more or less hamstrung by having to, like, make sense. Hub worlds can ignore this sticky geographical issue.
Dragon Age: Inquisition pulls this off to magnificent effect. Drawing on what Bioware learned from Dragon Age 2’s Kirkwall – ie. that playing out an epochal storyline inside gaming’s equivalent of Birmingham or Cleveland is a tad dull - the sequel’s Inquisitor travels the length and breadth of beleaguered fantasy-continent, Thedas. From a breathtaking desert oasis, through under-construction castles, to long-lost, overgrown temples, arriving in a new area is as much about the rush of tourist-y excitement as it is the opportunity to nobble some new demon variants.
Some games simply don’t allow for an open world in the way we’ve come to expect it. The recent return of the space sim has led to several games that use the hub format out of necessity rather than any kind of overt design philosophy, built to offer millions of locations to look around, fight in and be damaged by on an existential and spiritual level.
Elite: Dangerous could technically let you point yourself at an unexplored solar system and trundle towards it at a mere 300 kilometres per hour, but it would take multiple lifetimes worth of gameplay to get even halfway there, and I’ve got better things to be doing - like Hearthstone or something - so its hyperdrive-aided hub system cuts out the wait (and your mid-flight death). Hub design is as much used to make open-galaxy games as it is open worlds at this point, facilitating game spaces that make the likes of Red Dead Redemption’s wide-open frontier look like a particularly violent atom.
The likes of Elite also raise another particularly modern issue for non-linear exploration. As we crave more and more from our game worlds, developers can’t physically keep up. Unless we want a group of haggard, sleep-deprived nerds who’ve worked their fingers down to bloodied nubs through sheer force of keyboard presses, they need a way to make big content without spending their entire lives on it.
Enter procedural generation, in which a few pieces of design can be re-used to make practically endless variations. No Man’s Sky will be creating its neon-pastel landscapes, frilly dinosaurs, and flimsy, destructible asteroid fields on the fly, and it can’t very well do it if you’re watching intently the whole time. Think of it as the game’s take on urinal stage fright - your jumps between the game’s many, many, many systems are the equivalent of you turning around to use the sink, allowing the game to freely excrete a whole new set of worlds, before, ruining this metaphor, you turn around to use the game-toilet once more. All of this is basically science, so you’re not even allowed to be disgusted.
“Why can’t I go into this laundromat?” you scream. “I mean, it has a door, I can see it there. Yes, it has a less detailed texture than doors I’ve been allowed to use previously, but it is certainly a door. I recognise all the door-like features, barring one. The only thing missing is my ability to go in and snoop around people’s baskets of soiled clothes.” I’ve been there, friend. I too have wanted to see every mundane detail of a city’s thousands of buildings but, again, it can prove too much work for designers otherwise trying to accurately simulate a dangerous crime spree.
Dead Island 2’s multiple locations help alleviate that issue. Paring the world down to interesting, constituent parts means that developers can lavish more attention on their smaller details. Couple that with some small procedural generation of building layout, and you have yourself the perfect opportunity to look around fake people’s bathrooms for the rest of your horrible life.
Just as building multiple areas lets developers focus on the detail of each, it also lets them focus on the design of it, too. Game design as opposed to art design, that is. I wasn’t suggesting Just Cause 2 takes place in a featureless world of undulating white topology.
As far as I can tell, some people are still angry that Destiny isn’t a truly open world space shooter thing. Let me just stick my head out of the window and check. Yes, I can still hear bleating. What this ignores is that each of its hub environments is built to offer the experiences you need, both in and out of missions. Enemy levelling, choke points, even the placement of seemingly non-linear Patrol mission pick-ups have been placed to funnel you through the world in the most entertaining possible fashion, while keeping the challenge consistent. Try this in a truly open-world and you’ll either have impassable mountain ranges stuck in the middle of your map (hello, Far Cry 4) or a studio of people driven mad by fractal geometry, drawing mazes on the walls in their own or others’ blood.
This one’s less about design, and more about how you, the player, are a fickle, spoilt, toddler. Don’t worry, I am too. We expect the world on a plate or, at the very least, an easily accessible inventory map. The problem with a traditional open world is that it’s unwieldy - a single, gigantic bit of architecture we’re expected to look around ourselves. Which is why fast travel was invented. But then we also complain that it becomes too easy to get around without seeing what the game actually offers between its major landmarks. So a game like the oft-overlooked Dragon’s Dogma comes along, makes fast travel a tough and arbitrary experience, and we all get up in arms about it.
The solution, basically, is to give us no choice. Assassin’s Creed Rogue, for instance, splits its world into three distinct hub areas, forcing you to fast travel between them. With nothing to see between the New York coastline and the North Atlantic, there’s also nothing to miss. Problem solved. It’s a crude solution, but looking after a toddler’s tough, you know?
Of course, behind all of this pontificating, there’s a fairly major point I haven’t addressed yet - making a decent open world is really hard. Los Santos is an incredible place, but it also took five years, hundreds of people and millions upon millions of dollars to create.Throw in the fact that a new console generation means almost every third-party developer will be spending the next year or so performing the programming equivalent of trying to make a sculpture out of thick yoghurt in the dark, and there’s a reason relatively simplistic hub design is so popular right now, in the early days of the new consoles’ collective regime.
Put it this way - as fantastic as Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain looks, and as squeal-inducingly fun as attaching a balloon to a ram and flying it, fatally, into a helicopter - so that the vehicle crashes into the side of a verdant cliffside - sounds, you can bet Hideo Kojima wishes he could do more. He wishes you could then drive your Jeep to the beach, catch some rays, meet a buff volleyball player who’d make a good recruit ,and abduct him before grabbing a catamaran and sailing home to Mother Base. As it is, we’ll be *yawn* taking an evac helicopter that can play custom tunes between areas. You do what you can with what you’ve got.
But perhaps that practicality is a necessary stop-gap and nothing more - a way of capitalising on our machines’ newfound power while everyone relearns how to make huge, complex games. We’re fairly certain Just Cause 3 will return to the single open-world format (which works, primarily, because getting across the map using a grappling hook and parachute is about as much fun as anything else in the series), and who knows what else is on its way?
The Witcher 3 is going big, and Michel Ancel’s Wild is said to take place across a map the size of Europe, and there are any number of developers quietly getting on with projects that could potentially come to redefine what we know as the traditional open-world game. Hub design is proving to be a useful, and often hugely exciting, form for new-gen games to take. It could be that its self-contained freedom has provided a ‘safe’ environment in which to teach potential open-world devs a few lessons about where to go next.
The recent, perhaps necessary, boom in hub-based games raises the question of whether anyone’s really perfected the open-world yet. There’s more to come, and when it arrives, I’m willing to bet you’ll have seen its early form in the hub games I’ve mentioned. Any further thoughts? Liking the way open-world games are going, or do you crave a traditional Grand Theft Auto 6, stat? Let me know in the comments.
But before you head off into the yonder, to explore wherever you will explore, equip yourself with some of our other wide-ranging, boundary-free content. Our list of .
First it overtakes the UK, then Nuremberg, until finally setting its sites on the United States. Yes, folks, it's Toy Fair time! Toy Fair 2015 has begun in the heart of New York City, with every conceivable toy company from across the globe on the show floor to present their shiniest plastics. Favorites like NECA, Diamond Select, Mezco, and Jakks have worked tirelessly to prepare prototypes and give fans a chance to snap pictures of what's to come - all the way through 2016! GamesRadar+ is stalking the show floor for the cream of the crop, so dive in and let the drooling begin...
Can you feel that wallet tensing up? Looks like the next year is jam packed with irresistibly gorgeous collectibles. Did one catch your eye? Post your bids below!
Toys have totally invaded the gaming world. Just check out this .
Video game ne'er-do-wells get into the villainy business for all kinds of reasons: greed, jealousy, megalomania, maybe even because they think the hero simply needs somebody to fight. But let's take it one step further back - what causes them to fall in with such a bad crowd in the first place? Turns out that they just want what we all want, man: love.
Rough childhoods, absentee parents, lack of recognition, unrequited romances - yet we sweep them all into the same category as those one-dimensional bad guys who just want to wreck shit for no good reason. Shameful! So I say no longer. Come with me as I recognize some of gaming's most despicable villains who really just need somebody to cuddle.
I don't know what awful reproductive events transpired to bring Bowser Jr. into the world, but at the start of Super Mario Sunshine, his dad has him convinced that Princess Peach was an important part of the process. Biology aside, you can't blame Jr. for wanting the Mushroom Kingdom's vision of grace and gentleness in his life, given what must have been a pretty rough upbringing in the Bowser household. The little fella just wants a hug from a pair of arms that aren't wearing spiky bracelets.
I'm not sure what gives it away - maybe how Peach doesn't seem to recognize him, maybe that she despises his father, maybe the fact that she has soft human skin instead of a spiny turtle shell - but Jr. eventually realizes that she isn't his mother. If my dad manipulated my deep maternal longing as part of his evil schemes to kidnap a princess and rule the world, I'd probably be a bit upset. To be fair, I had parents who tried to raise me to be a good person rather than as a living, breathing tool of vengeance.
If four of your closest friends all decided to up and leave one day without telling you why, you'd probably be a little upset, right? Welcome to the first installment of Life Sucks with Skull Kid. Later on they briefly return, only to banish him for pulling endless mean pranks on the residents of Termina. After that, he wanders around for a while, eventually making friends with a nice little Kokiri boy who teaches him a song on his ocarina… and then also disappeared for seven years.
There's no denying that the Skull Kid has a lot of mischief in his soul - that's just the way he rolls. But if all his friends didn't keep vanishing, they might be able to turn that prankster spirit toward more creative pursuits. Seriously, somebody who has the gumption and gusto to be the trick-pulling scourge of an entire kingdom could probably do some really admirable stuff if he put his mind to it. Poor Skull Kid just needs a pal to keep him on track.
I know what you're thinking. "Vaas doesn't need more love, he needs a life sentence or intense therapy, preferably both." And it's true that he does seem to derive a bit more joy from being a murderous, treacherous asshole than the other people on this list. But it all could have been different if he'd literally anybody to rely on aside from Citra.
If you've finished Far Cry 3, you know that Citra doesn't quite match the the noble resistance leader image she tries to cultivate. Vaas learned that a long time ago. Maybe, aside from ordering him to kill people to prove his Rakyat loyalty, she was a loving adoptive sister. But judging by the really unhealthy way Citra uses sex as a carrot-on-a-stick for her most loyal soldiers, I'm guessing there was some more creepy shit going down there. You can't blame Vaas for ending up a little bit off and betraying his people (whatever that means). You can still blame him for kidnapping outsiders and selling them into slavery though, because that's just an uncool thing to do in general.
If you didn't play Mass Effect 2's Overlord DLC, you never met the Mass Effect series' most sympathetic antagonist. I could recount the sad story of David Archer leading up to his encounter with Shepard, how his brother Gavin was using him to command the Geth to claim their armies for Cerberus… To be honest, it's pretty much Rain Man, if Tom Cruise had abused Dustin Hoffman's talents for memorization and calculation by strapping him into a computer to dominate a synthetic life form instead of making a couple bucks at a blackjack table.
That's pretty much the definition of being a shitty brother, right there. Inevitably the plan goes sideways, David's consciousness is shattered, and he takes over the entire facility and kills almost all of its occupants. His story can have a happy ending if you free him from the machine and take him to the Grissom Academy, at least.
You might know the phrase 'publish or perish' if you're familiar with the cutthroat world of academia. It means you have to regularly conduct valuable research and publish your findings if you want to remain relevant and thus eligible for jobs or tenure - but for Dr. Wily, it was more like 'publish and perish'. Whatever brilliant contributions he made to the field of robotics, Dr. Light was always a step ahead of him, scooping up all the praise and international goodwill.
Wily just wanted some recognition for his almost-as-impressive body of work, but they don't give out runner-up Nobel Prizes. The jealousy drove him mad, and he decided to forsake love and admiration for total domination, reprogramming Dr. Light's robot masters to seek global conquest. Dr. Light rebuilt his beloved lab assistant, Rock, into a war machine to fight the Wily menace, and the bad feelings have gone on ever since. Maybe next time Light could just share the spotlight?
Ok, what's rule number one for maintainers of balance and observers of history? Aside from "don't have sex with your ancestors" and "don't tell anybody the lottery numbers"? That's right, it's "don't fall in love". But poor Cia spent a little too much time watching the era-spanning exploits of Link instead of reading the Triforce overseer rulebook, and she ends up developing a huge crush on him.
While she knows that her duties will never permit her to be with the hero in green, she becomes massively jealous of Princess Zelda, who can't seem to throw a musical instrument without hitting some incarnation of him. Those feelings (plus some demonic possession) drives her to take over Hyrule so… so she can be with him? The guy who always fights and kills whoever's trying to take over Hyrule in any given week? Hm. She didn't really think this one through. But such is the weakness of a lovesick mind, I guess.
Gary Smith is really bad news in Bully. Aside from endlessly scheming to take over Bullworth Academy, he also makes it his personal mission to completely undo every little bit of social standing that new kid Jimmy Hopkins manages to cobble together (once he goes off his meds, anyway). Seriously, he probably tortures small animals when he's not busy drawing up complex schemes to turn all the school's cliques against each other.
Here's a protip for any parents reading this: if your child is very likely an undiagnosed sociopath, you probably shouldn't drop him off at a crappy boarding school, set him up with an awful therapist in town, and disappear from his life. I don't know if Gary could ever expect to live a normal life free of megalomaniacal/homicidal urges, but a little more parental involvement could have kept him from "primary antagonist" status, at the very least.
Is Revolver Ocelot a villain or a hero? That's tough to say with 100-percent certainty about almost any of Metal Gear's recurring characters, but Ocelot is a particularly dense knot of duty and deception. Since you end up shooting at him more often than not, I'm going to say he's a villain for the purposes of this article. Baddie cred established, what's love got to do (got to do) with it? Just about everything.
Ocelot is the son of The Boss and The Sorrow, but he's babynapped soon after birth by the Philosophers, the increasingly nefarious international organization both of his parents work for. Would the pair have retired from international super-soldierdom to raise their kid if given the option? I kinda doubt it, but at the very least they wouldn't have let him be raised in secret military academies to become an instrument of the Philosophers' will. Unlike most of the sad kids in this article, Ocelot's parents really did care about him - the Sorrow even agreed to let the Boss kill him rather than risk Ocelot's life - they just weren't allowed to show him that love.
Being the child of a demon father and an elf mother sounds kinda metal, but it actually sucks. Hard. Isair and Madae, the sibling antagonists of Icewind Dale 2, found that out when their mother ran out of the room and jumped off of a cliff as soon as she saw their wrinkly little devil wings and cloven hooves. Not a great start, they actually had a pretty decent childhood under the care of a benevolent priestess who sheltered them from the outside world.
But when that priestess passed away (I don't think she threw herself off a cliff) the townsfolk got their pitchforks and torches and proceeded to undo their kindly upbringing. Cast off and accepted neither by humans nor fiends, they strike off on their own and try to create a new world order where their kind can live without fear for their lives… until a bunch of adventurers come around and boot them into another plane. To think, this all could've been avoided if people weren't so awful about the whole "half-fiend" thing.
But those are just some of the poor, villainous souls who could've done with a few more hugs in their formative years. Can you think of any more villains who just needed a little more love? Let me know in the comments below!
Want some more villainous insight? Check out these
Being the monster in Evolve is pretty freaking awesome. You can be an ultra powerful beast with the ability to breath fire, shoot lightning, and prey on some of the most dangerous lifeforms in the universe. The Godzilla-like Goliath, ghostly Wraith, and Cthulhu-inspired Kraken are already in the game and it's a blast to smash hunters into piles of red goo. I want more monsters.
Because Evolve's current monster lineup is obviously inspired by the classic antagonists of old school horror movies, I decided to think up a few new concepts of my own. There are a ton of monsters out there to pull inspiration from, and I think they would make awesome additions to the roster. Check out the monster-of-the-week favorites I would like to see in Evolve.
What would it look like? If we followed the classic look, this werewolf would just be a dude with a few extra patches of hair on his face. We're not going with that. For Evolve, I'm thinking something simple, but classically terrifying. Having a giant, Goliath-sized werewolf, running on all four legs, hunting you from the shadows, sounds like something that would be scary as all hell. Sold.
How would it play? Wolfmen don't have much armor on them - just lots of hair. So, in order for this monster to survive the onslaught of hunter projectiles, it's going to have to avoid them. Translation: the werewolf must be fast. While the Goliath uses big leaps to quickly move around the map, the Wolfman would be a blur of fur and teeth on the ground, moving from cover to cover, and using vegetation for stealth. How would it kill the hunters? Hit and run tactics. It could spread life-draining lycanthropy with its bites (maybe even raising up fallen foes as friendly minions) and bleed the humans out with savage claw slashes.
What would it look like? A giant zombie man, wrapped in toilet paper? Meh, that sounds dumb. Rather than a zombie, a Mummy-inspired Egyptian god would be where I'd go with the monster concept. The jackal-headed god Anubis is easily recognizable. If the 2001 Mummy Returns' CGI showed us anything, it's that dog warriors brandishing Egyptian blades are really cool (and scary) looking.
How would it play? The Anubis mummy would play like a mage and the plagues of Egypt would be his spells. Want to slow the hunters? Throw frogs and locusts on them. Want to escape from a tight corner? Cause darkness to cover the land. Need a badass AOE attack? Make fireballs rain down on your enemies.
What would it look like? Like with my reinterpretations of the werewolf and mummy, I wouldn't go with the charming, neck biting, human form of the Count for inspiration. Instead, Dracula's ability to turn into a bat would serve Evolve better. After all, a giant, winged, hairless bloodsucker sounds like a perfect fit for Evolve's intense multiplayer.
How would it play? This monster would have the hunters keeping their eyes up. The vampire bat-like beast would keep to the sky and use its talons to perform dive-bombing runs on unsuspecting hunters, and perch on cliff faces to stay off the radar. And what would a Dracula-inspired monster be without some sort of life drain ability? I just imagine swooping down on a hunter, and draining his blood while carrying the human away from the team.
What would it look like? Oh, boy. This one can be fun. Yes, Frankenstein's monster is really just a big, dumb child that goes around "accidentally" killing people, but in Evolve's futuristic world, a monster inspired by this creature could be really cool. I mean, with monsters like the Kraken, Goliath, and Wraith species populating planets, humans must have captured a few. Maybe they experimented on them a little and genetically modified them. Maybe they chopped a few up, sewed pieces onto others, or added mechanical parts to create a creature that has the abilities of other types of monsters.
How could it work in Evolve? This thing would be the Shang Tsung of Evolve. Frankenstein could have a few abilities that already exist in other monster's arsenal, only with this mutated monstrosity, you can mix and match. How awesome would it be to blast a group of hunters with the Goliath's fire abilities then follow it up with the Kraken's lightning? Very awesome.
What would it look like? Okay, these monsters might not fall under the classic horror genre (it's totally an homage to '50s B-movies so it totally counts), but adding an Evolve monster based on the burrowing Graboids from Tremors would completely change the dynamic of the game. I'm picturing the monster to be a wormlike creature with a sarlacc pit for a face. Simple, yet completely terrifying
How would it play? We've already got monsters to run on the ground and fly through the air, but a Graboid-inspired worm would burrow underground. I'm thinking this creature would act like a Hydralisk from StarCraft, able to burrow and pop up for surprise acid spit attacks, or act like a living mine to instantly gobble up anyone that passes by.
What would it look like? Evolve needs a creature that is perfectly at home in the water, and a monster inspired by the man-eating, megalodon-sized shark would be perfect. I'm picturing a monster that is as much at home on land as in the water, with a shark-like maw and a body suited for scaling the cliffs of the Evolve maps. Basically, it would be a Street Shark.
How would it play? The Jaws-inspired monster could simply be a more water-friendly Goliath. On land, it would move similarly to its fire breathing counterpart, but once it jumps into water, it's as agile as the ocean's deadliest predator. This ability would be perfect for turning the tables on the hunters, allowing you to set up ambushes, and escape into the water, drawing them into the murky depths to rip them to shreds.
What would it look like? Medusa is the most famous gorgon, with her snakes for dreads and creepy serpent body. Her full head of snake hair, coupled with a long, slithering body and an intense stare that freezes players would definitely give the monster roster some visual variety.
How would it play? There aren't many games that allow you to control a giant, man-eating snake, but an Evolve monster based on the gorgon's abilities sounds perfect for the Defend and Nest modes. Being able to petrify individual hunters with a good hard stare would do well to keep the human team from getting to your nests and minions. If you petrify a single hunter, that means the entire team has to stop and rescue him. Otherwise, smash.
That's it. That's all I've got. But there are plenty of other classic creepers out there. Let me know what monsters you would like to play as in Evolve. Are they inspired by a classic, or your own concoction? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
For more, be sure to check out our list of the coverage a read.
It's a classic trope in the entertainment industry. Take your hero and his or her obvious love interest, add in some long, meaningful stares and a few moments when they almost kiss, and then tease, tease, tease. It's all-too-obvious to their friends, enemies, and everyone else in the surrounding solar system that these two are meant to be together - but for whatever reason they just won't seal the deal (with a kiss, I mean).
Video games have their fair share of long-standing relationships, ever teetering on the edge of romance. Granted, these couples have a lot on their minds and not a lot of time for love, what with having to save the world and all that. With any luck some of the entrants on this list will stop opening chests long enough to open up about how they feel - after they've defeated the last boss, of course.
Fair warning, we're going to get into spoiler territory with all games mentioned.
They first met back in: The Legend of Zelda (1986)
There have been many women in Link's many lives, but none have featured as prominently as Princess Zelda. Throughout the ages, these two have been brought together time and again, as if the fates themselves were conspiring on their behalf. Even so, their relationship has never evolved beyond a kiss on the cheek or a brush of the hands. Despite the fact that they've saved each other's skin over and over - and clearly care for one another - neither has been willing to string those three little words together. Though to be fair, the fact almost every game is a mini-reboot, seemingly casting them both back into the reincarnation pool at its end, hardly helps.
Remember Spirit Tracks? Remember all the long, meaningful glances, blushing, and hand holding going on in that game? Or what about Skyward Sword, where it's implied that Link and Zelda end up together after Zelda decides to remain on the surface, but who's to say for sure? There are some exceptions, of course, such as in Twilight Princess where childhood friend Ilia is Link's main squeeze. But these are the exceptions. Maybe one day Zelda will
They first met back in: Kingdom Hearts (2002)
Poor Sora just can't spit it out, can he? Since the beginning of the franchise, Kingdom Hearts has been playing up Sora's feelings for Kairi. But there's always another quest - or another kidnapping - that keeps the two apart. In Kingdom Hearts 2, Saix even tells Kairi she is "the fire that feeds Sora's anger," which sounds like a really weird thing to write on a Valentine's Day card.
The ways and means in which the Kingdom Hearts games telegraph Sora's feelings for Kairi (and vice versa) are so frequent and numerous that I can't squeeze them all into this paragraph - let alone this feature. Needless to say, these young lovers have been pining for each other for well over a decade now, and apparently we've had to wait for the power of next-gen consoles to (presumably) finally bring them together.
They first met back in: Resident Evil 2 (1998)
Ah, now here's a fun couple. Despite the fact that they're always pointing loaded firearms at each other, openly attacking each other, and periodically double-crossing each other, Ada Wong and Leon Kennedy have been doing the Resident Evil-equivalent of flirting for the past 17 years. One of them had better make a move before they finally kill each other for good.
In all seriousness, Ada does seem to harbor some genuine affection for the often bewildered Leon. One of the most prominent examples , where an injured Ada confesses "I don't want to lose you." More recent examples can be found in Resident Evil 4 and 6, where Ada seems to jump between toying with Leon and expressing genuine empathy. Of course, since Ada can only express herself in cliched, action movie dialog at that point, getting her true feelings across is a challenge.
They first met back in: StarCraft (1998)
Love conquers all, right? Right? Perhaps, but Kerrigan - better known by her punk rock moniker The Queen of Blades - is betting it'll take more than some mushy feelings to bring down an ancient evil threatening the galaxy. And she reached that conclusion just moments after finishing her first date with on-again, off-again squeeze Jim Raynor. Granted, this "date" involved teaming up to murder an old man in his office, but let's not get into semantics.
Kerrigan and Jim are destined to fail, and that's exactly why you want to root for them. Their jobs come first for the time being, what with that ancient galactic evil and all, but when Jim finally puts down the bottle and Kerrigan hangs up those blades, wouldn't it be nice to see the two of them ride off into the galactic sunset together? Maybe I'm just a romantic...
They first met back in: Prince of Persia (2008)
Healthy relationships are not without conflict and turmoil. It's overcoming these rough patches, and moving forward, that makes a relationship strong. Elika and the Prince have certainly experienced their fair share of trouble. After going on an adventure together filled with teamwork and flirtatious remarks, the stage seemed set for a classic "happily ever after" ending. Instead, it went sour, in a big way.
You see, at the end of the game the Prince is faced with a sadistic choice: either let the woman he's fallen for remain dead, or let an ancient evil rise again (thereby undoing everything accomplished in the game) to bring her back to life. He chooses the latter, and she resents him for it. Sadly, with no sequel plans on the horizon, it is unlikely these two will ever get to work out their whole resurrection disagreement and make amends, in spite of the chemistry they share.
They first met back in: Half-Life 2 (2004)
This is an odd one, seeing as how Gordon's perpetual silence makes their relationship a little one-sided. Or maybe you're one of those people who thinks Gordon is talking and we, the players, just can't hear him. At any rate, the games have heavily implied Gordon and Alyx are destined to be together, with the bubbly Alyx taking a liking to the stoic doctor from the moment they first meet.
After that fateful encounter, the pair save each other's skin a few times, with the most memorable - and relationship-affirming - instance occurring in Half-Life 2: Episode 2. Here, Alyx is mortally wounded, and through an ancient, alien ritual she is healed with the aid of the Vortigaunts who "weave the Freeman's life with her's." Alyx seems cool with all this, and even gets a little flustered when her father mentions the possibility of grandchildren. All that's left is an affirmation of love fans have been waiting eight years (and counting) to hear.
They first met back in: Enslaved: Odyssey to the West (2010)
Monkey and Trip go through a real relationship arc throughout the events of Enslaved. They start out as, essentially, adversaries, with Monkey acting as Trip's unwilling slave and guide through the robot-infested wasteland. Gradually, their budding relationship grows into a sort of begrudging acceptance, then friendship, and then something more than friendship.
This all culminates in Trip offering to release Monkey from his servitude, and Monkey choosing to remain by her side. At this point it's clear just from the looks they give each other that these two are in love, but that all sort of gets swept under the rug once the ending starts. Somewhere between all the giant robots and the memory pyramid, Monkey and Trip's relationship falls by the wayside, presumably to be picked up in a sequel we'll likely never see.
Life is too short for missed opportunities. Better to have loved and lost, as they say, than to have never loved at all. And when you have an attraction as strong as the entrants on this list, the whole 'love' part should come pretty naturally. Rejection sucks, sure, but you can't let it slow you down when the love of your life could be on the line.
And for more lovey-dovey fun on GR+ be sure to check out .
I'm not even going to try to justify this one. You know why you're here. I'll warn you though, it's going to get pretty traumatic.
I spent most of yesterday discovering the Hell that is unleashed when you set 's search filters to "Romantic" and "M-rated". I now enjoy a hitherto unimagined level of empathy with Vietnam veterans. Whatever mind-bending spectacles and seething horrors await you over the following pages, just know that I've read the full stories that these selected quotations come from, and far more to boot. You won't believe how far the rabbit hole goes. Literally and figuratively. And just FYI, all fic extracts here are presented largely as originally written, intermittent avant garde grammar and all. The only change I've made is to censor some of the more explicit terminology. But regardless, explicit content abounds from this point forth.
Written by: The Crimson Wing
The synopsis: Kratos (from God of War) and Sam Fisher (from, er, Splinter Cell) are enjoying an ongoing, passionate affair, as a result of magic portals.
Selected 'highlights': "Hot lips collided again, glazed eyes locking. Kratos caught Sam's right hand with his left as the right hand of the lower trailed down the bare chest, caressing the jumping muscles and swirling the navel. Rough fingertips trailed over the top of the kilt, sliding in ever so slightly to brush over more bare skin, earning a grunt of acceptance from the pale male. The hand of the god that wasn't occupied began to work on the shirt of the Splinter Cell, popping open troublesome buttons with ease (actually ripping them off was more like it…) before his hand paused, lips releasing Sam's to emit a sigh, eyes fluttering closed.
"Sam grinned, brushed his fingertips over the head of his lover again to earn another sigh. Kratos's muscles spasmed all at once and he was half sitting upwards to rip off Sam's shirt when…" Ok, moving swiftly onwards...
Written by: weinercaughtinabutt
The synopsis: Doomguy (from Doom) finds his wife amorous after a long, hard day of demon-slaughter.
Selected 'highlights': "Doomguy walked towards the bedroom after a long day of work. "Ugh" he grunted after trying to open the door, it would not open. "Hold on honey!" he heard from behind the closed bedroom door. The door opened softly as his wonderful wife curled her finger toward the bedroom. As he entered the doorway, she began to close the door. Her eyes beamed "you seemed to have such a hard day, why don't I soften you up" she said seductively. Her nightgown silkingly wove her body, as it fell off it revealed her tender body. Doomguy was instantly reminded that the carpet matched the drapes, blonde." Hey, this is quite tasteful.
"As they both climaxed, her..." Er, ok then, that's enough of that.
Written by: Alpha Sam
The synopsis: An Eevee named Sparky has a problem. A Pikachu named Rex helps him with it.
Selected 'highlights': "'Well I have a … little problem…" Sparky looked away shamefully. 'Yea Spark? What is it?' the Picachu put his little paw on the Eevee's softed furred head. The Little Eevee sighed. 'Well….' Sparky spread his hind legs apart showing his..." Goddam it, Alpha Sam!
Written by: BlueRaine
The synopsis: Gears of War's Marcus takes Carmine aside to teach him some advanced RR techniques.
Selected 'highlights': "Carmine freezes, standing there on his knees like a bastard child caught with his hand in the cookie jar, he looks up to Marcus for instructions, his big blue eyes concerned and as wide as dinner plates. "You've got nothing to worry about, Kiddo." Baird says in his most arrogant of voices, "I happen to be damn good at this particular sort of mission, well, not that I'm ever bad at ANY sort of mission since I'm..." Baird trails off as Marcus interrupts him in a gravelly tone, 'I'm sure you can come up with something better to do with your mouth than run it all day.'" Righty-o.
Written by: StopJustStop
The synopsis: Beat from Jet Set Radio is seduced by real-life Indie Car driver Danica Patrick. In a branch of a well-known fast-food outlet.
Selected 'highlights': "Go and pick out a piece of chicken. But don't eat it. That's for later." Danica ordered Beat. He picked out a piece of chicken. "If I can't eat it, what do I do with it?" Beat asked. 'Stick it in..." Oh god!
Written by: DeamonPrince
The synopsis: Back at Wayne Manor, Bruce (from Batman: Arkham Asylum, obviously) recounts a hitherto forgotten escapade resulting from drugging.
Selected 'highlights': "Ivy's hands were now removing Batman's cape and armor. As they kissed deeply, she rubbed her hands on his iron chest making him grunt. Batman's hands were now massaging Ivy's..." Alrighty then. Surely it isn't all like this! "Ivy broke the kiss again to drop to her hands and knees to remove Batman's belt and pants. ~No! Stop! ~ He thought as she massaged his..." Oh, yeah, it is.
Written by: NoWindForThisHole
The synopsis: Hakan goes on an exciting, globe-trotting, street-fighting adventure.
Selected 'highlights': "Hakan travelled to the jungle where he found a Chinese woman with malformed legs. 'My name is Chun-Li' she boomed. 'And you look like a fun.' You've got Spinning Bird Kick well I've got Spinning Bird D..." Well, that's an image I'm not going to shake any time soon.
Written by: bloiffy
The synopsis: Wander (yeah, from Shadow of the Colossus) must defeat the 16th Colossus in order to revive Mono. The Colossus is a hot, human-sized woman. Later, he gets a horrible surprise.
Selected 'highlights': "A tear in his trousers had unlocked his most secret treasure trove. Wanderer's cheeks flushed with blood as he was filled with embarrassment, just as his **** was flushed rigid with blood due to his undeniable arousal. It stood, his True holy sword, jutting forth, pointing skyward. His gaze fell upon it, and he saw that indeed a glowing light shone forth from his vas deferens, indicating this new challenge's glowing weak spot. Her w..." No, no, no--that isn't cool. And the next bit, featuring Agro the horse? Words fail me.
Written by: irishileana
The synopsis: Months after her escape from Aperture, Portal's Chell is troubled by unusual dreams.
Selected 'highlights': "Her left hand had moved from Chell's shoulder, making the short distance to her..." Chell's partner in this fic is GLaDOS. Be aware of that. We need go no further.
Written by: babethecooltomboy
The synopsis: Tails is in love with Cream the Rabbit, but can't bring himself to tell her. Then one night, he runs into her after getting smashed on tequila.
Selected 'highlights': "Tails was a smart and had study a lot about sex..." No! No, I'm not even touching this one. Just no.
So, thank God that's over, right? I don't even know what to say here, to be honest. But, er, yeah. This was certainly a feature that I wrote and that you've just read, and those fics are real and were written by real humans. Draw your own conclusions. I can't even feel feelings any more. And if you think the previous was bad, know that what you've just seen were the very edited highlights of the nicest bits of the nicest stuff I read.
And while you recover, why not check out some of our less mind-crushing Week of Love content? Try a go.
Video games have grown from clusters of pixels on a black screen to cinematic adventures with lifelike characters voiced by all-star actors. And sometimes, these characters are so well-developed that we find ourselves emotionally drawn to them. In movies, the experience is over so quickly this doesn't have a chance to go any further, but in games, we have upwards of 100 hours with someone, and after all that time... well... emotions are silly things.
What can we say? The heart wants what the heart wants, and here are fourteen characters that still reside within our chest cavities. Er, hearts. Yeah, definitely sounds more romantic when you say 'heart'.
No one is more deserving of the phrase "I love you, man" than Roy "Big Bo" Boateng. The Rust Crew's machine-gun-toting, catchphrase-spewing heavy weapons expert is almost too much to handle and, in any other game, Big Bo probably would just be obnoxious. But he's such a great foil to Binary Domain's transhumanist melodrama, hooting and hollering about sweet headshots as the rest of your group grimly considers global politics.
French robo-commando Cain may be more charming and well-spoken, but Big Bo is your buddy through thick and thin. And Binary Domain's voice command system makes it such a bizarre joy to interact with his big, effusive personality. Rather than picking options out of a menu, you spend the campaign shouting stuff like "Big Bo! Cover me!" and "Big Bo! Nice work!", and listening to him bellow back solid gold like "THAT WAS SAH-WEET!" If you haven't fallen in love with Big Bo by the end of the game, you must not have a shred of joy in your heart.
By the time you meet Rose of Sharon Cassidy (just call her Cass), she's already lived a long, hard life. Not that anybody's life is particularly easy in the Mojave Wasteland, but hers has been particularly rough - rougher still when she hears her caravan's been burnt to the ground and decides she has nothing better to do than go traveling with you.
But even with all that taken away from her, she's still held onto two things: a dark sense of humor and a killer moonshine recipe. And those are two very good things to have in a post-apocalyptic companion. If you traveled with her father, Cassidy, in Fallout 2, you'll definitely see the resemblance - and your love for her may be more of 'daughter-I-never-had' kind than romantic. Either way, it's tough to travel with this rough-and-tumble desert flower for too long without getting sweet on her.
Not the you were expecting? Yes, Nathan Drake is a lovable rogue, but his mentor Sully has him beat in two very important areas: style and confidence. Alright, alright, three very important areas: style, confidence, and facial hair. Sully just oozes 20th century pulp-hero panache (seriously, he probably slicks back his hair with the stuff), chomping on a cigar and hopping behind the stick of his bombshell-bedecked propeller plane. It also doesn't hurt that he's the spitting image of a latter-day Errol Flynn.
But awesome adventurer traits aside, the fact that he managed to shape Nathan Drake from a roguish little pickpocket to a good-hearted treasure hunter - and that he's always willing to come back out of retirement to help him out - says it all. One of these days those endless calls to adventure might be the end of him (Uncharted 4 is subtitled A Thief's End, after all) but until then, we'll cherish every minute.
Throughout Mega Man Legends 1 and 2, Roll is the rock of the Caskett clan. She keeps Mega Man outfitted with gear and up-to-the-minute intel when he's on a mission, looks after her retired adventurer grandpa Barrel, and deals admirably with robo-monkey Data's endless hijinks. Any one of those tasks would be a full-time job by itself, but still she somehow keeps it all together. It'd be tough enough not to fall for the girl who builds you awesome new weapons with a smile, but add to that how conflicted she seems about putting you in harm's way, and resistance is futile.
Roll's so lovable that it almost sucks to see her falling for Mega Man. After all, this is the guy who 'accidentally' walks in on her changing clothes, then while she's in the bath, and pumps his arm victoriously after both occasions. That's not OK, Mega Man - you'd better treat the girl who's willing to work with her arch nemesis to build dozens of rockets so she can retrieve you from the moon right.
In any Final Fantasy game less-packed with memorable characters (let's be real, here, any other Final Fantasy) Celes Chere would clearly be the main character. Why? She kicks ass with all the strength and smarts of an imperial super-soldier. But regrets from her years of unflinching service to an increasingly evil Empire keep her aloof, even as the rest of the game's many heroes begin to relax and develop new relationships. She's like Squall and Cloud put together, minus most of the whinging.
Suffice it to say, Locke isn't the only one who's quickly infatuated with her. There's just something about Celes' confidence that makes her immediately appealing, and something about her vulnerability that keeps her in your heart. You even get to know her softer side with intimate moments like practicing for the opera and caring for her old friend Cid. No joke, Celes had us fawning like starry-eyed recruits.
Vamp is kind of an asshole, but he's also pretty sexy in that hangs-out-at-goth-clubs kind of way. There's something about a guy with long, dark hair, fangs, and a Romanian accent - the fact that he can predict your movements just by watching your muscles tense and relax is the maraschino cherry on top. Speaking of thick red liquids, he also drinks blood, which is admittedly kind of a turn off… or turn-on, depending on where you're coming from in life. Not judging.
Unique talents aside, you have to appreciate Vamp for making Raiden a teresting character purely by osmosis. And his story is actually pretty tragic - he's the literal embodiment of Metal Gear's "cycle of death on behalf of nations and ideals" theme. Metal Gear's given tragic deaths to many adversaries, but Vamp's plucked at our heartstrings more than most. When he finally croaks for good in Metal Gear Solid 4, it's more "goodnight, sweet prince," than "and stay dead, you son of a bitch".
You can't spit without hitting a brash, adventurous prince in the canon of fantasy RPGs, but it's less often that you get to watch them grow into strong and noble kings. In a game that's all about staying loyal to your friends and your ideals, Chrom is dealt the harshest blows of any, eventually casting aside his youthful commitment to peace and preparing his nation to fight for the greater good.
Of course, it helps that female player Avatars can marry him and have kick-ass future babies. But even if you decide to have your kick-ass future babies with someone else, the bond that Chrom shares with his rag-tag crew of adventurers is truly something special - in particular his total trust and support of your Avatar. It's enough to send your heart all a-flutter when he compliments your choice of tactics.
John Marston's a unique guy. Though at first he appears to be a typical gunslinger, he eventually grows into a fully fleshed-out protagonist with morals and scruples we sympathize with. He's not riding around the wilderness skinning rabbits and murdering people because he wants to - he's riding around the wilderness skinning rabbits and murdering people because he has to. For his family.
Yes, Marston is a family man, and that's the reason we ended up falling for him. He's a kind soul who will do anything and everything to look out for his family. He's the kind of guy you take home to your family; the kind of guy who your father would love to go hunting with. He's just a hell of a guy. Plus, you know, he's ruggedly sexy. Gotta love a guy with some wicked scars.
Our love for Yorda was less like a relationship and more like a sibling thing. These emotions didn't form right away, however. For the first hour or so she was an inconvenience and nothing more. She managed to be annoying despite being mute, which is a feat in and of itself, and her helplessness was nothing if not infuriating.
It wasn't until Yorda was put into danger that we realized how attached to her we were. She was like a little brother or sister we had to protect, and even though our on-screen character was technically younger, we still felt like the bigger sibling. We worried for her not just because her capture was the failure state, but because of an honest-to-goodness attachment.
Like you're surprised to see another Uncharted character on this list. Elena Fisher has been Nathan Drake's on-again-off-again partner throughout all three Uncharted games, though we think our actual feelings for Elena started showing up in the second one. In the first, she was a cute side-character, but she didn't have a ton of time to develop. When she showed up in the second game, however, we realized how much we had missed her, and it certainly wasn't because of her marksmanship.
A lot of credit is owed to Emily Rose, the voice actress for Elena. Her talented vocals have helped Elena rise from annoying reporter to full-blown crush, the kind we'd slip lovey-dovey notes to in junior high. Heck, we doubt we'd even have the guts to approach her ourselves; we'd likely need to give a note to a friend of ours to give to a friend of hers to give to her.
It started off plainly enough: our neighbor came over for a housewarming party once we moved in, and we told them a few jokes. But then they came over again and the jokes became flirts. And then the flirts became more flirts. And then they slapped us, but then the jokes became more flirts. Cut to a few months later and we were married, pumping out kids like no one's business.
Such is life in The Sims, but as strange and insane as it might sound, we've found it hard not to grow emotionally attached to the characters we end up WooHooing with. Sure, they're digital, soulless, and speak in gibberish, but we're playing as avatars of ourselves, living vicariously through digital characters. We're living the lives we want to live, going through the daily motions as we would in real life but in fast-forward, seeing our past, present, and future, all as we wish it was. And then there's the one, the one we fell in love with, living alongside us. Playing The Sims is like having a lucid dream, and good luck not falling in love with your dream.
There wasn't really any semblance of romance in the original Half-Life. Gordon was essentially alone in the Black Mesa Research Facility. Well, technically it was him, a few workers, and a bunch of aliens, but there was no one to have an emotional attachment to. And then Alyx came strutting into our lives in Half-Life 2 like it was no big deal, and absolutely ruined our hearts.
Since Gordon Freeman is a silent, invisible protagonist, he's really nothing more than an extension of the player, making Alyx's coy smiles, shy laughter and touching words all the more powerful. You can fawn over SoulCalibur's curvacious ladies all you want - the feeling we got when Alyx put her hand on the window as the elevator went down makes Ivy's cleavage (and even her neathage) fade into the background.
Zelda's cute and all, but she's sort of an arranged marriage for Link - the wife the Hero of Time is destined to have and all that. And then there's Malon, the adorable, unassuming, red-headed farm girl who spends her nights singing outside of Hyrule Castle. When you first meet her she's a cute little girl, but when the game flies forward by 10 years, she's instantly turned into a teenager that (as teenagers ourselves at the time) we were head-over-heels for.
Malon is sort of the forbidden fruit of the Zelda series. There's no way Nintendo would ever include an overtly romantic sub-plot of any kind in one of its games, so most encounters even with Zelda are kept to an uncomfortable hug. That means that Malon, who's even further away from being a romantic interest, is even further away from our grasp. Beyond being helpful, kind, and awesome, she's also just out of reach, which makes her all the more alluring.
What is there to say about Garrus that hasn't been scrawled onto the back cover of a teenage girl's Trapper Keeper? The guy's a heartthrob, plain and simple. There's just something about him that makes women weak in the knees, and the mere utterance of his name brings panties flying in from every direction. His calm, soothing voice, his charming personality, his... sort of creepy, bug/kitty appearance... It's hard to figure out exactly what makes Garrus so damn appealing, but whatever "it" is, he has it.
As a squadmate in all three Mass Effect games, Garrus proves to be 100 percent loyal. He never questions Shepard's motives. He never flips out and throws a tantrum if he doesn't get his way. Even if you intentionally screw up his revenge plan, he walks away, totally cool about the situation. We're like, "Sorry we ruined your revenge," and he's all like "Whatever, you were right. Thanks for not letting me kill that guy. Let's go clubbing!" And then he's the designated driver, because he's THAT AWESOME.
Ah, we feel all flushed just thinking about all those lovable so-and-sos. But sure enough, we haven't highlighted all the deserving candidates out there. Make sure you let us know who we missed in the comments below!
In the last few weeks, I've committed to a relationship with a horned sassmaster in Dragon Age: Inquisition, witnessed a noir romance in . There's a lot of love in all that code, but like the grouchy curmudgeon I am, I sit here decrying youthful joy and pointing out that that's not how real relationships work, bah humbug!
My hyperbolic bitterness aside, video games really do give some terrible romantic advice, and I don't just mean the dating sims. Look long and hard enough, and you'll start to notice the same implicit, wink-and-a-nod suggestions about why common interests don't really matter and how buying love works great. Sure, everyone's different, so some of this advice might work on some people some of the time. But if you go out there thinking it's as sure-fire as Cupid's arrows? You're gonna be in for some serious heartbreak. Consider this Top 7 a warning. Trust me. I know all about bad love advice.
In video games… between all the village-avenging, death-defying, and mook-killing game characters deal with on a daily basis, there usually isn't much time to kindle a proper romance. Asking someone out is rough enough when all you have to worry about is whether you have something in your teeth and whether the mustard stain really came out of your favorite shirt. When you can barely hold a conversation because the clock on this nuke is counting down way faster than it should, that's gonna throw off your game. But get that heartfelt love confession out between waves of howling enemies and, barring a heroic sacrifice during the last cutscene, you two are together for life.
But really… While asking your crush out to coffee without forgetting what language is can be a challenge, there's a whole new set of puzzles waiting in relationship-land. You never see video game characters argue about where the money's going to come from for a new rebel hideout, or start a shouting match because one of them left the legendary weapons out in the rain again. Relationships take work, and it's certainly worth the effort to be with someone awesome. Just keep in mind that comparatively, getting the date is the equivalent of the level one boss.
In video games… our lovebirds meet just as they kick off their adventures, and during their journey to the big bad's hideout/the promised land/MacGuffins "R" Us they fall for each other. You'll usually get a few cutscenes where they discuss their immediate futures, and Person A will definitely save Person B at least once. A little longer and then they start gazing into each other's eyes and shouting each other's names in moments of peril, and all that's left is to pick the wedding venue.
But really… did a discussion of hobbies ever come up? How about beliefs and values not immediately important to the plot? Whether they like their eggs scrambled or sunny side up?? Yes, obviously games have to be economical with their time, and lovebirds exchanging recipes probably ends up on the cutting room floor. However, that often leaves us looking at a couple who have seemingly nothing in common, because they never actually talk. Can you name one thing that Squall and Rinoa share aside from a mission to save the world and intense social stupidity? No you cannot, because they don't have one. That might be fine for them, but real relationships tend to last longer than twenty hours, so follow this bit of gaming's best romance wisdom and you're going to run out of stuff to talk about real fast.
In video games… you solve puzzles by putting item A into slot B, and relationships are basically puzzles, so it's really the same thing. I of course mean that item A is a gift and/or good deed of sorts, and slot B is the person that you love, and those gifts are the key to the puzzle of their heart (I know what you were thinking, pervert). The same way you feed coins into a vending machine and get health packs out, you feed kindness into your crush and will inevitably get love out. That's just economics.
But really… while there are plenty of folks out there who dream of being showered with gifts and affection by a generous suitor, it isn't as ubiquitous as games make it look. In fact, some people don't like receiving gifts or being the focus of over-the-top good deeds, especially when the giver has never disclosed their true intentions and/or has said maybe five words to them in their entire life. The discomfort meter fills up even faster when the giver's looking for something unspoken in return, especially if they do it with a creepy smile while breathing really hard. Don't be that giver.
In video games… when you have multiple romance options, you're probably going to have a favorite. You could focus all of your attention on them, trying to kindle a deep romance that will one day see you rocking on a digital porch together with wrinkly old face textures. But there is a chance they might not like you, meaning you'll end up romance-less, die alone, and most likely get eaten by your many cats. Best to play the field from the get-go and create as many romantic opportunities as possible, then pick and choose from the lovelorn fish you managed to hook.
But really… the lady/gent you're carrying a torch for has peripheral vision, and can definitely see you flirting with someone else less than five feet away. Some games do a good job of showing the jealousy this creates - romantic rivals in Mass Effect throw legendary shade - but it usually doesn't get past sexy catfighting for exclusive right to play tonsil-hockey with you. You never see the love interest who knows they're too good for this shit and peaces out - in games anyway. You'll see a lot more of that in the real world.
In video games… it can be nerve-wracking trying to court an RPG companion or dating sim cutie, because sometimes you just don't know what's going to get the best response. But don't worry - if you get stuck, there are plenty of walkthroughs and guides that tell you exactly what you need to do to raise your beloved's love meter. Whether it's what tasks you need to perform or how you should converse with them down to individual dialogue options, winning them over is a simple process as long as you follow the manual.
But really… While romancing a certain so-and-so in Dragon Age, I had to choose between jailing or killing a criminal. I decided that jailing him would be the best call... and my darling love greatly disapproved. Goddamn! It may be easy to reload a save and change my mind in a game, but if I confronted a similarly tough ultimatum in real life, giving in wouldn't be good for either of us. Sure, it means less conflict now, but it makes me miserable, makes my beau feel like I'm never being genuine with them, and creates a relationship that can't handle even the slightest bit of blowback. And it will come. Oh boy will it ever come.
In video games… something terrible's happened that's left your digital love interest utterly distraught. Their village burned down, their family's dead, their favorite character kicked it in Game of Thrones - whatever the specifics, some heart-shattering tragedy has occurred that's left them beside themselves. This is naturally the perfect time for you to console them. Yep. Console them. You know what I'm getting at, insert inappropriately obvious wink. By supporting them in their time of need, they see you truly care, and the two of you cement your relationship, which may or may not involve making out in a pond.
But really… I'm not going to say this never works, because for some folks physical comfort really is the best medicine. Different strokes and all. But there's also a chance your love interest will find you coming onto them when they're at their lowest seriously annoying, if not unbelievably creepy. You really need to know someone before you make this move, and given it usually happens at the same time as the couple's first kiss? 'Courting disaster' sums it up nicely.
In video games… remember a couple slides ago, where I mentioned guides being the way to your beloved's heart? Well bring that one 'round again, because they're essential to getting everything right. It might be a rough road winning the heart of a picky potential partner, and you might have to do some things you aren't proud of (be prepared to hide more than one body). But with determination and meticulous attention to detail, you can guarantee you'll get the happy ending you so desperately want.
But really… remember a couple slides ago, where I mentioned that guides don't work in real life? And a few slides before that, when I pointed out everything on this list is really bad advice - you get where I'm going with this. As rough as it might be, you can 'do everything right' in a bid to win another person's affections, and they might still turn you down because they don't feel the same. As heartbreaking as that can be, it doesn't make either of you bad people, or your connection any less valuable. And hey, it's a big 'ol world out there. Game characters may be stuck to the romantic paths coded for them, but you? Your love life is yours to generate
Those are the Top 7 worst bits of gaming love advice and how disastrous it can be when they’re applied to the real world. All that finger-wagging might make me sound like a loveless sourpuss, but trust me when I say that isn’t so! I mean, I definitely refer to Valentine’s as Single’s Awareness Day, but when it comes to you having a happy love life, I want nothing more than for you to succeed - and avoid every one of these romantic snares with Pitfall!-like grace. Ever tried out one of these suggestions yourself? Got any stories of associated disaster, or did this all totally work for you and I have no idea what I’m talking about? Go ahead and break hearts in the comments below.
Before Blockbuster came to represent the death of the brick and mortar video game rental business, it was a blue-and-gold juggernaut whose reached extended from coast to coast. In its prime, Blockbuster's influence was so great that it actually began requisitioning video games to be released exclusively in its stores. And while I'm sure this seemed like a very good idea on paper, in practice it spawned a whole slew of bad to mediocre titles, many of which were mere updates to existing releases.
Building a comprehensive list of all the Blockbuster exclusives is surprisingly challenging, mostly because it comes by way of word of mouth. Rumors and speculation abound about which games were "true" exclusives and which had proper retail release after the fact. For those in the latter category, I've included the [Limited Exclusive] tag. Please let me know if there are any I missed! But now, without further ado...
True to its name, ClayFighter: Tournament Edition was a slightly updated version of the original, in the same vein as Street Fighter 2: Champion Edition and others. The game fixed bugs, added new modes, and did a bunch of other stuff no one ever noticed or appreciated. It helped pave the way for the bizarrely named ClayFighter 2: Judgement Clay and, later on, another Blockbuster exclusive on the Nintendo 64.
This special version of Donkey Kong Country was designed specifically for the second Blockbuster World Video game Championships, which were held in 1994 (though it was really more of a North American championship). Donkey Kong Country was one of the featured games, and this version has only a handful of stages, no animal tokens, and a score counter, as the BWVGC was largely a high-score based competition.
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This is what most people expect when they hear the term "Blockbuster exclusive." Eek! The Cat on the SNES was a painfully overblown escort mission involving an old woman who relentless walks in whatever direction she's facing, a purple cat who was in no way Garfield, and teeth-gnashing, hair-splitting gameplay where you must protect this old lady from harm. The game itself is actually an updated version of , developed by the same team.
When beloved arcade beat-'em-up Final Fight made its debut on home consoles back in 1990, fans were disappointed to see that several features got cut along the way. No industrial stage. No cooperative play. No Guy. Everyone loves Guy! That's why Guy later got his own version of the game, where he replaced Cody. Still no industrial stage or co-op though...
While Eek! The Cat didn't garner much love, developer Ocean once again stepped up to the plate with another Blockbuster Exclusive, Mr. Nutz. The games stars a red, anthropomorphic squirrel - because we were so clever in the '90s - in a short, 2D platformer. While largely forgotten today, those who do remember the game remember it because it was rather, well, . And if you lived outside of North America, you could totally pick up this gem at other gaming retailers.
Fire Dogs continues the time-honored tradition of developers making terrible platformers based off of popular cartoons. Miraculously, the game somehow manages to squeeze hours worth of content out of a single episode of the Ren Stimpy cartoon, specifically the one about them painting themselves up as dalmatians to get a job at the firehouse. And if its sluggish, unresponsive controls didn't send you sprinting back to Blockbuster, the irritating music loop certainly would.
Not to be confused with the Donkey Kong Championship Cartridge mentioned earlier, the Blockbuster World Championship II video game was an all-in-one package for the Sega version of Blockbuster's World Championship event. The cartridge contained an oddball combo of Acclaim's NBA Jam and Judge Dredd, two wildly different styles of gaming for players to test their skills and compete for the high score. When the BWC was finished, these cartridges were supposed to be destroyed, however a few have survived to this day (fetching a pretty penny online).
The Game Factory cartridges were a forward-thinking bit of technology on the part of Blockbuster. They were basically flashcarts that could have any Genesis game available at the time loaded onto them via a dial-up connection. The cartridges came in different colors - blue, green, and red - which indicated the size and capabilities of the cartridge. It's interesting to think that a major retailer was using piracy techniques as a business strategy.
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It's starting to seem like every video game franchise had an obligatory Championship Edition at some point in the '90s. In Madden '93's case, this new edition added in everything from the base game plus the eight greatest NFL teams at that point in time (as of 1992, anyway). As anyone who has been to a second-hand game store knows, there is a veritable sea of used Madden games on the market, but this one - because of its rarity as a Blockbuster exclusive - is the mother of them all.
Blockbuster just couldn't get enough of that awkward ClayFighter action the first time around, so they brought the series back with another rental exclusive, this time titled Sculptor's Cut (because of clay, get it?). The biggest addition in this version was the inclusion of four new characters, one of which is the Statue of Liberty. Thankfully, Sculptor's Cut finally ended the tyranny of ClayFighter, and it has since become one of the most rare and expensive N64 cartridges in existence.
Amid so many horrors, Stunt Racer 64 enjoys the distinction of being an absolutely decent racing game. It combines arcade-style racing, with extreme futuristic technology like rocket boosters, which let your car perform all sorts of sweet, mid-air tricks. As you barrel roll - excuse me, aileron roll - your way to the finish line, you earn currency to buy new parts and cars. However, despite being a solid game, it never saw a wider release.
Transformers: Beast Wars Transmetals - which is a real word jumble of a title - is yet another awkward, painful fighting game dropped into the laps of unsuspecting children thanks to Blockbuster Video. Sticking to genre traditions, Transmetals stars a whole bunch of characters who are all fighting for reasons no one cares about, and there are super moves. You don't even really fight so much as run around spamming projectiles while grunting "Urgh! Urgh! Urgh!"
NFL Blitz Special Edition is basically NFL Blitz 2001, only this time it's called "Special Edition" instead of "2001" which makes it different. This gets a pass, however, as NFL Blitz's hilarious combination of wrestling moves and simplified gridiron rules is still awesome. While Special Edition started out as a rental only, Blockbuster eventually started selling the game in its stores as well.
While Razor Freestyle Scooter was released on several different platforms, only the Nintendo 64 version was exclusive to Blockbuster. But not even the sweet, sweet allure of exclusivity could entice the masses to try this poor imitation of the Tony Hawk skateboarding series. How bad is it? It manages to have a plotline involving robots abducting children - in a scooter game - and still not be awesome.
This game is a collection of mini games themed around - you guessed it - track and field sports. And by "track" and "field" I mean "button" and "mashing" because that's just about all you do in it. For many kids, this was the ideal rental game, because you'd play it for a day or two and then never touch it again.
Capitalizing on the success of the Indiana Jones movies, Infernal Machine pitted Indy against the Soviets in a race to collect the four pieces of the titular device, a biblical MacGuffin that does something. While the game was praised for its detailed plotline and interesting stages, it was ultimately torpedoed by the killer of so many Nintendo 64 games: poor controls. In addition to being available to rent or buy at Blockbuster stores, customers could also order the game straight from LucasArts' website.
The troubled history of , which remains one of the most stupendous flops in gaming history, does not need to be retold here. Suffice to say, the underwhelming PC release spawned an equally underwhelming N64 flophouse exclusive to Blockbuster. It ultimately did little to help the struggling game, and was later given a standalone retail release.
It should come as no surprise at this point, but Eggs of Steel was yet another awkward, laborious game that further cemented the Blockbuster exclusivity program as a den of depravity with the motto "Who gives a shit?" The game stars a low-res animated gif of an egg wearing overalls who walks around a pre-rendered steel mill while reading letters from his girlfriend. His name is Charlie and sometimes he dies but not often enough.
Given the amount of raw edginess radiating from this game, one would assume Freestyle Street Soccer follows in the wake of Razor Freestyle Scooter as another watered-down, simplistic clone of a superior game. Somehow, miraculously, astonishingly even, this is not the case. Freestyle Street Soccer is a decent, arcade-style soccer game with four-on-four matches and an emphasis on tricks. Of course, the machismo-driven, turf-war attitude is still completely laughable.
The unfortunate Outlaw series of sports games - which mixed mediocre sports mechanics with a lethal dose of hypersexualized badittude - spawned a handful of Blockbuster exclusives. They were basically DLC packs you could rent. The two Golf games have Christmas-themed links and outfits for the golfers, while the Volleyball game is set in Hell (which is actually kind of awesome).
Chances are, there are still some more games out there that were part of the Blockbuster exclusivity program that aren't included on this list. If there are any I've missed, let me know in the comments below and I'll see about getting them added.
It's a commonly held belief that sex sells, but that's not really true. Sure, sexually charged imagery has a good chance of grabbing people's attention, but just because someone does a double-take on your product, doesn't mean they're going to snatch it up and sprint over to the nearest cash register. Advertisements full of TA might be marginally appropriate when the game in question is all about naked bodies - Leisure Suit Larry, Muscle March, Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball, what have you. But typically, in-your-face objectification in game ads is reserved for titles that are desperate to distract you from their blatant flaws and failures.
You've no doubt seen those Game of War commercials starring Kate Upton, which devote roughly 0.05% of the ad's runtime to the game itself. But this is just the latest in a not-so-proud tradition of games trying to ensnare those who make purchasing decisions with what's in their pants. Strap in for a ride on this libido roller coaster, as we journey back through time to see the most ridiculously sexual game ads that in no way represent what's actually being sold.
I'm fairly certain that, at no point in the entire course of human history, has an actual person earnestly commented that "You deserve an orgy today!" But maybe Wartune is on to something. Instead of complimenting your co-worker in the hall with "Hey Alex, great job on the quarterly earnings presentation today!", why not try shouting "Hey Alex, you deserve an orgy for the way you presented that PowerPoint!" across the office? You'll destroy your reputation and career in one fell swoop, but you'll have that much common with this stolen art asset of a smiling maiden lifted from a Chinese MMO.
If Wartune really did invite people over for a rollicking evening of group sex, it would only allow its participants to remove one item of clothing (socks included, and counted individually) every seventeen hours. Its actual gameplay is about as arousing as looking at a map while someone begs you for money.
Ah, Evony - a modern classic of laughably bad and ineffective advertising. What started as a concerted effort to grab the attention of horny web surfers devolved into something bordering on self-parody, with banner ads that assume breasts, in any form, have the same effect as a hypnotist's swaying watch. If you're the kind of person who excitedly clicks on each and every Evony ad you encounter online, then prepare for a lifetime of disappointment. Things are only going to get worse from here.
Think Farmville is for Facebook casuals, but find yourself itching to click a bunch of static images while you wait for something to happen? Hankering for a SimVillage where it takes a real-world week to erect a new building? Evony is the game for you, person who doesn't exist!
If you find this imagery to be sexy, then you're well on your way to becoming a festishistic serial killer who can only make love to modified mannequins. If you find this imagery funny, you're just an idiot.
Congratulations: you're now the owner of a system with next to zero first-party support! I hope you like playing imported visual novels, JRPGs, cool indies, or remote play, because that's all you'll ever use this handheld for!
This anatomically incorrect comic book woman took a break from her role in a Rob Liefeld comic to stand next to these controllers, so I guess they must be tangentially related! Note the pasted-on Nyko logo on her shirt, carefully manipulated to accentuate the curvature of her breasts and half-raised nipples. Just to clarify, what does all this have to do with third-party controllers, again?
I guess the intent was that, when you see this drawing of a woman, your palms will become so sweaty that you'll be begging for some kind of fan-powered plastic controller to dry them off. Or maybe her dead-eyed stare will somehow remind you that your hands become rainforests whenever you're playing a game (kinda like mine)? Either way, Air Flo controllers are what you game with if you don't want anyone to ever take you seriously.
It's not often that an advertisement will use beastiality as an incentive to purchase a product. Actually, I'm not sure if it's still called beastiality when the animal you're sexually assaulting can breath underwater. And I'll be damned before I look that up on the Internet.
The visual imagery of inseminating a sea bass is only slightly more revolting than the gameplay in this Dreamcast oddity. You'll question if the sex crime you committed against all of creation was worth it when your offspring looks like Ariel's inbred half-cousin, thrice removed.
Hello, ladies! I don't speak Japanese, but your kind eyes and winning smiles are a universal form of communication. However, I have a sneaking suspicion that you're neither featured nor interested in Gallop Racer 2, and judging by your attire, jockeying is not your formal profession. So I'm a little confused as to why you're taking up more space on the page than the gameplay screenshots. Oh well!
If you often purchase horse racing games from Japan at retail, then I'm sorry to have offended you with such mockery. But then again, you're not actually reading this right now, are you? You're probably off somewhere betting fake money on fake horses because that's what your life has become. Unless the game in question is , in which case I take it all back.
"There's only one thing more torturous than playing Deathtrap Dungeon. Not playing it." So... were people writhing in agony before Eidos pressed this game to disc? Waterboarding, bamboo shoots under the fingernails, drills drawing ever closer to your eardrum - all of it pales in comparison to this third-person Dark Ages brawler. Which I guess is a good reason to buy it? Maybe?
Ian Livingstone is the author of the Fighting Fantasy series of choose-your-own-adventure books. You know how those tend to devolve into a series of dead-ends, confusing riddles, and fatal pitfalls that you can't see coming? Now picture that with some chunky polygons, and you've got Ian Livingstone's Deathtrap Dungeon in a nutshell. Yep - Livingstone was slapping his name on games before American McGee made it cool for a whole five minutes. But to be fair, at least there's actually a playable dominatrix in this game.
Pop quiz: what's the best way to promote the latest game from a third-rate mascot? If you answered "Show a parody of Janet Jackson's infamous Rolling Stone cover instead of gameplay," then you're a late '90s publicist who got flung into our time to discover that everyone thinks you're dumb as hell. Welcome! This is what's become of that little fad called "the internet". We currently have no way of sending you back to your former reality. Sorry about that.
Now admittedly, Playboy model Marliece Andrada is in Gex 3, relegated to FMV cutscenes that serve as the springboard for Gex's horndog comments. But all of those... ugh... "Miss Adventures" boil down to running and jumping through very loosely themed 3D stages, all while you daydream about playing Super Mario 64 instead. Ah, and before I forget: obligatory Geico joke.
You'd be amazed (or maybe not) at how rarely men take the sexualization spotlight in video game advertising, so Blood is a refreshing outlier. "You're soaking in it," reads the text carefully placed near this fellow's abs/crotch. I was under the impression that I was looking at a fold-out ad in a magazine, rather than soaking in blood, but I guess I stand corrected. I'm also of the belief that this man's nipples could cut through glass.
The Blood ad also has the decency to show actual gameplay to the audience - imagine that! But since this shooter uses a first-person perspective, there's no way to tell that the protagonist, Caleb, is a gritty Wild West gunslinger raised from the dead, not the hunky genderswap of Elizabeth Bathory. False advertising strikes yet again! In any case, you should go play Blood. It's pretty great.
I have no idea what this advertisement is actually for, because all I see when I look at it is a woman's butt. That description text? Those in-game screenshots? They may as well not exist, because they are vying for your attention against impossible odds (much like the paragraph you're currently reading). But besides reducing a real woman with thoughts and feelings to an anonymous rear end, there are some definite problems with this ad. I get that "Take advantage" is a tennis joke, but given the context, it sounds like the inner monologue of a sexual predator. And why is this tennis player holding a boxed game at this exact moment in time? What, is she about to spike it across the net for a highly illegal serve?
It's a tennis game. Tengen made it. I'm not sure what else you want me to say. I guess they do have individually pixelated butts.
Here's a 'pro tip': Don't stick your penis into a Game Gear. This man mistook his Sega-brand handheld for a sex toy, and his flattened, cartridge-shaped wang now serves as a permanent reminder that he was dead wrong. Maybe if this oaf was actually looking down, he would've realized that he was vigorously humping a piece of plastic.
You know, the Game Gear did full-color handheld visuals when the Game Boy didn't. You know what else the Game Boy didn't have? A voracious appetite for six AA batteries every two hours, housed in a system so bulky it could barely be called portable.
I pray to God that this woman safely escaped from the disheveled murder-house belonging to this homicidal, Tetris-obsessed maniac. Looking at this image makes me instinctually want to call the police, not rush to a store and snag a slimmer Game Boy. Advertisements like this one are why we can't have nice things, humanity.
Here's a fun experiment! Tell a joke about that time a riveting game of Tetris took priority over SM roleplaying with your significant other. Now, look around you. Is anyone laughing? No - because you're alone, and with that sense of humor, you always will be.
I think The Lonely Island wrote a song about this exact scenario. Are those mustached twins our heroes? The villains? I honestly have no idea. The woman in the green bikini looks like she's longingly gazing at the place she'd rather be - somewhere, anywhere but here.
Complete with levels that liberally rip off Space Harrier and Contra! Konami made Turtles in Time and Sunset Riders, so it's eternally forgiven for any arcade stinkers. But you won't score any points with the bikini babes by completing this coin-muncher, I'm afraid to say. Looks like you bought that neon-pink-and-yellow wetsuit and white fedora for nothing.
The photographer probably told this model to look like she was having fun. Yet the picture makes it look like she's running away screaming from this lecherous-looking man. And "Gotcha!" is typically what psychos say before a devilish grin flashes across their face, a loud violin chord rings out, and the screen cuts to black. Also, this arcade cabinet is purposely designed to make the controls look like giant pink nipples. Way to go, Atari. Also also, why is the woman transparent? Are they ghosts? This adds a whole new dimension to the terror!
No, this isn't a '70s training simulation for aspiring cryptographers - it's all the hot, steamy in-game action awaiting you in GOTCHA. You play as a ball chasing a plus sign through a shifting maze of random shapes. Because that presentation could be interpreted as literally anything, Atari's advertisers thought it would be best to offer sexual harassment as the prompt for your mind's eye. For this, they shall burn in Hell.
Why do you have to put me on the spot like that, Interlude ad? Yes, I often like to strip down to my unmentionables and lug an 80-pound home computer into my bed. Is that so wrong? I'm no different from any other sane human being: I just want to be loved. Can your product finally offer an escape from my lonely nights and tear-stained pillowcases?
As hilarious demonstrates, Interlude is just a questionnaire of your sexual fantasies, with the end goal being specified instructions for having sex. There's just one problem: by the time you've finished asking your computer about how to best please your lover, they will have already started a meaningful relationship with someone who talks to them instead of filling out 'sexy' surveys.
So there you have it - sex has been used in the attempt to sell games since the '70s, and it doesn't look like things are going to change anytime soon. Big ups to the tumblr, which has loads of retro gaming ads both classic and horrifying. Tell me in the comments which ad you think is the most egregious - and please, refrain from sharing which one got you the most aroused.
And if you're hungry for more light-hearted mockery, check out .
There's a weird irony with video game characters. They suffer life-or-death, world-saving trials every day, but they never have to deal with the regular traumas of real every day life. You know, the little problems and flaws that bother and inconvenience real human beings constantly.
Yes, they have to fight off orcs, goblins, demons, and occult theocratic robot space-lemurs all the damn time, but missing a bus? Breaking a nail? Slipping a disc? Losing their place in the magical tome required to vanquish the local Elder God and having to go back to the contents page? No. Never happens. Click on for 14 more things that really should make being in a video game far, far harder than it is. In a way, those jerks have it easy.
Aiden Pearce is going 70 miles per hour down a city street with a dozen squad cars in hot pursuit, but he's not particularly worried. All he needs to do is raise a few bollards and change a few traffic lights and he'll be free and clear. Smirking at his own cleverness, he pulls his phone out from his pocket and loads up ctOS.
But then an unfamiliar screen greets him… the login screen. With mounting horror, Aiden realizes that he cleared his browser cookies last night after reading racy Brony fanfiction. His eyes dart from the street ahead to the empty password field below. He begins to panic. Dear Lord, what was his ctOS password? AidenNo1? blum3suck5? abc123?! Nothing's working! Where's the 'Password Reset' option?! Why hasn't the email arrived yet?! Why is he not watching the roa
Being the foremost robotics expert in the world and the recipient of a Nobel Prize, you might think that Dr. Light has done very well for himself financially. You would be half right. The profits from his world-changing technology allowed him to construct a state of the art lab and surrogate robo-children, yes, but it hasn't made paying off his Ph.D's student loans any easier. Particularly since interest rates have gotten even worse by 200X.
Dr. Light spends so much of his income just keeping up with interest that he can't actually afford a place of his own. He lives in the lab's broom closet, and Roll's beginning to suspect something after having found him passed out between the mop bucket and floor waxer for the dozenth time. At least Dr. Wily gets a castle. Then again, he does have to fill it with killer robots to keep the creditors from repossessing it.
It's easy to get attached to your armor in Destiny, given how you much time and Glimmer you invest in finding it, leveling it up, and customizing it to your liking. Thankfully, whatever sentimental pangs you may feel from swapping a trusty old piece of gear are usually crowded out by the joy and anticipation of slotting in a new item with more powerful stats and bonuses.
Unless it's not really a stat upgrade, and you just had to farm for new leg armor because your old ones are riding a little tight these days. Hey, it happens to a lot of Guardians - you get older, you start putting on some Light levels, and suddenly your butt doesn't fit in your old default dropship seat. Maybe go a few sizes up when you're farming Engrams to be future-proof, since you can always wear a belt.
You know, with all that armor plating, weaponry, and a freezer full of ice cream novelties, Sweet Tooth is nearly unstoppable. Doesn't really matter in the arena if your ride weighs five tons, handles worse than a bathtub on wheels, and belches plumes of acrid exhaust, as long as it keeps moving and shooting longer than all the other cars. Passing your biennial smog test, though? That can be a problem.
But if Needles Kane doesn't want to get pulled over for driving a vehicle with expired registration while he's trying to get his vehicular manslaughter on, he doesn't have much choice. Ugh, can you imagine how hard that would wreck his killer clown image? Now he can only pray that the technician doesn't notice he replaced the catalytic converter with a flamethrower…
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The Dragonborn was somewhere outside of Morthal, on the edge of the Hjaalmarch, when a familiar Argonian face appeared in the mists before her. "Mother?" she asked. "What magic is this? Why do you interrupt me as I work to liberate this frozen land?" The face was taken aback, inasmuch as a swirling grey visage could convey taken-abackedness.
"Well hello to you too, sweetie. Oh, I just went down the street to old Xolth's - you remember Xolth, he said the blessing at your scale-fasting - and asked him if he could conjure something that would let me talk to you. Because you never visit! And I worry about you up there in Skylimb because it's so cold and you never dress warm enough! Your horns will freeze off! And for that matter, how are you ever going to give me grandchildren if you spend all your time liberating? You need to come back to Black Marsh and meet Xolth's son, he's back from college and he's going into business with…"
The only thing harder to get out of a khaki-colored henley shirt than Nathan Drake is a bloody grass stain. That's why treasure hunting is such a vicious cycle for him - he goes looking for rare artifacts, but in the process gets his entire wardrobe shot up by mercenaries or torn to shreds from falling out of airplanes, so he has to sell all the treasure just to afford new designer shirts and pants to half-tuck into each other.
Money gets lean between adventures, though, and eventually he has to sit down with a needle, thread, and a spray bottle of stain remover to try and salvage what he can. His hands are so messed up from years of rock climbing and firing high-caliber weaponry that it usually ends up looking like the work of a five-year-old, but he knows Elena will just laugh him off if he asks for help. It's tough to be Drake.
Yeah, getting that new Mercedes Roadster seemed great at the time, but the problem with driving an actual car on the course is that you need actual car insurance. And it's a Benz, so the insurance is incredibly expensive. You wonder why Luigi has that ever-present death stare? He's willing you to stay the hell away from his car so that you don't get in an accident and drive his premiums into the stratosphere.
I mean, it's a great car, but taking care of it has kind of driven the joy out of racing, y'know? Not much to do about it now, though - Luigi traded in his kart to help with the downpayment and the secondhand market for tiny, cartoon-sized sports cars is notoriously fickle.
So you’re Gordon Freeman. You’re a badass guerrilla physicist. Egon Spengler, Peter Venkman, Ray Stantz, James Bond and Rambo rolled into one. Your time in City 17 since you arrived has been spent on one long journey of discovery, survival, and insurrection amid the long-standing Combine occupation. Now, finally, it looks like victory is in sight.
One thing though. You’ve noticed lately that your aim has gone to shit. And the loud bangs and ratta-tatt-tatts of the battlefield are making you really twitchy. And you keep forgetting important tactical conversations you’ve just had with various members of the resistance. And you keep getting really sad and teary about the stupidest little things. And you’re really, really, really paranoid. Then you realise. You haven’t taken a minute’s break since Half-Life 2’s continuous, unbroken campaign started four days ago. And those aren’t Combine that you’re shooting up, but the innocent Sunday shoppers of Tesco, and you’re actually just tripping balls.
Dom: Hey, Marcus, how far you thinking this Grub tunnel goes? Feels like we haven’t seen daylight in a week.
Marcus: …
Dom: Marcus?
Marcus: …
Dom: Hey man, where’d you go?
Marcus steps out from behind a rock with a look of relief on his face.
Dom: Where's your bandana?
Interesting thing about months-long, cross-continental RPG quests. The human immune system wouldn’t like them one little bit. Between the perpetual, mostly on-foot travel, constant exertion, ever-present risk of attack, resulting plethora of minor flesh-wounds, repeat mana burn-out, and potential for zero sleep, even if your game has a day/night cycle (and if you do get any, it’s likely to be al fresco), an RPG campaign conducted under real-world conditions would make you ill.
Levelling up as the journey goes on? No way. By the end of an RPG quest conducted under real-world conditions, you wouldn’t be stronger. You’d be a quivering, snotty, coughing ball of infection. Maybe that’s why levelling slows down the further you get into a game.
Slippy-slidey ice worlds! Amazing! Slipping! Sliding! Pretty, tinkley tunes, evocative of all the best things about Christmas! Murderous snowmen! I love them, you love them, and Mario certainly loves them. He loves the atmospheric change of pace. He loves the new challenges thrown up by the extra momentum and inertia under his platform-savvy feet. He loves stomping on insidious, sentient snow-piles and making friends with friendly penguins.
He loves all of that because he only has to involve himself with the fun parts of winter. Never once has he, around level five or six, realised his error in only bringing along his standard dungarees and thin work jumper. Never once has he found himself slowing in the run up to an important jump, joints seizing and hands aching. Never once has he slumped under a tree, mere feet from the final flag pole, so tired, so cold… so hungry… so… blue…
You know what’s ridiculous about the epic, House of Blue Leaves fight scene in Kill Bill: Part One? It’s not that Beatrix kills roughly a thousand sword-wielding Yakuza while taking barely a scratch. It’s the fact that after demolishing the structural integrity of seven or eight gangsters, she’d have found herself unable to inflict more than a nasty bruise on the rest. Swords, you see, go blunt really fast.
Katanas in particular, being the samurai’s weapon of choice, are not really design for long, protracted duels. Instead, they’re all about short, incredible sharp, one-hit kills, ideally after walking up to someone like a badass and slowly explaining how you’re definitely about to kill them and that there’s nothing they can do about it. Sorry, Mitsurugi, Yoshimitsu, and any protagonist from Onimusha. In real-life, after a few choice cuts you’d be reduced to slapping your opponents to death with a long, steel ruler.
Ken had it in the bag. It had been a tough fight. Bison had been typically relentless from the off, keeping up the Knee Press pressure and dodging every corner-trap with that bloody EX Psycho Crusher of his (seriously, how does he get that crap out so fast with half a scrap-yard attached to his shins?), but all the pain had been worth it. Ken’s Ultra gauge was now ready to go, and while he had just been knocked down, his opponent was getting cocky. The dictator had thrown caution to the wind and was actually jumping in. The crazy fool! What was he thinking? One Ultra Dragon Punch on wake up, and that shit-eating grin would be wiped off Captain Cap’s face forever.
Bison’s boots grew closer. Time slowed down. Ken rose to his feet, prepped the Shinryuken, and leapt. His fist connected with Bison’s chin, and his wrist crumpled with a nasty ‘snap’ noise, as a direct result of the sprain he’d incurred during that cheap, one-two punch combo after the cross-up in round two. Ken’s fist went as limp as a dead squid, and immediately afterwards, all was darkness.
John Marston was not happy. “Yeah, we’ll help”, had said the cheery locals of the oppressed Mexican town in the south. “Just one thing. Can you go and single-handedly clean out the fort in the north for us first? We’d appreciate it ever so much. You’ll find it really easily. It’s only 50 miles away, just past the big rock and left at the third cactus”.
What they’d spectacularly failed to tell him was that the entire desert was made of rocks and cacti, and the northern border was 150 miles across. And everywhere was full of hungry coyotes. No, John Marston was not happy at all.
Anything else you'd add? Any average, underplayed woes plaguing your life that you really think game characters should get their fair share of? Let us know in the comments, and then go and have a nice cup of tea to calm down.
And while you're here, why not check out what would happen if a game hero applied their high-fallutin' powers to a more normal life, in .
Names are tough, because there's such a fine line between sounding cool and sounding completely bonkers. A good name sticks with people, a bad one sticks with people because it sounds like something a porn star would reject for being too obvious.
We have a lot of porn star-sounding game character names in the following slides, as well as ones that are too-cool-for-school and others still that are just complete nonsense. If you've ever been picked on for having a goofy sounding name, take comfort in the fact that it could have been worse - much worse.
Seen having a stupid name in: Punch-Out!! (arcade game)
Name is stupid because it sounds like: a first grader's attempt at identifying 'Italian things'. Seriously, was this THE FIRST THING that popped into the developers' heads when designing their Italian boxer? What about Gucci Gnocchi?
Seen having a stupid name in: Super Punch-Out!!
Name is stupid because it sounds like: a fun way to speed the weekend. Do you think when Bear's parents named him, they knew their son would grow up to be a grizzled old mountain man who's also a boxer? It was destiny.
Seen having a stupid name in: Street Fighter EX
Name is stupid because it sounds like: WrestleMania, only deadlier.
Seen having a stupid name in: Mega Man X5
Name is stupid because it sounds like: Duffman from The Simpsons, oh yeah! Fun fact: the Duff is apparently short for Duffin, which doesn't make it any better.
Seen having a stupid name in: Mega Man X6
Name is stupid because it sounds like: a device that plays metal sharks. What would even be on a metal shark? Music, videos, lots of teeth?
Seen having a stupid name in: The King of Fighters XIII
Name is stupid because it sounds like: a grab bag of words people think sound cool. If he started a band, it would totally be called Nightmare Final Infinity.
Seen having a stupid name in: King of the Monsters 2
Name is stupid because it sounds like: some sort of weird, online sex slang (unlike all that totally normal online sex slang).
Seen having a stupid name in: Sonic the Hedgehog 2
Name is stupid because it sounds like: a stupid pun on the phrase "miles per hour." Tails is a decent enough name, but when you learn his name is actually Miles Prower - which sounds like "prowler" - it makes him sound like a creepy stalker.
Seen having a stupid name in: Guilty Gear Xrd -SIGN-
Name is stupid because it sounds like: laziness.
Seen having a stupid name in: several Tekken games
Name is stupid because it sounds like: martial law. Even though the character has nothing to do with the military or the legal system. Super funny, right? Get it?
Seen having a stupid name in: No More Heroes
Name is stupid because it sounds like: a cheap way to have "down" in his last name. The main character's name is Travis TouchDOWN so, naturally, his rival should have the word 'down' in there somewhere.
Seen having a stupid name in: Toshinden 4
Name is stupid because it sounds like: a bunch of knightly words strung together. If your character is already a knight - and you feel the need to put the word knight in his name - then take a step back and really think over the decisions you've made in your life.
Seen having a stupid name: Final Fantasy X
Name is stupid because it sounds like: the noise a teeny, tiny baby would make while playing with a toy. Actually, Wakka was the goofball of the group, and he did fight using a toy, so I guess this name fits.
Seen having a stupid name in: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
Name is stupid because as a matter of fact: Starkiller didn't kill any stars.
Seen having a stupid name in: Ready 2 Rumble Boxing
Name is stupid because it sounds like: the name of a porn star. Seriously, you're going to find a lot of these in this list.
Seen having a stupid name in: Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner
Name is stupid because it sounds like: an Australian game show host. And yes, I'm saying the name's Australian because it has the word 'dingo' in it. I'm sorry.
Seen having a stupid name in: Zettai Hero Project: Unlosing Ranger VS. Darkdeath Evilman
Name is stupid because it sounds like: the first draft of a new Power Rangers villain. To be fair, ZHP is a parody game, so Mr. Evilman is technically a parody of generic villain names. But even so, it's still too ridiculous not to feature here.
Seen having a stupid name in: Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker
Name is stupid because it sounds like: his parents had a really, really cruel sense of humor. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall during the 'Hot Coldman vs. Cold Hotman' naming meeting at Kojima Productions. Thankfully, good taste prevailed.
Seen having a stupid name in: Mario Kart 8
Name is stupid because it sounds like: Nintendo really has run out of new ideas for Mario Kart Racers.
Seen having a stupid name in: Devil May Cry 3
Name is stupid because it sounds like: a basic description for a character. There's actually a wonderfully convoluted reason for why Lady calls herself Lady, but the end result is that it's still a dumb name.
Seen having a stupid name in: Kingdom Hearts 2
Name is stupid because it sounds like: someone wanted a group of 13 people to all have the letter 'X' in their name, but ran out of good ideas after the first one.
Seen having a stupid name in: Chris Moneymaker's World Poker Championship
Name is stupid because it sounds like: an evil CEO in one of those family-friendly movies starring a talking animal.
Seen having a stupid name in: EarthBound
Name is stupid because it sounds like: Mr. Carpenter, which would have been a fine name, but if you really squint your eyes and read it again it actually says car painter. Car painter? As in, one who paints cars?
Seen having a stupid name in: Dirge of Cerberus
Name is stupid because it sounds like: blue the blue, which is basically what he's called. His name sounds like azure, a shade of blue, and his... um... title is cerulean, another shade of blue. There you have it: Blue the Blue.
Seen having a stupid name in: too many Mario games
Name is stupid because it sounds like: Luigi but with a 'W' at the front, yeah, we get it Nintendo, it's like what you did with Wario, only his named sounded cool and this just sounds like some kind of word jumble. Poor Luigi, even his villains are lame.
Seen having a stupid name in: Fracture.
Name is stupid because it sounds like: the name of a '50s high school football hero transported into the year 3090, where he stars as the protagonist of a pulpy sci-fi adventure serial, itself made in the '50s. Also, he sounds a bit like a porn star.
Seen having a stupid name in: Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire.
Name is stupid because it sounds like: computer science slang.
"Yeah, I was having trouble getting that part of the UI to display properly, but I've run a quick dash rendar to kluge it together for now. I'll fix it properly tomorrow"
Even for a character living in the Star Wars universe, it's ridiculous.
Seen having a stupid name in: the Gears of War series.
Name is stupid because it sounds like: the name of a porn star. Seriously. Take him out of context and it does.
Seen having a stupid name in: Trevor McFur in the Crescent Galaxy on the Atari Jaguar. That's why you've never heard of him.
Name is stupid because it sounds like: the developers did not realise that simply putting "Mc" in front of an obvious character trait does not a plausible name or believable characterisation make. Also, given the current state of internet culture, it's inadvisable to put the word "fur" in any character's name. Also also, Trevor is my dad's name and so all of this just freaks me out. Click on to the next slide now and forget that this one ever happened.
Seen having a stupid name in: Rosco McQueen, Firefighter Extreme.
Name is stupid because it sounds like: the name of a southern '70s sheriff who works by his own rules but gets the job done.
Seen having a stupid name in: the Halo series.
Name is stupid because it sounds like: of all the real-world naval ranks available to them, Bungie chose the one most likely to sound like "Captain Boss" to those uninitiated in military designations.
Seen having a stupid name in: Star Ocean: The Last Hope.
Name is stupid because it sounds like: the name a 10 year-old would give themselves if handed a deed poll form shortly after being handed a bottle of whiskey and a giant bag of Skittles.
Seen having a stupid name in: Final Fantasy VII and its multitudinous spin-offs.
Name is stupid because it sounds like: the name of a teenage goth's online alter-ego. Or alternately, that of a French porn star.
Look, I'm going to stop doing the porn star joke now, because a) it's not a joke, and b) it applies to nearly all of them. Can we just agree that it goes without saying from this point on? It'll save me a lot of time. Like, literally seconds.
Seen having a stupid name in: Final Fantasy VII and its multitudinous spin-offs.
Name is stupid because it sounds like: Square-Enix realised that "Cloud" sounded too much like the product of hippie parenting. Given that Cloud was to be their most emo hero to date, they thus stuck "Strife" on the end in order to add additional angst. He might as well be called Rainbow Misery.
Seen having a stupid name in: Far too many Sonic the Hedgehog games.
Name is stupid because it sounds like: an instruction to do something unpleasant to a rabbit.
Seen having a stupid name in: Mace Griffin, Bounty Hunter.
Name is stupid because it sounds like: the developers decided that sticking together the respective names of a medieval weapon and a mythical beast was a dead-cert route to badassery. And it should be. But in practice, it isn't.
Seen having a stupid name in: the Wolfenstein series
Name is stupid because it sounds like: iD effectively tried to shoehorn the word "blast" into the name of an action hero.
Seen having a stupid name in: Metal Gear
Name is stupid because it sounds like: the subtitle of any modern military FPS.
Seen having a stupid name in: Metal Gear Solid
Name is stupid because it sounds like: a gadget used by James Bond during the ultra-camp Roger Moore period.
Seen having a stupid name in: Parasite Eve
Name is stupid because it sounds like: the name of a mad scientist. Which is exactly what he is. A really, really obvious mad scientist. Who was somehow allowed to carry on with his mad science until he nearly brought about the destruction of the world. Hans Klamp, people. He was called Hans Klamp. And just look at his freaking beard! Look at it!
Seen having a stupid name in: the Virtua Fighter series.
Name is stupid because it sounds like: Sega obviously didn't pay attention to my "Jimmy McCharactertrait" rule from earlier on.
Seen having a stupid name in: the Virtua Fighter series.
Name is stupid because it sounds like: Sega have tried to subvert the "Jimmy McCharactertrait" rule, but only slightly succeeded.
We know that Wolf is a nature-loving woodsman, but the point need not be laboured by stapling together three elements of the natural world in order to create his name. Who's his arch-rival, Concrete Buildingstreet?
Seen having a stupid name in: Final Fantasy VIII.
Name is stupid because it sounds like: half a sentence. Rinoa Heartilly what? Ate a juicy roast chicken? Laughed at the poor? What? What was Rinoa doing with such gusto, Squenix?
Seen having a stupid name in: the real world, as a pro-gaming association.
Name is stupid because it sounds like: the supporters' association of a well-known assisted suicide clinic in Switzerland. Apparently the whole thing was a complete, really unfortunate accident, and they were quite embarrassed when they discovered connotation.
Seen having a stupid name in: the Guilty Gear series.
Name is stupid because it sounds like: OH COME ON!
Seen having a stupid name in: the Star Fox series.
Name is stupid because it sounds like: his parents spent very little time naming him.
"So we, Mr. and Mrs. McCloud, being foxes, as we are, have birthed a baby fox. What shall we call him?"
"Fox?"
"Done"
Seen having a stupid name in: Dark Souls.
Name is stupid because it sounds like: I'm not even getting into this one.
Seen having a stupid name in: the Ace Attorney series.
Name is stupid because it sounds like: Capcom tried to go for a name that playfully danced with genre conventions, but then went a bit too far, effectively naming their character "Detective Detective".
Seen having a stupid name in: the Ace Attorney series.
Name is stupid because it sounds like: Okay, looking back over these pages I think we we might actually have stumbled upon the method for coming up with your own personal Video Game Name. By my estimation the method is simply a case of working out your porn name (first pet + mothers maiden name) and then substituting one of the words with the name of a mythological beast or dangerous real-world animal of your choosing. Mine is Goldie Minotaur*. Tell me Metal Gear Solid has never used anything sillier.
*I imagine Goldie Minotaur to be a street-smart female detective in a lightly steampunk-tinged '20s-noir universe. Because why wouldn't she be? She's not a minotaur though. I'm not going all Star Fox with this one.
Seen having a stupid name in: the Ace Attorney series. Again.
Name is stupid because it sounds like: the name of a low-to-medium-profile mid-'80s wrestler, with a garish gold outfit and a large beard.
Any other stupendously named characters you think I've missed? Any in this list you think have been hard done by? Let me know. And don't forget to drop your official Video Game Name in the comments.
And while you're here, check out some of our other tasty feature content. I'd recommend .
Well, I’m Henry Gilbert and I’m here to say I dislike bad rap in a major way! If you wanna have rhymes that sound real cool, don’t put in these games and look like a fool... What you just read is an example of the dangers of thinking you’re cool enough to spit dope lyrics with the best of them. You end up looking like an out of touch nerd. It’s an experience games know all too well, as they’ve played host to some of the worst music in hip hop history.
When you’re working on a game, penning some original rhymes covering the excellence of your title and/or mascot makes sense in the moment. Unfortunately, 99% of these custom rap songs are doomed to be dated the instant the title is released (if not sooner). Read on to experience the worst crimes against hip hop that games have ever committed...
Worst lyric:
This one feels slightly unfair, mainly because the producers of this fighting game’s soundtrack are (very likely) non-native English speakers. Still, the above brag is such a weird one, because basketball legend Michael Jordan isn’t really known for slinging rhymes. NBA greats like Shaq and Allen Iverson have been known to spit a verse, but less so for MJ. Most of the rest of the lyrics are near-unintelligible - “Make some lyrics like the bass with the treble” (?). I mean that they’re both hard to make out, and don’t make sense even when the words are clear. Also, while the hook and bridge are nice, it feels like they repeat about five times in one minute. I know the song is called Stimulation, but slow your roll, CvS2.
Worst lyric:
This corny rap is the intro song to DK’s N64 debut, and Rare probably designed it to be lame. And they did too good a job too! This kid-friendly song laboriously introduces us to each playable character with clunky lyrics - “Inflate himself just like a balloon, This crazy Kong just digs this tune!” Good job sneaking in that boast about your song, guys. The DK Rap then concludes with the above words, sweatily cobbling together “pineapple smells,” as if that’s a phrase any human has ever said. The song sets the tone early for this cornball game, and I give Rare bonus credit for sneaking “hell” into the original version of the game (subsequently it was rewritten as “heck”) showing little disregard for the sensibilities of Nintendo’s audience.
Worst lyric:
Platinum Games is one of my favorite developers, and the custom, lyric-heavy soundtracks are usually one of their strongest attributes. This song is up there with its weaker offerings, though, and it isn’t helped by being the theme for the annoying, problematic Black Baron character. The song is very fitting for the grating, over-the-top character, even specifically referencing things like Baron’s violent girlfriend and the tilted brim of his hat. But it’s a little too slick, just like the character. Credit where it’s due: I really like “You just sealed your fate. On the holidays that'll be one less plate,” because it conjures up a sad family during a Thanksgiving meal. It’s a visual far too many rappers overlook.
Worst lyric:
Wiz Khalifa is a legit rapper and he does a fine job with this wrasslin’ game’s promotional hip hop, so he’s not the issue here. My main gripe is with John Cena, the omnipresent WWE superstar who’s also on the cover of the game. He got his start as a parody of lame rappers, then somehow became a non-joke rapper with a groan-worthy entrance song. All Day is his return to the studio after years of not-rapping, and in it, we hear more of what we weren’t missing. Cena’s rhymes are more like spoken phrases said with the requisite amount of intensity his brand requires, “I’m about to go on trial, murdering instrumentals,” is another example of his flat verse. John is as average as ever, but at least it only lasts for a fraction of the song, limiting the exposure to his awfulness.
Worst lyric:
It’s weird to feel pity for a hall of fame NBA player like Scottie Pippen, but I kinda do. Pippen won six championships with the Chicago Bulls, but he was always overshadowed by teammates like Michael Jordan and Dennis Rodman. Perhaps Scottie thought he’d finally breakout of their orbit by starring in his own game, but the resulting Slam City is an FMV Sega CD release, guaranteeing obscurity. The monotonous ‘Get Respect’ opening song fits the unmemorable vibe, with bland platitudes about how one goes about earning respect. As the above lyric states, if you’re beaten, then you didn’t bring your best shot. Sadly, the next obvious statement wasn’t, “if you think you see the sky, but it isn’t blue, that’s wrong too.”
Worst lyric:
As someone who lived in America in 2001, I can tell you that post-September 11 was a really weird time for all of us. People reacted in strange ways to this new stage of the War on Terror, and that includes crappy shooters with terrible rap over the credits. Fugitive Hunter is the type of cheaply made game that is only memorable for being exceptionally bad (and for including a level where you actually kill Osama bin Laden) and the end credits theme is just as blunt in its response. The words come fast and furious, describing all the ways the wordsmiths will sneak into terrorist hideouts and hunt down the bad guys, with the phrase “Fugitive Hunter” droning on top of it all. Someone should check with the members of Seal Team Six to see how accurately these lyrics compare to actually hunting Bin Laden down.
Worst lyric:
Even the most stoic Sonic apologist will admit that most of the series’ music features lyrics are in the ‘so bad it’s good’ category - and I mean that as a half-compliment. That’s the case with the ludicrous rap and jazz fusion that is Knuckle’s theme in Sonic Adventure. The songwriters seem to approach the song with a list of Knuckles attributes, talking over and over and over again about how he’s a loner, tough, and out to cleanse evil. The hip hop breaks are the weakest part of all, doubling up on explanations like “I'll give you the colder shoulder, My spikes go through boulders.” Even a jazzy saxaphone solo can’t mask how incredibly uncool Knuckles looks when this tune is over. Or, indeed, while it’s playing. Fun fact: The rapping is done by the original voice of Parappa the Rapper, who has much better material!
Worst lyric:
One of Dead Island’s main characters is a rapper, so hearing at least one tune by Sam B. is unavoidable. And like many rappers, his rhymes reflect the world around him, in this case a tropical paradise full of animated corpses. Sam B. has some very grisly lines about the undead that surround him - “Shrunken heads, broken legs, body parts on the concrete” is another winner. Still, call me overly sensitive, but what I hate most is the constant use of word ‘bitch’ in this song. In fact, the chorus uses the word a half-dozen times, acting like you can rhyme a word with itself constantly and not look like a hack. Beyond feeling openly misogynist, constantly repeating “Who do you Voodoo, bitch?” bothers me as a professional writer/human being.
Those are the worst crimes against hip hop that I could chronicle today, but I'm always looking for more awesomely bad rap. If you'd like to share some that I missed, let me know in the comments!
And if you're looking for more tuneful features, read/listen to
...is a great woman. That's how the old axiom goes, and it's no more true anywhere than in video games. Yes, the medium might have a reputation for poorly representing female characters, while promoting dull-headed, overly stoic masculinity as its major protagonist trope, but is any of that really true? Of course not! Games are nothing but a bastion of ultra-modern, equality-focused storytelling, you big idiot!
Just think about how important women are to the biggest action game plots. Without them, nothing happens. Okay, so they might be dead, or die during the course of the story, but that doesn't mean that they're not every bit as respected, well-rounded and meaningful as their related men-folk. There's no tokenistic objectification here. No lazy character motivation, or adherence to dated cliche. No, dead female characters (I'm extending the definition to both girlfriends and ambiguous romantic interests, because this is a healthily eclectic group of characters, not limited by simplistic definitions of matrimony) are just as important as anyone else in video games. BECAUSE THIS IS SERIOUS, MATURE, WELL WRITTEN ART, Y'ALL. So let's have a word with them, shall we?
Killed in: Gears of War 2, by Dom, as a mercy-killing.
Would probably say: "Okay, so I was kidnapped by a race of inhuman monsters, kept underground, hidden away from daylight and all I held dear for years, and eventually tortured into a twisted, mindless husk, residing in a tiny metal coffin before eventually being released only to gasp my first breath of fresh(ish) air in God knows how long immediately before having my brains blown out. But let’s face it, the really sad part about all of this is how it caused a few mild problems in Dom’s friendship with his meat-headed military buddy. Causing frictions in masculine, male friendships. That’s the true tragedy wrought by the Locust.
"Don’t worry about me. I was barely even in the story to begin with."
Killed in: Double Dragon 2, right at the start.
Would probably say: "So I get kidnapped. Billy and Jimmy mount a rescue attempt. That was kind of cool of them. But what happens when they arrive? Do they call the police? An ambulance? Even check I’m alright? No, they stick their idiot chests out and have a fight to see who ‘gets’ me. Nice. I mean I only have a couple of cracked ribs, and I don’t think there's any internal bleeding, so you guys carry on. Not like I need any say in who I end up with anyway.
"Well, it's not like I get any say in anything any more, seeing as how I got shot dead pretty soon afterwards. It's almost like I'm not actually a real person at all, and more a cheap excuse for Billy and Jimmy to beat people up. "
Killed in: Final Fantasy 7, by Sephiroth
Would probably say: "Wow, that sword came out of nowhere. Totally unexpected. I mean I know Sephiroth was a bit of a dick, but that was entirely unwarranted. Come on, I’d barely even done anything. Seriously, try to remember anything significant I’d said or done at that point. Recall a single line of my dialogue. I was completely inoffensive. Hell, if I was going to get meta about this, I’d say it was almost as if I was a barely sketched up cliché of submissive, victimised femininity, designed only to elicit sympathetic, protective feelings from male onlookers.
"No, I’m being paranoid now. That would make my very existence, and by association my death, only relevant in terms of creating artificial angst and narrative drive for the second part of the story, and that’d just be ridiculousThough I did die about halfway through… Hmm... Hang the fuck on a minute…"
Killed in: God of War, by Kratos, in an oblivious war rage.
Would probably say: "You know what’s really frustrating about this whole thing? I was about to leave the bald-headed boar anyway. He was just such a tedious, one-dimensional, perpetually angry dickhead. No depth to him at all. Such a self-indulgent grunt. It was like his view of masculinity hadn’t evolved since he was a teenager. No way I could raise a family with someone like that. By great Zeus’ beard, I bet my death was the most interesting thing that had ever happened to him. I mean how notable would he have been, really, if killing me and the kids hadn’t set off that little tantrum of his?
"Never mind the plans I had for moving away and setting up my own business, or how excited the kids were about moving to the coast, just as long as Kratos got his foot on the career ladder and had an excuse to not grow the fuck up for another few years. Yeah, that’s what we should be focusing on here. As ever."
Killed in: Dante's Inferno, by some middle-eastern assassin, off-camera, because she didn't really matter to the story until she died.
Would probably say: "I was a teacher in the village before I died. I also sat on the town council (while the men were away at the Crusades, naturally), was instrumental in sorting out the new water supply, helped several of the area’s poor by creating new jobs through the farmland redevelopment programme I initiated, and was also a dogged environmentalist.
"Of course, all of that happened before Dante’s story started, so you won’t know any of it. All you’ll know is that I died with my tits out."
Killed in: Castlevania: Lords of Shadow
Would probably say: "You think he’s a moping, disaffected dick now? Think about this. Pretending my death was reversible was the only way I could persuade him to carry on his quest to save the world. Seriously. That’s why he went all the way to take down Satan. I effectively had to give my life so that millions more could be saved, because he, supposed noble warrior of light, would not get his arse in gear otherwise.
"And he gets the credit. Brilliant."
Killed in: Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor
Would probably say: "This is bullshit. Seriously. What the fuck? I was nothing if not dutiful. Cartoonishly so, if you consider my offer to ‘fess up for Talion’s crimes before I died. And that whole ‘be brave, we’ll be together in the next life’ schtick. And all that submissive bullshit when we were talking about moving away to build a better life for our son. Sweet crap, who the hell actually behaves like that? That's some just plain unbelievable idealistic bullshit there. I mean there’s being selfless, and then there’s not even existing except as an appendage of one’s husband.
"Did any of those orcs even know my name before I died? Did anyone? I’m pretty sure it didn’t come up. Not that anyone asked. Like, at all. And it’s not like things improved afterwards, either. Did I get offered any glowy-eyed vengeance? Nope, that’s all for Talion. Apparently this isn't about me. I can actually see why Beatrice - that's her name, by the way - thought about hooking up with Lucifer. Of course it's all about Dante, and Kratos, and Talion, and the rest of those moping pricks. Total horseshit."
See, ladies? See how good you have it video games these days? Hell, some of you even get to fire guns. Truly, we are living in the age of enlightenment.
Christ, I can't carry on with this. Shall we just move onto some links? Good. Have a look at . Because why the hell not?
