Every year we, the insatiable gamers, are blessed with an assortment of high-quality titles, which we gobble down with the utmost haste. Whether it be one of the greatest games ever conceived or something a bit more modest, we tend to forget the predicaments the main characters go through whilst we're being entertained. Shooting enemies is fun - undoubtedly so - but what about the guy who shoots a loved one? What about the guy who was just going about his everyday life when his town explodes? How about the guy who can't remember his own name? These are the videogame characters we feel most sorry for.

The list of game characters has grown exponentially over the years, and with them the issues that develop in such a memorable way. Some of these problems are a bit more serious than others, but hey, they're still problems right?

9: Solid Snake

The issue: Snake is a clone; he ages rapidly, has to fight multiple metal monstrosities and extraterrestrial soldiers, and has to prevent multiple nuclear strikes across all the games. Also, pretty much everyone close to him dies. Savvy.

Snake is an old bastard, or at least he was, by the time Metal Gear Solid 4 rolled around. Even so, his decrepit arse still had to take down a gaggle of enemies with crazy powers, and a series of metal beasts that could cause the apocalypse; not a small feat by any means. The worst of his conditions, though, is definitely his rapid aging process, being a clone and all. How would you like to live less than half your life and be thrust into a rather impossible scenario multiple times? Not so cool. Also, he fought - well, technically, his father fought - a guy who could control bees. ...bees.

8: Link

The issue: How would you enjoy waking up after defeating the toughest nemesis you ever faced, with all your power and items taken from you? Now, how would you enjoy it if it happened every single time? Also, and arguably worse, Link's vocabulary consists of only "HIIYAAA" and "WAAA" and "UGHH". He's a think-tank, clearly.

Link is a legend in the videogame character kingdom, and so are the design philosophies behind The Legend of Zelda, but those scenarios are going to take a backseat here. You see, at the outset of every game, Link is pretty much a different person who in no way resembles the skillful, item-ridden hero from his last adventure. He can also only communicate via several emotional screams, which explains why Zelda always gets lost some way or another (would you want to be around someone like that?). While there might be some kind of odd lore, and occassional connections to games past here and there, it's never truly apparent in any game. Which - naturally - leads me to believe that he's (a) insane, (b) a robot, or (c) maybe both. With this information we can only conclude that Link is tethered to the Matrix as some evil genius's puppet. I don't think he knows Kung Fu, though.

7: Tidus

The issue: Besides his strange taste in random clothing, Tidus has a problem with being tangible, and another with killing his father to metal music. He also likes Blitzball.

The protagonist from Final Fantasy X with the feathered hair gets a lot of flak for his somewhat... eccentric attitude - laughing scene, anyone? - and his random elbow pad. Tidus goes through quite a bit emotionally as the game continues on, but much to his surprise - and ours - he finds out that he doesn't even exist. That's right; by the time the game ends, Tidus basically just up-and-vanishes from Yuna's arms. Before that, though, Tidus participates in the killing of his father to save the land. I truly have no idea how this works, but when you break it down it sounds pretty bleak; Tidus killed his father to save a land that he can't be a part of because he just discovered he doesn't exist.

...blame Blitzball.

6: Boy from Shadow of the Colossus

The issue: In an effort to bring a girl that means something to him back from the dead, this boy must fight sixteen colossi. And slay every one.

It might not sound too depressing at first, but once you finish killing all sixteen colossi, something very bad happens to that boy. Instead of being rewarded with the chance to restore life to the girl, the boy ends up being turned into a giant demon. After the short stint of demonry subsides, the boy then turns into a baby, and the girl then awakens. So, after all that trouble, the kid has absolutely zero idea of what happened.

That, my friends, is what I call 'the shaft'.

5: Master Chief

The issue: Born and bred to fight, the Master Chief had no childhood and no life besides constant intergalactic warring.

Halo's Master Chief really is quite a depressing character. Whilst the games don't exactly dive deep into his background, the man had no life, no friends, no family; nothing. The only thing left to him was the drive to keep fighting for humanity. Every single day is just another step toward killing more aliens and regenerating more shields. I think the only friend the guy has is Cortana, and she's basically just the Internet. It does make you wonder, though; what does he do to kill time, besides sleeping in space?

4: Dominic Santiago

The issue: For a man whose whole world revolved around finding his wife and kids after his planet exploded, putting the gun to his own wife didn't seem to make him the happiest person.

Gears of War is all about the planet Sera, and how it became scorched due to the Locust emerging to annihilate the humans. After the initial attack, Dom lost his kids and his wife, but had never given up on trying to locate them. Upon entering the Locust Hollow in the second game, Dom finds his wife tortured and destroyed; a husk of her former self. Dom couldn't let her suffer any longer and was forced to shoot her, right in the ole' cranium. Could you imagine yourself dedicating your life to finding someone, actually finally managing to find them, and then having to kill them? To augment that feeling, you can then wake up every morning after that, to a world that's fully destroyed and trying to kill you. Awesome.

3: Castlevania's Dracula

The issue: Every single game, he comes back with greater power, badass traps, horrific monsters, and a thirst for vengeance. But he always ends up getting his arse whipped. Literally.

Castlevania is synonymous with Dracula at this point. Like the description points out, he comes back in almost every iteration more powerful than before. Yet, even if he came back with sixty thousand demons and a Godzilla-sized Death at his side, he'd end up losing to some schmuck that gets all up inside his castle. Having your soul literally ripped apart and being forced to sit there for years before you can manifest enough power in a feeble attempt to come back must suck.

2: Gordon Freeman

The issue: A scientist who really enjoys his work, Gordon somehow managed to turn a rather harmless experiment into a full blown alien invasion. ...good job, Gordon.

Half-Life is famous for having one of the best lead-in moments to a game ever, and it still holds up today. Gordon, being the wonderfully nice scientist he is, was going about his business as usual until he decided to push a cart into a part of the experiment he was helping with. Cue bolts of electricity, alien portals and dead people. Now Gordon is solely responsible for finding out how to fix the problem, which he still hasn't been able to do. Bet you wish you could rewind time a bit, don'tcha, Gordon?

1: Vic Viper

The issue: When an alien invasion comes, there's only one option.

You'd think that, after the first time the galaxy routed the enemy in the Gradius universe, they would prepare some kind of defense force in case it ever happened again. I guess that's too logical, though, because those lethargic asses always send out the Vic Viper whenever there's trouble. What happens if the pilots all got sick and no one could use this spacecraft? I guess it's game over forever? Sorry Vic, those guys are jerks.

Labels: 2011, Andrew Whipple III, Castlevania, Final Fantasy XII, Gears of War, Gradius, Half-Life, Halo, Metal Gear Online, shadow of the colossus, The Legend of Zelda

"Best Game Ever" is totally subjective and will vary depending on personal opinion.

Once, I belonged to a clan called Outer Heaven. A group of misfits: perfect underdog material. There were only eight-or-so of us, mostly French, but the rest from all over Europe. And we ruled the land of Metal Gear Online.

Usually, we hung around the seventh best in the world. Sometimes, we'd push forward to the top five, or fall below the ten mark. But we kept at it, because we loved it. Because then, we became more than specks on this vast, senseless planet. Because we were playing Metal Gear Online... and we were a team.

Online games have always struggled with the concept of teamwork. Throwing a group of mismatched gamers in the same arena for a few minutes and telling them not to shoot each other just doesn't create that team spirit; you can't tell who's behind the gamertag, and you've no reward for helping a buddy. Like luckless lovers, we were destined to go from fling to fling, match to match, being told we were together but never believing it. So, leave it to Kojima, in 2008, to create the best game ever.

The anchor, upon which the whole multiplayer component to MGS4 revolved around, was the clan system. Not clan tags - pointless four letter prefixes allowing just enough room for you to swear in - no, the clan system was hardcore. The game didn't simply encourage joining a clan, it almost forced it, thanks to Survival mode (more on that later). Unfortunately, this meant there were a lot of two-member clans who just used it as a glorified clan tag, but for the rest of us, it was a gateway into another universe. To begin with, I wandered the muddy plains of Blood Bath alone, cold, and frightened, until a friendly French player offered me some help via the superb and unique Training mode. And that was that. A while later, around about 6 of us were clan members. And in MGO, that meant we were brothers.

The speech addition was vital to the game's success. Not everyone owns a headset, and for other team-based games, only those with microphones can order others round or pass information. But a quick tap of Select means you can type a message to friend or foe. It was brilliant, and I'm still at a loss as to why more games don't add this feature. We could communicate, coordinate, organize and dominate. The SOP System helped no end, allowing real-time updates on players' positions and situations. It turned MGO from a mess of separate tactics to a melting pot of strategy: we could decide to hide in our spawn points, or send two men up to the rooftop, or have one man flank in a box while the other distracts the enemy. Such a simple element made all the difference.

It became a necessity in certain game modes. I was never one for straight up deathmatch - it missed the point. No, I was a beast at Team Sneak. The attacking team, equipped with stealth camo, tries to bring either KEROTAN or GA-KO toys to their goal area, while the other team defends the items. You could also kill, stun, and (only for the attacking team) hold up all enemy team members. Whenever a stealth soldier is discovered, all stealth camo is temporarily rendered non-operational. It was incredible. The rush you could get from cowering in a sewer drain as a friend was discovered and the stealth went down was unmatched, as was the day I managed to knock out and brutally stab the entire enemy team when I was the only one left. Sweet.

But I didn't do it for me. I didn't silently stalk the shadows that fateful day to boost my own stats. I did it for us. MGO remains the most powerful game available today, able to turn even the most stoic of lone wolves into team players. The feeling you got from a team victory, no matter how poorly one personally performed, was overpowering - proper punch-the-air stuff. Ever had to wipe a smile off your face because of a win on Call of Duty? Metal Gear Online took six people who were thousands of miles apart and, no matter how corny it sounds (despite the fact we had never met each other and mostly communicated via typing into a game) transformed us into the best of friends, through the nail-biting finalés of deathmatches; through the heavy losses and outright dominations; high and low, thick and thin, game to game, day to day - this shining Blu-ray disc formed bonds that could never be broken, for hundreds of thousands of people worldwide.

Nowhere was this more evident than Survival mode. We played on Tuesdays. Each clan entered, and you played another clan in a random game mode, before the victor would advance to play again, in the aim to get 5 wins in a row. This was the big league. This was it. Titan clans of the game, such as the huge ITA network, would converge to parry off teams like 'Just4Lulz' in epic tournaments. We only managed to get the magic 5 a few times, but that was only a nice little goal to aim at; instead, we played for the matches. Survival produced some of the finest moments I've ever had in gaming. One day we'd be snatching a victory on the cliff lookout on Virtuous Vista, or getting destroyed in our fourth game in Ambush Alley. Epic Team Sneak marathons on Groznyj Grad, mad dashes to the catapults on Urban Ultimatum, defending the GA-KO down to the very last few bullets on Midtown Maelstrom. They were all priceless, and each Tuesday threw up a brand new challenge for us to overcome as Outer Heaven. Metal Gear Online is the best game ever because it's the only game to have nailed the aspect of true teamwork.

Of course, what goes up, must come down. I got stuck downloading the DLC pack due to a mixup with the awful Konami ID system. It took more than a month to fix. By the time I got back in, the clan was faltering. Slowly dropping down league tables, barely able to scrape together a team for most matches due to members drifting away. And so, on the 14th November 2008, Outer Heaven closed down.

We still keep in touch, via the PlayStation Network. Sometimes, we'll find each other playing the same game and team up online. A few times, we even went back onto MGO in the name of nostalgia. But it wasn't quite the same. One day, we said, we'd get back together. Maybe if they released an MGO2, Outer Heaven would rise once more, from the ashes, and again we'd become brothers in arms. Until that day, we're left, like luckless lovers, destined to go from fling to fling, match to match, being told we were together but never believing it. But always remembering those wonderful days.

Labels: Best Game Ever, Chris Hawke, Feature, Metal Gear Online, MGO