• 30Oct 09

  Top 9 Video Game Supporting Characters

  I have seen plenty of countdowns of best video game characters, so I am going to try it with a bit of a twist. I am only going to include supporting characters, non-protagonists. This means that no character in this countdown is the protagonist of ANY game, and they are not the main antagonist in any game. This disqualifies characters like Sephiroth, Tidus and Travis Touchdown. These are the support characters that I deem the best. Why did I choose 9? BECAUSE THATS HOW I WANT IT! So, A good supporting character can completely change a game, so it is about time they get their due, right.

  9. Roger Bacon

  

  Shadow Hearts Series- Roger Bacon

  I can't really write too much about him other than he is a magician. Anything more would spoil too much of the series since he plays an integral role in each of the games. The series was always more about the atmosphere than the characters, but the recurring Roger Bacon became a driving force for the entire series and earned a spot.

  8. Albert Steiner

  

  What does a dutiful knight with heavy armor, a giant sword, and too much eyeliner equal? That's right Albert Steiner. He is the stereotypical knight in shining armor, in the sense that he feels that he constantly needs to save Dagger. His bumbling antics provide some comic relief and his tension with the protagonist, Zidane is what causes many of the games problems to begin with. His loyalty and devotion are suitable for his knight in shining armor look, but he is actually an insecure, confused character that has a surprising depth.

  7. Aeris

  

  Final Fantasy VII universe- Aeris

  Let's start off with the fact that I think FF VII could possibly be the most over rated game ever Are you done cussing me out yet? ok well you can continue with the rest of this when you are done

  With that being said, she may not have been a great character, but events that swirled around her were pretty unique for the time and inspired a new direction for video games. Her relationship? with Cloud is pretty normal for RPG's, but those of you that have actually played the game know why I included her.

  6. Sylvia Christel

  

  No More Heroes- Sylvia

  She gets Travis Touchdown into the professional assassins circuit with promised of risque favors. As she constantly belittles Travis, she still manages to keep him interested with her telephone calls, suggestive comments and her clothes/lack of clothes. She really is the driving force of the storyline, and the game wouldn't quite be the same without her. She may not have the depth of some of the other characters on the list, but shes here based on sheer entertainment value.

  5. Kid

  

  Chrono Cross- Kid

  The theories surrounding her are beyond number, but one thing is for sure, she was the best of the dozens of Chrono Cross characters. She starts out as a simple thief, but playing through the game will reveal more about her and create so many questions about the Chrono universe, multiverse? that you will want more. Unfortunately we have not been treated to another Chrono game, so the alternate universes and crazy timeline theories will have to suffice for those of us that want to know what the heck is going on.

  4. Minsc

  

  Baldur's Gate Series- Minsc

  He is the goofy miniture space hamster owner that is always "Butt kicking for goodness!" His insanity provides some excellent comic relief. He has some emotional scenes, but he makes the scene for his entertainment value.

  3. The King of All Cosmos

  

  Katamari Damacy series

  That is right, the king in all his rainbowing goodness. He is the reason that the Prince of all Cosmos is forced to roll up objects into a Katamari to create planets, stars and other heavenly bodies. He sleeps, he hits his head and gets amnesia, he accidentally destroys the universe, etc etc. The more he does to damage the galaxy, the more I get to see him attack the prince with his eye lasers and read his ridiculous statements and watch his insane videos, so I'm rooting for him to continue destroying the universe. He is the HAPPIEST character on the list.

  2 Seifer Almasy

  

  He is the bully with an inferiority complex and an exaggerated Oedipus complex. He is the perfect foil to Squall. They came from similar circumstances, but one evolved into the bully and the other into a Lonewolf. Even throughout the game they are put into similar situations and seeing the different reactions is incredibly entertaining.

  1. Auron

  

  Final Fantasy X- Auron

  You really should have seen this coming. I have a hard time describing him without spoilers, but I shall try. Auron acts as a sort of mentor to Tidus, but it goes much deeper than that. Auron always seems to know more than he lets on, and he is not afraid to take charge if needed. He really is the star of FFX and if you've beaten the game and actually thought about the game you can see that he is a great foil, metaphor and symbol.

  Well there you go, the top 9 Supporting Video Game Characters. I suppose I could've provided more analysis, but I tried to keep the spoilers to an absolute minimum.

  What do you think...

  • Posted Oct 30, 2009 8:38 am GMT
  • Category: Editorial
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• 14Oct 09

  How to Legitamitly Complain

  This is inspired by the Demon's Souls debate that rages in every article comments section and message board, even though 99% of them have nothing to do with Demon's Souls in anyway. If you live under a rock and haven't heard yet, it is a game that will make Battle Toads and Contra seem forgiving. Yes, I'm serious... I own the game.

  This game has ignited a heated debate concerning everything from the game's difficulty to its mechanics to its graphics to its story... Do you see where I'm going with this?

  Before you read on just take a minute and go look at a few pages of the user reviews for the game. You'll see 80% are 9+, 15% are 3- and the rest will be in between. How can one game cause such debate and different review scores? I'll preface this by saying that the game is amazing and if you haven't played it for more than 4 hours online because that is when the real game begins, then you should withhold any opinion about this game. If you rent it, play it online and don't like it, then at least you kept an open mind and now you know. Anyway...

  The first thing mentioned is always the difficulty. I think I understand what is so polarizing about this. The first reason is simply a generation gap amongst gamers. I'm 20, so I remember picking up NES and SNES games and playing a level 10 times and still failing. Games in this generation are simply easier. Halo 3, O NO I JUST GOT MY SHIELD DRAIN NOW I'M GOING TO DIE!!!! o wait.. I can hide for 10 seconds and now I'm not going to die anymore. For us older, I use the term in a relative sense, gamers we are not fazed by death and having to redo the games. This is pretty much unheard of now. I think that if implemented well either system can make a fun game, but apparently there is a segment of gamers that hate the fact that I am even claiming this. Just go to an article about Dragon Age. It doesn't matter which one. They all have a section of comments where one person says Demon's Souls sucks and some people gang up on them saying it is amazing.

  The difficulty is at least a valid argument. I mean some people really do not want to have to replay a level 10+ times and I understand that, but many of the haters of this game say that the graphics are like a PS2 game and the physics are terrible. This I don't understand. Take a look at videos of Oblivion and Demon's Souls on the PS3. It is pretty comparable. I give the edge to Demon's souls. When you kick something in Oblivion sometimes it goes flying, sometimes it levitates, sometimes it just doesn't react. Why then is it the ultimate evil of all time that in Demon's Souls when you kick a dead body it doesn't react 100% realistically. It seems that just because they do not enjoy the gameplay (valid) they need to create reasons to bash the game (invalid).

  The second weird argument I've seen a lot of is just as strange. The people that clearly have not played online and then complain about traps only being detectable when you die from them are also running rampant. The box specifically says that the Internet is required to play the game as intended. The online is not fluff, it is an integral part of the game that fundamentally changes how the game is played. This is like complaining about WOW without actually joining a party of fellow gamers or playing guitar hero without the guitar and then saying it sucks.

  I guess my point is just that if your going to complain about something you need to do a few things first.

  1. Make sure you are playing the game with all of its features activated.

  2. Limit your criticisms to real issues. Don't knock the graphics when you are mad about the game play mechanics.

  3. Don't take the argument to a place that has nothing to do with the game.

  4. Understand the difference between when a game is bad, and when you just don't like a game. Yes there is a difference. Example, I do not particularly like Gears of War. It is a game that I can see why others would like it, but I simply do not have fun while I play the game. Is it so hard to realize that sometimes you just don't like a game that is good?

  Well, this ended up completely different from what I originally intended. I wanted an intelligent editorial about what makes games polarizing, but this is what ended up appearing. Oh Well maybe next time, it isn't the first time I've failed on the first try.

  • Posted Oct 14, 2009 10:30 pm GMT
  • Category: Editorial
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• 4Aug 09

  Game AI Needs Improvement

  I love a challenge. There is nothing quite like coming out on top after a long tough game. Sometimes....

  What I mean to say is that I am sick of games that make it more difficult by giving the AI a special advantage. We all know this feeling. I'll use Civ IV as my example because I just beat a game on Immortal difficulty and it got me thinking about games. In Civ IV there are a bunch of difficulties, 10 I think. This is great because people of all different skill levels can have fun with the game and be challenged. The problem that I have is that instead of having theintelligence of the AI change with the difficulty level, either the player or the computer opponents get advantages. For example, on the toughest difficulty, deity, the AI starts with 2 settlers and 2 works whereas the player starts with one settler. For those of you that have never played this game, it would be like playing backyard football with you and 9 friends. You and Joe are captains, but Joe gets the first, second, third, fifth and sixth picks while you get the seventh and eigth picks. It just isn't fair. On top of this, the computer progresses through the game twice as fast as the human player. Despite all these insane advantages, people can still beat the computer players. This just shows how pathetic the games AI is. This is not only limited to Civ IV or even strategy games.

  In the campaigns of shooters how often does an opponent come up where you have to truly out play the opponent. Not very often, usually the game just sends an incredibly overpowered enemy, or a horde of enemies at you untill you blast them all away. *cough* the first Halo *cough*

  Or how about RPG's? How often do you come across a boss that you can't beat just by simply power-leveling. Trust me, I love RPG's, but I would like it a lot more if you could solve everything by power-leveling.

  What about sports games? In Madden you can be up by 14 points and your running back with speed rating 92 will be caught by a linebacker with speed rating 85, just to make sure you don't get to far ahead.

  What is wrong with just making the AI better? Maybe technology isn't there yet. Maybe there is not enough time for developers to make a game truly challenging, so they just give the computer players blatant advantages. I don't know what the answer is, but I do know that the number of purchases I've been making on video games has decreased steadily as games have "cheesed" more and more.

  We see more time and money spent on making better graphics or new gameplay options, but what if we took the concepts from these older games and took the effort to improve AI scripts? I would definitely pay $50 for Civ V if it had the same core game with a few tweaks but a much better AI. I know that nowadays we can play against humans, but it is still nice to be able to sit down and be challenged by the computer a little bit. Like I wrote before, I have no idea how feasible this is, but I know that it would make me much more likely to purchase a game than fancy new graphics that are slightly better in my new shooter than in the shooter that came out 6 months ago. I would also much rather have a truly challenging game rather than a game that adds a single new gameplay mechanic to a game that otherwise is a clone of the other games in its genre.

  With all this being said, progress is being made by a select few games. One RPG example is the Persona series. The unique knockdown system adds more strategy to fights. Although it is possible to beat the games by power-leveling, it is also possible to beat the game by using the correct characters at the correct times. Another RPG that avoids the power-level trap is Oblivion. In that game the monsters and bosses simply level along with the player, so it is much better to go do some side quests and get some better equipment than it is to go level up.

  Shooters have come into their own with multiplayer competition, but the end all be all in the campaign always seems to be kill devastatingly strong monster/soldier A or kill horde B. A firefight against a smart opponent that uses cover and flanking effectively would make me purchase my first shooter in a very long time.

  Overall, I would just like to see an improvement in AI. I'm sick of beating up on an idiotic AI that only stands a chance when given insane advantages. New graphics are nice, I guess, but I would much rather be challenged by an intelligent, ugly opponent than a stupid, pretty opponent.

  • Posted Aug 4, 2009 7:01 pm GMT
  • Category: Editorial
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