10 Video Game Protagonists That Actually Kinda Suck

Is this list self-indulgent? Probably, but try not to think about it THAT way. Instead think of it as my take on the heroes of video game lore...or rather, my attempt to bring them down several pegs.

I'm going to try to ignore the games of their origin, and instead judge them on their depth of character, and just how likeable a protagonist they actually are. Why? Because I'm a hyper-literate smug bastard, that's why!

And of course, how can one truly enjoy a video game, how can one truly be sucked into the gameplay, when deep down you know that you're furthering the goals of a complete peckerhead?

So now, enjoy this list of:

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10 Video Game Protagonists That Actually Kinda Suck

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10. Non-Classic, Non-X Megamans (Or is it Megamen?)

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I can pinpoint the exact moment the Megaman franchise started to go downhill. It was when they at Capcom forgot who made the series great.

IE: MEGAMAN.

Sure there were others with the iconic name slapped across their grill, but most gamers have seen them for what they are...mere shadows of the blue bomber's former greatness. (With the possible exception of X...Until the 5th game, that is.)

Sometimes he's in a computer program, sometimes he's working alongside some forgettable humans to fight some other humans, sometimes he's red and not even NAMED Megaman!? (Screw Zero. Really. He sucks.) But your not playing a Megaman game if you're not the blue bomber we all know and love, and some whining emo swordsman with long blonde hair. (The character yaoi fans WANT him to be.)

Thank goodness for Megaman 9. If the future of the series had to be that Star Force bullshit I would have sworn the series off forever.

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9. Post-Genesis Sonic The Hedgehog

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Wow. What happened to you, Sonic? Back when you were a 2d platformer you were classic. The jump to the 3rd dimension clearly was unkind to you.

You had a voice now, so we could hear you spout annoying catchphrase after annoying catchphrase after annoying catchphrase (I know they did it on the old Sonic cartoons, but that had a deliberately cartoony feel to it, so it was at least good to laugh at, unlike the ridiculous forced realism of the current games.) with some of the worst voice acting this side of Deus Ex... (Jason Griffith, Ryan Drummond. It doesn't matter who you like, I think they're BOTH awful.)

You forgot that you weren't living in the 1990’s now, and thus didn't realize that doing "Extreme" stuff like grinding on rails without a skateboard and going hoverboard racing didn't make you look cool, it made you look like an extremely low-rent Marty McFly...

But most of all, it's the fact that you've somehow managed to reach your head over and shove your own head up your ass, (Which I imagine is quite painful for a hedgehog.) and reach the conclusion that the thing your series needs most is DRAMA. That's right...drama. Brooding, ennui, and agonizingly maudlin drama.

In a game about anthropomorphic animals fighting robots?? I think NOT.

And y'know what? Y'might as well throw Shadow The Hedgehog in too, because they're for all intents and purposes the EXACT SAME BEING.

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8. Claude (Grand Theft Auto 3)

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The Grand Theft Auto series is by no means a series full of likeable characters. Pretty much all it's good for is the blowing off of steam in ways you'd probably be shot at for trying to do in real life, I'll give you that, but let me elaborate. I was a huge fan of the series for the first two games, when it was 2.5D, top-down view, and there wasn't any semblance of a storyline in sight.

Then next-gen graphics came along and had to screw it all up for me. I am in no way saying that Grand Theft Auto 3 and its’ followers are bad games, I just don't like them. Part of why I don't like them any more is the way that many of the characters have been humanized as a result of the focus on realism.

The first two GTAs were about the petty indulgence of grand-scale destruction, but since the sudden focus on characters and realism that came with the latest few GTAs, a lot of people still have yet to realize that all the protagonists of GTA3 forward are complete assholes. That kinda makes it all the more hard (For me at least.) to go around killing people for no reason.

So which protagonist makes the list? Initially it was a toss-up between the eternally mute Claude of GTA3, or Tommy Vercetti, the smug looking mafia dickhead of Vice City. In the end I went with Claude, who apart from never talking, also has no past apart from committing terrible acts upon innocent people.

So he's an incomplete asshole of a character? That's the impression I'M getting.

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7. Master Chief (Halo series)

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So let me see if I understand this completely...

Zero-to-no backstory, loved and admired by all of his allies, feared and detested by all of his enemies, has never lost a battle, shows no fear, and a complete lack of real character.

Sounds less like a video game protagonist to me, and more like a really bad Mary Sue fan-character.

Bungie has claimed that his lack-of-attributes-in-general are for the purpose of making it so the player can really feel like they're Master Chief.

Call it what you want. Personally, I call it a shoddy excuse to release a character they weren't done developing.

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6. Johnny Cage (Mortal Kombat)

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What a sorry excuse for comic relief, he was.

Everything about Johnny Cage just keeps adding up to an extremely unlikable character. He’s a smug and vain movie star, he has pretty much no character history, he is supposed to be a comedic character when he does nothing funny, he’s based off Jean Claude Van Damme, but most of all, he is easily one of the more ineffectively useless character in the games.

I suppose somehow he COULD have been an interesting character, but as it is Midway pretty much just made him a vapid pretty-boy celebrity who just HAPPENED to have martial arts, making him the only primary main character to have absolutely no interesting traits to his name.

And don’t try to tell me about that nut-crack attack of his. He still sucks.

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5. Cyclops (Countless X-Men games)

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Noone can contest that his motives are pure. He's a hero in every sense of the term, but generally people dislike Cyclops in video games for the same reason they dislike him in the X-Men comic book series, the cartoons, the movies, the novels, and pretty much every facet of X-Men lore; because he's a stone cold douche.

Whenever there's a plan, he's always the one enforcing it, whenever someone strays from the plan to do some good, he scolds them for not sticking to HIS awesome plan, and he pretty much just reminds everyone of that jocular dick you knew in high school, who had the perfect frame, lantern-like jaw, hot redhead at his side, and absolutely no personality to his name.

As if that wasn't enough, he has some really dicky moves in the fighting games too. Capcom's X-Men fighting games were excruciatingly fun, I think everyone can agree, but holy guacamole is Cyclops ever a cheap character in the game. His optic blast will damn near ALWAYS stop an opponent in mid-air, and I swear the super-art version of it takes up the whole freaking screen.

He may have been slightly less cheap than Cable in terms of moves, but at least Cable was kinda cool. Cyclops? Not a chance.

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4. Marcus Fenix (Gears of War)

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Okay. Let's just go through the different elements that make up this character...

Is our protagonist in question...

- Battle-hardened?
- Have a shady past?
- Having been betrayed by some bloke?
- Impossibly muscly?
- Having a voice that sounds like his lungs were shredded with sandpaper?
- Grizzled?
- Lacking a personality?
- Wearing a suit of armor big enough to colonize the inside of?

Answer? An emphatic YES!

Congratulations! You just created a faceless, interchangeable archetype that can be applied to ANY goddamn FPS EVER!

And as long as were at it...Do you think that MAYBE, just MAYBE we have enough games starring freaking grizzled space soldiers?!

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3. The Prince of The Universe (Katamari Damacy)

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Everytime I mention that I don't like Katamari Damacy, people's heads turn in my direction for some reason. (Is that really so hard to believe?) Argue with me if you want about the revolutionariness (I hope that's a word) of it, and how it's like no other game, but I just don't like it any way I look at it.

Part of the reason for it is the protagonist is an enormous jerk and noone seems to realize it but me. Consider that the primary objective of this game is to roll everything up into an enormous lump - causing massive property damage and wrecking the lives of anyone around you - and turn it into a star.

I'll repeat that.

You're supposed to take everything around you can find, clutter it up into an enormous junkball, and turn it into a star. You're supposed to take all that stuff, including LIVING PEOPLE AND ANIMALS WHO DIDN'T DO NOTHIN' TO NOONE and turn it into a BURNING MASS OF ARGON, HYDROGEN, AND OTHER DEADLY GASES.

And I'll tell you right now, I don't CARE if the sky needs stars and stuff to please the King of the Universe, (Who is a complete FREAK, let me tell you.) he broke the damn sky in the first place. Let HIM fix it. Leave Earth out of it.

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2. Cloud Strife / Squall Leonhart (TIE)

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From a literary standpoint, in order for a protagonist to work, the reader needs to sympathize with them. They need to LIKE them. While the Final Fantasy series has been known for its assortment of characters with backstories out the wazoo, I gotta wonder just what mindset Squaresoft was in when they developed the main characters for Final Fantasies 7 and 8.

Cloud Strife may be a favorite among video game fans, and I by no means hate FF7, (The first FF I ever played…though personally FF6 reigns supreme in my mind.) but looking back I realize the main character was really REALLY annoying. He’s supposed to be the hero, but he experiences depression with every breath of air, manages to help the main villain THREE TIMES because he’s “being influenced by him” or something…all in all there really isn’t a moment where he’s just staring at the camera and screaming “PITY ME!!!”

But apparently he was just emo and thus popular enough to spawn a sequel, in the form of Squall Leonhart, (The last FF I ever played…which was the one where I finally caught on that they all share the same story.) who was even more depressive, more emotionally empty, and even more annoying.

Hell, their sad nature is even hinted at in their names. (Strife, and Squall)

That really shoulda been a give-away, I think.

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1. Superman (Countless Superman games)

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Do I NEED to elaborate?

The man may be an icon of American culture, and a comic book legend, but in the world of video games he’s public enemy #1. Can any other conclusion really be reached, when his track record includes “games(?)” like Superman on the NES, Superman on the Sega Genesis, Superman 64…hell, pick any system. Chances are good that Superman has a crappy game on it.

But I’m not here to talk about the games, necessarily. I’m here to talk about the CHARACTER.

That is to say the LACK of character. Superman may have been history’s first superhero, and he may be an American icon, but if you take all that away what do you have left? Not much, especially if you look at some of the Superman comics from the 50s or the 60s, where pretty much everything about them was either stupid or stupider. (There’s an issue where Superman walks upside down and noone else does, but Jimmy Olsen’s the only one that notices. What the hell?)

The point I’m trying to stress here is that Superman’s comic book self often is translated over to video games PERFECTLY…for the worse.

Oh, yeah. And he’s a colossal dick. (http://superdickery.com)

Sorry, Superman, but your time’s pretty much up. Come back when we need a personification of America to go kick some country’s ass in a war like during the 40s. Until then, stay the crap out of our video games.

Batman’s more awesome anyhow.

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As I say with all the lists I make, whether you agree with me or not: It's best not to take this too seriously.

I'm only keedeeng, after all. :D