Console gaming has been so very good to us all in oh so many ways. The games we play matter more to us than some of the human beings that we exist alongside, because games never lie to us or move to Texas. The only downfall is that there may, in fact, be too many games to play, and while Xbox, PlayStation and Nintendo battle to be the best, we the consumers are the ultimate winners.
Paying homage to the early video games and arcades is a respectful gesture, but no longer is it necessary. We’ve evolved to play games like Halo, Dark Souls, and Call of Duty with cutting edge graphics, professional writing, and top of the line game mechanics. As the consoles grow in computing power and ingenuity, the games we want to play are given an even stronger platform to thrive on.
Games like Halo were so influential to the world that the game spawned multiple sequels, at least two spin-offs, movies, and novels. This all started as a great FPS on the new Xbox console that many may have been wary of when first released. Now, look at Xbox and all their glory. So we thank you Xbox, for Halo. And we thank you Halo, for Xbox.
25 The Shadow Of Mordor
The mind of an Uruk is most likely a dark and filthy place. For Talion, jumping in and out of their minds must yield some pretty crazy backstories and childhoods. Speaking of, has anyone ever seen an orc child? Do they exist? As far as I remember, the only evidence available was Saruman digging dudes out of the ground in mud sacs.
Perhaps we’ve been too quick to judge, and some of the Uruks have dreams of becoming writers or video game bloggers, but Talion, Aragorn, Legolas, and Gandalf just purge all that from the cosmos as they extinguish countless Uruk lives on their journeys. All we know is that Talion merges his mind and body with the Elf-spirit and then starts toying in Uruk brains for fun. There has to be a high probability of mental instability.
24 Raiding Our Tombs
We all played the first Tomb Raider for our own specific reasons. For some of us, the visuals depicted in this comic is one of them despite the actual gameplay and story. Either that or trapping the butler in the walk-in freezer at Croft Manor.
When Angelina Jolie played Lara Croft in the Tomb Raider movie, we feel that only added to the idea that Lara was largely popular due to her ample bosom rather than her gun-toting adventure skills. In one of the Tomb Raider games, they added bounce and movement to her chest and I distinctly remember my cousin wasn’t allowed to play the game because of that. Sorry, Chris.
23 Virtual Reality Makes Me Sweat Too Much… But So Does Eating
If you ever played video games with siblings, and if you were the younger one, you often lost. Sometimes in a rage, we would make excuses for losing and even stoop to cheating. Some of us would even grow emotionally unstable and quit, otherwise known as rage-quitting.
This comic introduces the worst possible excuse for not being good at a video game. Being fat as a gamer used to be an advantage for one could rest any number of items on their bellies as they gamed. Whether it be the controller itself, a cheese plate, sandwich, or the risky bowl of cereal, being big-boned works well with gaming. But with the introduction of VR and the Wii nunchucks utilizing motion of the player, we start to sweat and be a little more active. Which is probably a good thing.
22 Slippy Will Never French Kiss His Prince
If someone were to compile all of the video game deaths that have ever occurred by every player in every game and then cross-examine those numbers with the number of times an ally NPC has been killed by the player, Slippy and Fox would take up a large chunk of that percentage. Unless, of course, you count assassinating your co-player in Halo to get more ammo or fresh health bar.
In Star Fox 64, to master any of the levels of the game, you had to have a certain number of kills and all members of the team needed to survive. For some of the more difficult levels, you’d want a fully healed team. That meant shooting them down a level beforehand to get them fresh for Venom 2. But that’s only if you’re not a noob.
21 Still Waiting For Call Of Duty: Medieval Warfare
Seriously, where is Call of Duty: Medieval Warfare? There should be a billion dollar team somewhere tooling away at their computers to make this happen. We’re ready for it, and we deserve it. Especially with all the nonsense COD games that have been released since Black Ops. It got sort of ridiculous when most people were buying the game just for updated multiplayer maps and Nazi Zombies.
When Treyarch and Infinity Ward did their little split, I only was worried about Zombies. As popular as Call of Duty multiplayer is, it often seems too simple and not as much fun as working together to kill zombies with ray guns. When they introduce the new zombie versions where the zombies wore exo-suits, as well as the alien survival campaign, we were not impressed. Aliens and fast zombies could be fun to murder by the hundreds, but it still needs to be fleshed out and as developed as some of the Zombie campaigns were in the past. Der Riese will always have a special spot in my heart.
20 This Is Just My Gaydar
Kingdom Hearts 2 is hands down one of the greatest video games of our lifetimes. To deny that is to deny all of Final Fantasy, all of Disney, and all of your basic instincts. The first game of the series introduced a fantastic idea, but it was KH2 that really changed things for the better.
That being said, the curse of JRPGs are the ridiculous outfits the characters wear. After Cloud and his crew in FF7 were well-clothed, wardrobes started to spiral out of control. Organization XII, the bad guys of the Kingdom Hearts series, went so far as to have a bunch of members dressed in cloaks with no evidence of undergarments like some sort of emo peeping tom.
19 You’re A Long Way From Hyrule Field
Dark Souls is a game famous for its intense difficulty and lack of forgiveness to player mistakes. Compare that to games like Halo and Grand Theft Auto where a player can be shot over and over and heal no problem. Dark Souls isn’t like that. Dark Souls is a bit of a puzzle game that involves the trial and error of killing your enemy.
It’s always been of interest to place various video game heroes into different games with their specific gameplay mechanics and see how they fair. Imagine Master Chief in Super Mario World, or Samus Aran fighting the Covenant on Installation 04. It would be awesome and difficult for the various heroes as well as the enemies they’d face. In this case, it looks like Link wasn’t ready for the skeletons of Dark Souls. Not even a little bit.
18 Don’t Tell Your Mother About That Guy
Who here hasn’t played a little too much Grand Theft Auto to the point where they drove around in real-life on the cusp of a rampage? Too many times, in reality, we wait at red lights, not drive up curbs, and refrain from stealing and crashing other people’s cars. But we wish we didn’t have to.
GTA 3 may have been the most controversial game while growing up, to the point where it attracted the political gaze of Hillary Clinton and her war on violence in video games. Soon that violence light was shined over at Quentin Tarantino for his films as well. But violence has existed since the first ape picked up a rock and bashed another ape’s face in for disrespecting him. So go ahead, log into GTA, steal someone’s car, kill them with said vehicle, and go do battle against the police.
17 Will There Ever Be A Great Video Game Film?
The Assassin’s Creed film had a lot wrong with it. But it’s my firm belief that if they made the film longer, there would have been more opportunity to get it right. The problem with this movie is the same thing that is wrong with past video game movies, as well as movie-inspired video games. They’re just not being developed in the new medium by the right people.
The creators of Mario, Halo, Assassin’s Creed, and Resident Evil already accomplished the feat of creating their stories and sharing it with the world. The fact that those games were so successful in their storytelling is what lead them to be attempted in the film medium. Brand recognition with an existing fanbase is a solid financial idea, but it seems like the producers get ahead of themselves and created flops rather than taking the opportunity to nurture and utilize a great idea from the world of a video game.
16 Kratos Vs. Jesus H. Christ: A Battle Of Sin
The new God Of War game coming out pits Kratos against the Norse Gods, and unfortunately, I read somewhere that this was going to be the final game in the series. Part of me thinks that is okay since it would be disappointing to watch God of War follow the same open-endedness that Assassin’s Creed has embraced.
It’d be great to watch Kratos fight the Egyptian Gods, and then maybe the Chinese Gods, but when would it end? When Kratos is fighting Jesus Christ, Cthulhu, The Flying Spaghetti Monster, and Xenu from Scientology? The Norse Gods and the Greek Gods are very popular in the western mainstream, so the most recent game makes sense and looks like it’ll be awesome. That being said, Kratos fighting other ancient gods of lesser-known civilizations could act as a fun learning tool for kids and religious history. Even though he’s killing them…
15 Things Just Got Real For All The Feels
This Uruk’s fate is the realistic fate of many video game villains. The ones lucky enough to live, at least. The same could be said about Batman’s enemies and the beatings he’s dealt out over the years. Pretty sure Batman’s code of ethics has something to do with beating his enemies into spinal cord injuries but to never kill…
Shadow Of Mordor’s nemesis system, where you developed slight relationships with Orc captains, meant you were going to fight some familiar faces. This comic takes it to a whole ’nother level and makes us feel bad for some of the Uruks we may or may not have crippled. Though most of the enemies you defeat in Shadow of Mordor get decapitated, we can’t help but think that isn’t the worst end they could receive.
14 Thanks For Showing Up, Raiden, You Jerk
Few things infuriated me more than discovering you had to play as Raiden in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons Of Liberty. What a ridiculous decision. We wanted to play as Snake. And to make it worse and completely rub it into our faces, Snake was operating in the same place as Raiden throughout the entire game in different areas. Why couldn’t we just be Snake?
Nevertheless, the development of Raiden and Snake throughout the series is a beautiful thing. The Cyborg Ninja, Gray Fox, in Metal Gear Solid was one of the coolest characters I’d ever come across in the video game realm. When Raiden became the new Cyborg Ninja Solid Snake turned into Old Snake, we had to give a round of applause. That’s just good writing and development. Also, did I mention that Solid Snake had an IQ of 180?
13 Video Game Logic Called Betrayal
It made no sense that the heroes of our video games met their end by simply jumping into water. What was the point of that? Was it because of laziness by devs, or just another way to unnecessarily kill the player? Why not just have lava everywhere instead? Lava deaths at least make sense.
In the one Halo Game, Master Chief falls FROM SPACE and lives. But for some reason there’s still fall damage and cliffs to fall off of and die. Does that make sense to you, Bungie? Yeah, we didn’t think so.
12 There’s A Bit Too Much Crying In Attack On Titan
The anime Attack On Titan became popular with its wild story and intense scenes. People getting eaten alive is an intense fear. But killing giant monsters isn’t something new to us video gamers, especially anyone who’s played Metroid, Legend of Zelda, Star Fox, Final Fantasy, God of War, and of course Shadow of the Colossus. If those people exist.
But Shadow of the Colossus was a game dedicated to killing giant monsters. Literally, the only enemies to fight in the game are the 16 colossi who range from the size of conversion vans to entire castles. Wander from Shadow of the Colossus would do well against the Titans from the anime, or he might run up to one, try to climb up its ankle and get smashed like a bug immediately…
11 Master Chief Has No Face, Only More Helmets
Cortana and Master Chief have a weird relationship. Spoilers, this weirdness is brought to light when she finally dies in the fourth game. I didn’t really care because, even though she was there with Chief through all the bad, she was sort of annoying. There was a lot of emphasis placed on her survival as a valuable AI and thousands of humans died on Cortana’s behalf. But she was, without a doubt, an expendable sidekick.
The cool thing about their weird relationship is that Master Chief was unable to connect with real human beings, and Cortana was able to overcome that. That’s probably because he’s the best of the best, as well as the last of his kind amongst the Spartan-IIs, and friends may not come easily. We can imagine that it’s difficult for Chief to develop meaningful friendships, since their constant loss is too often and too painful. With Cortana, maybe he could fake the relationship until things got too personal and he could just turn her off.
10 They Want You In There
Titanfall is one of those games that looked amazing, had an awesome concept and great gameplay, but never quite took off. After checking out this comic, it’s pretty obvious that the lack of content between a player and their Titan was a major missed opportunity.
We are all waiting on mechs… personal mechs that we can walk to school in and fight off alien monsters with. Japan seems to think that Mechs are our future, and I tend to agree that we should be funding them. But unfortunately, the sheer amount of power needed to run something like a mech isn’t currently feasible. So we’re stuck with bikes and cars and dumb stuff like that.
9 Oh, So That’s Where They Put It…
Every game has their healing items and in every game, we as players let slide the means by which we are healed. Mario eats mushrooms, Link eats the hearts of his enemies, the Dragonborn uses magic and food, and Resident Evil has its herbs. We overlook these things because when we need health, beggars can’t be choosers.
Regardless, the potted plant didn’t make much sense, because why would anyone carry around a potted plant while they’re fighting for their life? Let alone 4-5 of them. Maybe if Claire had some Ziploc baggies and uprooted the plant I’d be more of a believer. But until there’s an explanation, I’m just going to imagine these fools carrying around a bunch of weed plants indoors.
8 You’d Better Watch Yourself…
There’s a fear of medical procedures involving hypodermic needles. It might not really apply to the BioShock characters or addicts, but it certainly applies to some. And why shouldn’t it? It’s an unnatural idea, plunging a sharp metal tube small enough to fit in your arteries and veins into your skin with the hopes of injecting something inside you.
BioShock made use of this fear and turned it into a power that made the player super strong. But we can’t for one second believe that all of those needles were fresh and clean. Sharing needles was one of the first things we learned from Officer Safety and the D.A.R.E. program. You all remember the D.A.R.E. program, right? The program that showed us and taught us all about substances when we were kids and probably got us more interested in them rather than deter us from using them. You remember. Well done, government.
7 Video Game Speed Dating
Samus and Master Chief make an adorable couple. But the reality of that situation is Master Chief is into Cortana, and Samus has a love/hate relationship with Ridley that spans the galaxy. The idea of video game heroes speed dating is hilarious when you think about how much baggage and emotional damage they come with.
It’s also funny to think about what villains would be like on a speed dating circuit. Can we even imagine Bowser sitting across from a woman who is not Peach, or Ganon across from a woman who is not Zelda? Say what you will about villains, but many of them stay loyal to their loves. Plus, the idea of speed dating is super weird. Who the hell even goes to those things?
6 Oh My God… It’s YoshiZilla
Now, we know where Godzilla came from, and it’s the same thing for King Kong. Mario got his medical degree, became Dr. Mario, and reached the peak of his potential following the natural career path of hero > plumber > doctor > legend. But what they don’t tell you is that when Mario got to the top, he grew sinister and began to experiment on those he previously called friend. Thus, you have Godzilla from Yoshi, and King Kong from DK.
A bit of video game logic used against this comic is that when you ride Yoshi in Super Mario World and a mushroom power up is shown, Yoshi is the one who swallows it up, and then the power up transfers to Mario. Or Luigi… I guess. So this theory has been tested and failed.
