In games, as in life, alcohol is seldom the best approach to overcome any given problem. Whether it’s saving a Princess, catching a serial killer or saving the galaxy, most successful missions are achieved with a combination of bravery, heroism and, crucially, sobriety. Not all games characters seem to know this however. Here’s five of the most debauched, drunken videogame inebriates:
5. Grayson Hunt of Bulletstorm
Many of the characters on this list see the results of their drinking cause them problems, but few are as bad as Grayson Hunt. Grayson’s desire for revenge saw him sacrifice the lives of almost all of his crew, and allowed his friend Ishi Sato to be so gravely injured that he was transformed into a cyborg warrior, and also the most irritating game character in recent memory. This whining cry baby went on for the next 8-10 hours complaining about broken promises, dishonour and how much he loved make-up and shopping (probably). Other characters on the list may have lost loved ones or sacrificed innocents through drink, but no one else created a robotic moaning-machine as bad as Ishi. You suck Grayson.
4. Conker of Conker’s Bad Fur Day
Nut juice may sound like a euphimism for semen (probably intentionally), but Conker drinks that stuff down like an Irishman in a country where whisky costs less than diamonds (anywhere but Ireland). When the game was remade as a movie years later with an all-human cast (The Hangover) the dark ending and many of the events of the main storyline were changed. In Bad Fur Day, Conker gets so drunk that he wakes up in an entirely different world and has to go on a long mission to return home. Along the way he finds love, money and fame, and loses it all. Its his greed rather than his drinking that is his downfall, but it was the drinking that got him into trouble in the first place, and in the end he has nothing left to do but drown his sorrows once again in a lonely nut bar (no, not one of these).
So what’s the moral of the story then? Its this: Drinking will take you to new worlds where you’ll find love and everything else you seek, and after you’ve lost everything it will cheer you up in the way that only a depressant can.
3. Niko Bellic of GTA4
How many alcoholics fail to kick their habit because of a peer group that considers drinking as essential to life as breathing? If you meet all your new friends at alcoholics anonymous, how many good influences will you have? This is the kind of problem Niko Bellic has. He may be trying to quit his drinking (or bowling, or darts) habit, but he simply can’t get away from bad influences. Every two seconds his phone rings with another national stereotype asking to be entertained like a bored 5 year old. “Niko, lets go bowling”, “Niko, when are we going out again?”, “Niko, can you kill a dude for me?”, “Niko, lets play pool”, “Niko, I want a sandwich”. Leave! Me! Alone!
2. Commander Shepherd of Mass Effect 2
There’s a point that I realised that Mass Effect 2 was my favourite game of all time. It wasn’t when I defeated the Reapers or fully upgraded my character or resolved Jacob’s daddy issues. No, it was when I became an spacefaring playboy. By the time I had completed all of the DLC as the evil shepherd I had achieved intergalactic pimp-dom. I had a bar on board the Normandy to get wasted, a hot navigator to flirt with and feed my fish (in ME3 Kelly will be mine, oh yes, she will be mine), a bionic, psionic, virtual Yvonne Strahovski (mmmmmmmmMiranda) and a bald nympho for dirty space nookie (I got Jacked).
Of course before I had the space mini-bar (which I don’t have to pay for, I’m the Commander bitch!) I had to drink in seedy space ports. Many of them were hives of scum and villainy…but at least they didn’t serve synthohol!
1. Chuck of Dead Rising 2
Imagine you lived in a world where you had discrete, quantifiable life bar units. If you fell too far or got hit by a car you would see these life bar units decrease as you approached death. I’m guessing this would make us look at life in a completely different way. Maybe we would be more reckless (I’ll jump off this building, I’ve got 6 health units left!) or maybe we would be more careful (I’m not coming in to work today, I’ve only got three health units left and I’m fresh out of med kits). Either way, we would instantly reach for whatever increased our health units the second they were less than full.
Imagine the plight of poor Chuck then. His health units are restored more fully by alcohol than almost anything else. Obviously he is tempted to drink nothing but beer and whisky. In the world of Dead Rising though, drinking has many of the same side effects as in the real world. Vomiting, falling over and generally being a bit worse at everything applies to drunks in Dead Rising just like in real life. Whine surrounded by brain eating zombies though, its hard to enjoy the benefits of alcohol: increased attractiveness to your own reflection and stupidly overconfident judgements of your ability to score with hot women. For Chuck, being drunk involves much less enjoyable side effects – like being slashed by maniacal, bullet resistant bosses and chewed up by bemused zombie-gamblers covered in his own vomit.