3: Solid Snake from the Metal Gear Solid series. Snake for me is one the greats in the video game Hall of Fame and was first introduced to us in 1998 by Hideo Kojima of Konami Studios. Back then Snake didn’t look that great, with his featureless square of a head, but that didn’t matter because you knew this was a guy not be messed with as he fought his way through an endless sea Storm Troopers, with Pac Man ghosts on their heads.
Previously an agent of the Foxhound group and a clone of the infamous Big Boss, Snake was designed to be the perfect soldier. A gun and espionage expert he was trained to be lethally efficient; traits vital to a game where (unlike many other games) a shot to the face pretty much marks your end.. suffice to say playing metal gear solid takes nerves of steal and the patience of a saint. Sneaking through a room with 4 guards whilst trying not be spotted is very tense and really gets the blood pumping.
Game play aside, you cant but not like Snake, with his huge personality flaws ( brought to life by the magnificent David Hayter) and self-destructive nature and the more the series progresses the more you learn why he is the way he is; A Psychiatrists dream who’s “issues” and consequential aging stem from the betrayal of the people closest to him, which culminates in some genuinely heart wrenching moments in Sons of the Patriots.
2 . Raziel from the Soul Reaver series will not make a lot sense to people as nowadays no one knows who he is! So I will enlighten you. Raziel was first introduced to us in ‘Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver” (1999) by Eidos. At beginning of the game you know very little about this shadowy creature, except that he was once a vampire and that he can shift between the physical and spectral plane but as the game and the series continues, you start to glean more about his long story and why he is now only a shadow of his former self. We learn that when Raziel was a vampire he was Kain’s (lord of the Vampires) most trusted lieutenant, and was the most powerful vampire besides Kain himself; Always being the first to evolve powers in the wake of Kain’s evolutions, he took to those gifts quickly; some would say quicker than Kain himself. Alas, because of Kain’s lust for power, the evolution of the Vampire race was his honour alone and anyone taking that away from him he would see destroyed in the most horrific way. Raziel’s fate was sealed when he was the first of the vampire race to evolve wings. Kain was incensed and and such was his rage that he tore the wings from Raziel’s back, ripped off his jaw and broke his fangs. After all the un-imaginable tortures he could bring to bear on Raziel, he threw him into the Netherworld to be tortured by the Old God for all eternity. (ouch!)
This is of course not the end of our heros story, but just the start. After being cast down he was gifted the Soul Reaver by the Old God and set free once more, to put an end to Kain’s reign of tyranny; It is here the Game Starts and we fist meet Raziel.
In my humble opinion you have to play Soul Reaver to really see why Raziel is an amazing character. There is such depth to his story and playing as him is a genuinely fun experience. However, I feel he has been let down by Eidos as their focuses have moved elsewhere. Without a single next generation outing, Raziel has been left to collect dust on many gamers shelves and that is a terrible shame.
