Everyone loves the main characters of their favourite video games. There are tons and tons of great characters and it’d be way too difficult to choose a top ten best overall. This list will not just be based on how badass they look but rather their accomplishments, how/why they did things and what they gained/lost. So here we have the top 10 most badass video game characters!

CAUTION: SPOILERS!

10. Sergeant Cortez

Hailing from the Timesplitters series, Cortez  doesn’t have much backstory. All we know is that he was in charge of an elite unit of space marines in whatever the army is called in the game story (the story doesn’t have much detail at all). When playing as him, you go through all sort of situations. You get to fight your way through a zombie infested haunted mansion, fight with the British in World War 2, fight a robot war many years in the future, fight the Aztecs from thousands of years ago as well as more timeline events. He usually finds a little sidekick from each timeline but he rarely needs their help.

9. Elliot Salem and Tyson Rios

These are two people, but they’re based from the game Army of Two and even if I wanted to, I couldn’t decide which one was more badass. For starters their armour/masks/weapons are fully customisable and you can place metal plate shields on top of your weapons!

These two do pretty much what it says on the tin, they’re an army of two. During the game you take down a huge amount of enemies with whatever weapons you choose, you look completely badass by doing so too.

8. Big Daddy

Anyone who has played the Bioshock games will not be able to say they didn’t crap their pants when this thing first appeared. At first the game has a perfect balance between beauty, story and great enemies, and then you find one of these. The sounds it makes is terrifying, as is the drill and the face. Click here to see the first encounter.

7. Lu Bu

The king of the Dynasty Warriors series, Lu Bu was unlocked in Dynasty Warriors 3 by killing 1000 enemies in a single game, on a hard setting. He’s always been one of the toughest warriors to get but his power is unequalled. If he was in battle, you’d pretty much stay away from him until you’ve wiped out all other forces so you can get him on his own.

His weapons/armour themselves are just badass as hell, he looks the part and definitely fits the description of a badass character.

6. Trainer Red

My surprise of this list, from the Pokemon games, Trainer Red is the character you play as during the Pokemon Red/Blue/Fire Red/Leaf Green games. He’s completely silent in game, besides a few yes/no answers and shopping. No one knows anything about his father but his mother stayed at home while he went out into the world.

He took down an entire mass criminal organisation by himself, he pummels his rival every time he faces him (in most games your rival pummels you), he’s the first Pokemon master ever and he’s the ultimate Pokemon trainer.

5. Duke Nukem

From his own game series, the Duke Nukem games were made popular by the fact that it provided young men with a mixture of what they love best in video games. First there was humour, Duke Nukem would run around blowing the heads off of Pig Cops shouting “Mmm bacon bits” but it’s the fact that wherever he goes, destruction follows. He smokes cigars, which is always badass, same story with the sunglasses.

4. Dragonborn

The playable character in The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, technically the Dragonborn isn’t one person, every player makes a different Dragonborn but the story is essentially the same. In Skyrim, a powerful dragon starts resurrecting previously dead dragons and this leads to a major crisis of dragons pretty much destroying the land. After surviving a dragon attack on a city, wearing nothing but rags and having your hands tied, you got out into the world.

Dragonborn goes on to slay hundreds of dragons, undead, bandits, soldiers, wild animals etc and by the end he completely re-shapes an entire country just by his deeds. He time travels, visits other realms and meets/fights gods. He can also control everything around him just by speaking. Speaks for itself really.

3. Lich King

An entire World of Warcraft expansion was dedicated to this SOB. He controls an army of undead called the Scourge, I know this sounds slightly cliche but these undead are more than your mere skeletons. He has control over dragons, huge abominations and an entire continent called Northrend.

His sword is awesomely called Frostmourne and is one of the most sought after items in the game. His boss fight is one of the best (and longest) in any video game, that’s if you can get past his legions first.

2. Nathan Hale

From the first two Resistance games, Nathan Hale has everything in his badass locker. Based around an alternate to World War 2, the theme of the game is that the Russians were digging/experimenting and eventually they released some alien/zombie type virus type thing. These enemies were called Chimera and they completely dominated Europe, only England was left and the Americans sent over thousands of troops to help secure it.

You go on to fight a few battles as a normal soldier until all of your allies are eliminated by the virus and taken to a Chimera base to be turned into their zombie/alien things. Nathan actually bonds with the virus though, and it makes him stronger. Through that he proceeds to go around England blowing up Chimera bases and slaughtering thousands of enemies. He has some help from allies but it was mostly all to him. He saves England-ish but the Chimera return after he leaves and demolishes it.

Soon after, the events of Resistance 2 begin which is pretty much the same besides it’s based in America. At the end, the virus overcomes Hale and he turns into a Chimera, but is killed soon after. He pretty much delayed the destruction of the Earth by himself.

1. Master Chief

From the Halo series, Master Chief is the perfect example of a good soldier. Nathan Hale managed to delay the destruction of Earth but Master Chief has managed to prevent the extinction of colonies of humans over multiple planets. He fought in a war between the Humans and the Covenant (an army of mixed aliens) and after the Humans won (basically just by Chief’s abilities) there was a zombie type virus called the Flood that basically reanimated hundreds of thousands of corpses and attacked the covenant/humans alike. He killed most of those too.

He’s a man of few words, not really saying anything unless completely necessary, but it really goes with his character. Sierra 117 is the last known Spartan alive and for good reason.

If I’ve missed your favourite character out them I’m sorry but I’ve not played every video game and I did do a lot of research but some characters (such as Altair or the dude from Devil May Cry) would take a huge amount of time to research.

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