"All Time Greatest Video Game Hero" at Gamespot - Link vs. Gordon
- Thread starter BillNyeTheColonelGuy
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Stop being an anti-nintendo fanboy. A great portion of Nintendo fans are those that grew up with the NES and SNES and are thus much older then 7-8. The wii != All of Nintendo.[/anger]
I really don' think Gordon should win. He's not really a character, he's an empty shell that the player projects their personality onto. He's more of just an alias that the player gets in Halflife. I think the personality is necessary to a great character/to be a hero and Gordon lacks one.
I really don' think Gordon should win. He's not really a character, he's an empty shell that the player projects their personality onto. He's more of just an alias that the player gets in Halflife. I think the personality is necessary to a great character/to be a hero and Gordon lacks one.
I voted for link because 90% of his games are awesome, now I have only played halflife 2 way back on xbox, but I didnt think it was all that great
It should be Duke Nukem versus Gordon Goddamn Freeman, but as Duke failed me, Gordon has to win with that girly pijama-wearing Pointy Ear. Dayuum, this would have been such an interesting contest.
He came to kick ass and gravity gun, and he's all out of ass.Fluffles said:
There is a good chance it will be Mario or Link. I've met several people who don't even know what Half-Life is (the poor fools) and there are a lot of Nintendo fans. I'm a fan as well. But even I believe Gordon should win.
The problem I have is you don't have many "Hero's" in video games. Sure, you have main characters, usually controlled by the player who face down impossible odds and yet somehow still manage to prevail, but that's not quite the same thing. Generally, in a video agme there is a certain inevitability to the engagement. The latest red faction demonstrates this marvelously - in spite of the obvious advantage in manpower and equipment, the EDF is clearly doomed to fail from the outset thanks to the inclusion of the player. Inevitably, mario, samus and link all fall prey to this exact problem - from the beginning you know with utter certainty that not only will they resolve the immediate threat, they will handily solve the entire dilemma and even neatly wrap the package on the way out. They are, in a word, super heroes, individuals who by their very nature tend to be the opposite of heroic. It takes no courage for Superman to foil a robbery - as he literally has nothing at stake but the brief time it takes to accomplish the task.
Gordon, while being the weakest character in the group (his characterization literally consists of "an early 30's man with a goatee and glasses, wearing a power armor analog who has but has never demonstrated a proficiency with advanced physics and mathematics" - everything else is the player's own creation), is the only one who strikes me as heroic. In the final accounting, he is not terribly well equipped to resolve the problems with any proficiency. His armor provides an edge, but in the end it's not much of one. His rudiemntary firearms training has been honed to perfection by a recent lifetime of firefights and near death experiences. But, at the end of it all, he is simply human. Gifted with neither the blessings of fate (like link) or with hyper advanced alien technology (like samus) nor any mystical abilitys to produce fire, change size or jump to astounding height (like mario), Gordon has been from the first game simply in over his head.
In the first game, halting the alien invasion was hardly a goal at all for the first 20 hours of the game - simply surviving was victory enough. Yet, when faced with the inevitable choice of continuing a desperate bid for escape or pursue a plan with so little hope for success that one could call it a fools hope, Gordon (or that is, the player) opts instead to plunge deep into the very heart of the nightmare. Samus does this because that is her job, link takes on the same challenges because that is his very purpose for existance and mario does this because that's how the mushroom kingdom works.
In the second game, the player is thurst into a world overrun by aliens resisted only by a fractured, weak movement who have no real hope of success. For the resistance in Half-Life 2 the only victory lay in dying a free man or woman. Yet, even when Gordon's arrival is heralded as nothing less than the second coming, when the entire world expects you to somehow play as savior to the universe you as a player are acting on the ineffable whims of an entity who doesn't even have a name. When you first step foot into the city, you, like the rest of humanity, likely see no course for victory and instead simply find yourself fighting with every ounce of power you possess to take another step forward. That we are not blessed with the certain forknowledge (and one cannot assume gordon is either) that victory will come in time makes the very act of defiance in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds heroic in and of itself.
Is gordon the best example of a hero in history - certainly not, but he's certainly among the best that video games have ever produced. By giving us an everyman for whom survival itself, let alone victory is uncertain, every act in the story becomes heroic. Heroism is, afterall, nothing more than chosing to continue on when hope is lost.
Gordon, while being the weakest character in the group (his characterization literally consists of "an early 30's man with a goatee and glasses, wearing a power armor analog who has but has never demonstrated a proficiency with advanced physics and mathematics" - everything else is the player's own creation), is the only one who strikes me as heroic. In the final accounting, he is not terribly well equipped to resolve the problems with any proficiency. His armor provides an edge, but in the end it's not much of one. His rudiemntary firearms training has been honed to perfection by a recent lifetime of firefights and near death experiences. But, at the end of it all, he is simply human. Gifted with neither the blessings of fate (like link) or with hyper advanced alien technology (like samus) nor any mystical abilitys to produce fire, change size or jump to astounding height (like mario), Gordon has been from the first game simply in over his head.
In the first game, halting the alien invasion was hardly a goal at all for the first 20 hours of the game - simply surviving was victory enough. Yet, when faced with the inevitable choice of continuing a desperate bid for escape or pursue a plan with so little hope for success that one could call it a fools hope, Gordon (or that is, the player) opts instead to plunge deep into the very heart of the nightmare. Samus does this because that is her job, link takes on the same challenges because that is his very purpose for existance and mario does this because that's how the mushroom kingdom works.
In the second game, the player is thurst into a world overrun by aliens resisted only by a fractured, weak movement who have no real hope of success. For the resistance in Half-Life 2 the only victory lay in dying a free man or woman. Yet, even when Gordon's arrival is heralded as nothing less than the second coming, when the entire world expects you to somehow play as savior to the universe you as a player are acting on the ineffable whims of an entity who doesn't even have a name. When you first step foot into the city, you, like the rest of humanity, likely see no course for victory and instead simply find yourself fighting with every ounce of power you possess to take another step forward. That we are not blessed with the certain forknowledge (and one cannot assume gordon is either) that victory will come in time makes the very act of defiance in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds heroic in and of itself.
Is gordon the best example of a hero in history - certainly not, but he's certainly among the best that video games have ever produced. By giving us an everyman for whom survival itself, let alone victory is uncertain, every act in the story becomes heroic. Heroism is, afterall, nothing more than chosing to continue on when hope is lost.
God the Gordon vs. Link is close. I voted Gordon (Zelda hasn't really appealed to me that much, probably because I never played ocarina of time[cries]). I hope the voiceless protagonist triumphs, but even if he beats Link, there is almost no chance of beating Mario.
Or could it be that there are some of us who find no idol worship for a guy with glasses from a first person shooter, which some of us believe is the bane of all things good gaming, and have for evidence the Halo franchise, Turok, FEAR, Haze, Call of Duty, Fallout, and every other FPS clogging up the market making it almost impossible to find a good game that is not.BillNyeTheColonelGuy said:
In short: Fuck your Gorden Brimley.
Please don't bring what is essentially their gigantic versus thread here. Your post started out nicely enough, but then it just seemed to turn into advertising (by you attempting to get votes for Gordon), as well as Zelda-bashing. I discourage this in the future.
How is it so close, 49.9% and 50.1% (Link's winning)? Seriously I thought this would be a total landslide victory, when the fuck did Gordon Freeman become so popular, I knew he was but to beat Link in a contest like this?
No, instead he repeatedly gets godlike powers and kills a half-demonic king.Ph0t0n1c Ph34r said:
Then put magical spells and fairies in bottles versus lightly armoured Hazardous Environment suit.BillNyeTheColonelGuy said:
Regardless, I'd say Link will win, since there aren't as many Half-Life fans as there are Zelda fans. Plus, Zelda games are timeless classics. Half-Life 1 isn't, though 2 is a masterpiece.
"Well, excuuuuse, me, princess." Now, if that hasn't ruined your interpretation of Link, you didn't get the reference. Or maybe someone else already posted it. I only read through the first page.
Either way, Gordon is a true hero. While Link is going around, saving one princess from two or three clones of a wizard; he's out saving the entire human race from an oppressive government, and aliens ready to eat your face, all while keeping the torment locked up inside so he can appear as a leader to those who still have hope. The horrors that man has lived through excuse his silence.
Unfortunately, as we speak the Freeman is down 49.9% to 50.1%. This does not bode well, though it could still turn around. Here's hoping.
Either way, Gordon is a true hero. While Link is going around, saving one princess from two or three clones of a wizard; he's out saving the entire human race from an oppressive government, and aliens ready to eat your face, all while keeping the torment locked up inside so he can appear as a leader to those who still have hope. The horrors that man has lived through excuse his silence.
Unfortunately, as we speak the Freeman is down 49.9% to 50.1%. This does not bode well, though it could still turn around. Here's hoping.