Okay, I can see that people seem to have problems with Shepard when it comes to his bland emotional range, but I also get the feeling that maybe most of you have only played through as a male (disregarding the fact that eighty percent of the walkthroughs on youtube seem to be female. Or maybe that's just me). I personally liked my Shepard characters, both male and female, and I'll admit that FemShep WAS better with emotions. However, come Mass Effect 2, Shepard was officially on the back burner for Mordin, who was definitely my favourite character.
Now, taking it down a little notch and going old school, I'll probably include Legend of Dragoon. Yes, it seemed to be the (somewhat dense) clone of FFVII, but it was a pretty interesting little game - if you can muscle past the fact that the dragons all look like giant bugs and the opposing race's name is "Wingly." However, as far as characters go, I must say I preferred Lavitz(and later, Albert) over Dart. Because Dart WAS Cloud's nonexistent little brother who felt that it would be "cooler" to wear red instead of black and parade around looking for his helpless girlfriend who - you guessed it - couldn't pull her own weight.
Speaking of the Final Fantasy series, it's fair to say that it's easier to like a supporting character than the main character, but instead of saying "omg so-and-so was horrible", I'll just chime in and claim that I appreciated Kain more than Cecil from IV. OOOH I'm terrible. Along those lines, Sora from Kingdom Hearts was a likable character HOWEVER I found myself liking Riku a little more. "What are you talking about? Riku was so EMO." Yes, but notice how he was emo and built character from it. Sora started out as the ideal little hero, but not much (if any) of his characterization changed. Not to mention Riku was just more of a looker.
I myself find it rather hard to like a main character more than supporting characters if the main character is female. I can't name any games off the top of my head, though, as logic naturally keeps me from PLAYING such games. This rule is hypocritically null when you can personalize your main character and it ends up being a girl, mostly because they don't turn into a Mary Sue. An example from Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, though I'll make another reference and say I preferred Carth over my character. Why? He's darn cute. Same for the second game only with Disciple (YOU MONSTER, how DARE you choose Disciple over Atton.)
Isn't hating character from Dead Island somewhat like hating character choices from Heavy Rain or Left 4 Dead? If THAT'S the case, then I'd like to make an honorable mention to Rochelle from L4D2. Stealing my kills, woman. -shakes fist with evident disapproval-
And, while I feel the compulsive need to drown you all in pointless text, I'll just include a couple more characters that I dislike, but can't find a supporting character that I like more - mostly because the character I like more is the bad guy, thus not a supporting character: Henry (Silent Hill 4), Heather (Silent Hill 3), and probably Isaac (Dead Space. Seriously. "Sure, I'll run around and do EVERYTHING while everyone else mills about pretending to be useful.")
