Video games come and go but some characters that feature in them stick in the memory for one reason or another. Some stick in memory because they are just so metal they make James Hetfield look like a concert violinist and these are five of the most metal characters of all time.
5 Eddie – Legacy of the Beast
This is a bit of a cheat seeing as Eddie was gracing Iron Maiden’s album covers long before he was ever a character in a video game. This doesn’t make him any less a valid choice for this list though. In Legacy of the Beast he adopts a great many guises but he starts out wearing jeans and a leather jacket and smashing enemies with a nasty array of chains Ghost Rider-style.
Well before he saw himself split into the many different personas found in Legacy of the Beast he was the star of another video game called Ed Hunter that appeared as part of the Iron Maiden greatest hits album that celebrated the return of Adrian Smith and Bruce Dickinson to the line-up in 1999. The game saw him battling their way through a load of levels themed around Iron Maiden’s back catalogue of amazing album covers.
4 Solid Snake – The Metal Gear Series
Solid Snake has cemented his reputation as one tough son of a gun over the 17 years since he first arrived in Metal Gear Solid. Inspired by the equally tough Snake Plisken, Solid Snake sneaks around top secret installations with a mullet, bandana and a permanently lit cigarette taking down dumbfounded guards, genetically-modified super-soldiers and massive mechanoid tanks armed with nuclear weapons with equal ease and finesse.
All of this qualifies him for status on the list as one of the most metal game characters of all time. Even when stricken with accelerated ageing i.e. Metal Gear Solid IV, he still manages to kick ass with the best of them and that makes him a legend in anyone’s book.
3 Doom Marine – The Doom Series
The Doom Marine is the original silent video game character but his myriad of bloody achievements make him as metal as they come. Time and again he has cut a violent and gory swathe through the minions of hell sending them packing and making Mars and Earth safe once more for scientists to continue their ill-advised experiments that seem to shatter the barriers between this world and hell. He does it with a combination of fearsome weaponry and the kind of grit and swagger only exhibited by the heaviest of metal bands.
He also does it with some pretty hefty metal riffage playing in the background, placing him amazingly highly on the list of the most metal game characters ever. Not bad for a man with no name.
2 The Darkness – The Darkness Series
To be number two on this list you’d need some pretty impressive credentials and the Darkness has a pretty envious set. He’s an immortal evil symbiote that possesses select individuals throughout the course of history to feed on an endless carousel of murdered souls. The Darkness imbues his chosen human with some extremely dangerous powers including tentacle attacks that can split a man in two and tear their hearts out in seconds.
In the game he possesses a young mob boss by the name of Jackie Estacado before embarking on two game’s worth of bloody retribution for the murder of Jackie’s beloved girlfriend.
This alone makes the Darkness more metal than a Carcass album but the Darkness also just happens to be voiced by Faith No More’s frontman Mike Patton. What’s more metal than that?
1 Metal Mario
What indeed could top a demonic symbiote voiced by Mike Patton you ask? Metal Mario can. Now Nintendo’s long-time mascot and mushroom mashing plumber may not strike you as particularly metal in his traditional red dungarees but in one of his newer guises as Metal Mario he trumps everyone else. The reason is simple. He’s made of metal. Metal! That’s about as metal as you can get.
He puts it to good use as well to beat off the competition in Mario Kart 7 and 8 crush enemies in Super Smash Bros Melee.
Have we forgotten anyone? Give us your thoughts in the comments section below.