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Sunday, June 16, 2013

Top 10 Notable Video Game Dads

In honor of Father's Day we present our top 10 list of notable video game dads. As in real life some of these dads are amazing and some of them are downright deplorable, but for better or worse these 10 are some of the most memorable.

 10. Big Daddies - BioShock Series


Big Daddies aren't really dads in any normal sense however, they're not just here in name alone. Like lots of dads Big Daddies don't say much and like power tools, especially drills. They're very protective of their little girls, murdering and maiming any no good looking degenerate who gets near them inspire of the fact that the little sisters frequently emasculate them by calling them names like "Mr. Bubbles". While I think many of us don't necessarily want mechanized dads with homicidal tendencies, you have to appreciate their careful guardianship.


9. Dracula - Castlevania Symphony of the Night


Dracula obviously appears in quite a few titles in the Castlevania series, but Symphony of the Night is where you get to see his fatherly side. Unfortunately for Alucard, the main protagonist in SOTN and Dracula's son, his fatherly side is severely lacking. Dracula lets a castle full of minions attempt to kill his precious baby boy and if they don't get the job done he eventually comes after Alucard himself after he  refuses his generous offer to eradicate the entire human race alongside him.  Nothing seals a father son bond like a death duel punctuated with vampiric super powers!

 8. Cervantes - Soul Calibur series


 Cervantes is one of the worst fathers ever, basically his only acknowledgement of his child is when he's beating her or attempting to consume her soul. To be fair it's a two way street, Ivy doesn't acknowledge Cervantes as her father the majority of the time and only really comes in contact with him in order to kill him. Though even if Ivy wasn't half the problem,  Cervantes is a undead pirate who also happens to be a self-serving egomaniac who murders people and eats souls, it's a pretty safe bet he'd never be a particularly good father.

7. Big Boss- Metal Gear Series

 
It's kind of hard to blame big boss for being a crappy father when he didn't have a whole lot of say in the whole having children, or more accurately having clones process. Still though that doesn't really excuse the crap he's put his "children" through. Poor Solid Snake in particular has a lot of experience in both dodging his fathers bullets and cleaning up his messes and his "brothers" have a nasty tendency to turn  up dead. Honestly Big Boss is a pretty cool guy, but not one you'd ever want to be related to.


6.Mike Haggar - Final Fight


 Having your daughter kidnapped by terrorists/gangsters/thugs/neighborhood hooligans is pretty much a rite of passage for any mayor. Most mayors either send out the entire city police force, immediately give in to any ransom demands or send in the one man who can stand up to a crime wave on his own. Not Mike Haggar though, he teams up with Jessica's boyfriend and his best friend to take on the criminals with his bare hands. Notably Haggar is billed as a former pro wrestler and street fight champion, so it wasn't one of those ordinary people doing extraordinary things in the face of a tragedy, but  he's still very effective at both punching his way to a lower city crime rate and  smashing his way through the punks that took his daughter. Overall, Haggar is great mayor and an even better father, I think most of us wish we had a Dad who could pile drive all our troubles away.

5. Barret - Final Fantasy VII



For a man with a gun arm Barret is a pretty caring father. He spends a lot of time worrying about Marlene (and complaining about it a lot during your inter-party chats). Like most fathers he worrys about how to keep her safe in a bad part of town, though compounding things is that he is embarking on the extremely dangerous and often deadly quest to save the world at the same time. While it can be argued that leaving your child at home to mix drinks in the neighborhood bar while on an epic quest isn't great parenting, without Barret and the rest of the party Marlene wouldn't have a world to live in any more, so you kind of have to give Barret as pass on that.



4.Jecht - Final Fantasy X


Jecht was a terrible father (though really no one in FFX would be winning any father of the year awards) and basically every issue you have throughout your adventures in Zanarkand is all his fault in some way or another. It can be argued that he did make the ultimate sacrifice for good, but that really didn't make a lot of difference to Tidus who had to deal with years of  an emotionally abusive then physically absent father. Jecht's poor parenting culminates in  him being your final boss (as Braska's Final Aeon), which is his most egregious action, not just for the battle, but because he has the worst boss music of any Final Fantasy character ever which makes him not only a bad father but an all around bad character.

3. Heihachi - Tekken Series


Though there have been a lot of bad dads on this list. Hiachi is the worst of the worst. Tossing your young son off a cliff would generally be bad enough on it's own, but Heihachi won't settle for less than the best so he follows it up by later throwing him into a live volcano. Kazuya manages to survives his fathers many assaults and eventually has his own son with whom he has his own awful relationship. Being a terrible father to Kazuya and attempting to kill him on multiple occasions isn't good enough  for Heihachi so naturally he eventually decides to turn his fatherly evil on his grandson Jin as well. Wherein he spends his time constantly betraying and attempting to kill Jin (and Kazuya too when he pops up). Perhaps the thing that really makes him truly evil though is that he appears in every single Tekken game , so his evil just keeps getting a new platform.

2. Ethan Myers - Heavy Rain


Getting one son inexplicably hit by car and following that up by getting the other kidnapped by a murderous psychopath normally wouldn't make for a great father. Ethan however one of the best dads ever, while he probably shouldn't have taken a few more measures to keep Shaun from being abducted in the first place but once it happens he does things to find his son most of us would never dream of. I mean I don't have kids but there are people I would die for, but I'd still have a heck of a time cutting off my own finger using unsanitary tools in an abandoned building especially when it's just ONE of the insane things Ethan has to do to rescue Shaun. Ethan really goes the distance to not only atone for his early parenting mishap but also because he really, really loves his son and is willing to do literally ANYTHING to get him back.

1. Harry Mason - Silent Hill


Harry is the ultimate father. First he rescues Cheryl as an abandoned baby on the side of the road and raises her as his own child then 7 years later faces the worst demons and hell spawn imaginable to get her back.  Now as much as I was squawking about Ethan's seemingly super human ability to sever his own digits, I'd more sooner cut off every one of my limbs using a spoon than face Silent Hill. Harry however takes the experience like a champ, in spite of being an ordinary guy with no special skills who falls off stoops, harry manages to beat back the hell spawn and never lose sight of the fact that his little girl is somehow lost in this horror. Asking every reasonably human person he comes in contact with if they've seen a little girl after beating down scalpel wielding zombie nurses with a lead pipe. I personally would have probably given up on it  and just cried and/or killed myself as soon as I'd had by first experience with the rusted chain link nightmare that is the Otherside. Depending on which ending you get how Harry's quest ends changes pretty dramatically, but regardless if you get something good or something bad, Harry never, ever gives up on Cheryl. Given the tired trope of men ignoring/and or being less loving to kids who "aren't theirs", Harry shows there's a lot more to being a father than biology.

~Stephanie

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