The Volties: My Top 10 Favorite Boss Battles

I don’t know if you’ve heard before, but video games?  They’re pretty cool.

Plenty of conventions have made their rise to fame and delight for the common gamer justified.  They’re like a book you can dive into as long as you’ve still got a connection to an electrical source!  They’re like a movie you can play, only about four times longer on average, for better or worse!  They’re like newspapers you can…uh…okay, the analogy breaks down here, but you get the point.  Any medium can accomplish a lot with its conventions, and games are no exception. 

In fact, games have been proving that little rule to be true for years.  Why?  Because it’s got the “boss fight” -- a true test of one’s skill, wit, and resolve; it forces the player to defeat their greatest foe in order to get closer to saving the virtual world.  They’re big, they’re brutal, they’re boisterous, they’re bombastic, and in a lot of cases, they’re brilliant.

So what do you say we celebrate a few of them?  Go on, then.  Press the Left Mouse button to start.

WARNING: Incoming spoilers.  If your fragile maiden’s heart is easily bruised by such slights, then I suggest you depart now, and take to sipping tea atop your tuffet while tending to your little lambs.

I suspect that this train of thought has long since derailed.

The Volties: My Top 10 Favorite Movies

There’s been too much negativity on this blog recently.

It’s been a chain of despair -- one troubled product to the next, or at least things that make me think harder than any normal person should.  Man of Steel was crushingly disappointing.  The Last of Us came out as a confused tale (and more confused game) hamstrung by creators and conventions.  The Wolverine had good intentions, but suffered from dull and almost-contradictory drama.  Percy Jackson is just awful.  It wasn’t my plan to do posts on four less-than-savory products almost one after another, but I guess that’s just the way it goes sometimes.

I say it’s time to turn the tide.  And this post should be just the thing to start doing the trick.

The Volties: My Top 10 Favorite Game Characters

I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned this at one point, but I’d say that for the moment it’s impossible for me to make a “Top 10 Favorite Games Ever” list.  As you can imagine, I’ve played a lot of games.  And as much as I would like to make a definitive list, I don’t feel like I can without replaying the titles that would have been in the upper echelon.  And given that I don’t have a fair number of the games I’ve played (and the means to play them), seeing how they withstood the test of time and my “evolving tastes” probably isn’t going to happen.  

But then a thought occurred to me.  I might not be able to honor certain games, but I can still honor certain characters.  That much should be significantly easier…and possible.  All I need is a little consideration, some fond memories, and maybe a little root beer on the side.

So let’s have at it then, shall we?  These are my favorite video game characters…because if the Nostalgia Critic is doing it, then surely no one else has ever thought of it before.