Nathan Drake is the coolest

It's official. Because we all said so. More features like this when I stop procrastinating.

Polls close tomorrow

Not had a chance to post much lately. Things are afoot though, so do not fear. For now, accept my apologies and know this: Nathan Drake and Gordon Freeman are tied for coolest character and not one of you fucks voted for Cody. I'll be closing the polls tomorrow so please vote if you haven't already or else I will be forced to do something creative and ingenious.

The Coolest Game Characters of All Time: Voting Time

I can't believe we actually ran a feature for a whole week. Can you!? I doubt it, but sometimes we just pull these amazing things out of our collective behind. Sorry. Enough of this silliness, there are votes to be cast!

All week long you've been hearing from us about how our chosen character is cooler than the next and I don;t mind saying that they have all been thouroughly convincing. If you didn't write your own piece, then this is your chance to voice your opinion. We had enough ideas to easily run another week of this, but I don't want to get delusions of grandeur and frankly, I'm sick of typing the word 'cool' - it's almost lost all meaning to me. If you think there really is someone that we criminally left out, just let us know in the comments- I've already had an ear-bashing over Duke Nukem's absence.

I know polls are a sensitive issue here so I'm going to say just one thing. There are no prizes to be won. Only fame and adoration for a fictional character, so remember: when you cheat, you only cheat yourself. Your mother would be ashamed.

The Coolest Game Characters of All Time: Cody Travers (Final Fight, Street Fighter series)

If you want to talk about cool game characters then there is really only one place you need look: the house that Capcom built. Capcom have been showing character designers the world over how it should be done for decades now. Their characters exude a simple, timeless charm that sees personalities expressed in small visual nuances ; whether it be Ken's irritating thumbs-up, Dan Hibiki's tears or Barry Burton's magnum.To stand out as the coolest amid the inherent coolness of your brothers and sisters is no mean feat and one that is achieved by only one character: Cody Travers.

Despite my increasingly vocal professions of love for Mike Haggar, it is undoubtedly Cody who is the coolest motherfucker in Final Fight. The classic James Dean white t-shirt and blue jeans, coupled with those fly 80's shell-toes makes Cody Travers the kind of dude that mayor Haggar is happy to see railing his daughter. His only goals in life are to get all up in Mad gear's shit and save his smoking-hot girlfriend. Looking good whilst he does it just comes naturally to him.


When Capcom retired Cody from the Final Fight series he told them where to shove it. After saving Metro City and his girlfriend he just couldn't settle down. Cody was built to fight, so that's what he continued to do. You have to admire a guy who knows his purpose and managed to brawl his way from one fighting series and into another. Getting imprisoned for his violent temperament is little more than a slight inconvenience; he frequently breaks out, seeking more opponents, only to return for a meal and a roof over his head whenever it suits him.

Cody's coolness is not so much determined by his actions, but rather his mannerisms and the style he exudes in everything that he does. Opening fights by taunting his opponents to see if they can finally do something about his boredom, still wearing those shell-toes with his prison garb and wearing those handcuffs when he has the key. What a swaggering bad-ass.

Throughout this whole week of coolness, I can see no-one else that I would rather be. Cody is nonchalant about fights when I simply panic and by playing as him I effectively become cooler. If, like me, you think coolness is all about the style and the swagger, then Cody Travers has got it down to a fine art.

The Coolest Game Characters of All Time: Max Payne (Max Payne series)

We are looking for cool here, and to do that we need to ask what actually defines cool. After checking the dictionary and finding the definition to be ‘neither warm nor very cold’, I threw it in the bin and tried to come up with some attributes that I consider to be cool, again I drew a blank. So in desperation I got out all my old games and started listing the characters that I thought were cool. Having my list of names helped me a lot to whittle down to just one, or at least a couple, where some serious battling got me the name for my coolest character. So it came down to whom rather than what defines cool in my eyes.

So who is the coolest of them all...? Max Payne. So where do we start here?As with most things let us start at the beginning, he is a normal guy working as an NYPD detective, with a wife and baby daughter living in a leafy suburb, completely un-cool and that in itself adds to his status. But, after his wife and daughter are killed by drug junkies high on a drug known as Valkyr, Max becomes the ultimate badass one-man-army vigilante, and that makes him cool, in fact that makes very cool. He takes on gangsters with his trusty sawed-off shotgun and the uber-cool ability to dodge bullets in slow motion, in his eternal search for vengeance against the people ultimately responsible for his families’ death.

Max Payne is a true antihero; a man trapped within his past, a tortured broken man constantly reliving his “New York Minute”. His film noir storytelling and unique wordplay add so much to his persona, also added to that is his cynical view of the world and as we know everybody loves a cynic. I could go on and on here about his personal attributes that just exude cool but it all comes down to this. He is THE ULTIMATE VIGILANTE; he can slow down time to dodge bullets, has drug induced flashbacks, takes on the mob, is a tortured soul, has Russian friends, is on the run from the feds, drinks, is straight talking and takes shit from no one, and he wears a leather jacket. Someone please tell me anything there that isn’t cool. Also the game is full of Norse references and everybody loves Vikings, especially ones with Viking long-boats in.

So there you have it, the pinnacle of cool Max Payne

A faux-pas from me was to not include Max Payne 3 on my list games of the year to look out for, in my opinion a crime on my part and it will be in my machine the day it is released. Check out the stills released by Rockstar they look amazing. And before I get any comments Mark Wahlberg never happened.

-Token Gestures

The Coolest Game Characters of All Time: Me

Yeah that's right, I am the coolest games character ever created. Or more accurately, we are. For me a game can become even better when you're able to put yourself into the world given to you as it instantly makes you care more about whats going on in front of you. Sports games were probably the earliest genre of game that allowed you to create yourself or someone else, where I've had serious success lifting various trophies on the PGA Tour, winning a World Cup as captain of the Welsh football team, beating the likes of Stephen Hendry, Mark Williams and Ronnie O' Sullivan at snooker, and lifting various Naismith Trophies with my beloved Toronto Raptors. I've even been a pretty decent skater in iterations of Tony Hawk and also Skate, whereas in real life I cant even stand on a skateboard!

Now that online gaming has become a huge deal, this is another place in which you or I become the avatar and deal death to others. Call of Duty for example, I don't play as a US Marine or a Russian, I play as me. I take decisions as I'd hope I would in real life, and become the soldiers in games like these. Even in games where a character was already named and a history given, my imagination erases this and puts me in its place. In a previous comment on the Sonic post, I mentioned how I relate to Mario and this being a reason I deem him cooler and perhaps it's because I put myself into these characters' places that makes this happen. I'm clearly not a speedy blur hedgehog. A fat plumber? That's more reasonable!

When it comes to videogames characters, none have come close to what we've achieved.

Here's to the Custom Character.

Here's to Us.

The Coolest Game Characters of All Time: Sonic the Hedgehog (Sonic series)

The thing about cool is that it emanates from within. There is no learning cool, or earning cool. You either are, or you are not. Many characters have strived for coolness over the years, and I'm sure my fellow contributors will construct good cases for their favourites through the week- as to why they should be crowned coolest. There is a clear victor in this category of course, and that is the immortal Sonic the Hedgehog.

Sonic can waltz to the top of this list wearing nothing but a pair of sneakers and white gloves. He needs no fancy props or foul mouth to aspire towards cool, as he is the very embodiment of the word. Destroying hoards of enemies and bosses using nothing but his speed and agility and always for the noblest of causes, he really is a hero. OK, so he's not packing a magnum .44 or throwing stars but that's because he doesn't need them to embarrass his foes. Sonic has a something far more deadly at his disposal. Style (Yeah, I went there).

Even too laid back and aloof for lovers, the first female into the Sonic universe was Amy Rose who immediately pursued a romantic interest in Sonic. Was he interested? Did he fall all over himself looking like a damn fool like so many hero-types since, as soon as a chick showed up? Did he hell. He treated her like she was in his way from day one and that just made her want him more.

If his very nature and attitude doesn't convince you that Sonic is the coolest game character of all time and you cant really figure out why you should place him above anyone else, consider this one important fact: for all he has achieved - he's not even trying that hard.

Sega invented cool. And it's blue.

The Coolest Game Characters of All Time: Nathan Drake (Uncharted series)

Yawn. Old icons are old. There's a reason why we should only be concentrating on the here and now. It's called progress. Anything else is just hankering for childhood, and you don't want to be accused of that, do you, you big adult-nappy wearing fetish freak you? Thought not. So let's keep it in the here and now, and avoid all that Oedipal crap. And easily the coolest, nay, the best, character of this generation can be found in the swarthy features of one Nathan Drake.

Don't be fooled by all that "everyman" talk. He's not a normal guy at all. His grim satisfaction at snapping a neck followed by some lighthearted banter exposes the heart of a sociopath. And although his body shape could be rightly described as a little husky, he's still a skull-cracking alpha male with the face of an Abercrombie and Fitch model. Everyman? Don't make me scoff.

No, instead his appeal lies in the fact he's just a little better than you. He's not the ridiculous manbeast like Marcus Fenix, but for us cheetos-scoffing basement dwellers, he resonates far more keenly than any steroid-induced lunk. He's the jock in school who had flings with French teachers, or the guy in the pub who can break up fights with a glance. Everyone adores him, and you either want to be him or be on him.

Okay, his far-flung travels reek of Indiana Jones, and adventures are a hodge-podge of a thousand different tales. But damnit, for sheer out and out awesome, you can't get better than the Drake. No other game character conveys cowardice and guts in one wise-cracking, whimpering package. Who needs martial arts when you can throw wild haymakers and brawl like a champ? Of course he's too good to be true, but he's right at the edge of believeability, and that's all you need to buy into his untucked t-shirt wearing, wryly grinning, stubbled shtick.

He's Gerard Butler. He's Han Solo. He's the MAN.

-Paperboy

The Coolest Game Characters of All Time

In my youth, coolness could be easily defined by The Beastie Boys and Bart Simpson, but as I grow old, weary and cynical, I start to think about the term more seriously. Coolness is an almost catch-all term for me and - I would wager - most of my generation, but there are certain characters, from all mediums, that once in a while make you re-asses the term and consider just what it takes to be cool.

Creating a genuinely cool game character is no mean feat, especially when you consider the potential lack of cool on the part of the player. Even David Bowie could be made to look a tit, were he placed in some sort of Avatar-esque situation that saw a 14 year old COD addict running him into walls, trying to find glitches.So often being extensions of our usually un-cool selves, game characters can often struggle to achieve genuine coolness. For that reason, this week at Split-Screen, we will be celebrating all those who overcome such hurdles and stand in our minds as true bad-asses and bonafide cool dudes.

Adjust your mindset back to the 90's, help us bring back the terms 'rad' and 'totally tubular' and cast your vote at the end to help us decided the coolest of them all. Keep watch for your favourite because there will be a new one each day. If you think we're going to miss someone out, e-mail me: thefauxbot@gmail.com to fight their corner and we'll post up your piece to help the campaign.