It's been a fantastic year for video games, one that has seen favoured heroes return to our screens in new, terrifying new forms, alongside a wealth of brand new properties and characters who have dazzled us. With the video game medium year in and year out, it's great to see how more cinematic and human the characters are becoming, and this was proven no better than in 2012, where character-driven storylines took on a whole new emphasis, and perhaps most surprisingly of all, developers actually paid equal attention to developing antagonists as they did protagonists. In fact, in at least two instances in this list, the bad guy was so well fleshed-out, his presence completely overshadowed our own. In a year as diverse and artistically ambitious as any that the medium has ever seen, here are the 10 greatest video game characters of 2012.
10. Max Payne - Max Payne 3
When screenshots first abounded of Max Payne 3, I, like many hardcore fans of the series, was absolutely appalled and dismayed; whatever had they done to the film noir video game franchise, by setting it mostly during the day and drastically transforming the titular protagonist's look? Indeed, it look a while to get used to the fact that Max Payne was no longer the ruggedly good-looking, leather jacket-donning badass we had all come to know and love, but the game lets us down gently by having us play as "classic Max" for a few levels before he shaves his head, doesn't shave his face, and puts on a wifebeater. Proof that we should always put our faith in Rockstar Games, they managed to deliver a brutal, visceral, ludicrously entertaining shooter that stayed close to the series' core mechanics even if the look is very different. Not only was this another cinematic blaster in the style of the previous games, but it similarly paid fair due to its protagonist, who for most of this game is a destitute alcoholic practically asking to catch a bullet, even if nobody seems good enough to lodge one in him. Thanks to James McCaffrey's excellent voice performance - returning from the previous games - Max still has the same gravelly steeliness as before, and when he appears to have found some peace at the end of the game - at least for now - we're actually relieved.