8 Gritty Reworks Of Video Game Characters That Fell Flat

The original Contra games were as shoot 'em up as you could get, with nearly no nuance to add to the game's concept.

Just take a look at the shirtless, jeans-wearing hero Bill Rizer, who was dropped into occasional colourful worlds with the intention of filling every monster and every bit of the screen with lead. There was no pretext needed to justify the senselessness of the entire game, so no need to change Rizer into something else, right?

2002's Shattered Soldier, a sequel to 1994's Hard Corps, opted to take a different route. It took original protagonist Bill Rizer, and made him into an apparent genocidal monster who somehow killed eighty per cent of the Earth, as well as murdering his former partner Lance Bean. The game's backdrop was grim, full of conspiracies and betrayal, and it achieved edgy absurdness on a scale even larger than what the original games were known for.

Rizer's dialogue throughout the game, even amidst a serious story with hard-hitting themes such as corporations monopolizing power, is hilarious by today's standard. He constantly questions and wonders about transpiring events, such as Lance's motives after beating him, even after blowing up everything in sight.

Shattered Soldier tried to revamp protagonist Bill Rizer to fit this new, gritty direction, but ultimately came up short in hilarious fashion.