Last week I told you why I loved graphics. Juicy polygons, full of shine, make me happy. But, I have to say, there is one other thing that makes me fall in love with a game.

Just to review, we covered the little details that make a game great - such as the GTA IV cellphone. We covered the plot, which in some cases can make a game instantly a classic, and in other cases can destroy it entirely. And we covered the graphics, the spit and polish of a game.

I’m going to finish up this series with what I think is personally the most important part of a video-game - assuming that I can play it halfway intuitively and it isn’t broken.

The most important part of making a video game great is the characters. Those would be Link. Sephiroth. Mario. Knuckles. Dante. Leon. Master Chief. Samus. Lara Croft. Sonic the Hedgehog. Solid Snake. Iconic, classic, and with that certain something that makes fangirls and boys everywhere go weak at the knees.

Quite what it is that makes gamers so attached to the characters they play I’m not quite sure. Maybe it’s because there’s a little piece of us in them. Maybe it’s because they are hot. Maybe it’s because they can defeat three thousand enemies single-handedly.
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Hello, I’m Mercedes, and I don’t finish video games.

That’s not to say I don’t play them. That’s not to say I don’t enjoy them. But I can’t not put them down. There’s always that final push of the start button, the pause that lasts for days, weeks, and sometimes years. It’s a bad habit, to say the least, but I’m on the path to recovery.

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So I’m chugging through Gears of War, gunning down Locust left and right, lighting paths in the streets to avoid being eaten alive by the Kryll. I’m having a good old time and then suddenly I pause the game. It is then, sitting at the pause menu, that I am struck with a realization.

Some of my most favorite games have little or no sense of humor.
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I can enjoy a good single player game as much as the next gamer. In fact, being by myself can sometimes be cathartic. But only sometimes.

Having an added interactive personality or two to spice up the time you spend with your favorite pixels? Why, who could resist? Friends, and people in general, make gaming multidimensional. They point out things you may have missed, spend joyous hours entertaining you, share the journey of your characters from one point to another, and make you feel like not so much of a geeky gamer freak because hey – you’ve got friends who play too, so spending twenty hours a week or more on an activity atypical to most people in society isn’t quite so lonely an affair.

My personal favorite? Arnold Schwarzenegger impressions on Ventrilo during PvP combat.

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Beating games is the easy part. What? It is. Following the linear storyline and fighting the end boss, gathering all the necessary items or whatever it takes to unlock the final cut-scenes. Obviously there are some notable exceptions: Nobody would consider the credit rolling scene during K.K. Slider’s songs to be the ending of Animal Crossing. But the fact remains, most games require a bare minimum of effort to get to any of the plot points including the ending.

Side-quests are added in for a reason. A lot of the fun element in games is challenging yourself to get higher scores, better endings, or new outfits. Gamers have also been inventing ways to challenge themselves for decades. Who out there doesn’t have a 100% Zelda: Ocarina of Time save file? A better question: Who out there has actually taken up the three heart completion challenge? Significantly fewer people.

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On June 12th, Playstation 3 owners fled from their houses to the nearest GameStops, Best Buys, and Walmarts to get their hands on Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. Well, okay, maybe not all of them—but if you didn’t, you should have.

Fresh from Kojima Productions, MGS4 marks the end of an era. It’s the final installment in the Metal Gear series to star Solid Snake, the suave protagonist fans know and love. As a PS3 exclusive, the game earned itself quite a bit of hype and lives up to every bit.

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