9 game characters who refuse to die

Let us wish a blessed Good Friday to all the Catholics in the house. Now, get out. Your fish-sharing magician cannot compete with these 9 videogame characters who see death as nothing but a passing nuisance. These 9 heroes of reanimated flesh. These 9 unkillable beings of limitless power and mystery. Where is your precious Holy Spirit now, loser? Look at these 9 luminous freaks who have monstered sinew and reality to their will. Read my list feature, disgusting mortal, and repent.

Daddy Baker - Resident Evil 7

Just shoot him in the head! Oh? Huh. Try it again. Nothing? That’s unusual, I could've sworn it would oh my lord that dad is fast. Okay, uh, try setting him on fire, that works in the Resident Evil remake, you set the bods on fire and they don’t come back. Ah, that seems to have done the tr-- WHAT? HOW IS HE okay never mind, breathe, let’s think about this. Perhaps there is a way to, ah yes, a chainsaw. Excellent thinking, the lumberjack method, I like it, surely that will… nope, there he is again. I give up. You’re on your own.

Wolf - Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

Despite the assertion contained in its very James Bond subtitle, this shadow does not die twice, but hundreds of times. Our Swiss arm-y chum gets sliced, cursed, poisoned, burned. He gets dive-bombed by ninjas. He gets speared through the heart and thrown 10 meters into a wheelbarrow. And still he rises, like a puppy that just won’t stop trying to leap through the back door’s double glazing. We could, of course, replace go-go-gadget Wolf with the roll-spamming protagonist of any Dark Souls game. Or, thinking about it, the hero of any videogame. From regenerating Far Cry psychopaths to sadomasochist Tomb Pilferers, games are proof that if our great scientists solved the “problem” of mortality, the world would still be an intolerable shitshow.

Scavenger - The Swapper

Bippity bop, let’s do the swap. The space-suited wanderer in this puzzle platformer is a tricksy one. She can clone herself across rooms and move all bodies at the same time to solve sci-fi problems and get to the next section of ruined spaceplace. But there’s a catch. When she’s done with the clones - boop. They’re all dead. And she is left inhabiting only one of them, whichever one she likes. She hasn’t so much come back from death as found a tax loophole in death. Speaking of which...

Capsuleers - Eve Online

Imagine the scavenger from the Swapper, but a rich asshole. The capsuleers of our industry’s premier skulduggery generator are the players themselves. And they love a good clone resurrection. If they’re flying through unsafe space, for example, and suddenly find themselves popped inside their spaceships like a microwaved garden pea, that is okay. They blink back into existence at their home space station, inside a new clone body, having only lost their pride. And possibly a spaceship worth over a grand. You know how it goes.

Your best orc pal - Middle-earth: Shadow Of Mordor

“Ranger!”

“Oh, hi Grogblurt the Unbathed. How’s it going?”

“I’ll suck the marrow from your bones! It’s going okay, you?”

“Same old, same old.”

“Death will come slowly to you, Ranger! How's your mum doing?”

“Oh, you know, can’t complain. Well, she can - and does! Ha ha ha.”

“Ha ha ha, bless her. Cross swords and die, scum!”

Liquid Snake - Metal Gear Solid

“A coward dies a thousand times before his death,” wrote Shakespeare, “like Liquid Snake in popular tactical espionage action franchise Metal Gear Solid.” The blonder brother of David “Solid” Snake is a tough bag of abs, that is certain. Let’s see. He crashes a helicopter, explodes in a giant bipedal tank, falls into a pit, crashes a jeep, and has a virally induced heart attack. And he still finds the sheer willpower to return in Metal Gear Solid 2 as a hypnotic spirit trapped inside a transplanted arm. Fair play.

Sean Bean - Hitman 2

How is he doing this?

All the zombies - Resident Evil 2

They get back up, even when you kill them twice. Dreadful. This is breaking all the rules. The Raccoon City zombos are supposed to be cannon fodder baddies, they aren’t supposed to get back up from a brainbullet over and over again. Maybe once. One get-up each, that’s as many as you get. But the undead of the Resi remakes simply don’t respect this ancient law of zombie chivalry. It’s outrageous. It’s unseemly is what it is. Why isn’t the government regulating this?

Sonic The Hedgehog

If I kept my pet hedgehog alive for 24 years past its natural life expectancy, I would be called cruel, and possibly jailed. But when Sega do it...

One Off The List from… the nicest smiles

Last week we flashed you some clean white teeth, with a list of the 11 nicest smiles in PC games. But you recoiled at the insincerity of one of these grins. It’s… M. Bison.

Thoughtful list trimmer "juan_h" lobbied for ousting this mocking maniacal grinner in favour of someone more genuine. "I’d replace M. Bison with Dan Hibiki from Street Fighter IV," they said. "The smile at the end of his Ultra Combo, which is accompanied by a big thumbs up, a flash of light reflected from his blindingly white teeth, an impish turn toward the audience, and a subtle PING!, is ever so much more genuine Bison’s terrifying tooth-exposing grimace. Bison’s in it for Bison, doing things for his own Bison reasons. Dan does it all for us, the fans."

Eloquent, justified, sensible. These are the traits of a true list goblin response. See you next week, little ones.