Travicity
01-19-2011, 01:46 AM
Scary digital fingers inside your mind! Here are the absolute greatest psychic heroes and villains in video game history.
11
Raz
Let's open this up with one of the most beloved gaming psychics of all time - Raz from Tim Schafer's Psychonauts. The son of a circus family, he runs away to the Whispering Rock Summer Camp to learn how to control his burgeoning mental powers.
Of course, since this is a Tim Schafer game, his quest is anything but straightforward. As he learns a bevy of abilities, including telekinesis, clarivoyance and more, he must delve into the brains of his fellow campers and unravel a hideous conspiracy to remove those brains from the heads in which they comfortably reside.
I think we can all remember the moment in Metal Gear Solid when Psycho Mantis started playing tricks on us - from vibrating the controller to remarking on the contents of your memory card, this gas-masked floating mentalist pushed the fourth wall in ways that no other game had.
Hideo Kojima's mind-mashing tendencies showed up for the first time in this boss fight, which was incredibly difficult if you didn't figure it out. Mantis could read your "mind," aka your controller input. Plug your controller into another port, however, and he'd lose that link, letting you pump bullets into him with gusto.
Goichi Suda's Killer7 is one of the most divisive cult games of the last generation - people either love it or hate it. We're strongly on the love side, but we can see the argument. One thing that is inarguable is protagonist Harman Smith's incredibly disquieting psychic ability.
Harman suffers from "Multifoliate Personae Phenomenon," a psychic ability that allows him to physically transform his wheelchair-bound body to one of seven professional killers, whose souls he absorbed after their deaths. Of course, this is just a gateway to a terrifying world of double-crosses and red herrings, but that's Suda51 for you.
8
Psyduck
Okay, there are a fairly large number of psychic-type Pokemon, but most of them are kind of corny. The one I'm always weirded out by is Psyduck - a bulbous yellow waterfowl with a constant migraine.
Here's the deal with Psyduck: he possesses an almost unmeasurable amount of psychic power, but he's too stupid to use it. So it's only when he gets physically abused enough to lose control that he unleashes his full fury, which can split mountains and explode craniums like woah.
One thing about being a psychic is that you don't have to be physically imposing to be dangerous. In fact, you can look like anything, even... a little girl.
Alma Wade is the main antagonist of the F.E.A.R. series, a superhumanly powerful young psychic who was placed into an artificially-induced coma at the age of eight to keep her powers under control. Her body was then implanted with artifical embryos to try and pass her abilities on. Her appearances in the games are straight up terrifying - just flashes at the corner of your vision, until she attacks.
What makes it even scarier is that Alma is dead, and has been for some time - her inexorable psychic hatred is the only thing tethering her presence to the material plane.
During the Cold War, both sides were actually paranoid that the other was developing super-soldiers who could kill with no weapon besides their minds. A number of secret military projects tried to coax the psychic power out of normal men, but none succeeded.
Well, except for the insane alternate universe of legendary RTS Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2, which boasted Commie super-brain Yuri as its primary antagonist. The commander of the Psychic Corps not only has mind-control abilities of his own, but commands a small army of his own psychics.
Played by legendary B-movie actor Udo Kier, Yuri is an awesome creepazoid for the history books.
Queen Of Blades
5
Queen Of Blades
One bad thing about using psychics as weapons is that it's pretty easy to turn them against you. Take Sarah Kerrigan, the human psychic known known as the Queen of Blades from the Starcraft games.
Originally a trained assassin, Kerrigan gets captured by the insectoid Zerg and parasitically infected, transformed into a living weapon that lays waste to the Terran armies. However, her powerful consciousness breaks free of her Zerg conditioning and she goes into business for herself, setting of to rule the galaxy by her lonesome.
She's a central character for the StarCraft 2 campaigns, with the forthcoming Heart Of The Swarm promising to reveal the final fate of the Zerg.
4
Combine Advisors
One common explanation for the development of psychic powers is that they come when our bodies atrophy too severely to use them anymore. That would explain the Combine Advisors, the massive sluglike enemies of Half-Life 2 that can throw you around with their minds.
It's kind of a kick in the head - you get this awesome Gravity Gun and then you meet a big fat worm who doesn't even need one. Pretty gross. Lord knows if Half-Life 2: Episode 3 will feature any more of these bastards.
3
M. Bison
Most psychics usually like to refrain from physical contact, but not Street Fighter big bad M. Bison. This brutal dictator is the master of the mental discipline known as Psycho Power, which means that his punches come complete with a blue mental flame that messes you up on the inside.
It's never really made expicit what Psycho Power is, but it lets Bison fly through the air surrounded by a nimbus of purple flame as well as teleport behind people and smash their stupid faces in. Let's see Uri Geller do that!
2
Rion
PlayStation 1 game Galerians never made much of an impact on these shores, but its creepy merging of psychic phenomena with Resident Evil-styled survival horror had some cool moments.
The best parts had to do with protagonist Rion, who was placed in the typical "amnesiac wakes up with new abilities" scenario, with some twists. Most interestingly was Rion's dependency on drugs to perform psychic feats - without vials of brain-activating fluid, he was helpless. In addition, a special meter rose when he was high, damaged or stressed out - when it reached the maximum, uncontrollable psychic energy would kill everything around him. That would be awesome except for one thing: if you don't turn it off fast enough, Rion's brain explodes. Game over.
1
Lord Geld
And we close this list with the end boss from side-scrolling arcade beat-em-up Violent Storm. One major psychic trope is a superpowered teenager who uses his mental powers to transform into a huge monster (see Akira), and this game does it amazingly.
When you get to Lord Geld, he starts out as a sickly-looking kid on a throne. But one flash of psychic energy later and he's transformed into a hulking colossus making the floor explode with pyrokinesis. Nothing a few dozen kicks to the nuts won't cure, though, and once you beat his ass you're reunited with your girlfriend.
UGO
11
Raz
Let's open this up with one of the most beloved gaming psychics of all time - Raz from Tim Schafer's Psychonauts. The son of a circus family, he runs away to the Whispering Rock Summer Camp to learn how to control his burgeoning mental powers.
Of course, since this is a Tim Schafer game, his quest is anything but straightforward. As he learns a bevy of abilities, including telekinesis, clarivoyance and more, he must delve into the brains of his fellow campers and unravel a hideous conspiracy to remove those brains from the heads in which they comfortably reside.
I think we can all remember the moment in Metal Gear Solid when Psycho Mantis started playing tricks on us - from vibrating the controller to remarking on the contents of your memory card, this gas-masked floating mentalist pushed the fourth wall in ways that no other game had.
Hideo Kojima's mind-mashing tendencies showed up for the first time in this boss fight, which was incredibly difficult if you didn't figure it out. Mantis could read your "mind," aka your controller input. Plug your controller into another port, however, and he'd lose that link, letting you pump bullets into him with gusto.
Goichi Suda's Killer7 is one of the most divisive cult games of the last generation - people either love it or hate it. We're strongly on the love side, but we can see the argument. One thing that is inarguable is protagonist Harman Smith's incredibly disquieting psychic ability.
Harman suffers from "Multifoliate Personae Phenomenon," a psychic ability that allows him to physically transform his wheelchair-bound body to one of seven professional killers, whose souls he absorbed after their deaths. Of course, this is just a gateway to a terrifying world of double-crosses and red herrings, but that's Suda51 for you.
8
Psyduck
Okay, there are a fairly large number of psychic-type Pokemon, but most of them are kind of corny. The one I'm always weirded out by is Psyduck - a bulbous yellow waterfowl with a constant migraine.
Here's the deal with Psyduck: he possesses an almost unmeasurable amount of psychic power, but he's too stupid to use it. So it's only when he gets physically abused enough to lose control that he unleashes his full fury, which can split mountains and explode craniums like woah.
One thing about being a psychic is that you don't have to be physically imposing to be dangerous. In fact, you can look like anything, even... a little girl.
Alma Wade is the main antagonist of the F.E.A.R. series, a superhumanly powerful young psychic who was placed into an artificially-induced coma at the age of eight to keep her powers under control. Her body was then implanted with artifical embryos to try and pass her abilities on. Her appearances in the games are straight up terrifying - just flashes at the corner of your vision, until she attacks.
What makes it even scarier is that Alma is dead, and has been for some time - her inexorable psychic hatred is the only thing tethering her presence to the material plane.
During the Cold War, both sides were actually paranoid that the other was developing super-soldiers who could kill with no weapon besides their minds. A number of secret military projects tried to coax the psychic power out of normal men, but none succeeded.
Well, except for the insane alternate universe of legendary RTS Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2, which boasted Commie super-brain Yuri as its primary antagonist. The commander of the Psychic Corps not only has mind-control abilities of his own, but commands a small army of his own psychics.
Played by legendary B-movie actor Udo Kier, Yuri is an awesome creepazoid for the history books.
Queen Of Blades
5
Queen Of Blades
One bad thing about using psychics as weapons is that it's pretty easy to turn them against you. Take Sarah Kerrigan, the human psychic known known as the Queen of Blades from the Starcraft games.
Originally a trained assassin, Kerrigan gets captured by the insectoid Zerg and parasitically infected, transformed into a living weapon that lays waste to the Terran armies. However, her powerful consciousness breaks free of her Zerg conditioning and she goes into business for herself, setting of to rule the galaxy by her lonesome.
She's a central character for the StarCraft 2 campaigns, with the forthcoming Heart Of The Swarm promising to reveal the final fate of the Zerg.
4
Combine Advisors
One common explanation for the development of psychic powers is that they come when our bodies atrophy too severely to use them anymore. That would explain the Combine Advisors, the massive sluglike enemies of Half-Life 2 that can throw you around with their minds.
It's kind of a kick in the head - you get this awesome Gravity Gun and then you meet a big fat worm who doesn't even need one. Pretty gross. Lord knows if Half-Life 2: Episode 3 will feature any more of these bastards.
3
M. Bison
Most psychics usually like to refrain from physical contact, but not Street Fighter big bad M. Bison. This brutal dictator is the master of the mental discipline known as Psycho Power, which means that his punches come complete with a blue mental flame that messes you up on the inside.
It's never really made expicit what Psycho Power is, but it lets Bison fly through the air surrounded by a nimbus of purple flame as well as teleport behind people and smash their stupid faces in. Let's see Uri Geller do that!
2
Rion
PlayStation 1 game Galerians never made much of an impact on these shores, but its creepy merging of psychic phenomena with Resident Evil-styled survival horror had some cool moments.
The best parts had to do with protagonist Rion, who was placed in the typical "amnesiac wakes up with new abilities" scenario, with some twists. Most interestingly was Rion's dependency on drugs to perform psychic feats - without vials of brain-activating fluid, he was helpless. In addition, a special meter rose when he was high, damaged or stressed out - when it reached the maximum, uncontrollable psychic energy would kill everything around him. That would be awesome except for one thing: if you don't turn it off fast enough, Rion's brain explodes. Game over.
1
Lord Geld
And we close this list with the end boss from side-scrolling arcade beat-em-up Violent Storm. One major psychic trope is a superpowered teenager who uses his mental powers to transform into a huge monster (see Akira), and this game does it amazingly.
When you get to Lord Geld, he starts out as a sickly-looking kid on a throne. But one flash of psychic energy later and he's transformed into a hulking colossus making the floor explode with pyrokinesis. Nothing a few dozen kicks to the nuts won't cure, though, and once you beat his ass you're reunited with your girlfriend.
UGO