Fifty Worst Video Game Voice Acting Lines

Posted in News by on Dec 12th, 2009 11:15 AM

Voice acting in video games has come a long way since the CD-ROM format first gave voice to our digital avatars. When a budget was set aside for such talent, it was usually B-grade actors; more often, the acting was provided by anyone in the office and their kids.

David Hayter set a new standard in Metal Gear Solid, a game said to have more spoken lines of dialogue than the entire Star Wars trilogy combined. Now we're fortunate to have recognizable celebrities like Patrick Stewart lending their talent to storied franchises such as Castlevania.

Perhaps now that we've evolved beyond those awkward adolescent years, we can look back at particularly painful moments in video gaming's audio evolution — some of which haunt us to this day:



One obvious candidate was overlooked — a glaring enough one to dedicate your life's work to. A friend of mine works in Japan, presumably as a translator for electronic entertainment, as on Facebook, he describes his professional responsibility as "Trying to ensure 'What is a man?' never happens again." I salute you, sir:



Not even Patrick Stewart could've made that Castlevania clip any less excruciating.

Hat tip to Paul Scheer!

One Week to Silent Hill's Wii Release

Posted in News by on Dec 2nd, 2009 3:39 PM

Today we are only a week away from the release of Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, a remake of Konami's original survival horror game. As one last tease with which to whet our appetite, Konami today released this music video trailer:

Silent Hill has traditionally been a masterful manifestation of the Eastern interpretation of horror: an atmosphere of perversion founded not on sudden scares so much as an unshakeable feeling that something unnatural is afoot. When the first Silent Hill game came out in 1999, I saw it as too similar to Resident Evil; obviously I was not as discriminating a decade ago as I am now. I like to think that by Silent Hill 2, I'd come to appreciate the series. The continuation of the first game's plot into Silent Hill 3 appealed to me, but the series has strayed since then. Silent Hill 4 was not intended to be a Silent Hill game at all, and the next two releases, Origins and Homecoming, were American-made, as evident from the focus on combat instead of storytelling.

A remake of the original Silent Hill holds great potential, and whether or not the Wii is well-suited for such mature games, motion control may subject gamers to the horror of Silent Hill more directly than ever before. Here's to hoping next week's release proves to be something worth getting scared over.

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