Top 10 Doomed Video Game Romances

Valentine’s Day is a time to show the special person in your life just how much you love them (or a way for retailers to cash in on love, depending on your point of view), but not everyone is lucky in love. For everyone out there planning to spend the day wooing someone in Mass Effect 2, here’s a list of doomed video game romances that ought to cheer you up – or maybe just make you even more depressed. Beware of spoilers.

Mario and Peach – All Mario games

It’s a good job Mario isn’t the jealous type. For the majority of the time they’re not together at all. Peach is usually off somewhere with koopa king, Bowser, or his son, Bowser Jr. God knows what they get up to, but Mario is always risking life and limb to get her back as quickly as possible.

Claire Redfield and Steve Burnside – Resident Evil Code Veronica

Can there be anything worse than your love interest mutating into a massive tentacle-wielding monster, coming at you with a big axe? Well, the mutant could take his own life in front of you. Poor Steve Burnside now lives on through YouTube tribute videos.

Dom and Maria – Gears of War 2

Hands up everyone who thought Dom’s quest to find his wife was going to end well. Yes, it was quite predictable, but no less poignant. In what must rank as one of the most emotional moments ever to grace a third-person shooter, Dom, after finding his long-lost wife in an emaciated state having been imprisoned in a Locust work camp, takes her life. Very sad indeed.

Tim and the princess – Braid

Talk about a complicated relationship. You pursue the princess throughout the game’s devilishly difficult levels, always being told she’s in another castle or something equally confusing, and then when you find her you realise she’s actually trying to run away from you. And that she might be a nuclear bomb. Or something. Our brains hurt just thinking about it. Damn you time manipulation!

Niko Bellic and Kate McReary – GTA 4

Niko just wanted to live the American dream, and have all that comes with it. Things obviously didn’t turn out quite as he planned, though, with plenty of criminal activity and death ruining the pretty picture somewhat. To top it all off, if he follows the advice of his beloved Kate at the end of the game, she gets caught up in an attempted hit on Niko, and is shot dead at your Cousin Roman’s wedding.

Chelle and Weighted Companion Cube – Portal

Let’s be honest. This was never going to work out. On one side of the relationship you’ve got a woman, with a get up and go attitude who does everything herself. On the other side you’ve got an emotionless, large, object that can’t think for itself and would gladly sit around on its arse all day. Hmmm.

James Sunderland and Mary / Maria – Silent Hill 2

Here’s a hot tip: if you ever receive a letter from your dead spouse asking you to meet her in the creepy town of Silent Hill… don’t. James Sunderland ignored this advice and ended up meeting a sexed-up doppelgänger of his wormfood wife. It kind of worked out for a while, but then she was violently (and repeatedly) murdered by a sword-wielding giant with a pyramid for a head. This kind of thing happens all the time in The Hill.

Max Payne and Mona Sax – Max Payne 2

Max tends to have a hard time with women. His first wife got murdered by mad junkies, and he had to kill a lot of people before he got over it. Then Mona Sax, a woman he’d previously assumed to be dead, came back into his life and kick started a steamy love affair. Until she got shot by Max’s “best mate” and died. Ain’t love a pisser?

Cloud and Aeris – Final Fantasy VII

Well, we all know how this one ended. It’s that age-old story: Boy meets Girl. Boy loses Girl. Girl gets skewered on the sword of a legendary warrior who went mental after discovering the corpse of his alien mum. Never mind, eh? Tifa had bigger…um…. personality… than Aeris, anyway.

Carth and female player character – Knights of the Old Republic

Some people quite like beardy-man NPC Carth Onasi; others find him to be a snivelling whinge bag. If you’re in the latter camp, and if you’re a lady Jedi who’s embraced THE DARK SIDE of the Force, you can make the poor sap fall in love with you. He’ll try to save you and turn you back to the path of righteousness, even when you start murdering mutual friends, but you get the last laugh: you snuff out his lights at the end of the game, minutes before you go on to conquer the entire galaxy. Mwuh ha ha!

Can you think of any other doomed romances? Let us know in the comments section below.