The 5 Most Pathetic Video Game Acting Performances

When you're asked to voice yourself in a game only so your digital visage can get can get pissed on and exploded by the player, you know your career might not be at its apex.

The Performance:
It isn't so much the acting in the satirical PC shooter Postal 2 that puts Gary on the list, as much as it is the sad subtext behind it.

Now, there are a lot of stars out there that eventually become walking jokes. Some embrace it, some become angry and bitter. Coleman took the idea of embracing it to a higher level of low when he agreed to get paid to be in a game that openly mocks the idea of Gary Coleman even being alive, by having you kill him within minutes of meeting him.

He isn't a part of the story in any way and he has no impact on anything. He's just there, as Gary Coleman, and the game is clearly programmed with the foregone conclusion that upon recognizing the man, any of us would
1) piss on him ...

... and 2) try to take his life.

We happen to think the game has over-estimated the amount of murderous animosity the public holds against Gary, but upon hearing the concept of the game, Coleman apparently nodded and said, "Yes, that sounds about right." Might need to work on the self-esteem there, Gary.

The Performance:
So it turns out that Gary Coleman was not the first to travel the bitter Diff'rent Strokes-to-exploitative-video-game career path of despair.

This Sega CD game appeared in 1992, in an era when the sight of live actors moving around in our video games was so amazing to us that it was almost enough to make us ignore how shitty the game was. Almost. Plato's performance consisted of running around in a sports bra (which was as sexy as video games got in 1992, sadly) and her occasional "Can you fucking believe this shit?" glance at the camera like she's a student of the Jim Halpert school of breaking the fourth wall.

It's impossible to say whether her death scene in Night Trap had more or less dignity than Coleman's in Postal 2, as science has never developed device to measure such things:

Once again, subtext plays as this game marked the beginning of Plato's decline. The same year the game came out, Plato was arrested for trying to rob a video store (Wikipedia says Wayne Newton bailed her out) and she was working at a dry cleaner's shop.

Then, in 1999 ... well, let's just move on before we get any more depressed than we already are.

Sure, he slurs the word chances at the end there so it sounds more like "chanchesh." But rarely has a performance more clearly and concisely conveyed the subtext: Helllll, yeah.

The Performance:
So, it's not surprising that as Redmond Boyle, the acting Director of the Global Defense Initiative in Command and Conquer 3, Williams is less hard-nosed leader of the war effort, and more a guy who wants to make sweet love to the war effort. Watch this short clip and listen to his smooth, sexy and sultry declaration of retaliation:

The sultry delivery of the promise that Kane has " ... Sewn the seeds of his oooown destruction ... " makes us think that Kane's "destruction" will involve a glass of wine by a roaring fire.

We know what you're asking yourself. "Did I just accidentally stumble onto a list of the best cutscene performances of all time?"

Unfortunately, when Billy Dee is forced to portray some emotion other than barely repressed lust, he flies right into the same gesticulating Shatnerization that seems to befall even the most competent actors when cast in a video game:

Keep in mind, this game is from 2007. So, through 15 years of progress, somehow video game cutscenes are still just as cringe-worthy as Dana Plato's arm-flailing death scene in Night Trap. If Billy Dee couldn't save us, who possibly can?

For jokes about video games you've actually played, check out The The 10 Most Irritatingly Impossible Old-School Video Games. Then, avoid all that taxing "thinking for yourself" bullshit and instead feast on the opinions of the much more qualified Michael Swaim in Super Smash Brothers: The DEFINITIVE Review.