Castlevania: Symphony of the Night Walkthrough Video Game Strategy Guide (PC, XBOX 360)

JASON MAHONY Can't get enough super sugar crisp...Unless I get to punch in on some video punks!! View all articles | Contact author

But of all gaming's deathdefying characters, there's a handful that stand out for their complete and utter disregard for mortality. They spit in the very face of the reaper. Maybe even pee on him a little. Not in fear, but because they just felt like peeing on something and he was there. It seems like a good time to recognize that kind of chutzpah.

#10 Every MMO Enemy Ever

Nothing stays dead in an MMO. It's the most galling in the case of major plotrelated bosses, but hell, most common critters don't have the decency to wait 10 minutes, much less three days. Some games have spawn timers so screwed that enemies will reappear before you even get around to killing them in the first place. My favorite was a spot in Vanguard where they'd placed an NPC on top of a mountaincat spawn point. The guy had been killing them so fast he pretty much lived under a pile of bodies. At night you could hear him crying. You just had to listen kind of hard because dead cats make great soundproofing.

#9 Johnny Cage (Mortal Kombat series)

The most remarkable thing about Johnny Cage dying is that he was just about the only guy who died. Half the point of those games was to make a guy explode and shoot bones all over hell, but if you care about the storyline you need to accept that nobody ever actually exploded any main characters for like, three games. Now people tell me the guy isn't dead anymore. They also tell me that in the last game Liu Kang has chains fused to his arms so he now looks like like the love child of Kratos and Bruce Lee. I actually believed that for a minute, until they also said that there was a kartracing minigame stuck in there, at which point I realized they were just screwing with my head. Ha ha. F***ers.

#8 Wesker (Resident Evil series)
Dying and not staying down isn't all that much of an accomplishment in a series where, well, everything does that. Now dying, coming back to life, and not ending up all ickylooking is a bit more of a trick. Wesker still looks pretty slick, and the worst side effect seems to be some wickedlooking vertically slit orange cat eyes. If anything, those only help. Now the guy actually has an excuse to be wearing sunglasses indoors at night.

#7 Dracula (Castlevania series)

Dracula's died and come back so often it barely counts. They've done this song and dance so many times they started setting the games in the future because they're down to one weekend in 1470 where the guy was actually dead for more than a couple minutes. Not that this is strange. Death is like his best bud. They just hang out in that tower all day drinkin' PBRs and watching the Spice Channel until a Belmont shows up and they pull the immortality equivalent of hiding under the couch until he goes the hell away.

#6 Bowser (Mario series)

I always kind of figured Bowser might actually like being dropped in lava. There isn't a much better explanation for why he has a living room full of the stuff. At least I thought so before playing through New Super Mario Bros., where he gets the flesh boiled right off him and doesn't seem to be enjoying it at all. It's like a sadistic Groundhog Day. Guy probably has the most boring blog ever: