Top 5 Greatest Girlfriends

When we're talking about video games and their significant others, I really do mean significant: there is no overestimating the importance of a good love interest. Especially when these lovely ladies make their big, strong boyfriends look like wusses in comparison.

These are the Top 5 girlfriends who support, love, and destroy the weak alongside their guyfriends. And, often at the same time, make them their bitches.

5. Juliet Starling

Lollipop Chainsaw

When Juliet finds Nick, her boyfriend, in this game, the first thing she does is chainsaw his head off and wear it on her belt like a Tamagatchi. She's a great girlfriend.

But yes, that boyfriend is still alive as a head and she's trying to find a way to bring back the rest of him with magic or something. I don't know, the game was too crappy to finish. But hey, that means that the girlfriend gets to be the protagonist for once! Now the girl is the one slaying zombie hordes by the bushel while the guy is a literal helpless hanger-on. He's pretty depressed and weirded-out at the whole experience, but he should be more grateful: she managed to save 1/7th of him, after all.

4. Ophelia

Brutal Legend

As Eddie Riggs would say: "God, she's awesome."

As with everything in the Brutal Land, Ophelia is the heavy metal girlfriend amplified. She isn't just a chick with black fingernails and weird jewelry; she's a chick with black fingernails and weird jewelry that slays demons, rescues damsels, talks like a Viking, and tears the bones from wild motorcycle-pigs with her bare hands. And then uses those bones to make cannons for her battle-sisters. That's brutal. Just one more reason I totally want to live in Brutal Legend.

3. Anya Oliwa

Wolfenstein: The New Order

Finally, BJ Blaskowitz meets a girl who's crazy about killing Nazis as he is.

In the main game she's already pretty great: she helps out with missions, intercepts messages, and makes loud, passionate love to our hero to the embarrassment of her friends. All admirable qualities as a supporting character.

But then we hear her collectible diaries, and we learn that before the events of the game she waged a one-woman war on the Nazis that makes Inglorious Basterds look tame. Entry after entry about cartoonishly violent Nazi murder, from running them over with her car to feeding them cyanide sausages. She is a walking Tarantino movie. Listen to them here: you will either be disturbed or, if you're like BJ, extremely aroused. They're perfect for each other.

2. Paula

Earthbound

You think Ness is the protagonist of Earthbound? And this cute little girl is his faithful JRPG healing sidekick? Ha! Brother, you've got it exactly backwards.  Ness is only there to keep her healed so she can annihilate her enemies with lightning and hellfire. Her's is the true face of the destroyer. She is Armageddon with a pretty pink bow. She makes the supposed boy protagonist look like a chump. Paula is awesome.

She's insanely brave too. She isn't just haplessly thrown into the adventure: she just realizes that saving the world is part of her destiny and goes with it. She doesn't even hesitate. She just says "Ness, let's go. We have a planet to save and I know just the crew for the job."

Think about that. Even if I had demigod-like powers at my disposal like Paula has, I would at least think twice about going on a giant globe-trotting quest like this. I would be pretty scared, even now as a grown-ass man. But never once does she lose her cool. How does she fit those balls under that dress?

 And on top of all of that, she knowingly volunteers to help Ness fight this.

1. Marle

Chrono Trigger

Boy, Chrono Trigger has a lot of things that could make #1 on a list, doesn't it? Well, here's another one: Marle, the marksman, cleric, ice mage, exiled princess, and greatest girlfriend in the video game universe. 

First of all, how cool is it that they made the healing party member have some sass in this game? In other games they always make the cleric be some gentle girly-girl, but not Marle: Marle is the rudest, boldest, and most vicious of the whole Chrono Crew. She'll back-talk dinosaur kings and shoot cosmic horrors in the face with nothing but her trusty crossbow. Or by dropping an ice mountain on it.

But that's not the reason she's the best girlfriend: the reason Marle Guardia is the best girlfriend of all time is that she climbed an Eldritch-spawn-infested demon-mountain from the future so she could bring her man back from the dead.

This game had the balls to actually kill off Crono, the main protagonist. Marle had the bigger balls to defy time itself to bring him back. It's a long quest line, and that mountain is hard as shit. But she was not only willing but driven to fight her past hordes of bosses, up a frozen post-nuclear mountain, and snatch her love from the jaws of the devourer of worlds. And afterwords, help you kill that ugly bastard. That is some love, dedication, and outright badassery. If I had a girlfriend and got blasted to atoms by giant deer-tick Cthulhu, my ass would stay dead. Because that girlfriend would not be Marle.

Honorable Mentions

Elena and Cloe, from the Uncharted series

Skylar Sinclair, from The Saboteur

Berri, from Conker's Bad Fur Day

Silvia, from the Viewtiful Joe series

Lucy and Nix, from Infamous 2

Anybody else? Who else is an awesome video game girlfriend?