The whole point of a video game is to help a character accomplish some goal, whether it's saving a princess, defeating an evil boss, or designing the prettiest dress for the costume ball. Unfortunately some of these characters fall well below their already-sunken expectations and are just plain useless. So I thought I'd compile some of the worst offenders in this group who serve no purpose other than to frustrate gamers everywhere. To keep this from becoming a "Top 1,000" list, I'm going to exclude any characters that the player has to physically escort from one place to another (Sorry, Ico princess and the president's daughter from Resident Evil 4; your uselessness needs no acknowledgement). No, these are characters who should be helpful, but ultimately aren't.

6. Barney (Half-Life 2)

Barney first distinguished himself as his own character in the third Half-Life expansion, Blue Shift; a game that could be beaten in 4 hours and told the story of one security guard who was humorously locked out of a room in the first game. For this and this alone, Barney became a fan favorite and earned himself a decent role in the highly-anticipated sequel to Half-Life. In fact, he's the first familiar face you see as he saves you from the torture room. Later on, he sends you off into the world to fight the world-dominating Combine and tosses you...a crowbar. Yep, the man has used his sharp intellect to pass himself off as one of the enemy forces, but he can't seem to secure you one decent weapon? What a useless bastard.

5. Dan (Street Fighter)

This character began life as a joke, which probably should have indicated his uselessness pretty quickly. He's developed a reputation as "the gay Ryu/Ken" in both the derogatory sense and the literal one. Considering Capcom keeps releasing images like the one above, it's no wonder why. Anyone who selected Dan to fight with though quickly found that the joke was on them. His special moves were identical to Ryu and Ken's, just much much weaker. His fireball only extends a foot in front of his hand before it dissipates, and his "hurricane kicks" is really just two kicks in mid-air. Sure, some people have managed to master Dan and can probably beat all challengers with him, but they could probably do even better with plain ol' Ryu or Ken.

4. Rio (Lifeline)

Lifeline has become a joke among gamers and that's almost entirely due to the actions of this woman. Rio is a cocktail waitress who finds herself trapped aboard a cruise ship suddenly beset by aliens or demons or whatever those things are that are trying to eat her. Apparently this woman has never made a decision by herself in her life, since it is now your duty to guide every single one of her actions through commands uttered into a headset mic.

That might be all well and good...except that she's half-deaf and probably suffering from a mental illness. Even when she has a gun in her hand and pointed right at some monster lumbering toward her, she still won't make a move to defend herself without your approved. That's bad enough, but it's when there's no danger in sight that things take an even more face-palming turn. Half the time when she mishears you, for whatever reason, she'll assume you said, "Run." Rather than asking "Run where," she will instead go "okay" and begin running laps around the room. She will do this until she gets tired or you yell at her to stop.

It makes you wonder how she even got a job as a waitress. You'd think her boss might notice something was wrong when every five minutes she'd suddenly start jogging around the kitchen like a kid whose Ritalin prescription has run out.

3. Aeris (Final Fantasy VII)

A lot of people credit Aeris with bringing some genuine emotion to gaming (WARNING: 12-Year Old Spoiler Coming). Her surprising death apparently brought many a gamer to tears back in the late 90's. That's probably because she's basically an innocent girl who gets brutally murdered -- by PS1 game standards -- which is all depicted through some beautifully directed cut-scenes.

Still, none of that really covers up the fact that she vanishes forever about a third of the way into the game, taking all her weapons, armor, and experience with her. She's one of the first characters you meet, so you spend literally hours building her skills up, upgrading her weapons and armor, and learning how to use her effectively in combat. I was partly lucky in that I knew about her tragic fate before I played the game, so I made sure to avoid using her whenever possible. The reason I knew this though was because of several friends who recounted how sad they were when she died...and took all that precious EXP with her. It's the video game equivalent of having your sand castle washed away by a high tide. Yes, her death is tragic and a crucial moment in the story; but when your greatest accomplishment in a game is dying, you can't really be considered all that useful.

2. Lambert (Splinter Cell series)

Ever since the first Splinter Cell game, Sam Fisher has been making just about everyone's "Top Ten Badasses in Video Games" lists, and it's easy to see why. All of his games involve moving through the shadows to avoid detection, incapacitating or killing terrorists using an assortment of gadgets and weaponry, and just basically being a modern day ninja. He could be behind you right now, and you wouldn't know until you felt a hand clamping around your mouth and some sharp steel jamming into your neck.

So where does Lambert come into all this? He's Fisher's boss and the guy who keeps him in check. Thus, when you're sneaking down a hall and about to snap some hapless guard's neck, Lambert chimes in to tell you that you aren't "allowed" to kill anyone. This seems like the strangest thing you could possibly tell someone after teaching them a hundred different ways to kill a man, giving them a fully-loaded assault rifle, and sending them off to break into some fortified compound. Sure, you could still disobey him, but then the game is automatically over. Lambert basically makes this list for being gaming's biggest killjoy.

1. Any Generic Mushroom Person (various Super Mario games)

Toad, I am excluding you from this list. You've been a useful character since Super Mario Bros. 2, one of my favorites in the whole Mario Kart series, and you were even more helpful than Mario in the cartoons sometimes. For this and other reasons, you may rest assured that you are indeed classified as "useful" in your games.

As for the rest of you Mushroom people though, how has your race not gone extinct? You have two goals in life: 1) build a thriving community and 2) keep Princess Toadstool safe; and you can't do either right without calling in Mario to bail you all out. I'll let the first princess-napping slide since, let's face it, no one ever expects a giant lizard-man to just waltz in and snatch your leader like that. But what about the other dozen kidnappings since then? You already know Bowser's got it out for you, so why don't you build some actual defenses? At least do more than stand around looking all surprised when your Princess gets taken AGAIN and your kingdom is infested with monsters AGAIN.

About all you're good for is occasionally selling power ups to a pair of plumbers that have to do your job for you (and in one instance, baby versions of those same plumbers). Hell, even then you sometimes force them to play ridiculous guessing games that may or may not give them something useful. I just don't know why Mario even bothers.