Mothering Sunday is fast approaching (take note kids!) and what better time to take a look at the mothers in video games. These poor creatures get one bad rap in the pixellated world.
They tend towards the less maternal of the mothering bunch by creating monster children, abandoning their kids to their fate, getting kidnapped and leaving the heroes as lonely little orphans. Or they turn horribly evil and attempt to destroy the world. Here are eight of the best.
And in the spirit of honesty and cooperation – Spoiler Alert…
Poor Alma, she didn’t plan to be the creator of a troop of clone soldiers but it was to be her destiny. Forced to become a mother at the tender age of 15 (social services alert!) she claims Paxton Fettel, Point Man and many telepathic clones as her offspring. Thanks to her overpowering need for revenge and death, she doesn’t seem to have much in the way of a maternal instinct although, in the sequel, she does deliberately have another baby.
Most likely to: Kill you than bake you cookies
While she may not have undergone the joys of pregnancy and labour, Dr. Tenenbaum did create the Little Sisters and the Big Sister thanks to her research. Unlike Alma, however, she was all about giving them love and support and protection. If you wanted to get on her good side then you didn’t want to harvest those little darlings for ADAM, no sir, you did not.
Most likely to: Feature in the Daily Mail for smoking around children
Maggie Monday - Stubbs the Zombie: Rebel Without A Pulse
Maggie Monday is one lady who makes the most of her unfortunate circumstances. Her father kills her lover, Stubbs, and buries him in the spot where her son decides to build the city of Punchbowl. Stubbs, of course, rises from the dead and proceeds to eat the brains of all who live in the town in a revenge quest of epic proportions. Maggie is reunited with Stubbs, he eats her brains (although nobody is entirely sure if she was totally into this idea) and the two remain madly in zombified love. She does save her son from imminent brain eating when she tells Stubbs that Andrew is her son, but sadly the nuclear explosion that destroys Punchbowl kills him anyway. She didn’t appear too gutted as she sailed off into the sunset with her putrefying husband.
Most likely to: Whip up deep fried brains with tartar sauce
Talk about not being a role model for your kids. Annette Birkin, mother to Sherry, was hardly a poster mama for child rearing and care. Even though she and her husband William started out as doting parents, as things progressed she spent more time in underground labs than she did with her poor daughter. Not only that, but she also stuck a sample of the virus into a locket and gave it to Sherry. Whether that was to help her find a cure or to infect her is entirely up to your way of playing the game. No matter which way you look at it, she left her daughter to fend for herself in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. Nice.
Most likely to: Be arrested by social services
Lady Amelia Croft was the epitome of the caring parent until an unfortunate teleportation incident, along with her husband’s death, left poor Lara a bewildered orphan. Still, she did turn into a thrall and try and eat her daughter., forcing Lara to shoot the mother she’d spent most of her life trying to find. Psychologically she wasn’t very good for Lara, was she?
Most likely to: Be a real mother with side effects
Nina is a super assassin who had her child while in cryogenic sleep. As you do. Really. Promise.
She barely pays any attention to her son, Steve Fox, acting as if his existence is nothing more than a mere inconvenience. But she doesn’t kill him so perhaps there’s a spark of maternal instinct in there , somewhere.
Most likely to: Strangle you with a nappy
Even if her taste in men is somewhat dodgy and she doesn’t really epitomise the concept of the soccer mom, Maria did take a bullet for her daughter. She died tragically (as mothers in video games tend to do) but at least she did it while saving her child’s life.
Most likely to: Be splashed across the front page
Benezia led a rather eventful life and was something of a forward thinking rebel in many of her life choices. She had her daughter, Liari T’Soni, with another asari which was considered something of a social faux pas. Needless to say the two of them did not have a great relationship, especially after Benezia was indoctrinated, but at least they made friends on her deathbed.
Most likely to: Cause teenage angst and rebellion
Have I missed any biggies? Is there a mama you think should be up in lights? Let me know your thoughts, meanwhile I’m going to play Mass Effect again.
Game Buzz is a weekly opinion column designed to take an irreverent look at one of the biggest news stories to break in the past week. Every Friday evening we’ll be bringing you another slice of reaction to topical gaming news, and inviting you to agree, disagree, shout assent, vent rage, scream and complain to you heart’s delight. Following this week’s unveiling of the Playstation Move, Jon and Matt combine forces to pen an open letter to the key figures in the development of upcoming motion control.
Certainly the market is frothing at the mouth. Shortly after Asus plonked their netbook onto the market, the news began to shake with 3D this and 3D that. Movies like 
One side is arguing that spoilers are fine. That the more “dependent a work of art’s emotional power is upon the lizard-brain surprise generated by some putatively shocking revelation, the more cheaply sensationalistic that work of art probably is”. [
