When you hear the phrase "video game hero", what images come to mind? Do you think about a superhero in skintight spandex punching out supervillains? A dark-haired man wisecracking throughout his explorations through the world and through his female companions' erogenous zones? A woman wearing revealing outfits as she kills horrific monsters in the name of feminism?

Of course, these poorly-veiled references to Spider-Man, Nolan North, and Bayonetta (or Lara Croft? Juliet Starling? Whatever.) are heroes in their own way. But a hero greater than all of them is an overweight, middle-aged photojournalist who watches too much professional wrestling.

(Note: listen to this as you read, please. Then go look up the lyrics after you realize you can't understand them.)

Frank West isn't a remarkable man. He's not particularly attractive, is kind of a smartass in the non-endearing way, works a low-paying job, and has an odd affinity for dressing in women's clothing. But all his quirks make his acts of heroism shine even more brightly.

(Our best hope against the impending zombie apocalypse?)

Frank West's backstory is vague: we know he's a journalist and we know that he allegedly covered wars at some point. What we do know about him is that he is a self-motivated individual: he hired a helicopter pilot to take him to Willamette, Colorado in DEAD RISING so he could report a potentially dangerous situation to the world. He's definitely not the type to rest on his laurels and hope fame and fortune come to him; he goes out and seeks glory himself.

Frank West ends up in an incredible situation: stranded in a city overrun with zombies. Instead of curling up into a ball and crying, he does what most sane people wouldn't do. He continues to seek the truth behind the zombie outbreak with the side goal of saving every living being he can find. Zombie outbreaks will inevitably cast the world into a brutal place where everyone only cares about their own survival. Frank knows this, yet he tries his hardest to keep both himself and every other human being he meets alive and safe.

Even after suffering through events that would make most people lose their minds, like being attacked by psychopathic murders, seeing horrifically mutated humans, and being called every 5 minutes by Otis, he survives and becomes one of the key developers behind the anti-zombification drug, Zombrex.

Whoever put up with this without killing Otis deserves a medal.

Somehow Frank keeps a cool head while dealing with nearly being killed, escorting a slew of survivors with such immense issues with basic motor skills that they cannot walk in straight lines without getting lost, and pretty much getting no respect for his efforts. It's because he's a true hero that he deals with all of this and saves everyone he can anyway.

Not to mention that he's a badass. This is a guy who's beaten up government-trained secret agents and military commanders with his bare hands. He has no super powers, yet he survived injuries and zombie attacks for numerous days with just good ol' fashioned strength...and use of whatever weapons he happens to find lying around. Oh, and orange juice. Keep drinking that Sunny D if you wanna be like Frank one day!

Frank West is a hero we can all relate to. In the end, he's just a hardworking guy who uses his ingenuity and common sense to survive in extraordinary circumstances. He shows that you don't need to be rich or superpowered to be a hero, you just need to have the motivation to do the right thing.

Also, he's totally gonna be Mega Man X in the future. That's pretty cool too.

Recently, I got a brand new copy of Final Fantasy XIII for $10. It's great because I've wanted to play it for a while, but definitely not pay a significant sum of money for it! I was right to wait, because it isn't a very good game. It's not awful or the worst RPG I've ever played or anything. It's just very bland and terrible at making me want to keep playing it. But even a mediocre experience can be positive, and I learned what I like about RPGs from things Final Fantasy XIII did right AND wrong. So I'm gonna list these things and you probably won't care because this game's old and the sequel is out. Let's start!

Post-battle recovery is boring.

In every other RPG ever this has bugged me. After most battles, you will go through this ritual:

1. Go to item menu and use Potions to heal up your wounded characters.

2. Use Phoenix Downs to revive the downed characters.

3.Use Ether to refill magic.

It's just a waste of time, which is why I'm glad Final Fantasy XIII is nice enough to refill your HP after every battle, and there's no limit on MP at all! This is directly linked to the next point because this game can afford to be generous when

Every battle is a challenge.

For most of Final Fantasy XIIII, you really need to pay attention to battles or you're gonna lose. If I'm playing through an RPG for an extended period of time just steamrolling every enemy in my way, I'm gonna get bored of it. Final Fantasy XIII's difficulty is always spot-on, and even challenges that seem insurmountable at first glance can usually be overcome if you just reconfigure your party and Paradigm setup. It's always a challenge, and that made me want to keep playing.

I hate useless equipment and bad upgrade systems.

I think a good 75% of the equipment I picked up in Final Fantasy XIII was trash. There are TONS of accessories that raise your resistance to status effects and certain types of damage. If you use a healer in your party (which is pretty tough not to do) or spend a few Gil on status recovery items, these accessories become meaningless. There are weapons with fantastic abilities like "makes your magic weaker", "makes your physical strength weaker", and "+100 HP (which you can already get from the ten +100 HP items you got earlier)". They're worthless.

Even if these weapons got some kind of FANTASTIC ability when you upgrade them all the way, I can't tell. The game's upgrade system is so poorly explained in-game that I ended up looking up a guide to find out how to upgrade items most efficiently. It's not worth leveling up this "Enfeeblement" staff to see if it evolves into The Godlike Killing Staff of Pure Death if I could just upgrade the "Better Healing" staff and beat the entire game without changing it.

I love checkpoints!

The checkpoints in Final Fantasy XIII are fantastic. Since nearly every battle includes the very real possibility of you getting your ass blasted off in seconds, they checkpoint the heck out of this game. Failed a battle against one of those Behemoth guys because he stood up halfway through and decided to kill you in one shot? You get a retry right on the spot which spawns you outside of the battle and gives you time to change your tactics. I've played plenty of RPGs where you would get kicked out to THE MAIN MENU after losing a battle and have to retry from the last save point, which means you could be losing a ton of progress. I hate that. You might say it's "too easy" but I don't care if it makes the game more enjoyable. I love checkpoints.

Caring about characters = caring about the game.

I REALLY didn't care about the main cast of Final Fantasy XIII, and I can't quite put my finger on why. Maybe because of all the melodrama? The frequent switching of perspectives? The long cutscenes where they continually reiterate their motivation and major plot points so often that I just stopped paying attention? Either way, I didn't care about what happened to these people and it really hurt my enjoyment of the game as a whole. The battling is fine, but in a story driven game, good pacing and writing are just as important as the gameplay. I didn't care about the story of Final Fantasy XIII, and it greatly diminished my desire to finish it. But it was only $10...

Good post-game content is crucial.

When I play a game, I try to get the most out of it. It's a bummer finishing a game and having nothing to do afterwards but start a new one, even if it is a New Game+ with added features. Final Fantasy XIII unlocks a ton of cool things after you beat it. New missions, new areas to explore, and the opportunity to raise all your characters to their maximum potential. New Game+ is cool, but I think I like post-game additions in RPGs even more.

I hate not having fast travel in a large world.

Once I got to the point in Final Fantasy XIII where I could do sidequests, I set out to do ALL of them because I like sidequests. I quit about two hours later because it was taking too long. There are a few missions you can complete to unlock fast travel spots. But this world is really, REALLY big. The fastest travel option you get is a Chocobo, but this option is not made apparent and requires you to do a lot of legwork on your own to finish a few loosely-connected sidequests to unlock. And even when you get the Chocobo, you can lose it easily because there's so many wild enemies running around to knock you off. Which means you'll have to walk quite a while to get on another mount. Which you'll probably lose again. Oh well. If you're gonna put in a large overworld, have a good fast travel system!

I'm glad I saw Final Fantasy XIII to the end. I didn't enjoy it all the way through, but playing a game that I never really got drawn into or enjoyed for a majority of it was a unique experience in learning what I appreciate as a gamer. Now I've just gotta find an RPG that I really like.

Please don't recommend Final Fantasy XIII-2, unless I can get that for $10 too...

The 1996 hip-hop classic "Space Jam" by Quad City DJ's needs no introduction, but I will give it one anyway. It was the theme song of the Looney Tunes/NBA film "Space Jam", and it is clearly the most memorable thing from the film. It's a simple song, but it still builds hype like few other songs can. If you go to a basketball game where this isn't played over the PA at some point, that is not a real basketball game.