The 15 Greatest Suits of Armor in Video Games

Samus Aran has easily the best armor. Hands-f**king-down.

Why? Well let's see:

Though it's a bit confusing as to how it works exactly, it's fundamentally PURE ENERGY manipulation INTO MATTER! I mean, that alone is just simply incredible. Though it can lead to the occasional bit of idiocy when an explosion occurs around Samus.

If that's not amazing enough, it's totally modular. With all of its augmentations and upgrades it can cause you to run at frickin' light speed, it can negate gravitational shifts, pressure and heat changes in the environment, change its shape, apparently can form on Samus at will, store multiple styles of ammunition, has a built in grapple beam, and a scan visor that analyzes structural and enemy weaknesses (which really is one of the greatest inventions in Sci-Fi history in general.)

Plus let's not forget the simple fact that it has an arm cannon built in that can be used to shoot incredibly deadly plasma at enemies. An Arm Cannon! As in, "I don't need to dick around carrying a bunch of guns because I've already got the best one possible. How sure am I of this? IT'S BUILT IN.".

Oh, and then there's the fact that it just looks awesome! And not just one version of the thing, but pretty much all of them. Remember in Metroid Prime 2 when you got the Light Armor and Samus looked like the world's deadliest Apple product? Yeah, that one's probably my favorite

Plus, if we're being honest, it's really the main reason we see Samus as capable individual.

Whenever a Metroid game has her step out of the armor into her "Zero Suit" (which surprisingly isn't a codeword for birthday suit) she's incredibly vulnerable and she becomes an object of sexual desire (see speedy/100% endings to most Metroid games, also the internet vast reserves of Zero Suit porn) rather than an independent, powerful woman. In fact, there's been a bunch of flak directed towards Nintendo since in her most recent game, this exact situation occurs! For Samus, it's really the kick-ass armor she wears that garners our respect. But, it's respect well deserved.



And now, a photoset of a girl dressed as Samus Aran doing burlesque and stripping: LINK

So this game's not out yet, but I've been playing (as in multiple times cause it's awesome) the demo of Vanquish and have come to realize that Sam Gideon is totally the man.

There's a button in the game that has him light up and smoke one puff of a cigarette before tossing it! It doesn't seem to give you any advantage either. It's just there to look cool, but it doesn't hurt you like in Metal Gear Solid. That's just badass.

It's also probably (SMOKE) subliminal messaging from big tobacco (SMOKE), but that's probably my imagination running wild (ARE YOU SMOKING YET?).

Then there's his armor. It's what takes this game from being another Gears of War-esque cover-shooter into a totally new direction. Mostly because it has rockets in the back.

So, you end up rocket knee-sliding all around the battlefield like you're in some sort of battle-addled guitar solo, but your guitar is a pulse rifle and the audience are Russian robots. An audience that you kill with your awesomeness.

Then there's the fact that like Ms. Aran's suit, there's a degree of energy-to-matter manipulation, in that the suit itself stores the data of the guns you pick up and then creates them for you to use. Also pretty cool. Oh, and it can Augment your Reactions (i.e. cause slo-mo) as the name of the damn thing implies.

It's easy to see the main reason and the iconic image of this game is going to be Sam's armor. But when it looks this cool, and let's you BE this cool, that's OK by me!



Damn. I need to go out for cigarettes now.

I'm sure the Halo Fan-boys are going to complain that this isn't higher up, but there are some solid reasons.

First, to be fair, the MJOLNIR armor is pretty damn amazing. All the versions of the armor have the ability to generate a protective shield around whoever's in it, and does a damn good job of increasing strength and speed of the user (thank you robotic joints!). As with Samus and Sam, it's also the main iconic image of the respective games that feature it (I mean when you've got MJOLNIR armor featured on Coke cans, you know it's memorable).

The MJOLNIR armor in Reach is definitely better, as it has the features of later versions, but also has all sorts of upgrades, from energy shield bursts of pure invincibility, to stealth cloaking technology, to hologram generation. It's not as good as Samus' armor though, since only one of these nice upgrades can be in any one suit, but hey, it's still pretty damn sweet.

However, with the release of Halo:Reach it also suffers from the Episode 1 syndrome of having better tech in the past than what occurs later in the timeline, and anything that forces a game to get compared to Episode 1 simply knocks over its reputation.

I mean, the armor in Reach is fundamentally better than anything Master Chief had. I definitely would have loved the option to turn invisible or sprint at 50 miles per hour in Halo 1, 2, or 3! Why the hell is the armor in the past better than what we had later on?

The Chief, IIRC got an armor upgrade between Halo and Halo 2, so why didn't he get some of the modular armor upgrades from Reach in that process? I'm sure that this wasn't ALL prototype equipment. It's the goddamn military, there's so much redundancy in equipment at any barracks that there should be tons of these mods lying around in a different base somewhere.

And if all the tech was on Reach exclusively, that's just poor strategic planning.

The sheer awesomeness of the Reach armor over what the chief has just creates a nice logic bomb in the series, and that knocks it down some.

Poor Isaac Clarke. I mean that dude just wanted to hang with his girlfriend on the USG Ishimura and fix a few broken antennae to make some credits. All valid requests, and definitely not too much to ask.

But then he walks into a nightmare scenario of gargantuan proportions, has everyone and everything screw him over, and apparently just goes insane over it in the upcoming sequel.

I just feel bad for the guy.

Still he did survive, and it's mostly due to what he was wearing that day.

In fact I'm going to say it's a direct result, as I don't recall seeing any other dead engineers on the ship, so I just assume anyone with these suits on survived.

The Engineering Environment RIG (or Resource Integration Gear if you want the long version). It's a pretty damn fine piece of tech. It's a sealed environment to protect from a vacuum, has magnetic boots to enable Zero-G navigation, get's upgraded to have better armor plating, can generate holograms, and just looks cool to boot. But the main feature that separates it from other suits? Kinesis and Stasis mods.

The ability to slow down your enemies to a crawl by, um,well I'm not sure exactly how, or move objects from a distance, by er . . . how do these things work? And why does a simple engineer have access to this technology? and weren't there Marines with better suits that had theoretically BETTER technology than the engineering version? Why the hell did they all die then?

Hmm. Best not to think about it too much probably.

Still, it's rather "neat-o gee-whiz it's the f*ture" stuff going on. Plus it helped spur that trend of removing a HUD from video games, and is probably one of the better examples of how to do so . . . even if having your readouts for Stasis energy and oxygen on your back is probably the worst place to put such displays. Wait, hold on, that's just stupid! How would he read them to know . . .?

Yeah, best not to look to far into the details of this suit.

I couldn't decide exactly which was better here, but then I realized that both of these suits of armor are pretty much the same thing: f*turistic but completely realistic pieces of body armor for hazardous situations.

In the case of the N7 Armor, a lot of the realism is derived from the description:

"Special issue combat armor for Systems Alliance military. N7 is the highest rank and proficiency a marine can achieve and only awarded on completion of an elite training program. The N7 armor features thick, ablative ceramic plates with kinetic padding. The layer of fabric armor underneath allows the user additional flexibility and mobility in a firefight. Lightweight, effective and easily repaired, the N7 armor also emits recharging kinetic barriers for additional protection."

See? That has just enough technical jargon to seem totally plausible right? Plus it really kind of IS when you see some of the amazing cosplay : Click here for Cosplay of this amazing suit of armor.

As for Gordon's iconic armor, well, it's similarly realistic sounding. It's meant to prevent radiation exposure and other more general forms of danger, which also (thankfully) includes bullets! Unlike the N7 armor though, the suit is rather unique, and pretty much everyone in the Half-life universe remarks as such.

In fact it's probably the only reason Gordon survives in-game, and it's definitely the only thing that defines him in the media. Because other than that, he just looks like Gabe Newell lost some weight.