Jack (BioShock)

Would you kindly kill the evil mastermind ruler and open things right up for the even eviller mastermind schemer to step in? If you could, that’d be just great. Thanks.

Facepalm rating: 1/5 Picards

Jack obviously had no control over this whatsoever, and he finished the job off as soon as he'd fixed his brain-wrongs.

The Chosen One (Fallout 2)

Amid Fallout 2’s many random encounters, it’s possible to stumble upon a time-warp. Its destination? The original Fallout’s Vault 13, back before a broken water chip forced the first game’s protagonist out into the wasteland in search of a replacement.

Three guesses what you end up breaking before you leave. The hardships of the first game, your ancestor’s exile from the vault, the creation of your village and the hardships you’re dealing with now are all your fault. Should have stayed at home. Though if you had, home might not have existed. But then you’d still be safe in Vault 13. But then… No. No more. Must rest brain.

Facepalm rating: 4/5 Picards

Rule number one of time-travel is amplified if you're a clumsy oaf.

Dirk the Daring (Dragon's Lair 2)

Rule number two of time travel. If you ever find yourself in The Garden of Eden and meet a young woman called Eve, do not under any circumstances, give her an apple. Why? Or, it’s just that it could bring about a teensy little problem. Like the instantaneous loss of worldwide innocence and the start of millennia of corruption and pain.

Facepalm rating: Super Mega Hyper Picard Overload

No further comments.

Harry (Silent Hill)

It’s entirely understandable that Harry Mason wanted to find a way out of a mind-raping grim-hole like Silent Hill, but such enthusiasms must be tempered with a bit of common sense. The town has the demeanour of a place vomited up by Hell after a gluttonous binge on rusty nails, so it might not be the best idea to blindly trust anyone living there about the background details. Just in case believing said person leads to you actually stopping the completion of a magical anti-demon-god seal, rather than doing the exact opposite.

Facepalm rating: 2/5 Picards

An overly-trusting screw-up on a grand scale, but there are extenuating circumstances. After all, Harry would have been more than a tad anxious to get his daughter out of a town filled with broken-bodied murderous anatomy failures.

The Agent (Crackdown)

If ever there was a lesson in why you shouldn’t blindly accept authority as truth, Crackdown is it. That lesson is, you see, doubly painful when you are the authority. Spending countless hours fighting tooth and nail to clean up the city’s gangs already adds up to a pretty hard week, but then finding out that it was all part of your fascist bosses’ secret scheme to take over the world? That’s one hell of a super-powered kick in the stones.

Facepalm rating: 4/5 Picards

A dictatorial new world order. Nice one. This one's only saved from a 5/5 because The Agent was clueless as to what was going on. Though given the excessive number of pies his bosses' fingers were in, maybe he was just all-round clueless.

The Human forces (Gears of War)

Not only did the war-winning lightmass bomb detonation at the end of Gears of War only kill some of the Locust, now everyone’s lungs are melting due to the imulsion fumes it expelled. The COG wins again!

Facepalm rating: 4/5 Picards

Given that Imulsion was in use as a fuel for decades before the lightmass bomb went off, surely someone must have had an idea what would happen. Three seconds thought would have been too long to get this one vetoed.

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