My Top 5 Celebrity Cameos In Videogames

Ellen Page starring in Beyond: Two Souls might be exciting news, but celebrity talent in videogames is nothing new. In fact, big name stars have shown up in more videogames than you might expect. Here are some of my personal favourites.

1: Carrie-Anne Moss in Mass Effect 2/3

You remember Aria, the cool, confident owner of the Afterlife club in Mass Effect 2? She was voiced by Carrie-Anne Moss, who is perhaps best known as Trinity, the leather clad love interest from the classic sci-fi action film The Matrix. She also co-starred in Christopher Nolan's thriller Memento, another great film.

There are other celebrity cameos in the Mass Effect games worthy of mention (Martin Sheen, Seth Green) but this one gives me another excuse to put an image from The Matrix in one of my articles.

I do love The Matrix.

2: Jason Isaacs in El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron

I'll be honest, I wasn't really sure what was going on in El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron. Harry Potter star Jason Isaacs might, though, playing ultimate archangel Lucifel. He has the ability to travel through time and can talk to god on his mobile phone, which is pretty handy.

Isaacs also plays Satan in Castlevania: Lords of Shadow. Hang on a minute...Lucius Malfoy? Lucifel? Satan, I.E. Lucifer? Is Jason Isaacs living a secret life as the devil incarnate? He also lent his voice to point and click adventure game Beneath a Steel Sky way back in 1994.

3: Gillian Anderson in Hellbender

Going back to the mid-nineties has reminded me of Hellbender. I'm not talking about the breed of giant salamander; Hellbender was a shooter/flight simulator and a sequel to Fury 3 from 1996. It holds some fond memories for me, not only because it was one of the first games I ever played as a kid (along with Planet of Death and 3D Dinosaur Hunter), but also because it featured Gillian Anderson, known for her role as Dana Scully in the X-files, as the voice of the ship's computer. Not that I knew that at the time. In fact, I didn't make the connection until years later, despite having grown up watching the X-files and playing Hellbender side by side.

4: Greg Grunberg in Condemned: Criminal Origins

The man who played the telepathic cop from the U.S. sci-fi TV series Heroes can also be found brutally bludgeoning demented tramps in abandoned subway stations in the 2005 survival horror Condemned: Criminal Origins. He can also be found briefly in L.A. Noire, looking surprisingly lifelike thanks to advanced facial animation technology.

Sadly, Grunberg didn't reprise his role for the sequel, Condemned 2: Bloodshot.

5: Stephen Merchant in Portal 2

And to think that people campaigned to keep the placeholder voice work from Valve animator Richard Lord when the game was first revealed. It's hard to imagine anyone else as Wheatley, the bumbling, cretinous A.I. sphere. Fans of the U.K. TV show Extras might recognise him as the incompetent agent of the series protagonist Andy Millman. He is also the co-host of The Ricky Gervais Show.

Don't worry, I haven't forgotten that J.K. Simmons also does a fantastic job voicing Cave Johnson. The "when life gives you lemons" speech is still one of my favourite videogame moments from the last few years.