At this point, it seems likely that Gordon Freeman is going to win GameSpot's All Time Greatest Game Hero contest.
This is the wrong choice. There is only one right answer to the question, "Who is the all-time greatest game hero?" That answer is Mario.
You may think that this is a matter of opinion. I am not so sure. To quote Roger Ebert, "There is a point when a personal opinion shades off into an error of fact." Whether the original Star Wars trilogy or the Lord of the Rings trilogy is better is a question of opinion. Whether Citizen Kane or Boat Trip is better is a question of fact. You might enjoy Boat Trip more, that's fine. But if you think that Boat Trip is the better film, you're simply wrong, in the same way that you're wrong if you think a painting of dogs playing poker is a better work of art than the Mona Lisa.
I am not saying that Mario is the greatest game hero of all time because I'm a slavish fan of all things Mario. I am not. I've barely played Super Mario 64, for instance, and didn't care for Sunshine much at all.
But from a historical perspective, I don't see how any other answer can stand up.
Mario has been there from almost the earliest days of video games. He was Jumpman, for crying out loud, in 1981's seminal Donkey Kong. Since then, the number of excellent, important, and innovative games in which he has starred outstrips the number featuring any other hero by a tremendous margin. I'm not going to start listing them. I think they are already very well-known to most people who will read this blog.
This is not to take anything away from Gordon Freeman. I'm a huge fan of the Half-Life games. But Mario he is not. You can certainly have enjoyed the Half-Life games more than all of the Mario games put together. But the Half-Life games, while certainly important and influential, have not had the same degree of impact on gaming's history as games starring Mario. No other hero's games have.
---
As long as I'm on the topic of greatness, let me also address a recent argument, made on ABC News, that Metroid Prime is the Citizen Kane of games.
Here is an actual sentence from the text version of that argument, which achieves a kind of zen-like beauty in its perfect absurdity:
"In the same way that Citizen Kane harnessed every technical component in film to express its post-mortem reassembly of an irrepressible and heartbroken man, Metroid Prime uses all of its technology to recreate the experience of a woman abandoned on an alien world inhabited by the ghosts of its prelapsarian inhabitants."
To see the ABC News piece, complete with a reaction that sums up my own feelings pretty well, check out this Rev Rant at Destructoid. (Warning: contains adult language.) For a skillful textual destruction of the Metroid Prime = Citizen Kane argument, I highly recommend this piece by Anthony Burch.
I'm all for games being viewed with more legitimacy by the mainstream press. Making absurd claims like this one, though, is not the way to go about it. In fact, as someone who wants games to be taken more seriously, I find arguments like this embarrassing. When people go on ABC News of all places and make patently ridiculous arguments like this one, it makes me want to scream, "Dude, YOU'RE NOT HELPING!"
Let games be great on their own terms. Don't try to compare a game about a space bounty hunter who goes around shooting things to one of the richest, most influential and complex films of all time. Please, just don't.