It’s no secret that females in video games are typically blatantly, sexualized byproducts of perverted character design. Between their skimpy attire and grossly exaggerated anatomy, most ladies featured in video games look more like prostitutes than crime-fighting, evil-slaying heroes. While games like Dead or Alive, Ninja Gaiden and Soulcalibur continue to perpetuate the demeaning myth that girls should dress like whores to sell games and kick ass, there are those leading ladies that have striven to break the stereotype.

So here are ten, completely badass video game ladies who are more concerned with messing up faces and ending lives than posing as pin-up girls for a nerdy version of Playboy. It was difficult to make this list; to qualify, entries had to be female, appropriately and modestly dressed for the majority of the game, and capable of totally kicking ass. Suffice to say, this excluded some of the most defining female characters in gaming history. But what good is a list if it doesn’t discriminate and judge?

Being the female in a predominately male group of zombie apocalypse survivors, Zoey could easy have been a scantily clad, buxom schoolgirl cliché. After all, that’s the way women are typically portrayed in zombie video games if Resident Evil 3, House of the Dead: Overkill and Hunter: The Reckoning are anything to go by. Valve, however, designed Zoey as a normal, female college student trapped in abnormal circumstances. Her jeans and pink parka is feminine without being sexual, yet she totes enough guns and ammunition to keep an army equipped. She may have almost flunked out of school for watching too many horror movies, but she gets an A+ in Molotov throwing, Witch hunting, Boomer shooting, and being overall awesome.

Faith (Mirror’s Edge)

Watching a hot lady running can be surprisingly sexy, as Megan Fox’s ridiculously long jogging scene in Transformers 2 proves. However, even though Faith makes a living out of running, looking good is the least of her priorities. As a smuggler who transports messages in defiance of an oppressive government’s censorship, Faith often finds herself being chased by police. And SWAT teams. And helicopter gunships. Rather than relying exclusively on brute strength, Faith escapes capture through her natural athleticism, speed and guile. On top of that, Faith is not some overly sexualized, big breasted wet dream, no matter what Japanese gamers might imagine.