I'm kinda fond of Fourth Wall. He is like a good friend who keeps you sedated with drugs and booze so you can forget who you really are and let your inner warrior ravage the world of your dreams. Something that would otherwise seem silly or even childish.

I agree with everyone.

The "fourth wall" is an inherently inappropriate term for use with games. Unlike in movies or plays, you are not simply observing independent actors in a cross-section of their environment, as if the proverbial fourth wall had been sawed off their surroundings and they have somehow failed to notice. In games, you are the actor who has the choice of whether or not to disregard the inherent artificiality around you. There's actually a popular term for this, it's called the "magic circle".

Viewers of film and plays notice immediately when the fourth wall is broken, as if they've been spotted eavesdropping on a private conversation. However engaging in the magic circle involves a tacit complicity with the system, so even if the system references its own artificiality this won't break the magic circle.

The Wikipedia page on the topic isn't great but here ya go: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Circle_(synthetic_worlds)

I don't think there's a right or wrong answer, or a right way to use the 4th wall. It just depends on the narrative, and what the storyteller wants to convey.

For clarification, read this article.

The part in Bioshock where Otacon calls you up and tells you to change discs.

What if the game was all about the player character and the NPCs around him or her dealing with this intrusive control the player was given over their world and the player character's actions specifically? Sort of like that movie where Will Ferrel is the character in a woman's novel. Stranger Than Fiction, I think. What if it was that, but in game form? There was a Daffy Duck game for DS that did this a while back, as well. I suppose, however, this isn't winking at the camera as much as it is being genuinely concerned at the camera's presence in their lives.

I agree that games that break the fourth wall or puncture this magic circle or whatever you want to call it, simply for the sake of comedy, repeatedly and consistently, do wear thin. I've played a number of RPG Maker games that are supposed to be comedy games where all they do is emulate generic JRPGs while pointing out that what they're doing is generic JRPG stuff that would seem quite silly in the real world. It gets tiring very, very quickly. Bard's Tale also did this. It was initially hilarious, but then it became quite clear that this was the only joke it offered, as if that made up for it's stale gameplay.

I tend to presume the Magic Circle, and feel cheated unless it's broken intentionally and artfully.