The dark side of the gamepad: finally being really bad
Table of contents
1 The villains of yesteryear 2 Reissued evils 3 Newer, worse, stronger 4 We want to watch the world burn But what about the other side? After all, we want to play really nasty guys. And before anyone says it, of course we have the chance to play the not-so-nice guy in a thousand and one RPGs and Knights of the Old Republic, Fable, Red Dead Redemption and Undertale didn't just walk past us. But honestly, who plays the bad ass if he can also be the misunderstood antihero?Recommended editorial content Here you will find external content from [PLATFORM]. To protect your personal data, external integrations are only displayed if you confirm this by clicking on "Load all external content": Load all external content I consent to external content being displayed to me. This means that personal data is transmitted to third-party platforms. Read more about our privacy policy . External content More on this in our data protection declaration. Infamous Second Son, for example, only ended up with around a third of the players with bad karma and the cutscenes with an evil protagonist don't really make sense either. Fortunately for us and our sadistic streak, there are always games in which we can not only play the bad guy, but should: violence, micro-aggression and absolute freedom of empathy included.
The villains from back then
In Evil Genius we set up a base similar to Dungeon Keeper and man it with minions. The goal of the game is nothing less than total world domination. Source: PC Games When we talk about evil video game protagonists, of course we don't miss the opportunity to indulge in nostalgic, glorified memories, because over 20 years ago we knew what was good (or bad). With Dungeon Keeper 1 and 2, Bullfrog put the dusty fantasy genre in a new light by freeing the player from heroism and giving him the supervision of a dungeon full of monsters. In this strategic building game, we noble heroes screw up the tour and set trolls, spiders, skeletons and other fiends on them. Although we violate the Geneva Convention with all torture options, we of course let anyone who points this out to us stew in dungeon until he realizes his mistake.Employee management, on the other hand, is much more problematic: the majority on Subject is namely not so submissive and has a number of sensitivities that we have to address. Flies do not want to work with spiders because they do not feel safe, dormitories have to be provided by the employer and on top of that they expect remuneration from us! If we fail to comply with the union demands, there is a risk of mass dismissals and the overflow to the hostile faction. The colorful and stupid henchmen from Overlord are much more grateful.
A little overzealously, Crypto 137 takes on the responsibility of killing as many people on earth as possible in a gruesome manner. Source: PC Games These lackeys are not only willingly led to their death and plunder every romantic mountain village at our behest, but also waive any claims in terms of compensation and satisfaction of needs.
In the alleged role model for "I - simply incorrigible" steer the overlord through a land that should actually belong to him, but was taken from his predecessor by seven heroes who are now also prone to tyranny. Unfortunately, on his vengeance and recapture campaign, the really evil overlord repeatedly reveals his soft heart and we get the option to be nice. Strangle.
Whoever lets innocent people live, even gets their own ending, which is withheld from the real / evil Overlord player. We prefer to use Overlord 2, because instead of choosing good or bad, we choose between domination and destruction. Depending on which vice we indulge in more, we will lay the country in rubble or enslave all of its inhabitants - just like a top villain should.
New evils
Already on the way At the beginning of Overlord 2, we are encouraged to chase our club-armed henchmen on little baby seals. Not very nice. Source: PC Games The title Evil Genius proves that a good villain can also get along in non-medieval settings. The name already gives it away: We are allowed to play a super-intelligent, super-wicked super villain who strives for nothing less than world domination with its own base, lackeys and nasty traps. As a strategic development game, Evil Genius uses some mechanics from Dungeon Keeper such as the basic building, the training of subjects and an extensive micromanagement. But there is still a big difference, because where in Dungeon Keeper you always have the task of eliminating a certain hero or competing dungeon keeper, the ultimate goal in Evil Genius is nothing less than total world domination. Depending on the weapon of mass destruction chosen, we see one of three endings in which the developers do not hold back in the case of rebellion, because at least one dog is involved in all end sequences - if that is not bad, we don't know either.We also find it unforgivable that we have to wait until now for the second part! At least it is now virtually certain that Evil Genius 2 will be released on Steam next year and only around 16 years after the sequel was first announced. With a hundred possible ways of suppressing the United Nations and usurping power, the title promises us the retribution we deserve for 2020.
Armed with tentacles and teeth, we avenge us in the most cruel way possible about humanity that it simply captures us just because we did not cooperate during the first contact.
Source: PC Games If you have never liked your fellow men, you already got your money's worth with Destroy All Humans this year. Actually on a secret mission to find his brother and collect human DNA, Alien Cryptosporidium 137 causes a mountain of "collateral damage". If you want to see how people burn to the bone in funny cartoon graphics and skulls burst in green goo, you will get your money's worth here. The slaughter does not seem really intelligent, but even as the bad guy, you like to lean back and turn your head off - or rather heads.
Newer, worse, stronger
Besides these Fortunately, remakes are constantly being created, in which evil is celebrated and the monster under the bed is finally allowed to describe his point of view. Carrion plays with the premise that the thing from another world wants to go home again, but the nasty people locked it up. At least until we control the blood-spilling monster. Armed with tentacles, fangs and a lot of undefined tissue, we decimate a research facility full of whimpering people who turn out to be astonishingly stubborn, especially towards the end. Ultimately, our path to freedom is more and more creative and cruel: it doesn't matter whether we gently ram the razor-sharp tentacles into our victims' backs or knock them to a pulp with the furniture standing around. It is probably thanks to the pixel graphics of the 2D scroller that the splatter should appear in Germany, even if the graphic representation is hardly less explicit because of that.People who blow, set fire to, stab and electroshock are just one small part of the repertoire of the party hard killer when it comes to defending his sleep. Source: PC Games Also in pixel garb and no less brutal, Party Hard and its sequel have cast a spell over us for several hours. The repetitive gameplay and a number of failures fall under the concept of "easy to learn, hard to master". To stab any person at a party is by no means art, even mass murder without a plan and killer combo looks like amateurish finger paint smear. In contrast to all 80s serial killers, Pinokl Games knows that a good killer kills efficiently and that an extensive background story only distracts. In addition, the motivation of our protagonist in its simplicity is absolutely understandable: kept awake by loud music, he moves out to party himself. With a knife. In your stomach.
For depth of play, however, you should use other titles such as the RPG pearl Tyranny. As the henchmen of a true despot, we subdue entire peoples, put down rebellions and make a number of malicious decisions. So we incinerate an entire region on behalf of the godlike ruler Cyrus, simply because the siege is not progressing fast enough for him.
Of course, we ourselves are not very friendly, although we can be gracious now and then but we never forget that we are going to war for an overpowering warmonger. Fittingly, our scope of action does not extend to classic good and bad, but to chaotic and dutiful - symbolized by the military factions of scarlet orders and the legion of the vilified. And, as befits an RPG, for every decision we make, we get loyalty and fear from a number of factions and characters. We especially like how responsive the world is to us. Whole map sections can remain hidden from our virtual self through certain life paths and may have to be explored in a new game play.
We want to watch the World Burn
Although we are actually not angry in this game If we have motivation, we rise above dead bodies when it comes to shoveling money, or even when we are simply bored. (1) Source: PC Games But no game has ever encouraged us to cause destruction and suffering like GTA Online. Although we are not the bad guy per se and measure ourselves against illustrious crooks like Ocean's Eleven with our work, we simply cannot help ourselves. Again and again we bomb the city heavily armed, make other players' lives hell for no reason, take the lives of several pedestrians as wrong-way drivers and open a round of manhunt for our friends. Without us benefiting from it, the game drives us to run amok again and again and then punishes us with a fat target on the chest in the form of a bounty.Nevertheless, it just feels good to be the bad guy, to always provoke the greatest possible destruction in moral dilemmas and to roam through virtual worlds feared instead of loved. And if you're not convinced yet, just imagine that you are killing a chicken in Skyrim and the villagers are so afraid and respectful of you that they just ignore it. Or how about an Assassin's Creed, in which you don't desynchronize because a civilian runs into you? "Use your aggressive feelings, boy. Let the hate flow through you." And keep us company on the dark side of the gamepad.
