Introduction
Hey, sometimes we just like games where you play as a terrible person. You know you can't do it in real life, so you might as well do it in a video game. Now we've talked about lots of games like this in the past. You can play as a criminal in any old Grand Theft Auto game, but we tried to think a little differently today, talk about some games that don't get as much love, some games you might not even realize where you're playing as a terrible person. So, we got 10 cool games to talk about. Let's get started."
Overlord - The Sauron Simulator
Starting with number 10, we have Overlord, the Overlord series. There was the first game, and then it got a sequel not too long after. These are kind of like Sauron simulators. Like, you are a big powerful armored medieval Demon King guy, and the whole point of the game is for you to get more powerful, get more minions, and raid and destroy and dominate. I know technically there are a couple of ways to play through, but ultimately it's you just going around amassing power and becoming bigger and bigger . You command hordes of these little imps. You start with just a handful, but then you get more and more as the game goes on, and then you get different colors that make for different use cases. And you go around just using them to kill people. You know, a lot of the time you're fighting monsters or the undead, but you're also fighting dwarves and like raiding bases and stuff and pillaging. Plus, you're using your little imps and you're treating them as expendable. They're kind of like cute in an ugly, gross way, but you don't care about them. That just makes you even worse. And then the second game ramps it up even more. I remember in an early part of the second game, you're killing baby seals as an enemy type, and then from there, you're given choices about killing or sparing villagers so you can just be an all-out. It was a very 2000s-style game where you're just like that awesome spiky armored badass guy doing whatever he wants and it works. These games are kind of underrated. They haven't aged the best, but they're still pretty cool. I wonder where those tracks lead next.
Spec Ops: The Line - Psychological Warfare
Over at number nine, we have Spec Ops: The Line from 2012. This one has been talked about in terms of just great video game storytelling, and part of that is with the main character and how a lot of things go down. I still think you should play this one. You should check it out and experience some of the twists and turns for yourself, but if you don't care, spoiler warning here. The whole game you're kind of chasing after this general who's committed war crimes, and then it eventually kind of turns out that he was a bit of a figment of your imagination and you've been going along doing these terrible things without really consciously realizing it. There's a lot to it like a white phosphorus gas attack that sets things off. This is where you actually see the real war crime atrocities happen, and from there the mental state of the main character just continues to decline. Reloading, this was too much. Say you need to smoke. It's toxic. Keep your mouth shut. Yeah, right. So, this isn't like a black-and-white terrible person thing because there's so much to it. The trauma of war, mental health, all these really interesting questions, but with the multiple endings, you can take the route. I will say that you can embrace the inner bad guy if you want and live up to Joseph Conrad who was like the running villain for the whole thing who turned out to be dead. It's cool and a unique game, one that feels like a third-person action military shooter very much of the time but quickly devolves into so much more. It tells a story that has something to say, the mental state of soldiers at war, what doing things in war will do to a person, and the choices you make. It's super awesome. We're not the first YouTube channel to talk about this one, no surprise, but if you've never checked it out, you still should. I need some cover here. He's down. Keep pushing. Reloading. Take them out.
Papers, Please - Moral Dilemmas at the Border
Next, over at number eight, here's another one that has a bit of nuance to it. It's called Papers, Please. If you've never heard of this one, you essentially work as a kind of border security checkpoint processing toll booth guy in a fictional fascist country ruled by a dictator. The fictional country is called Arstotzka, and it has all this imagery around fascist dictatorships and how brutal everything can be, and that comes down to you, just the worker, the soldier, processor, and agent who has to let people across the border, but everybody passing has to provide the right amount of documents, and you need to go through and process every single person during a workday and scrutinize their documents and make sure everything lines up. You can't screw up because you can get in trouble or you can let somebody through that maybe tries to attack the country or has a bomb or they're trying to assassinate somebody, but every day things get harder and harder for you, your job gets more difficult, you have to check more and more paperwork, you have to scrutinize even more while still trying to go as quick as you can and process as many people in a line as you can. Also, at the end of the day, you're graded and you're paid and you're paid like basically nothing, and the game shows a breakdown of your expenses at home, and you're trying to feed your family and it just gets worse and worse. So, in this game, you're technically supposed to be a terrible person. You're supposed to do your job and come down hard on a lot of people, and I say that specifically because the game will constantly tempt you, right? People will come up to the booth and be like, "Please, I'm just trying to flee the country.Please just let me through," or a confused grandma who says she left some of her paperwork at home. You have to be the terrible person and go, "No, sorry, that's it." All these moves and sometimes your moves where you're just working for the good of this country still have terrible consequences, and it is a brutal trip of a game. Again, there is nuance to this one because like you can try and like do the right thing and let people slip by, and you know, the game is really about walking that tightrope, and it just is absolutely brutal and well-written, and tense, and you should check it out.
Kane and Lynch - Partners in Crime
Next, over at number seven, we have Kane and Lynch, oh, the Kane and Lynch games. There were two of them, and they were single-player action-adventure games by IO Interactive, the people behind the Hitman series. And this was kind of like a playable, fun third-person shooter in the vibe of a Michael Mann crime film, where you play as two terrible people, Kane and Lynch. Essentially, the breakdown is like one of them is a mercenary criminal Grand Theft Auto type guy, and the other is just an absolute Trevor kind of psychopath. And in these games, you raise hell. You shoot up cops, civilians are always caught in the crossfire, you're taking hostages, even in the cutscenes, and the story, like, the characters are just nasty, just irredeemable people. They do some charismatic stuff, of course, but for a lot of these games, you are just straight-up terrible people. They're over there, don't let them get away, got it? And like these games are always a little rough around the edges even still to this day, like, they haven't aged well at all, but they still have some charm and for experiencing a story, a pretty unique one, uh, they're still worth playing through.
Aliens versus Predator - Predator Justice
Next, over at number six, we have 2010's Aliens versus Predator. Now, this is the one where it's first-person, and there are like three different play styles or like campaigns, so you can play as the Marines, you can play as a Predator, or you can play as an Alien. And uh, playing as an Alien or a Predator, just, you are a terrible person. I know a Predator is a hunter, but the finishing moves in this game alone are just so worth putting on this list. I don't even know if we can show them. They might get us demonetized or get the video age-restricted or something, but the finishing moves in this game are so over the top, just like the character going out of their way to be such a jerk. You know, rob a guy, stab him, look him in the eye, then rip him in half, or even the stealth kills which end up taking so long. These animations are so drawn out because your character is just sneaking up behind someone, snapping their head but then also slowly ripping their entire head off. Stuff like that, it's like Mortal Kombat levels of stuff, and it's awesome. All the murder in this game is good. You almost feel bad, but I mean, you're coming to this game to play as a murderous alien or a murderous hunter alien, and even if this one does feel like a very 2010 game, it does give you what you paid for or what you signed up for, that's for sure.
Evil Genius - Bond Villain Fantasies
Next, over at number five, we're going to talk about a classic. It's Evil Genius, this PC game from 2004 kind of lets you just live out your James Bond villain sadistic fantasies. In a lot of ways, it's a bit of an old-school kind of traditional PC game, but the amount of stuff it lets you do with all that stuff being kind of dastardly is pretty cool. Essentially, if you want to be like A.E. of Spectre, like a blow or hell, even like a do evil or a goo, this game has you covered. You're able to do all of the bad stuff, torture, interrogation, killing, secret government agents, and most importantly, developing world domination plans. Like you're building rocket silos and you're figuring out how to hold the world hostage, and you're doing all this strategic stuff, but it's also kind of fun and tongue in cheek. But you do choose one of three kinds of villain archetypes, and you go from there. And while it is cool to rile up minions and train them and abuse them and make them go out and kill government agents and stuff like that and protect your base, it's building the base that is the coolest. You're setting up booby traps and all kinds of dastardly stuff, you're kind of picking the look and feel of the place, and also, of course, training those minions to be capable. But at the end of the day, you're just the big bad guy sitting behind the chair. You're not necessarily getting your hands dirty, you're doing all the conniving evil planning. That's why it makes you a very different kind of terrible person, and we thought this game was perfect for this list.
Dungeon Keeper - Darkly Satisfying RTS
Next, over at number four, stick with me here, we're keeping it old school for a second and we're talking Dungeon Keeper. The original two Dungeon Keeper games are some of the greatest of all time. They tried to bring it back and they made it like a mobile game with microtransactions and it was terrible. Forget that, forget everything you know, and go back to the original Dungeon Keeper which just made you feel like a gross, nasty, evil dude and it was perfect. It was so satisfying playing this game as a kid and just looking down on the map, kind of like a demigod, just really causing misery made it an incredibly unique game experience and it holds up to this day sort. You're essentially building out a dungeon. You're staffing it with minions and monsters and you're setting up areas for them to hang out, you have hatcheries to grow chickens to just feed them to the monsters, and it's got this really good kind of dark, dry sense of humor to it. And the best thing I think and just that made you feel like a terrible person and a real Dungeon Keeper is the hands system. Essentially the cursor for the game is just a hand and you're able to just reach down, pick up minions, throw them around, drop them where you need them to be and you just feel like an abusive jerk. You can also like slap them around and do all kinds of stuff. It was really funny but also nice and evil. This was an RTS game like no other. I mean it's from Peter Molyneux, the creative developer of course behind things like Black & White and eventually Fable. You get that feeling here. It is just perfectly satisfyingly grimy and terrible and sarcastic. We're still hoping at some point this type of game can have a comeback. I mean with so many other games being popular like Prison Architect simulator it just makes sense for Dungeon Keeper to exist in the world you know. EA I think still technically owns the rights and who knows if they have any interest at this point but we had to give it some love here it was a no-brainer.
Far Cry 3 - Unraveling Morality
Next, over at number three, we're changing gears a little bit talking about something different. It's Far Cry 3. In Far Cry 3, you can kind of be a terrible person. Now a lot of people will think in Far Cry 3 you're a terrible person because you're like a douchebag. Like, he's just the main character Jason is a very bro-y guy going naively to a tropical island to party and vacation not knowing the sinister nature of the aisle there is all that sure of course but essentially throughout the game Jason gets more, and more sadistic old more and more of a trained killer. The game reflects this—you know, you kill your first person and he's like "Oh my God, I killed someone," and by the end of the game he admits that he likes killing. Essentially, you have to kind of look into it, you have to read between the lines a little bit, but the game is trying to say something. A lot of people speculate that Jason by the end of the game ends up becoming Vaas. Vaas, of course, is the iconic villain, this absolute psychopath iconically portrayed by Michael Mando from Better Call Saul. Jason essentially becomes the same ruthless kind of unhinged killer type guy, and by the end of the game they do give you a choice you can either save your friends like you set out to do, but you know, in the end, he does admit that he had to kind of be a monster on the island, he had to become a killer, uh, then, on the other hand, you can choose the bad ending which is nice and spicy, you choose to sell out your friends, you kill them, you have sex with the bad guy lady and have like this whole ancient ritual type thing and it's just nice and debauched and evil, really kind of leaves a bad taste in your mouth, and it's perfect. I know on this game we didn't go for games where you kind of choose your adventure, we go for games that kind of stick you to being absolutely but this one was just too good to mention especially with some of those subtleties throughout.
Manhunt - Gruesome Realism
Next, over at number two, we have Manhunt, believe it or not. Yes, Manhunt is a game we haven't talked about a lot, but it's the weird Rockstar game, one of the more controversial ones, a stealth-based simple game where you play as James Earl Cash, a convicted murderer. And the game makes no bones about it you are a bad guy, you are a murderer, you are a death row inmate with seemingly not a lot of remorse. The only difference with Manhunt though is that for the most part, you're put on this kind of snuff film game show type thing where you're killing other bad guys and psychopaths, so yes you're not murdering innocent people or being that terrible, but story-wise objectively you play as a terrible person and the game is happy to let you know it. It doesn't mess around with this. Also, the way you murder some people like I know you're a killer killing killers but some of the ways you go about it from just strangling somebody with a plastic bag a lot of it is just so brutal and unnerving to this day it just makes you feel terrible. It's funny to look at some of the weirder Rockstar Games like something like Bully where you're running around as a kid doing pranks and being a jerk and then Manhunt where you're in a grimy alley shanking a dude to death. Rockstar really can do it all and they really did something specific with man, the second game too yeah but it was the first game that just felt so iconic.
Plague Inc - Indirect Malevolence
Now down at number one, you're not going to believe this, we're going with Plague Inc. Because if we're talking about a game where you play as a terrible person, I think after Co and everything it's good to acknowledge that in Plague Inc. You play kind of indirectly as a plague, you're trying to spread throughout the world and kill as many people as possible. I know it's like a technicality but I think that counts for something. You know, it feels like a simulation, like a real-time strategy game, but instead of like clicking around for your units and stuff you're clicking around like, yes yes okay, how can I get around and murder and infect more people, and it kind of gets oddly satisfying but also sadistic. We got to point that out. I also just want to mention that this game has just had staying power over the years, this thing like originally released on phones in 2012 and people are still playing it to this day. I mean when Covid-19 happened a bunch of people downloaded the game and some people were even looking at the game to see what would happen that's a little extreme of course but Plague Inc. is just a good enough and compelling game on its own that stood the test of time and you're a terrible person in it. I mean you're a terrible virus plague sure but you're terrible nonetheless.
Outro
Those are 10 games where you play as a terrible person. Like we said, there are so many other games out there where it's obvious we wanted to talk about some weird ones today, so if you have any other picks, we'd love to hear yours in the comments. But as always, thanks for reading, and we'll see you guys next time.
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