Top 10 Lists: The Top 10 Games Where You Play As A Villain

Heroes - It's been quite a staple in videogames for a long time, actually, it's a fairly standard staple of fiction in general since time immemorial. Some of these heroes are great, for many different reasons, some have you wander a shining fantasy world killing goblins, beating Black Knights and getting a kiss from the Beautiful Princess herself, some have you as the ultimate supersoldier sniping the heads off the umpteenth alien invader and many more have you riding choppers, sneaking around an enemy base, leading suicidal charges against impossible odds, and in the end rise from the ashes standing proud over the fallen remains of the ultimate evil. But let's face it: Being a hero isn't what it's cracked up to be anymore, heroes have always been more a bulwark of morality and virtue against a tide of tyranny and conflict, and well, as noble as they are, stringing up a moral message in a story makes it hard to sympathize for an inhuman embodiment of good, and there's always a loop-hole in the idea of morality anyway. As we've all probably realized, some of the cooler characters in games, like Solid Snake or Master Chief or Cloud Strife, they aren't heroes, they're just ordinary guys with extraordinary abilities who find themselves being driven to stop the ultimate threat to the world simply because no one else is willing to get the job done. Remember: Doing the right thing is never easy. Now villains... hoo-boy the villains, as Roger Ebert once said "a story is only as good as it's villain" and as much as I dislike that guy he's right about this one, the setting and hero does not a movie make, and neither does it for a game. Apart from being a fresh, new experience for gamers tired of killing fugly demons all day long, it's also something of a reality-check. There is no denying it, villainy and heroism seem very unrealistic, and playing from an alternate perspective helps give us a clearer understanding of the world, and how both heroes and villains are so inhuman unless they have both features. Ok, enough about my rant about how Good and Evil is really just a lie, it's time to get to the list of Top Ten Games Where You Play As a Villain! (As a side note, this list will also cover whole series whenever necessary)

To start off with, the Legacy of Kain series, named after its titular anti-hero vampire, it was a phenomenal game series which helped propel games with a mature theme forward (Well technically it isn't the first mature-rated game, but it was one of the many that popularized it), the series' main strong point was its absolutely amazing storyline, you will never understand it at all unless you play previous games and compare facts, and you realize how the scope of a great epic is filled in each title. Unfortunately, the series has gone dry as of late, with some of its recent titles not exactly of the highest quality, they still had a great story to tell, if only the gameplay was improved too. But the real reason it's so low on this list is because you're not actually playing as a villain. Kain, for all intents and purposes, is not evil, no matter what other people tell you and no matter what you've made youself to believe, Kain may commit acts of villainy, but he does so for a reason, remember, doing the right thing is never easy, and while Kain clearly isn't disturbed by his own evil acts, he knows that the world of Nosgoth will never get anywhere without doing what is necessary.

One of the first truly controversial games of its time, Death Race placed you in the role of a car running down "gremlins" and making tombstone road-blocks out of them. It was apparently clear, however, that you weren't knocking down "gremlins" at all, and Death Race possessed a very morbid message to anyone who ever played it, it doesn't help that the game was originally titled "Pedestrian" either. So you basically drive around like a complete lunatic running any hapless bystander who happens to be in your way six-feet in death trying to beat your opponent for the most points all while dodging the vengeful victims of your rampage thanks to the tombstones they left behind. The game triggered one of the first ever videogame controversies, and well, I'll just let you read it for youself 'cause I'm not into that sort of thing. I have never played Death Race, but from what I've observed so far, it seemed pretty mediocre. In any event, Death Race was not only controversial, it may very well be the first game in history where you were a villain, giving into your rage and driving anyone out of your way simply because you were tired of it all and wanted to kill... time of course. While Death Race is long gone its legacy lives on in its quasi-successor, Twisted Metal, but that is a different story...

Taking a more comical approach to villainy, we have Rampage, in this game series you played as humans who mutate into various giant monsters we're all familiar with, A King Kong, Godzilla, a Giant Werewolf, and other nasty, colossal beasts. Anyway, the game is simple, bash dozens upon dozens of military forces all while reducing a city somewhere in the world into a worthless pile of debris. Rampage was the shining definition of an arcade game, if you were totally pissed off, either by your work, your wife, your annoying neighbor and his kid, anything that totally wants you to destroy anything, well guess what? You're in luck! If you just want to scream your head off while bashing everything into pieces, the best place to do it is in some nondescript city while striking bloody justice against the world for ruining your happy moment. As fun as it is it eventually grows stale after you've decimated like the 400th city and by that time, you would have probably mellowed out by now, nevertheless, it's a fun game to play if you have time to kill and need to let off some steam.

Fighting games are the only known videogame genres to let you play as villains freely, aside from Strategy games. Primal Rage is pretty much Rampage with elements of Mortal Kombat, you beat your opponent up and then, if necessary, perform a bloody fatality that left your enemy as a rotten, bloody husk of his former self. Similar to Death Race and its contemporary Mortal Kombat the game achieved a certain level of controversy when it was released, in particular was the rather peculiar nature of one character's fatality, basically, he finishes off his opponents using acidic pee! Sadly, we no longer have a chance to behold this spectacle due to the evils of grassroots activism (for better or for worse). Moving away to another aspect of the game, it let you play as one of seven giant monsters: Two giant gorrilas, two T-Rexes, a gigantic velociraptor, a Triceratops crossed with an ankylosaurus and what appears to be a Coelophysis with a snake's head and neck. Four of these guys are the good guys, One T-Rex, one Gorrila, the velociraptor and the Triceratops, and the rest are villains, the other gorilla and t-rex, and the snake-dino, the Evil Gorilla, known as Chaos, is the one who possesses the pee fatality if you were wondering.

The King of Fighters is famous for its notorious SNK Boss Syndrome, embodied in its absolute best with Rugal Bernstein, aside from utilizing some familiar techniques from Geese and Krauser of Fatal Fury, he also has his patented Genocide Cutter that may as well be the torment of any KOF player unlucky enough to have Rugal as their enemy. In KOF '98 Rugal received a significant upgrade to his usual plethora of attacks, and his Omega Rugal form was quite aptly the game's final boss, expert players could take him on easily, intermediates got a challenge and new players were completely devastated. There is a reason why he's SNK's favorite boss, while playing as him certainly doesn't guarantee a surefire victory, at the very least you have the power of one of the fighting game world's finest and most powerful fighters in your hands. Did I forget to mention that he dips his defeated opponents in liquid metal and make trophies out of them? Villainous indeed.

Riding upon the heels of Dungeon Keeper, Evil Genius was essentially a simulation game developed by (the now-defunct) Elixir Studios. In this game, you play the role of one of three villainous criminal masterminds in their quest to achieve world domination, you built a base on an island and commanded your evil minions and henchmen all while staving off attacks from the pesky Forces of Justice. It's a fun take on old-fashioned James Bond films fro the 60s all while providing an interesting experience for the gamer who plays this game. Unfortunately, it suffers from innumerable bugs and glitches, and you may have a lot of trouble with trying to beat this game as a result, but in any event, it's still a fun game once you get over its short-comings. After all, the chance to finally bring the whole world to worship you as its sole master is in itself a fun prospect, and maybe, just maybe, it could be for the better of the whole world... possibly.

Tolkien once stated that within the context of his Middle-Earth stories, the orcs were a mockery of elves, but in the case of Overlord, it's a mockery of his whole legacy (and it's awesome because of it). Overlord placed you in the greaves of the unnamed Sauron-wannabe known simply as the Overlord, having been brought back to life by his gremlin-esque followers, the "Minions," he is set on a quest to purge the land of the now-corrupt heroes who slew his predecessor and re-establish Evil's dominance over the realm. Aside from your typical rampage throughout the idyllic countryside of the land, you'll notice some of the most bizarre takes on the high-fantasy genre that anyone has ever seen, including man-eating unicorns, cannibal hobbits, giant stone armadillos, ninjas clad in Ringwraith suits, and a Bug which self-destructs. Gameplay mainly involved using your eager minions to perform the deeds you want them to do, which mainly involve bashing, stealing, and working on machinery, the controls play akin to the Pikmin if you've played that. You could also decorate your home base with many ornaments and changes to make it even more befitting of a mighty power like yourself, which is a nice, if somewhat overused, touch. Finally, and perhaps somewhat oddly, the game allowed you choices between good and evil, which is strange because you're supposed to be a megalomaniacal Dark Lord hell-bent on subjugating everyone under the rule of Evil, thankfully, I've heard that the sequel rectifies this problem.

You were framed by your brother for the death of your dad and now you've barricaded yourself in a haunted house while he sends assassins your way, do you feel righteous in your attempts to stave them off? No, of course not, especially when, in order to save your life, you've made a pact with the Devil himself. Such is the tale of Tecmo's Deception. The first game, despite receiving a relatively soft rating of "Teen" by the ESRB, possessed some ideologically sensitive content that is sure to send a shiver down someone's spine, it's a game where you truly felt callously evil, and the fact that you became Satan's underling doesn't help. Although the more recent games in the series have curbed the Satanic references considerably, the taint of dark, unholy malice sown by the first game clearly left its mark on us all.

Developed by the (in)famous Peter Molyneux and Lionhead Studios, Black & White is a game where you play as a newborn god vying to be the one true god in this fantasy version of our own world, battling against the followers and armies of rival gods in the process. At your side was your good and bad conscience steering you in either the right or wrong direction, depending on which choice you perceived to be the most efficient, at your command was an entire civilization fully-capable of responding to any one of your actions, and you interacted with them as a disembodied hand, you either ruled them with benevolence, or you do so with fear, either way, they will be nothing without you and you will be nothing without them. One of the game's key features was the Creature, a giant, anthropomorphic animal that you could tame to aid you in many of your tasks if you ordered it to, and much akin to its sibling game, Fable, their appearance, as well as your own hand, changes depending on whichever alignment you currently are. And why is it so high on this list? Nothing ever holds a candle to an evil god, that's all there is to it.

As everyone most likely already know, no one in the universe of Warhammer 40K are good guys, but there are two factions who take a larger slice of the cake above the rest. To me, there is nothing more evil than a corrupt, deluded religion, and in this case, there are two: The Imperium of Man, and the Forces of Chaos. The Forces of Chaos are a nihilistic, savage and absolutely insane legion of devil-worshippers who have given in to their dark desires and live only to engulf the galaxy in a flood of malevolence, all in the name of their Dark Gods. The Imperium, on the other hand, aren't any better, they may be the "good guys" of the series, but don't be fooled, they like to believe they are, but they most certainly are not. Looking from outside their perspective makes them look like a highly exaggerated, futuristic neo-Nazi empire with a hint of theocracy and a paralyzed, catatonic corpse as their god, and although their military proclaim themselves as the so-called "Defenders of Humanity" they're just as willing to throw a horrendous amount of human lives away in the process. The only thing that possibly makes people willing to be under their dominon is the reality of the fact that "They're better than the alternatives." The best that anyone could really hope for in the universe of Warhammer 40K is a clean death, and hopefully not have your soul captured by whatever malevolent horror lurks in the afterlife.

And there we have it, games which do their very best to bring out the very worst inside all of us, don't be afraid of your evil, think of it as a way to improve youself with, for better or for worse (and I'm gearing up for the latter, Muahahaha!!).

List by DestPrince (10/05/2009)