8 Times YOU Were More Of A Threat To Society Than The Gaming Villain
One bad day away...
With the release of the "let's just face it, it wasn't his best" Ryan Reynolds vehicle Free Guy, the world over came together to agree on precisely one thing.
And no it's not that maybe someone should have taken another bash at the script which when you say it out loud makes next to no sense. No instead it was that when it comes to video games, the player aka you, is well....kind of an !*$%.
Throughout the piece all we see are players screaming around destroying everything in their wake, abusing NPCs, and showing little to no empathy for others, and while this is obviously a hyperbolic interpretation of online life, I bet we could all readily draw from memory times in which we'd witnessed the worst of humanity first hand while trying to play a game.
And it sure doesn't help matters that there are some games out there that allow the audience to act out all of these nasty fantasies while also rewarding them for doing so!
From violence so ultra it would make normal chellovecks squirm like a scoteena (a Clockwork Orange reference for you there), to scenes that some would argue simply shouldn't exist in the video game medium, the games we're exploring all contain examples of rotten heroes that are utter menaces to society.
8. Being The Boss - Saints Row Franchise
Now to be honest there are a tonne of open-world games that I could have included here which all basically boil down to the same scenario, that which posits you in the role of "complete and utter bastard face". Red Dead Redemption, Far Cry, The Fable Franchise, all and many more give the player a tonne of free choice and as a result, offer up a lot of ways to cross people off your Xmas card permanently.
However, when it comes to wreaking utter havoc just for a laugh, Saints Row has all of these pretenders beat, as upon taking up the mantle of The Boss you basically also adopt a free pass to be a complete and utter !*$%. From routinely embarrassing the hard-working police forces around the area, to shoving monstrous dildos up into random civilians and launching them into the air, this is a playground of utter insanity and you are the school bully with developer Deep Silver being your little cronies yelling "yeah!" at the end of every sentence.
And when you add in superpowers to the mix things only multiply in madness, to the point that any prospective villain no matter how much they flap gums about enslaving humanity or destroying the Earth never feels even remotely threatening compared to the chaos you're causing just trying to get to the shops each morning.
"What's that? You're going to kill those hostages if I don't comply? Ok well how about I throw a car through your window and then get praised if any of them survive, it's a win-win for me mate!"
Seriously, in this game, you're the utter worst, and it's kinda great.