10 Video Games That Let You Get Away With Being An Absolute Dick

9. Papers, Please

Papers, Please is one of the most brilliantly unique video games of the last decade, a puzzle game which casts the player as an immigration officer in a fictional Eastern European-esque country, who must peruse immigrants' documentation and decide to either permit or deny them entry.

What makes the game so fantastic is its depiction of the banality of evil: the player is simply a bureaucratic cog in a totalitarian regime, a pawn doing the nefarious state's bidding.

But make no mistake, the player character can be a total dick, albeit one whose malevolence is entirely defined by the player themselves.

After all, though you're able to help citizens pass through the border despite incorrect paperwork, you'll receive a fine which will make it tougher to support your own family.

And so, an inclined player can operate as a thoroughly ruthless instrument of the government, covering their own hide while consigning others to a grim fate of rejection or even arrest.

Furthermore, you're able to subject the immigrants to a humiliating array of checks while scrutinising their papers, such as ordering a full-body scan to discern their full physical characteristics.

Later in the game a shadowy organisation attempting to overthrow the government tries to recruit you, and again, you're given the choice of helping or resisting.

Papers, Please boasts 20 different endings depending on your actions, and though you're able to make your journey throughout the game a heroic or even tragic one, it's also possible to remain fiercely committed to maintaining the brutal status quo right to the end.

You might not be strangling anyone to death with a cheese wire, but that doesn't mean you're not an a**hole.