10 Video Games Where You're The Bad Guy

4. Kane & Lynch

The Kane & Lynch games present players with two of the most detestable protagonists of any AAA franchise from the last 20 years.

The title characters are two vicious criminals who will murder just about anyone who gets in their way, and despite the series' attempts to make them mildly sympathetic - Kane has a daughter, Lynch is extremely mentally ill - it's tough to shake just how overpoweringly terrible the two men are.

Kane turned on his former partners and ran off with the goods, while Lynch is an untamed psychopath with a severe drug problem, and so together, they're a thoroughly unlikeable cocktail of ruthless villainy.

Though both Kane & Lynch games received mixed responses with many critics zeroing in on how loathable the protagonists were, it's honestly a pretty daring move to offer up characters this irredeemably awful in a AAA game.

And unlike Hatred, it doesn't simply feel like an edgelord fantasy: we learn plenty about these two men over the course of the game, yet despite how humanised they ultimately are, it's still tough to view them as anything but absolutely repugnant men.