When The Player Is The Final Challenge
Most video games put you in the familiar position of controlling a hero who has to defeat increasingly dangerous enemies. A few games flip that idea around and make your character, your actions, or even your entire playstyle the biggest threat in the game. Instead of spending hours preparing to defeat some terrifying boss, you get to be the reason everyone else is having a terrible day.
1. The Sims 4
While you could argue that you aren't really a boss in The Sims 4, you are definitely abusing your power over others. Being able to mess with your Sims' love life, job, and many other aspects of their life makes you a big bad. If that isn't enough, you can set up your Sims for failure by constructing tricky scenarios they'll have to navigate through.
2. Dungeon Keeper 2
Dungeon Keeper 2 puts you on the other side of the traditional fantasy adventure. You're the evil dungeon keeper building traps, recruiting monsters, and preparing unpleasant surprises for heroes who decide to invade your territory. Those heroes might think they're entering another dungeon full of loot, but you're essentially waiting for them with an entire evil organization.
Intricate Explorer on Unsplash
3. Evil Genius 2: World Domination
As the main villain in this game, you will be able to create traps for your enemies on your hidden island. Of course, you'll need to fill your island with traps and make sure your minions are trained to take out any who try to stop you. Hopefully, they don't make it to you with healthy lives.
4. Carrion
Everyone likes a good monster, right? Well, Carrion lets you play as one. You control a strange, constantly growing creature that tears through scientists, soldiers, and security personnel trying to escape a research facility. Instead of hiding from something horrible, everyone else is hiding from you.
5. Untitled Goose Game
This goose isn't the most intimidating monster, but they are just as much of a pain. Most of the tasks you'll have to do are just to bother people. Nobody needs a health bar when you can repeatedly steal someone's keys and run away honking.
Viktoriia Kondratiuk on Unsplash
6. Goat Simulator 3
You get to be a goat in this game, which allows you to do stupid things like headbutt people and destroy things. This is just one of many things you can do while roaming around in the game. The game's challenge isn't surviving a boss fight because you're the creature everyone should probably be worried about.
7. Overlord
Overlord lets you play a fantasy villain who commands an army of mischievous minions. You can send your creatures into battle while personally causing plenty of destruction along the way. Heroes may arrive expecting to defeat an evil overlord, only to discover that the entire game has been designed around making their lives miserable.
8. Prototype
There's so many powers you have as the main character in Prototype that no enemy can beat you. You can morph into anything and devour your enemies. When the game teaches you all you're capable of, you'll wonder how anyone can take you down.
9. Destroy All Humans!
Being an alien, you can do a bunch of crazy things to people on Earth. You can use psychic abilities, alien weapons, and a flying saucer to cause chaos across Earth. The humans aren't preparing you for a final confrontation; they're desperately trying to survive long enough to figure out what's happening.
10. The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction
When you're playing as the Hulk, there's nothing you can't smash. Buildings, vehicles, and your enemies will all fall to your power. The fun comes from seeing how much damage you can cause before the game finds something capable of slowing you down.
11. Prototype 2
Similar to Prototype 1, you get to control a powerful creature. After you devour enemies, you gain even more powers to take on your foes. The people chasing you might have tanks and helicopters, but you've got considerably stranger options available.
12. Shadow of the Colossus
You may not think of this game as playing a villain, but your enemies may. All these giant colossi aren't doing anything that normal villains would do. But you climb them and find ways to destroy them. So from their point of view, you're a villain.
Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash
13. Katamari Damacy
Katamari Damacy begins with a small ball rolling around. As your Katamari grows, however, you begin swallowing increasingly enormous objects, eventually reaching buildings and other massive structures. The people and objects around you don't have much of a chance once your tiny rolling ball becomes enormous.
14. Black & White
In Black & White, you take on the role of a god, which means you can do pretty much anything you want to your people. Even creating a monster that you can grow and command. There are no bosses to defeat; you just have to worry about yourself.
15. Stubbs the Zombie in Rebel Without a Pulse
Play as a zombie and convert others to your cause. You can bite people, attack them, and use some particularly ridiculous zombie abilities as you move through the game. Every encounter can potentially make the situation worse for the people trying to stop you.
16. War for the Overworld
A similar game to Dungeon Keeper, you get to play as an evil mastermind underground. Fill your dungeon with creatures and traps to stop heroes from getting too far. They think they are adventuring, but you're going to put an end to that.
17. Plague Inc.
Plague Inc. gives you an unusual objective: develop a disease and spread it across the planet before humanity can stop you. You decide which traits your pathogen develops and how it adapts to different conditions. The world's scientists aren't trying to defeat another player-controlled hero because the player is essentially the final threat they're racing against.
18. Lobotomy Corporation
Lobotomy Corporation puts you in charge of a facility filled with dangerous supernatural entities that can cause absolute chaos when mishandled. Your employees are supposed to manage these creatures, but the systems involved are complicated enough that a single mistake can turn the entire facility into a disaster. You aren't necessarily the monster yourself, but your decisions can create something considerably more frightening.
19. Fable III
Towards the end of Fable 3, you become the ruler, which means you're now the one making decisions for the land. Enemies might still challenge you directly, but the real power comes from being the person who can reshape the world around them.
20. Ravenous Devils
If you're not feeling that being a villain isn't dark or silly enough, then you can be Ravenous Devils. You run a tailor shop and restaurant where the business depends on a very unpleasant secret involving your customers. Instead of worrying about some villain eventually reaching your doorstep, you spend the game carefully managing the operation that makes you the biggest threat in the entire neighborhood.
