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"Playing As The Baddie"

So, who's your favourite character? Would it be the classic Nintendo mascot (and unsuccessful plumber,) Mario? What does he do? He saves all the strange worlds with Mushrooms in them, controlled by strange men like Wario.

Could it be Sega's Sonic? What does he do? He saves the world and other people from the evil Dr Robotnik (or however you spell it.)

Perhaps it's Solid Snake, the star of Metal Gear Solid. He goes around destroying nuclear weapons and other nuclear threats, as well as making some nice friends on the way.

But there are many more to choose from. It could be Crash Bandicoot, it could be Spyro the Dragon, maybe it's Lara Croft-there are loads of them. And what do they ALL do? They save worlds by beating the baddies.

Now, I was thinking, what would it be like to play the baddie in games? Perhaps you'd like to be Liquid Snake in MGS, or Wario in any 1 of the thousands of the Mario games. I think it would be very exciting, and perhaps a little tougher, as the goodies always seem to have much more health than the baddies, right?

There are many advantages to playing the baddie in a game. It would be much more interesting and fun, if once you completed the game you went and blew up some countries. It would probably be a lot of fun to watch all Mario and all his little friends disappear in a chorus of, "Mum-am-mia!"

It could also lead to some very enticing plot lines. You're some assasin who's been sent by Sadamn Hussein (dunno how to spell his name either,) to kill someone who is trying to thwart Sadamn's plans of world domination. You find this man, and your about to kill him when he pipes up with, "Please...think about what you're doing! You're going to send the whole world into slavery, and that will include you as well! Please stop this madness, and help me to defeat Sadamn!"

Then you have a choice. You can blow this man's brains out like Sadamn told you to...or, you can put your gun away, and help defeat Sadamn. Either way, you will end up completing the game. Would there be a 'right' way of doing it? No, not really. You can either watch the ending sequence where President Bush is rolling around with his trousers on fire, or you can see the one where you and your friend are standing on a podium being given a medal by President Bush.

BUT, there are some problems.

If you were, say, a monster in Doom 2, then the game wouldn't be very exciting, would it? In most shooters you have to kill many people, and go through many different challenges to get to the final boss. Where as if all you had to do was run around trying to find someone, killing them and seeing the end movie, it's rather dull. The only I can see them getting round this is by sending you into the goodies base, where your basically doing the same thing as you would've done controlling the goodie.

There have been some games around lately where your character is the bad guy. But nearly all of the time, your enemies are the police. Games such as Driver and Smugglers Run are notable examples. These type of games are not what I'm talking about, as I'm sure you'll have guessed.

So, where do we go from here? Do we continue always being the good guy, against all odds trying to save worlds and other people. Or are we given a game where we take control of the enemy. Where we can inflict much punishment on the annoying good-looking guy, who always gets the girl and beats up the baddies.

With some innovation, and someone as good as Kojima or Miyamoto, I believe we can get their.

Thanks for reading, Ant.

lol

Strafex wrote:
> The idea of my game would be that if you choose the Darkside then
> you find life easier but it's more rewarding to stay good.

It
> encourages players to become a stong Jedi rather than take the easy
> way out.



Ofcourse, everyone will fall to the Darkside the
> first time round, I'll ensure that it's too difficult not
> to.

Only once they're a bit better will they be able to follow
> the path of a true Jedi and unlock a super bonus that I've not
> thought of yet...

Then they can do it all again, this time NOT on
> the EASY setting :-D

Then you bring out the Expansion back called, "Jar-Jar's death."

You can either kill Jar-Jar, help him find his way home. I didn't find him annoying at all, so I'd leave him, and help him to find his Gungan city again.

:D

The idea of my game would be that if you choose the Darkside then you find life easier but it's more rewarding to stay good.

It encourages players to become a stong Jedi rather than take the easy way out.



Ofcourse, everyone will fall to the Darkside the first time round, I'll ensure that it's too difficult not to.

Only once they're a bit better will they be able to follow the path of a true Jedi and unlock a super bonus that I've not thought of yet...

Then they can do it all again, this time NOT on the EASY setting :-D

Sounds a bit like the forthcomming Star Wars: Galaxies to me. So you might not have to make it yourself. Still, you don't have to be a Jedi at all in Galaxies, as far as I can tell, so that's good too. Anyway, you had a similar choice in Jedi Knight, be evil and go for the dark side powers or be good and go to the light side. The expansion back was good too and had similar choices. The best thing was that neither side was better than the other, you just had to learn to use the powers well. Light saber no force duels were good too. Ah, I wish I could go back to those old gaming days, like I'm supposed to be able to in the Jedi Knight sequel Jedi Outcast (Dark Forces three I suppose). The best force power was Absorb, especially when they made it that you could have both absorb and grip. "Trying to hurt me with force eh? Good, eat my grip then. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA!" Was what I used to say. Funny how no one else ever used that combo. Guess it took skill. No it didn't. Still, sabers are more fun.

Wahey, sounds great Strafex, looking forward to that one. In fact, I look forward to any Star Wars game (unless it's as bad as Force Commander.)

I think I'd try both in your game. Be the baddie once, and the goodie another. Much improves the longetivity as well.

Tellah wrote:
> If you controlled and wanted a baddy to win, surely he would then be
> a goody? The goodies trying to kill you would then be
> baddies.
Hmmmm.

If you controlled a tiger in tomb raider, just
> going about your business, and a woman turned up and tried to shoot
> you, she would become the baddy!
Is it possible to control a baddy
> without them turning into a goody in the players mind?
After all,
> who would want to play as someone they genuinly didn't
> like???

Many badies have turned to goodies for other games. e.g.
> Donkey Kong and Wario. They may be baddies, but as soon as they are
> the star of their own game, they become goodies...

Does that make
> any sense?! =P


Wario is still a bad guy, and Donkey Kong might've been bad, but he wasn't as bad as the lizards who invaded his country and stole his bananas.

Anyway, you can easily become the baddie in games.

I'm hoping to create a Starwars game one day.
You control a free mercenary.

You can take the easy way out by siding with the strongest side, turning to the darkside of the force and generally taking all the shortcuts and easy way outs you can.

You might prefer not to be a suck up to the empire and prefer to do things your own way.
You could be a bounty hunter who remains nuetral but only works for money.
This style of play would be harder.


Or you can side with the rebels, taking on the near impossible odds they have, fighting the empire, dealing with all the nastiest bounty hunters who'll do anything for the money.

It would be good because although you CAN be a bad guy (and most poor gamers will), the best players will adapt to be good and go the passage of the light side of the force.

In internet games, Jedi and Sith will battle.

And the siths will probably be the weakest players around.

An evil Father Christmas would be good. Giving annoying kids twisted presents like a jack-in-a-box with a boxing glove inside.

The baddies I wanna play in a game are:

1. The AntiChrist.
2. The Grim Reaper.
3. Can't think of anyone else worthy of the tag 'baddie'.

Both Dungeon Keeper games were great. The important thing is that you want to be a bad guy right? So who says that bad guys don't fight other bad guys? If someone's trying to kill you, you kill them, if a government agent is on your trail, dispose of them, it doesn't matter whether the other person is good or evil they are against you and so must be dealt with. This is how the best bad guys think, so it would be best if you could have both good and evil opponents to compete with. The main thing is that a bad guy doesn't care what he/she does as long as they are benefiting from it.

In Hitman you were a hired murderer, but you only killed gang lords and were penalised for unnecessary kills (civilians). Then in the end it turned out you were a clone (what a surprise) and had to kill the big bad guy. In the end the Hitman was a good guy, even if his methods were illegal. Let's hope that Hitman 2 is a much better game and maybe that you can take contracts from anyone, from government agencies to the crimelords and do a hit on various people from both sides.

Still, the main problem with being a bad guy is that you would only be able to be evil through a pre planned way. Being a bad guy would give essentially the same sort of gameplay anyway, since you would either have to have your own private army or do missions on your own against good people. Plus games companies are wary of making games that show you as a ruthless killer since they could be banned or shunned for being violent for no good reason. GTA only barely got through and probably because of it's less realistic graphics.

It would be good to be a bad guy again, but only if it's done in an original way like dungeon keeper was and doesn't just take a game you are a good guy in and say that you are evil and the enemies are good thus creating no change in gameplay.

Beware the Toads wrote:
> The only games I can think of where you play as the baddie, apart
> from Perfect dark (which had the problems Ant mentioned about Doom)
> are the Dungeon Keeper games. Here you play the evil dungeon keper
> battling his way through the underworld which is gaurded by Heroes
> in an attempt to get to the world above and take it over. Playing as
> the baddie in this game is definately a welcome twist, and being
> able to torture the good guys untill they join your side is cool
> too.

Lol, yeah, I'd enjoy torturing Mario until he cries, "MUM-AM-MIA! You can have your world!" {:)