As I have shared with you in previous articles, games are not just for entertainment; they also take you to new and strange worlds, allowing you to do things that you can’t do in real life. Many games will give you choices; if you choose correctly, you’re fine, but if you choose wrong, be prepared to face the consequences.
However, there are a few games that go against this idea, and sometimes even encourage you to do wrong. These games allow you to wreak havoc, do immoral things, or even commit murder without worrying about the consequences. On the positive side, it also helps you relieve some stress. Here’s a list of 10 games that let you engage in mischief without facing repercussions.
Hitman
While there are many games that let you become a super spy sneaking into enemy territory to complete missions without spilling a drop of blood, Hitman is a series that allows players to hide but does so to assassinate targets. Most missions in Hitman have you play as Agent 47, tasked with assassinating a few people, usually a crime boss, a high-ranking official, or some VIP.
You will need to infiltrate highly secure areas, with 24/7 surveillance cameras and patrol teams always roaming around the target. In most cases, you will be informed that the target is the “bad guy” who needs to be eliminated; but is that enough to justify your cold-blooded assassination?
Thanks to the intricately designed levels, much like a puzzle room, it somewhat avoids the label of a “murder simulation” game, even though it essentially is (and to admit, it’s quite entertaining). However, this doesn’t change the fact that Agent 47 kills people mercilessly just for money and can live freely without a care in the world.
Papers, Please
Papers, Please is a very unique game of this decade. You play as a customs officer, reviewing the paperwork of incoming immigrants and deciding whether to let them through or not. The beauty of this game is that it turns the player into a bureaucrat in a dictatorship, a pawn doing the dirty work for the government.
Of course, you have the option to let those without proper (or legal) documentation through, but you will be fined and find it harder to make ends meet. Therefore, you often choose to follow the “protocol”: letting the privileged through while denying others, or worse, sending them to prison. Additionally, you can humiliate immigrants by making excuses to search their entire body during document checks.
Later in the game, an organization wants to overthrow the government and seeks to recruit you. Again, you have the choice to accept or decline. Depending on your decision, the game can have 20 different endings. While you can completely choose to be a “good” customs officer, you can also be a person who strictly follows the law throughout the game (and makes many people live in suffering and humiliation).
Watch Dogs
The Watch Dogs series is famous for its hacking mechanics to exploit everything in the game for personal gain. Players can manipulate traffic lights, hack security cameras, or eavesdrop on others’ phones. Although gamers are tasked with using their hacking skills to take down the antagonists, you can still hack other innocent civilians “just for fun” even though they are living their lives peacefully, without bothering anyone.
For example, you can hack someone else’s bank account, withdraw their money, leaving the victim to live in poverty because their income is barely enough to survive. Not to mention you have full control over traffic lights, causing traffic jams or even accidents; or you can cause a citywide blackout, disrupting the lives of its citizens. You are a hacker, but whether you’re a white hat or a black hat hacker, this game supports both.
The Sims
The Sims series is already very famous, and it is well-known and loved for one reason: you can create a dream life in this game. Of course, for many, this means buying a house, starting a family, buying a bigger house, and continuing in that manner. It is precisely this aspect that allows gamers to unleash their imagination, doing whatever they want, even the most ridiculous things.
With god-like powers, you can allow characters in the game to create new family members, while also taking away the lives of a few just because… you feel like it. You can set the kitchen on fire, block all exits and let the people inside burn; drain the pool and let them drown; electrocute them; work them to death; or even in The Sims 4, you can send them on a one-way trip to space, knowing that it’s a ticket without a return.
No matter how much EA promotes The Sims as a wholesome simulation game, eventually, you will get bored and start looking for ways to destroy your dream house just for fun.
Dark Souls
Although the Dark Souls series has extremely difficult gameplay, enough to make you want to “smash your controller,” its multiplayer mode allows players who have gone before to leave messages, giving hints to those who come after to help them get through “levels” a bit easier. And as you may have guessed, some people are willing to leave very helpful tips for the “newbies” who follow; but at the same time, there are also players who choose to “play dirty,” making the game even more frustrating than it already is.
One of the most common trolling tricks is to leave messages right at the edge of a deep chasm, luring players to jump down to retrieve treasure. And of course, many gamers have taken the bait and followed suit, inadvertently “committing suicide” in the game. Or there are also tricks that guide players to explore a secret path, but in reality, there is no path at all, causing the unfortunate gamer to waste dozens of minutes wandering aimlessly around a spot for nothing. In any case, you can’t blame them; the game is too hard, and they have to relieve their stress by trolling other players.
Tomb Raider
If you look closely, you will see that the brilliant explorer Lara Croft is actually a very unlikeable and detestable person, a colonialist who travels around the world, excavating ancient tombs to find treasures, and then appropriating them for her own purposes. It cannot be denied that Tomb Raider is very engaging and interesting to play, but allowing players to invade an ancient civilization and take their artifacts is quite outrageous.
In the most recent installment, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, at least it shows players that Lara Croft is not necessarily a good person, and even the antagonist condemns her for taking things that do not belong to her. But of course, by the end of the game, Lara is still Lara, still an explorer, and will continue to “pick up lost items, temporarily… put them in her pocket.”
Rocket League
Rocket League is a highly addictive game that combines two elements: racing and soccer. As of now, this game is still quite “hot.” And although scoring a goal is exhilarating, you can easily become a thorn in the side of both your opponents and your teammates. You can purposely score an own goal, block your teammates’ shots, or prevent them from advancing the ball. Then after scoring a goal, you can spam the chat button, making your teammates extremely annoyed, and when the opponents score, you can do the same.
Although the game has mechanisms to control message spamming, you are only muted for a few seconds, after which you can continue spamming as if nothing happened. The way the anti-trolling system in this game works is like “catch-and-release,” so the trolls can run amok without fear of any consequences.
Postal 2
The market still has game genres that allow players to indulge their violent and petty habits. And even though the most famous title is Grand Theft Auto, there’s another game that makes GTA seem “wholesome” in comparison, which is Postal 2. To put it bluntly, Postal 2 is like a simulation game of a scumbag. The game encourages players to do whatever they want, while its tagline is “a game as violent as you want it to be.”
Players can use electric guns to zap innocent people until they wet themselves (literally), or you can even urinate on them, set them on fire, or even kill them outright. Additionally, you can kill and harm animals, causing a herd of elephants to stampede, or break into an office and shoot all the employees inside. While it is true that the world in Postal 2 is full of scoundrels, that is no excuse for the characters in the game to harm anyone they please.
Untitled Goose Game
Whether you like it or not, you must admit that Untitled Goose Game is a highly unique game in recent years. This is a puzzle game combined with stealth and humor; you will play as a mischievous goose causing chaos in a quirky village in England.
The acts of vandalism include: opening a gate and getting a gardener wet, or even worse, stealing someone’s keys, locking a kid in a phone booth, stealing an old man’s glasses and throwing them in a well. Well, no one dies in this game, but just that alone is enough to drive the whole village crazy because of one goose. This might be the most mischievous goose in gaming history.
Heavy Rain
Games like Heavy Rain and Detroit: Become Human allow you to control multiple characters, and if you make mistakes from one to another, that character can die, and the game will switch perspectives to another living character. Therefore, many gamers have tried to find ways to ensure that the characters in the game all have the most tragic endings possible. It’s similar to the story in The Sims: you have full control over the fate of the characters in the game, or simply put, “you tell them what to do.”
In particular, among Quantic Dream’s games, Heavy Rain is the one where players can cause the characters in the game to suffer immensely. The most tragic ending is when all three main protagonists die, and the main character Ethan has to “hang himself” after his son Shaun dies and he is falsely accused of being the Origami Killer. Meanwhile, the real Origami Killer continues to hide in the night, disappearing without a trace.
Source: What Culture, translated by Gearvn