Reinventing the Generic Bad Guy

The phone rings. “What’s that? I gotta go save the world? Alright…which is it this time? Zombies? Nazis? Robots? Oh, it’s Nazis again. I’ll be right over.” It’s empowering being the one to single-handedly mow through hordes of generic bad guys on your way to take down The Big Boss, but over the past decade, it feels like we’re fighting the same armies. Are there no new races or organizations lurking in the shadows, plotting our demise? It’s time to enlist a new menace to give evil a fresh face!

Some game designers have tried to pin us against new groups of collective baddies, but with little success. When Ubisoft produced Rayman: Raving Rabbids, they shed light on an often overlooked scourge of buck-toothed, pointy-eared troublemakers: the retarded. While coincidentally, these pests were all bunnies, they had clearly unified under the flag of Down Syndrome. The games played against those varmints were fun, sure, but I’d prefer not to advocate making a trend of accosting the handicapable.

It begins with one...

No, we need a group that’s just as unsuspected, yet easy to accept as sinister. There’s a wealth of untapped cultures that we’ve not yet tested against our mettle!

My first vote goes to monkeys. We need more monkeys! They share our evolutionary blessings of the opposable thumb, plus the bonus of a tail! I would like to play more games where I face off against an army of tree-swingers bent on taking over the world. They’d hurl poo while I hurl grenades. My mission wouldn’t be over until the ground was scattered with craters and banana pudding.

Pirates seem to be en vogue, but pirates are nothing compared to their ancient predecessors, the Vikings. To them, looting and pillaging is serious business! This is a villain that’s applicable to a wide variety of game genres. You can defend your homeland from braided invaders in an action-adventure or real-time strategy title. And boy, if you thought pirates have a funny accent, try picturing a band of barbarians coming at you sounding like the Swedish Chef!

The fellas over at Penny Arcade may have been on to something when they included hobos in their On The Rainslick Precipice of Darkness series. You’d never suspect the homeless to rise up and take back what society has denied them by way of brute force. Most people prefer to look away, which is how they best conceal their numbers. The crazy cat lady rambling to herself at the bus station? She’s actually on a two-way radio with the blabbering old wino underneath the 8th Street Bridge using their secret hobo code! Our hand-outs are only funding their military stockpiles of weaponry, martial arts training, and hooch. Before we know it, we’ll be battling over the streets in the upcoming Bum Wars.