Why I Play the Bad Guys

Hey folks, SinSynn here.

My buddy the Ultimate Rival always plays the good guys. Always.
If you ask him about it, he'll tell you it's because he has to. It's like some kinda moral issue with him. He can't play the bad guys, ya see, cuz they're, well...bad.
He can't support that kind of behavior. It ain't right.

As for me, I always play the bad guys. Always.

*Ludicrous speed!*

In my youth, weekends would find me and my buddies tearing around the courtyards between the apartment buildings here in NYC. Y'know, the usual stuff that Terran children do. In the afternoon though, we'd drop everything, and my lil' gang of miscreants and myself would pile in front of the TV to watch movies.
I don't mean just any movies, I mean movies like the old school Hammer films, or Godzilla flics, or whatever gawd-awful, hideously dubbed karate mess was presented to us. My mother would bring us Kool Aid and snackies, and life was good.
The vast majority of those movies were so bad that I pretty much laugh out loud when I revisit them nowadays, but revisit them I do, since I own most of 'em.
Don't you judge me! We're talkin' precious childhood memories here.
Gotta tell ya, a karate flic had to be the worse-case-scenario for my moms, since after a couple o' fight scenes a dozen or so kids on a sugar rush would be kung-fu fighting all over the furniture, goin' all tiger-style and whatnot.
:D

Those movies introduced me to my first bad guys. Vampires, Werewolves and creatures of all shapes and sizes, from building-sized stompy monsters to fishy thingies in lagoons. There were the animated whatchamacallits from the Sinbad movies (Ray Harryhausen- friggin' genius), ninjas that disappeared in puffs of smoke, man-eating dinosaurs....So. Much. Awesome.
And there were things from outer space, lest we forget.
*toothy Xenos grin*

*Aw, yeah*

Bad guys always seemed more interesting to me, more enigmatic. Good guys always got the most screen time, while the bad guys were relegated to skulking around in the shadows, for the most part (giant stompy monsters are incapable of skulking, for obvious reasons). Not for nuthin,' but I always thought skulking around in the shadows was cooler (or stomping on tiny humans, either one works for me).

So you see, I've been rooting for the bad guys ever since I was a larvae. I root for Wile E. Coyote when he's suffering with another poorly manufactured ACME product (that damn bird has got to die), and I root for the Creature when he makes off with a swimsuit clad hottie, to this day.

*Caviar is MURDER! Now...HUGS!*

Ah, but the defining moment of my budding fascination with bad guys came when I saw Star Wars. Darth Vader was quite simply the coolest bad guy ever. EVER. The cape, the helmet, the ability to choke out fools with the power of the Force. That voice. He was the friggin' man.
He wasn't alone, either. My man Darth was like, upper management of the most ultimate-est group of bad guys ever. Yessssss...I hear that theme playing now...give in to the power of the Dark side....
Oh, hell yeah.
I did.

Sometime after the Empire Strikes Back (Darth murders incompetent underlings via conference calls! He stops laser blasts with his hands! *swoon*), I realized that I would forever favor the bad guys. I mean really, they always wear the better outfits....

*So friggin' cool*

Sure, they'll inevitably loose right before the credits roll, but they'll look good doing it. And yep, the good guys might manage to defy some staggering odds to pull off a win, but maybe a few of 'em will bite it.
That's right, I'm the guy cheering during all those tear-filled 'go on without me' scenes.

Another reason I play the bad guys is because the good guys are just so....bleh. Even though Sauron from Lord of the Rings was kinda one-dimensional as far as bad guys are concerned, he was still a lot more interesting to me than Frodo and Sam.

*They did star in a series of cartoons, so that's something*

Another thing about playing the bad guys is that, hey, somebody's gotta do it. Games would certainly be a lot less compelling if everybody raced to the objectives and then worked out their issues over a nice cup of tea, amirite?
Bad guys make our games more interesting, on every level. Would Space Marines be the glowing paragons of virtue they are if the powers of Chaos weren't so downright nasty? Would they be as revered if the Tyranids didn't show up and give them something to do besides squelching rebellious populations who've renounced the Emperor?

I think not.

That's why I praise the darkness, and cackle with wicked glee as my enemies don't quite loose, exactly. They just 'heroically sacrifice' themselves.
;)
Whatevs, I'm the bad guy. If history has taught me anything, it's that I better savor my wins.


Until next time, folks- exit with catchphrase!

-SinSynn