Retro City Rampage DX (Switch eShop)
In Retro City Rampage, you're 'Player', a crook in the city of Theftropolis (yes, really) who gets caught up in a bonkers storyline featuring time travel and a whole lot of real / parody cameos. Rather like the original top-down Grand Theft Auto games on steroids, you run, gun and drive your way around a surprising large and varied world.
It's more colourful and less gritty that GTA V's car-crashing antics, to be sure, and maybe you're actually on Player's side (he's just stealing to feed his family, probably), but at the end of the day, you're one of many henchmen working for a crime syndicate, and there ain't no judge in the world that would consider that "good".
Hitman 3 - Cloud Version (Switch eShop)
Uh oh, are we imposing our moral compass on hitmen? Hitman's Agent 47 doesn't really have a moral compass himself — he tends to be guided by the north star of "who will pay me the most" — but he gets the job done. Mostly with murder. No, entirely with murder. Collateral damage be damned, if he has to choke an innocent waiter to get to his target, that's just the way the murder-cookie crumbles, innit?
Divinity: Original Sin 2 - Definitive Edition (Switch eShop)
Like any Dungeons & Dragons-styled RPG, you can be whoever you want to be in Divinity: Original Sin 2 — but boy, is the dark side fun.
You can play a morally grey skeleton-man who likes to rip the faces off corpses to fashion disguises, you can use a literal biological weapon on your enemies (or friends, why not), and you can even murder every single NPC in the world and nick all their stuff, if you want. Or, the evilest thing of all — you can buy everything in a shop, and then steal all the money out of the pocket of the trader who sold it to you. So mean.
The Outer Worlds (Switch)
In The Outer Worlds, you assume the role of the Stranger, freshly dethawed from a sixty-year cryo-slumber. You are then informed that the colony you were en route to is now on the verge of complete collapse, having been hollowed out by incompetent mega-corps.
You'd be forgiven for thinking this game is basically Fallout in space, because, well, it is — and much like Fallout, you can totally be the antagonist of the story. You can turn in good people to the cops, side with genocidal politicians, and worst of all, you can scupper your companions' romantic relationships with other characters, just for fun. You monster.
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Cult of the Lamb (Switch eShop)
Cult of the Lamb is cute, but it's also quite evil — if you want it to be. Sure, you could make a cute little happy-clappy cult where everyone is kind and nice and just happens to worship an imprisoned Satanic deity, buuuuuuuut it's just so much easier to sacrifice your cult members to bump up your stats. Or feed them poop to get them to stop rioting. Or murder dissenters in the night. Or turn a dead follower into a tasty soup and hope no one notices.
It’s your cult after all, and you’re entitled to be as unethical as you must to get the results The One Who Waits needs.
Card Shark (Switch eShop)
They say cheaters never prosper, but clearly they’ve never played Card Shark, a wonderfully tense, goofy little game that’s all about keeping your cool under tremendous pressure as you basically rob people blind.
Is it evil to rob snotty rich people of their ill-gotten money? Arguably not, or Robin Hood would be the villain and not the Sheriff of Nottingham. But it's also not entirely fair, is it? Plus, the protagonist — the mute servant — might just be following along to avoid being cast out on the streets, but the noble Comte, his patron, is a much shadier character who's willing to put people in danger to cheat a game. And you're helping him!
STAR WARS: Knights of the Old Republic (Switch eShop)
(Spoilers for KOTOR are about to follow — but also, this is a twenty-year-old game, so please forgive us.)
In Knights of the Old Republic, there's a good old-fashioned alignment system, which tracks all your deeds and words in the game to determine whether you're a light side or dark side kinda guy. But that's boring. We've got loads of good/evil choicey games in this list already.
No, what sets KOTOR apart is that you lose all your memories before the game began, only to find out that — surprise! — you were a Sith Lord all along, ya dingus. Of course, you can be a good Sith Lord and renounce your Sithyness at the end, having discovered the power of the light side, but isn't it more fun to be bad?
So, go on — be selfish. Take the last biscuit. Refuse to stand up on the bus for an old person. Take your socks off in public. You'll never be as bad as you've been in video games.
This article is one of our Switch Essentials guides which cover a wide variety of genres, including the Best Switch FPS Games, the Best Switch RPGs, the Best Switch Games For Kids, the Best Switch Couch Co-Op Games and the Best Switch Fitness and Exercise Games. We can also help out hunting down the Best Switch Horror Games, the Best Switch Racing Games, the Best Switch Action-RPGs, the Best Nintendo Switch Roguelikes, Roguelites and Run-Based Games, the Best Free Switch Games, the Best Remakes And Remasters, the Best Switch Music And Rhythm Games, Best Feel-Good Switch Games, Best Switch Open-World Games, Best Switch Soulslike Games, Best LGBTQ+ Switch Games, and even Games to Play After You've Finished Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
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Still hungry for more? Elsewhere we look at Wholesome Games, TATE Mode Games, Flight Sim and Space Combat, Point and Click Adventure Games, and the Best Switch Exclusives, as well as Every Arcade Archives Game, Every ACA Neo Geo Game, Every SEGA AGES Game On Switch, plus the Best Switch Ports, Best Wii U-To-Switch Ports, Best Switch Collections And Compilations, Best Cheap Switch Games, Best Switch Demos, Games That Are Better On Switch OLED, Switch Games Under $10, $20, $50, and Switch games with the Best Soundtracks and the Best Graphics. Phew!
If you're looking for the best Switch games regardless of genre, our reader-voted selection of the Best Nintendo Switch Games should help you out, and you can also find the Best Nintendo Switch Games of 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021. And finally, if you're interested in other Nintendo consoles and retro games, check out the Best Game Boy Games, Best GBC Games, Best GBA Games, Best Nintendo DS Games, Best Nintendo 3DS Games, Best NES Games, Best SNES Games, Best N64 Games, Best GameCube Games, and Best Wii Games, and Best Wii U Games, as well as Every Available Nintendo Switch Online Retro Game, and ranked lists of Every Nintendo Switch Online NES, SNES, N64 and Sega Genesis / Mega Drive Game.
Comments (21)
Good list. I got a mess of these. Being the bad guy is way more fun.
And thanks for saying that about sharks.
Wait, you can slaughter younglings in the new Star Wars Lego game!?
Be still my evil heart…
Another game I would suggest would be No Man’s Sky. You can be a space pirate and plunder freighters, piss off sentinels (who are basically the space police), and destroy people’s ships. It’s fun, but pretty evil.
HONK is the sound of evil
Goose is not bad, he is missunderstood!
@Kermit1 HONK HONK, that's the sound of the geese.
I'd argue strongly that both in Carrion and definitely in Maneater humanity is at least as bad as the protagonist. I mean, experimenting on a creature, or killing a shark's mother... Humans kill way more sharks (and WAY WAY more animals in general) than sharks do. And if a shark gets a human leg to munch on... Well, unlike in the game sometimes, it's not the shark that got on land, it's humans that were looking for the Darwin award by going swimming where sharks live.
A goose stealing clothes is more of a bad guy than the protagonists of GTA?
Maneater was such a fun game.
@Kermit1 as someone who lives in the middle of Canada, I have to agree.
Lot of games. Hitman 3.
Didn't mention Nefarious, opinion invalid
You've forgotten Zelda and a ton of classic rpgs in this list-- sure they pretend you are playing the hero, but you are constantly stealing from houses and breaking everyone's pottery!
More seriously, rain on my parade is even more 'just being an incredible jerk' than even Goose Game.
Kind of surprised Retro City Rampage DX is here but not its successor, Shakedown Hawaii, which I feel looks and plays better.
Nonetheless, this article has got me curious about Maneater. I should check it out.
Thief Simulator is one of my favorites. Not the most polished game, but lots of fun to be had. Also, I'd really have to recommend Saints Row 3 over 4. The best reasoning I can give is that 4 feels like if you took 3 and overloaded it with mods that make most of the base game's mechanics completely pointless. If anything, it should have just been DLC, since the majority of it is recycled content from 3 anyway.
I was playing this game called Mario something or other and this adorable lil mushroom fella trotted over to me.
As it gingerly approached, i hit what i assumed was the “hugz and smoochez” button, but instead i performed an astounding leap that concluded with me landing, with both feet squarely, on top of the poor critter’s head.
As i lay in a smear of gore, imploringly shaking my fist at the heavens, i noticed a sea of cute yet angry eyes upon me. No one could could survive to tell the tale of my atrocious deed.
I tell you now, i left no critter alive in that magical land.
But wherever i go, i leave tracks of red…
@FishyS And Mario. It’s been rehashed many times by more interesting people, but Mario is a pretty randomly murderous dude. In the Galaxy games, he has a penchant for killing newborns minding their own business.
Undertale is amazing! As for the rest of the games on this list.
I did the genocide route and then felt bad so I did another pacifist route, well, let’s just say it’s not that easy, so I deleted it to fix the issue, did another pacifist route, and then let the world I love so much rest (:
Untitled Goose Game is so charming, the peaceful British village, the Goose, the ending... it's a perfect little game.
Cloud Retainer no1's fan's seal of approval
Undertale, though. Is killing monsters even bad, provided what they did? killed six children and are planning to kill you to go and ultimately do a genocide run on humanity
Undertale would be a better bad guy game if it wasn't so blatantly telegraphing that you'd be judged at the end and heavy handedly punishing you for it throughout with guilt trips. Not to mention you're not so much making a choice of paths as clearing one of multiple required predetermined routes to view the true ending. Cool battle system though.
@Poodlestargenerica I think you’re underestimating just how naughty that naughty little goose is. Let me tell you, it is a naughty, naughty, naughty goose.
How is dead by daylight not on this list? There's some pretty awesome killers to torment the rest of the player base with.
Carrion was brilliant, there are so many different ways of playing the game, either being stealthy and hide in the pipes and slowly take people out, or just burst in and grab as many people as possible and fling them at other humans.
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