Rayman, some happy memories of mine. (Spoilers, like you haven't played them all already)

I apologise for not updating.

Wait, no I don't. I'm evil, I can do whatever the hell I want.

Recently I went back to playing the PS2 for no particular reason. I was just looking through the games and Rayman 3 was sitting there just wanting me to play it. And play it I did.

I quickly moved on to Rayman 2, and I thought about the villains. The Hoodlums and the Henchmen, Andre and Razorbeard.

Mr. Dark may kick ass, but the game doesn't give him any character, and Rabbids? What Rabbids?

So here it is. 2 vrs 3. Robot pirates vrs Evil fairys in sacks.

First, the leaders. Andre vrs Razorbeard. Here there is really no competition, Razorbeard wins as a villain. Andre is an interesting character, but he is not threatening in the slightest. In fact, at the start of the game he just walks around in normal Hoodlum gear instead of building himself a cloth mech or something.

Or like a Hoodstomper with cannons on it. That would be freaking awesome.

But because Andre was in the basic Hoodlum form, he got himself eaten. And then all he could really do was make Globox drink plum juice every now and again. Even in the final fight, Andre was never a threat.

Razorbeard on the other hand was a legimate danger. He knew what he was doing, he used tactics to control the world (He went straight to the heart, the source of EVERYTHING'S power, whereas for Andre it was his ultimate goal, not his initial plan) and he already had an army when he decided to take over the world instead of making one as he went along. And Rayman never even bothered him personally until the final battle. And what did Razorbead do? He bought a fucking mecha to fight him in. This is a guy who knows how to destroy his foes.

Even better? Razorbead is never defeated. Rayman stops him from taking over the world, sure, but he just jumps in an escape pod and flies out of there. He could come back at any time he wants, and if these guys are robot pirates, that means something built them. That means there must be a Robot Pirate factory out there somewhere, and Razorbeard is probably in it right now building something nasty to blow the crap out of Rayman.

He looses points for racing against Rayman in the multiplayer games, but those aren't canon.

Now for the basic enemies. Henchmen vrs Hoodblasters or whatever those guys are called.

This one is a little harder. Henchmen by themselves are utterly useless lazy idiots, while Hoodlums are... Useless lazy idiots. They're both as effective as eachother in actual combat, so I'll have to think outside of the box a little.

Hoodlums are made of a group of Black lums (Or just one Black lum, it's never really clear) inside a cloth sack. I have no idea where the fireball gun comes from.

Henchmen are Mechanical robots created from what can only be scrap that are also somehow pirates. They have a fireball gun instead of a hand, and a hook instead of the other hand.

Now I'm going to give Hoodlums points here for having more of a personallity than the Henchmen. The Henchmen were robot pirates, but they were still robots, and they acted like robots, while the Hoodlums were actually alive and completely chaotic.

So that's one to each side so far, now for how dangerous they are as a whole.

This is a difficult choice. The Henchmen managed to destroy the heart of the world, splitting it into 1000 lums (and then razorbeard freaking eats a part of it.) and then proceeded to enslave the powerless survivors. They essentially took away the super powers of EVERYTHING on the planet in one swift attack.

The Hoodlums didn't make as big as an impact, but they spread so freaking fast. Think about it, the first cutscene was the first Hoodlum ever created. By the time you've made it to the second level, this one black lum has become hundreds of black lums, which have become hundreds of Hoodlums, and they've created explosives based around plum juice, as well as huge freaking bases around the place, and the WAR ZEPPELIN, in the time it took you to beat the first level. The only reason they failed to get at the heart of the world is because Rayman was so close to it to begin with, and because Andre is an idiot and got himself eaten by the comedy character.

I'm not so sure who should win. The Henchmen made the biggest actual effect, but the Hoodlums could have been absolutely devastating if they had a proper leader. Or maybe the lack of real direction is why they're so dangerous.

Honestly, I think this is an impossible choice. Frankly a choice between the Hoodlums and the Henchmen is like one between Chaos and Order. Except both of them are evil.

If I had to choose judging from what I've just said, it would be a draw.

If I had to choose without thinking about it, Henchmen would win. Because they have Robotic Ninja Pirates.

Evil Review: Choices Part 2

Now last part I said that games with Good/Evil choices rarely have a good motive for the main character to do the evil actions.

So that's where I'll start today. Motives.

Most actions are not good or evil. It's not the what, it's the why that makes a person evil.

Of course, games don't think about the why.

You are given points based on what you do, not why. For example, in Knights of the Old Republic, you gain light-side points for saving a sith from killing themselves, they then side with you.

However, my evil character saved her for the sole purpose of using her later.

And of course, the game didn't know what I meant to do with her, and just assumed that it was a good action.

Or what about Fable I? It gives you good points for killing bandits or undead, but why? I'm being attacked by them, I'm not killing them to free the souls of the dead, I'm not killing the bandits to stop crime, I'm killing them so they'll stop killing me!

Though probably the worst kind of good/evil choice system, in my opinion, is when there is one pivotal choice near the end.

This pivotal choice being something like "Destroy the world" or "Don't destroy the world"

It's ridiculous. Why? Because everything that the player has done, heroic or evil, until now is cancelled out by one action. I can understand forgiving someone after they repent and start doing good actions, but I don't understand forgiving the mass murderer evil psychopath because he saved a few hundred people compared to the thousands he's already slaughtered.

At the very least they'd still be cautious about him instead of just worshipping him as a hero.

And as one Mr Croshaw pointed out, being Evil isn't fun if the game expects you to be evil.

The entire point of being evil is breaking the rules. If the rules tell us to be evil, there's no winning. There's no evil. The only reason anyone wants to be evil in a videogame is because they want to screw everything over. It's the reason Trolling exists, the reason Griefing exists. People like breaking rules.

If you want to be evil in a videogame, don't play Fable, don't play InFamous, don't play Knights of the Old Republic...

Play Sims. Watch them burn. Slowly. Perhaps starving or drowning might be more entertaining. Then see if you can kill Death itself when it arrives.

Play Halo. Kill all of the other soldiers. Who cares if they might be useful later? You don't need them. You're evil.

Play any game where you are expected to be good and do the complete opposite. It is much more satisfying than being evil in a game that expects you to be evil.

Evil Review: Choices Part 1

Hello.

I'm Evil.

The subject today is choices.

Choices are becoming much more common in videogames. Choices between good and...


...I thought it would be fitting for my first review.

But to be entirely honest, I dislike games that offer the choice between good and evil.

Why? Because there is never any motive.

Why did you kill those 500 villagers in Oakvale? Why did you walk away instead of disarming that bomb? Why did you steal that hat, it's not like you're going to use it?

For the evil points, of course.

Even worse, it is such a distraction from the real story that it annoys me that they offered some choices at all. For example, in any game with choices, the main character will have absolutely no character development. They'll be an evil bastard from the start, and they'll never change.

It's entirely possible to create character development by changing your characters alignment based on the actions in the game, but when the player has to add content to the story himself, the game has failed.

Though I would personally find it interesting to explore the consequences of a measurable force of good and evil existing in a universe, especially if there were powers linked with the forces. Imagine a universe where hundreds of people die every day just to provide "Evil points" to the evil characters.

But moving away from that, most games don't understand evil properly. Fable, for example, gives you evil points for killing people and good points for helping people, fair enough, but it never gives you the chance to be cruel.

Cruel is not killing people. Cruel is watching them squirm, then killing their children and force feeding them the remains. Cruel is the evil that all of us fear and love to be.

Instead, games just provide us with a choice between pacifism and killing everyone in sight. It's not evil, it's just violent.

Knights of the Old Republic II managed to avoid this. The Dark-side Light-side meter only goes up and down, but there are actually three branches. Light-side, Dark-side, and what I like to call the "Palpatine" meter.

Characters react slightly differently whether you are on the violent version of evil or the Palpatine version. The violent serving as the normal videogame evil choice, "Kill this guy because he's pissing you off" but the Palpatine evil is much more cruel. It doesn't involve killing people meaninglessly, it involves manipulating them from the shadows without them even realizing it. Siding with both sides of a conflict, then killing the victor before they realize that this battle was yours from the beginning.

One of the reasons I love that game.

Before I end this short review, nobody ask for my opinion on Mass Effect's choice system. It is not good or evil, it is Optimistic or Cynical.

You may have noticed the "Part 1" in the title. I will be doing a part 2 tommorow. For now, goodnight.

Welcome

Hello.

I'm Evil.

On this page, I review media. Mostly Videogames and Movies, but I'm open to requests.

However, I don't focus on the action, or the story, no, I focus on the characters. A specific kind of characters. The Evil ones.

I review them based on their motives, their powers, how the effect the story, what they actually do and whether or not they can be called Evil at all.

I ask that any visitors to this page spread it around to their friends, enemies, aquantances, whatever.

If not, said friends might have a little accident.

Welcome to the site.

I hope you enjoy it.