10 Xbox 360 Adventure Games Where You’re Actually the Villain

Most of the first adventure games ever developed regulated people to embody selfless, often noble heroes on quests to save kingdoms or entire worlds from overtly evil protagonists such as Link from The Legend of Zelda or the Belmonts from the Castlevania series.

However, as technology continued to advance and darker stories started to become increasingly popular in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, developers began taking risks with adventure titles and allowed people to actually play as villainous characters in campaigns.

Here are just a few adventure games that debuted on the Xbox 360 that offered people the chance to briefly or entirely play games as villainous characters, with many being evil right from the get-go and others becoming evil based on the player's actions.

10 Jurassic Park: The Game

Playing a Role in the Fall of Jurassic Park

Telltale Games is famous today for its award-winning narratives in its many episodic graphic adventure games, and while The Walking Dead series of games is arguably the best title they released during the 360 era, the one that allows people to directly control a villainous character is Jurassic Park: The Game.

Set during and briefly after the film of the same name, Jurassic Park: The Game has players control several new characters as they strive to avoid being eaten by dinosaurs and escape Isla Nublar, but one character is already fairly malicious from the game's start, with that being Nima Cruz.

Cruz worked with Dennis Nedry to shut down Jurassic Park's power and defensive system in order to steal dinosaur embryos, unleash the dinosaurs, and use the profit from the embryos to help support her family after they were forcibly removed from Nublar when the park was constructed, resulting in the deaths of dozens of people.

9 Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

Wiping Out Order 66 Survivors

The appearance of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed on this list may be a bit perplexing for some, given that Starkiller does canonically help the Rebel Alliance in it and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II, but he doesn't start his journey out as a heroic Jedi.

Instead, Starkiller begins the game as Darth Vader's loyal apprentice being dispatched to kill three surviving Jedi Masters and their allied forces, with the game even starting with players embodying the Dark Lord of the Sith himself on Kashyyyk, killing hundreds of Wookies and Starkiller's own Jedi father.

Starkiller can even wind up becoming a villain by the end anyway, if players choose to kill Vader instead of the Emperor, resulting in the young Force wielder becoming the cyborg Lord Starkiller and being sent to eliminate Rebels including Obi-Wan Kenobi and Luke Skywalker in the admittedly amazing Sith DLC.

8 Destroy All Humans! Path of the Furon

Crypto's Final Conquest

During the original Xbox era, gamers were introduced to the cliché-looking alien race known as the Furons in Destroy All Humans! with the violent Furon clone Crypto representing most of the species as he traveled across 1950s United States comically deceiving or wiping out humans whilst invading Earth.

While the Crypto clone seen in the original DAH died long before the events of Destroy All Humans! Path of Furon began, his violent and manipulative legacy continued on in Crypto-139, who took control of Las Vegas in the 1970s in a plot to get rich and secretly harvest more DNA from humans.

Crypto-139 does ultimately kill the Furon Emperor during his quest across 1970s Earth, but I'd argue he's still an overall villain as he intends on continuing to kill and harvest humans by the end despite no longer being bound to so by the Emperor.

7 Dante's Inferno

Confronting Dante's Many Sins

Now, the titular Dante from the 2010 game Dante's Inferno may seem like a common hero as he spends most of the game fighting through Hell and demonic creatures to save the soul of his beloved Beatrice, but I consider him to be a villain as he's certainly no saint and is the reason why Beatrice is in Hell in the first place.

Before Dante's Inferno properly begins, Dante promised to be faithful to his fiancée before heading off to fight in the Third Crusade, but during the conflict, Beatrice bargains her soul to Lucifer to protect Dante during the campaign as long as he remains faithful.

However, Dante was not faithful and slept with an Acre woman whose husband went on to wound Dante and travel all the way back to Florence to kill Dante's entire family, including Beatrice, out of revenge, with Dante's lust ultimately resulting in his wife's death and his horrific journey through Hell.

6 Spider-Man: Web of Shadows

The Corruptive Nature of Venom

People may be surprised to see a Spider-Man game featured on a list all about playing villainous characters, but Spider-Man: Web of Shadows is a rare exception within the Spider-Man mythos as, depending on players' choices, Peter Parker could become earth's greatest threat.

Set in a universe where Spider-Man has been a hero for several years already, Spider-Man: Web of Shadows follows the Wall-Crawler as he becomes infected with a fragment of Eddie Brock's Venom symbiote and begins fighting villains like Kingpin, Vulture, and Electro whilst combating symbiote-infected Manhattan citizens.

Throughout the game, players can make either red or black suit decisions, with red choices being more heroic and black choices being more brutal, and if players finish the game with only black decisions, it will result in symbiote-wielding Spider-Man and Black Cat taking over the city with a symbiote army.

5 Fairytale Fights

Fairytale Massacres

For those who grew up playing practically every Xbox 360 game ever released like I did, they may recall a relatively obscure game called Fairytale Fights, which spins famous fairytale protagonists into murderous attention-seekers who have no qualms about eliminating anything that comes in their way.

Here, you play as Little Red Riding Hood, Snow White, Jack from Jack and the Beanstalk, and the Naked Emperor from The Emperor's New Clothes after they strive to become famous once more by slicing and dicing bandits, monsters, gingerbread men, and townsfolk in bloody combat.

While Fairytale Fights may not be one of the best games to play on the 360, it certainly allows those who always wanted to see classic fantasy protagonists go down incredibly dark paths to play as dark incarnations of those characters in fun but relatively shallow third-person single player or co-op gameplay.

4 Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2

Becoming Dracula

As mentioned before, the Castlevania series is one of the longest-running and most celebrated gaming franchises of all time. During the Xbox 360 era, the series was briefly rebooted into the action-adventure Lords of Shadow series, including its mainline sequel Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2.

In the first Lords of Shadow game, Gabriel Belmont manages to defeat Satan and the demonic Forgotten One in the Middle Ages but winds up becoming a vampire to defeat them, resulting in Gabriel becoming Dracula and commanding an army of monsters for years before vowing to destroy Satan once and for all in Lords of Shadow 2.

Dracula does manage to kill Satan in Lords of Shadow 2, but he still remains as a vampire and strives to establish a foothold on the world, destined to be corrupted by his dark vampiric nature and prey on humanity for eternity; even his own descendents.

3 James Cameron's Avatar: The Game

Ensuring Pandora's Alien Downfall

The Xbox 360 era was largely the last console generation that saw games released as tie-ins to recently released films and TV shows, with one of the better ones being the now non-canon James Cameron's Avatar: The Game.

Set two years before the first Avatar film, James Cameron's Avatar: The Game follows RDA Signals Specialist turned Avatar pilot Able Ryder as they're ordered to defend RDA facilities and staff from hostile wildlife while aiding scientists in researching Pandora.

Eventually, players will have a choice to either go rogue and join scientist Rene Harper in helping the Na'vi fight the RDA or remain loyal to the RDA but lose their Avatar body, with the latter decision resulting in Ryder wiping out entire Na'vi clans and using the Well of Souls to cut the Na'vis connection to Eywa and Pandora's wildlife.

2 Assassin's Creed III

Haytham Kenway's Templar Loyalty

Like most fans of Assassin's Creed, I was thrown in a loop early on in Assassin's Creed III when, after seemingly playing as Colonial Assassin Haytham Kenway for several hours, it was revealed that Kenway was never an Assassin at all but rather the Grand Master of the Templar Colonial Rite.

During the first few sequences of Assassin's Creed III, Kenway actually assassinates many crucial members of the British and Colonial Brotherhood of Assassins and eliminates several rogue Templars whilst weaving in Templar control over British leadership in the American colonies leading up to the Revolutionary War.

Aside from playing as Kenway early on in the game, Assassin's Creed III additionally has players control Templar agents in the game's multiplayer, with the multiplayer actually being a training module for modern-day Templars living through the memories of late 18th century Assassins and Templars.

1 Prototype

Alex Mercer's Journey to Villainy

Without a doubt, the best Xbox 360 adventure game to feature a playable villain as the protagonist right from the get-go is Radical Entertainment's Prototype, starring the shapeshifting Alex Mercer.

Prototype begins with Alex Mercer as an amnesiac with no recollection of his past or how he ended up in a morgue with shapeshifting abilities, allowing him to transform into any human and create blades in his body that he uses to kill oppressive Blackwatch soldiers virus-mutated civilians alike.

However, by the end of the game, Mercer discovers that he was actually a leading scientist who helped create the Blacklight virus in the first place, and instead of completely wiping the virus out with his abilities, he becomes resolved in enhancing the virus to infect all of humanity with it as seen in Prototype 2.