Good News: Shut Up!

In real life, children are precious and adorable. In video games however they are the most annoying things you can possibly deal with (Heavy Rain comes to mind). Most of the time we are forced to sit and endure them (Heavy Rain comes to mind). Sometimes we get to fight back. Here is a best of list that was so hard to narrow down we had to have 6 titles.

6. Black and White (PC)

Peter Molyneux and Lionhead Studios created one of the more sadistic god games out there with Black and White. While the game certainly felt like it was lacking in many areas, it really let you dish out a few verses of the Old Testament on the populace. See that fresh faced little youngster, full of life and ready to take on a new day? Well, your powers are running a bit low and sending that little scamp to the sacrificial altar is sure to put a bounce back into your step!

Perhaps you’ve just had a long, hard day of godding around and just can’t seem to get any obedience out of the some of the villagers. The solution is to take a page from the book of Exodus. Knock on the home of a particularly unruly family and they’ll all run outside, ready to greet the deity who has taken the time to visit them personally. Snatch up the first born male, throw him into the sunset hard enough that he’s just a speck in the horizon, take a breather and resume your godly duties.

It’s also worth mentioning that you can set up your dream battle between a 50 story tall magical bear and a little girl. Leash them together and just let nature happen. Goldilocks will think twice before eating anymore goddamn porridge.

Bear prepares for his upcoming bout. Goldilocks thinks the flame is too hot. Bear thinks it's just right.

Despite there being even more methods of dispatch, this game only hits spot 6 on our list due to the relatively low level of resistance these kids put up.

5. Deus Ex (PC, PS2)

Deus Ex is hailed by many to be one of the greatest games ever created. You take the role of JC Denton, a nanotechnology augmented counter terrorism agent with UNATCO out to kick ass, uncover conspiracies, and wear his sunglasses at night in a dystopian future. This game put a great deal of emphasis on dialogue and choice, and upon your first encounter with a kid it’s clear that the children of the future are little cretins with no manners.

Here one of the little brats is beyond flat out rude to a member or law enforcement. He both threatens to sick the terrorists on our hero and insults his wardrobe. In the video the player then makes the choice to teach the boy a lesson he won’t soon forget. Fun fact about doing this – if you kill terrorists in the first areas of the game, certain members of UNATCO will berate you for your brutality and withhold items. If you kill kids, it’s pretty much shrugged off.

To further cement the fact that no one in the future gives a damn about kids, take a look at that. You take out a Chinese Laser Sword, duel a prepubescent, and a fully armed bystander who actually employed and liked the kid just shrugs it off and only seems to find your actions somewhat rude.

For the apathetic reactions alone from adults in the world of Deus Ex, this game grabs the number 5 spot on the list.

4. Fallout 2 (PC)

The Fallout series has produced one of gaming’s favorite post apocalyptic worlds. It’s an absolutely engrossing and desolate landscape spotted with the occasional town that’s just barely scraping by. One of these towns is Klamath, filled to the brim with a bunch of pint sized kleptos who nab at your hard earned inventory to take to a shop to sell right back to you for an unfair price. This has infuriated pretty much every wasteland wanderer, and everyone’s impulse is to take out a sledge hammer, chase the little buggers down and smash them square in the groin. This isn’t any kind of hyperbole. Fallout had a fantastic (though now archaic) combat system where you could individually target parts of your enemies, and these little dudes weren’t any exception to this.

Unlike Deus Ex, people did actually take notice when you commit these acts and you actually get the title of “Childkiller” attatched to yourself. In a world with a dwindling population, lowering the chance of the world having any kind of future is seen as a very bad thing. Bounty hunters in power armor will actually start to hunt you down in random encounters and generally try to make your life a living hell.

This icon was originally supposed to be for Childkiller but was dropped from the final release. http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Childkiller

There is a loophole to let the kids rob you, exterminate them, and not get penalized for it at all. You load yourself up with nothing but armed and ready timed explosives and take a stroll through town. They’ll hop over, relieve you of your burdens and scurry off to admire their newly acquired prize. Count down a few second and presto.

The children in this game actually pose a viable though minor threat in some way to you, and lands Fallout 2 at number 4.

3. No More Heroes 2 (Wii)

Suda51 is no stranger to including absolutely ridiculous moments in whatever he does (as should be expected as he goes by the name Suda51). He adheres to his tradition of weirding out everyone who plays his games in No More Heroes 2 which features two of the more messed up bosses out there – Mimmy and Pizza Batt Jr.

She is literally too anime.

The only context really provided for this anime monstrosity is that Travis’s brother, Henry, falls asleep and dreams of this. Mimmy begs him to to stay in his imagination world forever, and Henry tries to convince her to come to the real world so she attempts to kill him. That’s pretty much all there is to it. It’s ridiculous, it’s stupid, it’s anime. God bless.

That is a horrible colour scheme.

After Travis Touchdown cuts his way through a multitude of assassins in his journey to be Number One, everything comes to a head where the big reveal hits and the final boss is a nasally voiced bald boy with a pizza tattooed on his head and Elton John glasses. He tricks Travis into believing that all his friends are dead by presenting their (fake) severed heads to him on silver platters, keeping with the stereotype that children are liars. The little runt is a rich one, charging around in daddy’s luxury hovercar to combat Travis, and later taking illegal drugs to try to combat him mano a mano.

Both of these are certainly memorable characters and Pizza Batt Jr actually provides a challenging boss fight. For this they are granted spot 3 on the countdown.

2. Bully (PS2, Wii, 360, PC)

Despite being one of Rockstar’s more tame titles, Bully has garnered a lot of flack from all over about the content of the game. There aren’t brutal fatalities in this game and much of the action is fairly tongue in cheek, but the title alone led many to believe it was just a game about bullying kids until they develop mental disorders. It was actually a well made game where you could be a good guy and help people out and the missions themselves were well written and fun to play.

Jimmy is kicking a butt. Jimmy is doing well.

Why does this game rank so high on the list? Easy. In this game you square off against a prep school of opponents as just another kid. You’re just Jimmy Hopkins – a ginger with an attitude. The game features a pretty in depth fighting system and you can pick a fight with literally anyone. Our red headed step child protagonist can either be a hero to the geeks of the school, a bully, or just an overall prick to everyone storming around punching random people and then making out with some lads. Welcome to number 2, Jimmy. You get a B.

1. Splatterhouse 2 (Sega Genesis)

In first place today is Splatterhouse 2, a game that isn’t exactly renowned for its gameplay. Like others in the series, the focus is generally grossouts, disgusting enemies and brutal ways of dispatching them. Gameplay is relatively simplistic with the player controlling Rick, an average guy who has put on the “Terror Mask” to become a Jason Voorhees knockoff so he can save his girlfriend from demons. It won’t win a Pulitzer, but the set up leads to a boss battle that never seems to get mentioned ever – the fetus fight.

Rick gets pro active with his stance on pro choice.

Rick enters a room and is greeted by a demonic fetus just hanging out from its umbilical cord down from the ceiling. It recedes into the ceiling and disappears as a pair of hedge clippers and a chainsaw float up from the ground and assail our hero. The fetus is telepathic. The only way to stop the weapons from flying at you is to punch them repeatedly. That’s right – the only way to stop a flying functioning chainsaw is to punch it directly in the spinning chain until it stops. Problem solved.

Not really. Now 4 demon fetuses drop down from the ceiling and they’re not happy that you broke their toys. Joke’s on them though – the chainsaw still works. They show their disapproval by dropping in and out like ninjas and spewing all over the place. The game then lives up to its name as Rick charges in and starts up a fetus filleting frenzy, sending green and red mess splattering all over the floor. Evidently chainsaws work just as well as coat hangers. Namco employed some sick sons of bitches back in the day. This whole fight is just wrong in retrospect.

In conclusion if you hate children as much as we do, then these games are for you! (Honorable mention goes to Flash game Dad ‘n Me – you just beat the shit out of kids left and right in this one!)