Video games can do just about anything. With a little creative flair and programming elbow grease, game developers can tailor any kind of experience imaginable, putting players in the shoes of an intrepid adventurer, the cockpit of an ace pilot, or the cloud stuff of a benevolent (or malevolent) deity.
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However, while there are still plenty of peaceful experiences, for one lizard-brained reason or another, most games today focus on giving players the one thing they crave over all else: mountainous body counts. While there are plenty of doom slayers or monster hunters out there with blood-stained hands and absurd trophy racks, these ten have the highest scores for hunting the deadliest animal: human beings.
10Lara Croft (Tomb Raider)
Hapless henchmen, exotic animals, and extinct species have all met their demise thanks to Ms. Croft, who has racked up a sizable body count over the years since her debut in 1996 in the originalTomb Raider. Following the series reboot in 2013 with the introduction of the first in theSurvivortrilogy, her kill counter was knocked back to zero. However, it didn’t take long at all for her to supercharge her high score back to levels equal to a civilization’s worth of sacrifices. Literally.
InShadow of the Tomb Raider, Lara shotgun blasts, stabs, and shish-kababs her way through scores ofall sorts of henchmenbefore finally finding herself face-to-face with a sacred dagger. Lara’s companion warns her that taking it from its resting place will trigger an apocalypse. However, on some flimsy pretext or another, Lara decides to nab it, resulting in a biblical-level tsunami that totals the island of Cozumel, killing a number of innocent peoplesomewhere in the hundreds.
9Agent 47 (Hitman)
Perhaps more astounding than Agent 47’s bourgeoning whack list is the number of creative (and entertaining) ways in which Agent 47 manages to off his victims and get away scot-free. Considering that he snuffs out human life at least five out of seven days a week (it’s his job), it might be hard to even calculatehow many skeletons might be out there hiddenin pits, down slopes, or in the crannies of a trash compactor.
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Considering there are countlessHitmangames, and the objective for each individual mission is to kill at least one target, it’s safe to assume that Agent 47 has killed at least over 300 people, and that’s not even counting the “optional” kills that Agent 47 might make throughout the mission, for people that detect him, or are in his way.
8Max Payne (Max Payne)
If murder were an Olympic sport, Max Payne would be… Well, he’d be disqualified for his obvious drug dependency (specifically, painkillers) before he got a shot at gold. But otherwise, Max would be able to hold his own, being quite the lethal killer himself.
Between all threeMax Paynegames, one estimation ofhis total body count is over 2,000, the third Rockstar-developed entry accounting for over half of that number. To be fair, one of his most iconic moves is diving through the air and pulling out a headshot mid-flight. There’s a good reason he’s so good at doing it: he’s done it a lot.
7Nathan Drake (The Uncharted Series)
As well as dusting several priceless,ancient ruins worthy of being world wonders, Nathan Drake’s record wouldn’t stand very well in an international court of law. Whether it was done in self-defense or not, Nathan put himself in a position to end literally thousands of lives over the course of his adventures (even if they were pirates or guns for hire) all in the name of grabbing treasure and solving a few enticing mysteries in theUnchartedgames.
That being said, the mysteries areveryenticing, and the treasures aregorgeous. Can anyone put a price on human lives? Well, Nathan Drake can (and does) on a regular basis. Without counting all the deaths following Drake-induced train crashes, explosions, or primeval city collapses, it’s reckoned that his fortune is worth almsot3,000 souls in total.
6Joel Miller (The Last Of Us)
As the story ofThe Last Of Usplays out, players see the tortured former father do whatever it takes to protect his adopted ward acrosswilderness-reclaimed apocalypse country, including taking out a small town’s worth of raiders. Just like the ruined world that he inherited, Joel’s brutality extends to every part of his being.
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Joel’s true body count really starts with all the people who could have otherwise been saved if not for his intervention at the end, in which he murders his way through peacekeepers and doctors; in other words, humanity’s last hope. Thanks to Joel, humanity lost its sole hope of fighting off the fungal disease that would eventually snuff outthe last remnants of humanity.
5Ezio Auditore (Assassin’s Creed)
Is it any surprise that Ezio Auditore, one of themost belovedAssassin’s Creedprotagonists of all time, should appear on this prestigious list? This iconic assassin loved three things above all else: tall towers, haystacks, and stabbing rooftop guards with pointy metal, the iconic Hidden Blade inAssassin’s Creed.
Ezio Auditore de Firenze has been the protagonist of three games, and the amount of assassinations he’s pulled off, and guards he’s fought, it’s safe to say that Ezio also hasa few thousand kills.That’s a lot of dead rooftop guards that were only up there in the first place because it was their job.
4Alex Mercer (Prototype)
If it wasn’t obvious by the mountains of corpses left in the protagonist’s wake, playersdo not assume the role of the heroinPrototype. In fact, by the time the sequel rolled around, Alex Mercer had given the whole “humanity existing” thing some thought and decided against it, opting instead to crack the can open on his own brand of apocalyptic super plague.
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Considering how difficult it is inPrototypeto complete the game (or even just traverse a single in-game block) without skidding a pedestrian’s guts along the concrete, it’s probably best to assume that Mercer has a count ofsomewhere between a couple of thousands to a few million.
3Kratos (God Of War)
Besides gods, demigods, demons, and titans, Kratos probably also has a lot of human flesh under his nails, thanks to his penchant forcompletely disregarding the value of human life. As a Spartan soldier, his record was probably nothing to sneeze at, but his number following his slaying of Ares probably puts most modern deadly diseases to shame. After all, he is theGod of War.
Although the number of deaths attributable to the God of War himself issomewhere in the tens of thousands, that isn’t counting all the collateral damage caused by Poseidon’s downfall and basically the end of the world (or at least the Greek world) inGod of War3, which puts his totalsomewhere in the multi-million range.
2The Prince (Katamari Damacy)
That cute little face and fashionable green headwear hides a dark secret. What seems like an innocent game about rolling stuff up to make a ball so big it could swallow the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is actually a game about enacting the apocalypse thanks toKatamari Damacy.
InKatamari Damacy, The Prince, at the behest of his father, the King of All Cosmos, is tasked with creating enough matter to create a new star. Where does The Prince source all that matter from? Planet Earth, including99.999% of humansliving on it (maybe a few astronauts get left behind). That’s a lot of humans!
1Commander Shepard (Mass Effect)
Throughout the events ofMass Effect, Commander Shepard and their comrades take down several thousand life forms (not necessarily all human) in their mission to combat the reapers, a deadly machine race hell-bent on ruining the party for all organic life in the galaxy.
Depending on the player’s choices duringMass Effect 3’s final moments, it’s possible to see Commander Shepard spitefully wipe outall life in the universejust to stick it to the reapers. Unfortunately, humans happen to be in the “organic” category, meaning that (at least in one of the endings) Shepard has the highest kill count in the galaxy.
