Video game ne'er-do-wells get into the villainy business for all kinds of reasons: greed, jealousy, megalomania, maybe even because they think the hero simply needs somebody to fight. But let's take it one step further back - what causes them to fall in with such a bad crowd in the first place? Turns out that they just want what we all want, man: love.

Rough childhoods, absentee parents, lack of recognition, unrequited romances - yet we sweep them all into the same category as those one-dimensional bad guys who just want to wreck shit for no good reason. Shameful! So I say no longer. Come with me as I recognize some of gaming's most despicable villains who really just need somebody to cuddle.

I don't know what awful reproductive events transpired to bring Bowser Jr. into the world, but at the start of Super Mario Sunshine, his dad has him convinced that Princess Peach was an important part of the process. Biology aside, you can't blame Jr. for wanting the Mushroom Kingdom's vision of grace and gentleness in his life, given what must have been a pretty rough upbringing in the Bowser household. The little fella just wants a hug from a pair of arms that aren't wearing spiky bracelets.

I'm not sure what gives it away - maybe how Peach doesn't seem to recognize him, maybe that she despises his father, maybe the fact that she has soft human skin instead of a spiny turtle shell - but Jr. eventually realizes that she isn't his mother. If my dad manipulated my deep maternal longing as part of his evil schemes to kidnap a princess and rule the world, I'd probably be a bit upset. To be fair, I had parents who tried to raise me to be a good person rather than as a living, breathing tool of vengeance.

If four of your closest friends all decided to up and leave one day without telling you why, you'd probably be a little upset, right? Welcome to the first installment of Life Sucks with Skull Kid. Later on they briefly return, only to banish him for pulling endless mean pranks on the residents of Termina. After that, he wanders around for a while, eventually making friends with a nice little Kokiri boy who teaches him a song on his ocarina… and then also disappeared for seven years.

There's no denying that the Skull Kid has a lot of mischief in his soul - that's just the way he rolls. But if all his friends didn't keep vanishing, they might be able to turn that prankster spirit toward more creative pursuits. Seriously, somebody who has the gumption and gusto to be the trick-pulling scourge of an entire kingdom could probably do some really admirable stuff if he put his mind to it. Poor Skull Kid just needs a pal to keep him on track.

I know what you're thinking. "Vaas doesn't need more love, he needs a life sentence or intense therapy, preferably both." And it's true that he does seem to derive a bit more joy from being a murderous, treacherous asshole than the other people on this list. But it all could have been different if he'd literally anybody to rely on aside from Citra.

If you've finished Far Cry 3, you know that Citra doesn't quite match the the noble resistance leader image she tries to cultivate. Vaas learned that a long time ago. Maybe, aside from ordering him to kill people to prove his Rakyat loyalty, she was a loving adoptive sister. But judging by the really unhealthy way Citra uses sex as a carrot-on-a-stick for her most loyal soldiers, I'm guessing there was some more creepy shit going down there. You can't blame Vaas for ending up a little bit off and betraying his people (whatever that means). You can still blame him for kidnapping outsiders and selling them into slavery though, because that's just an uncool thing to do in general.

If you didn't play Mass Effect 2's Overlord DLC, you never met the Mass Effect series' most sympathetic antagonist. I could recount the sad story of David Archer leading up to his encounter with Shepard, how his brother Gavin was using him to command the Geth to claim their armies for Cerberus… To be honest, it's pretty much Rain Man, if Tom Cruise had abused Dustin Hoffman's talents for memorization and calculation by strapping him into a computer to dominate a synthetic life form instead of making a couple bucks at a blackjack table.

That's pretty much the definition of being a shitty brother, right there. Inevitably the plan goes sideways, David's consciousness is shattered, and he takes over the entire facility and kills almost all of its occupants. His story can have a happy ending if you free him from the machine and take him to the Grissom Academy, at least.

You might know the phrase 'publish or perish' if you're familiar with the cutthroat world of academia. It means you have to regularly conduct valuable research and publish your findings if you want to remain relevant and thus eligible for jobs or tenure - but for Dr. Wily, it was more like 'publish and perish'. Whatever brilliant contributions he made to the field of robotics, Dr. Light was always a step ahead of him, scooping up all the praise and international goodwill.

Wily just wanted some recognition for his almost-as-impressive body of work, but they don't give out runner-up Nobel Prizes. The jealousy drove him mad, and he decided to forsake love and admiration for total domination, reprogramming Dr. Light's robot masters to seek global conquest. Dr. Light rebuilt his beloved lab assistant, Rock, into a war machine to fight the Wily menace, and the bad feelings have gone on ever since. Maybe next time Light could just share the spotlight?

Ok, what's rule number one for maintainers of balance and observers of history? Aside from "don't have sex with your ancestors" and "don't tell anybody the lottery numbers"? That's right, it's "don't fall in love". But poor Cia spent a little too much time watching the era-spanning exploits of Link instead of reading the Triforce overseer rulebook, and she ends up developing a huge crush on him.

While she knows that her duties will never permit her to be with the hero in green, she becomes massively jealous of Princess Zelda, who can't seem to throw a musical instrument without hitting some incarnation of him. Those feelings (plus some demonic possession) drives her to take over Hyrule so… so she can be with him? The guy who always fights and kills whoever's trying to take over Hyrule in any given week? Hm. She didn't really think this one through. But such is the weakness of a lovesick mind, I guess.

Gary Smith is really bad news in Bully. Aside from endlessly scheming to take over Bullworth Academy, he also makes it his personal mission to completely undo every little bit of social standing that new kid Jimmy Hopkins manages to cobble together (once he goes off his meds, anyway). Seriously, he probably tortures small animals when he's not busy drawing up complex schemes to turn all the school's cliques against each other.

Here's a protip for any parents reading this: if your child is very likely an undiagnosed sociopath, you probably shouldn't drop him off at a crappy boarding school, set him up with an awful therapist in town, and disappear from his life. I don't know if Gary could ever expect to live a normal life free of megalomaniacal/homicidal urges, but a little more parental involvement could have kept him from "primary antagonist" status, at the very least.

Is Revolver Ocelot a villain or a hero? That's tough to say with 100-percent certainty about almost any of Metal Gear's recurring characters, but Ocelot is a particularly dense knot of duty and deception. Since you end up shooting at him more often than not, I'm going to say he's a villain for the purposes of this article. Baddie cred established, what's love got to do (got to do) with it? Just about everything.

Ocelot is the son of The Boss and The Sorrow, but he's babynapped soon after birth by the Philosophers, the increasingly nefarious international organization both of his parents work for. Would the pair have retired from international super-soldierdom to raise their kid if given the option? I kinda doubt it, but at the very least they wouldn't have let him be raised in secret military academies to become an instrument of the Philosophers' will. Unlike most of the sad kids in this article, Ocelot's parents really did care about him - the Sorrow even agreed to let the Boss kill him rather than risk Ocelot's life - they just weren't allowed to show him that love.

Being the child of a demon father and an elf mother sounds kinda metal, but it actually sucks. Hard. Isair and Madae, the sibling antagonists of Icewind Dale 2, found that out when their mother ran out of the room and jumped off of a cliff as soon as she saw their wrinkly little devil wings and cloven hooves. Not a great start, they actually had a pretty decent childhood under the care of a benevolent priestess who sheltered them from the outside world.

But when that priestess passed away (I don't think she threw herself off a cliff) the townsfolk got their pitchforks and torches and proceeded to undo their kindly upbringing. Cast off and accepted neither by humans nor fiends, they strike off on their own and try to create a new world order where their kind can live without fear for their lives… until a bunch of adventurers come around and boot them into another plane. To think, this all could've been avoided if people weren't so awful about the whole "half-fiend" thing.

But those are just some of the poor, villainous souls who could've done with a few more hugs in their formative years. Can you think of any more villains who just needed a little more love? Let me know in the comments below!

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As video games grow more sophisticated, so too do the stories they try to tell. Movies and books tell stories of the wide range of human emotion and interactions, and those moments are bound to include sexual intimacy - so why can't games get in on this action, too? There's just one problem: the uncanny valley is a real creepy place, and we've been stuck there for going on a decade now.

Video games are better at making some things look convincing than others - like cars. Cars have looked great for years. People having sex? Still looks like two Barbie dolls having their faces mashed together. Plus, it doesn't help that many game designers treat intercourse with all the subtlety and grace of a 12-year-old who just discovered his dad's hidden stash of Playboys. When you combine the two, you get this list of the most cringeworthy sex scenes in video games. Hope you have a vomit bucket handy.

This article is totally NSFW. Though you probably guessed that when you saw the word 'sex' in the headline.

Despite being filled with all sorts of grotesque humor and wanton violence and destruction, the Grand Theft Auto series has shied away from displaying graphic acts of sex (up until GTA 5's first-person mode put it all right in your face) - mostly because Americans are weird like that. Hidden away in the darkest corners of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas' code lies the fabled 'Hot Coffee' mini-game, and it's only available if you actively seek it out by modifying the game. Which… is probably for the best.

Once the right switches are flipped, successfully going on dates (which were a normal part of the San Andreas experience) will eventually lead to a moment where your girlfriend casually invites you inside for a hot cuppa joe. This is code for sex - horribly rigid, polygonal sex. As you bump and grind against your significant other, you have to move the analog stick in proper rhythm to keep your 'excitement' meter high enough. Though it's surprisingly tame in comparison to some of the others on this list (everyone remains fully clothed for the duration), it's CJ's mouth-agape expression that makes this scene the stuff of nightmares.

As someone who thinks that 'cinematic' means a heavy dose of melodrama and some thin excuse to show two bodies rubbing against each other in the night, David Cage is gonna be on this list a few times. And Fahrenheit (or Indigo Prophecy, as it was called in North America) features not one, but two cringe-worthy sex scenes. The first involves Lucas getting back with his ex-girlfriend Tiffany - complete with an interactive serenade foreplay sequence and some shitty Nickelback wannabe playing mid-coitous. Awkward, but not even close to the worst scene in the game.

No, that honor goes to the scene near the end, shortly after Lucas dies and gets resurrected. He finally meets up with Carla (the detective who's been tracking his every move) and they go from 'Hey, how ya doin'?' to banging out in an abandoned train car within a few minutes. There's no character development here at all and, oh yeah, CARLA IS HAVING SEX WITH THE UNDEAD. The fact that both characters look like animatronic puppets is actually the least disturbing thing about this whole set-up.

David Cage joint #2 checking in, showing just how tenuous a connection between two people can be before they make sweet, passionate, digital love. Ethan Mars has lost one son to a car accident already, the other's been kidnapped by the Origami Killer, and he's beginning to worry that he might be the culprit, like a doughy Tyler Durden. He's physically falling apart at the seams after going through several Saw-style trials, and is acting like a complete psychopath. But sure, let's have a sex scene because EMOTIONS.

Oh, let's not forget the shit reporter Madison Paige has had to deal with as well, considering the home-invasion-wait-it-was-all-a-dream and forced stripping she's had to do to get to this point. Both Ethan and Madison are in no psychological condition to be doing anything remotely romantic (nevermind the fact that they've basically just met), and yet, after a couple of choice dialog prompts, they're both making awkward 'O'-faces and hovering their virtual body parts over one another.

No David Cage sexcapade is complete without mentioning Beyond: Two Souls. While not nearly as graphic as the other two games (no one gets fully naked here), the premise behind the scene is is just as cringeworthy, as you're essentially a disembodied voyeur during the whole thing.

In Beyond: Two Souls, you don't just play as Jodie Holmes; you also play as a ghost named Aiden (pronounced AYE-den - yeah, I know), who is attached to Jodie via some paranormal umbilical cord. During her date with the totally unremarkable Ryan Clayton, you can either use your spooooooooky powers to mess with her dinner (move plates, throw wine glasses, and other typical poltergeisty stuff). Or you can, y'know… just sit back and watch the sexy times unfold. And by 'sexy times', I mean 'look on as Ellen Page and Eric Winters dolls move their faces together until their lips touch'. Also, if you know the plot twist regarding Aiden's relationship to Jodie, that scene just got waaaaaaaay more awkward. Hey, at least she went on an actual date this time.

BioWare games are usually fantastic adventures. But sometimes, it feels like their romance subplots were bolted in because the development team collectively realized "Well, we're making a BioWare game, so you should be able to fuck somebody, right?" Dragon Age: Origins' sex scenes feel especially tacked on, mainly because there are two different sequences in total: one if you're playing as a man, the other if you're playing as a woman. The game basically just pastes in the party member you're currently boning.

OK, sure, you want to save on time, and only creating two sets of animations helps. I get that. But they're not even that well done. Sure, the tasteful fades are nice, but each time the screen comes back in, you and your partner are in a completely different position, like they're flipping through the Kama Sutra and working their way down the list a half-second at a time. And that over-blown fantasy music swelling in the background just makes it all feel even more awkward. Throw in some stilted animations and dead eyes and you'll have none of the arousal but all of the shame when a family member/significant other walks in on it.

Suda 51 is nothing if not unpredictable. Whether he has you playing as a sexually frustrated otaku with a lightsaber, or running around making dick jokes with a talking gun named Johnson, you can be sure that whatever game he's heading up will be totally bonkers. But nothing prepared me for Gigolo mode in Killer is Dead.

In this mode, you're tasked with chatting up ladies at a bar, and ogling every inch of their bodies when they turn away. Oh, and you've also got x-ray glasses that let you see through their clothes (but not their underwear - we're keeping it classy, here). Once you've peeked long enough, you can make your move, your ultimate reward being the strangest softcore sex ever offered in a video game - complete with schmaltzy saxophone music. You're even granted an Achievement that says you've made each girl your 'prisoner in body and soul'. Yikes.

No list of awkward sex scenes would be complete without God of War making an appearance. There's nothing quite like mashing a couple buttons and wiggling some analog sticks to really simulate the joy of making an intimate connection with another human being - especially when the actual act of sex is relegated to some terrible off-screen moaning and watching a precariously placed vase get knocked around a bit.

What makes God of War so cringeworthy is that each sequel feels like it has to up the ridiculousness ante. The first game's scene felt like a silly joke that we all quickly moved on from. The second established it as a running gag (this time featuring a peeing statue whose stream grows stronger by the scene's, erm, climax). By the third game, you're practically watching a full-blown porn cartoon, as two handmaidens (who look eerily like real dolls) grope each other while they watch Kratos give Aphrodite the ride of her life. This is why no one takes video games seriously (part 34,538).

Far Cry 3 started out with such promise. Sure, the story is super dumb, with you controlling a douchey club kid's descent into the heart of darkness. But it has some moments, mostly thanks to Vaas, who's an awesome villain - until they ditch him about halfway into the game. And it's only downhill from there.

At the end of the game, you're given a choice - do you rescue your friends and leave the island, or do you kill them all and embrace your warrior instincts? If you choose the 'kill' option, you not only get to see your friends' grisly demise at your own hands, you're immediately 'rewarded' with some POV humping between you and warrior queen Citra. Then, she stabs you in the stomach, leaves you for dead, and presumably goes off to raise a little baby Skrillex fan of her own. Congratulations! You've won…? Seriously, why would you pick this option?

I hope that games are someday able to express the wide range of human expression, including that most intimate act two people can possibly share, without making players physically ill. Today is not that day. If you need me, I'll just be giving my eyes a good bleach-washing and clearing my browser history. Let's never speak of this again.

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