A Guide to Video Gaming’s Biggest Dickheads

Dickheads. They’re everywhere these days, aren’t they? Is it just me?

People who pick their nose and eat it. People who identify as “foodies.” People who barge into elevators at the last minute. People who wear those fluffy little pom-pom bobble hats. Everyone involved with “brand banter.” The guy who sits opposite you. James Corden. Clean Bandit. Donald Trump. Your dad.

Video games are a well-worn escape route from the braying morons who infest modern existence. But, crushingly, the medium has its fair share of dickheads too. So let’s talk shit about them, shall we? It’s always good to get things off your chest.

Here’s the VICE Gaming guide to video gaming’s biggest dickheads. You know, just terrible people.

You might be a spider now, Patches, but you’re still a dick.

PATCHES (Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls, Bloodborne)

Patches makes an appearance in every Souls game directed by Hidetaka Miyazaki, including Bloodborne, and he’s an insufferable, snidey, backstabbing prick in every single one of them. Optimistically described by the Dark Souls Wiki as being an “opportunistic trickster,” he’s really just a duplicitous twat. He takes advantage of well-meaning treasure hunters and kicks them off high, rocky ledges into pits of slithering bloodthirsty monsters, or he leaves them to starve to death. He’s basically that guy who goads you into approaching someone who’s out of your league on a night out, and then stands with his mates snickering when it all goes to shit. Fuck you, Patches.

You do play those drums excellently, Ivan, but you’re still a dick.

IVAN (Devil’s Third)

Devil’s Third‘s Ivan is a stratospheric dickhead. He’s a hulking, topless, monotonous, drivel-spouting meathead who’s absolutely gagging to join the crew of lesser known and underappreciated cult gaming icons—a Dante, a Gene, a Travis Touchdown—but with absolutely none of the wit, style, charm, or charisma to warrant it.

He plays his drum kit, smokes cigarettes, and drinks whisky in his prison cell. He bumbles around cluttered environments with his dreadful tattoos on show, and every sentence he utters is a smug, self-satisfied, snarky comeback.

Essentially a disturbing manifestation of designer Tomonobu Itagaki’s infantile boyhood fantasies, Ivan’s existence is utterly inexcusable.

No one wants to be Ivan, and nobody even remotely cares about him.

How to beat the dick that is Envy, via YouTube

ENVY (The Binding of Isaac)

Envy is, by his own creator’s admission, the most annoying enemy in the Binding of Isaac games. In a game teeming with deliberately irritating and challenging opponents, this pretty much makes him one of the most irritating in indie games, full stop. Or in other words: dickhead.

Fighting Envy is a battle of attrition. Every time you deplete his health bar, he splits into two, then four, then eight, then tens of little Envy bits, all with their own health bars, colliding around the room. Fighting him with vanilla damage is a serious risk to your long-term health.

With his smug 4chan trollface, he’s the video game equivalent of those dickheads in the comments who haven’t read the article and just. Won’t. Go. Away.

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Look, Lisa, we know a whole bunch of bad stuff happened to you, but there’s no need to be such a dick about it.

LISA (P.T.)

As the chief antagonist in the Scariest Video Game Experience Ever Made, Lisa is an appalling dickhead, and she is responsible for one of the most alarming jump scares in the medium’s history.

Lisa, this is the last time I’m going to tell you: Get away from my newly doubled glazed windows; stop pissing on me; stop writing haunting, hellish messages on my newly painted walls (the landlord will go berserk); wipe the vomit off your mouth; get a new nightie; go to the opticians; get out of my video games; get out of my mind; and get out of my nightmares. They’re horrific enough already.

Hey, Nate, mate, it’s cool that you’re all shooting from the hip and that, but tone down the dickishness, would you?

NATHAN DRAKE (several Uncharted games)

When you were getting picked last for football in front of that obnoxious girl you used to be into, insufferable wisecracking jock Nathan Drake had been standing around joking with his friends in the “picked” area for over ten minutes.

Nate. Nate. Even his nickname makes my blood boil. He’s the irritating boyfriend of one of your girlfriend’s friends, the reason you make up shit to avoid the Friday night double date. He’s not the playground bully per se, but worse, he’s the guy who stands behind the bully’s back, laughing as you get poison ivy shoved down the back of your pants.

Nate. The sort of guy who opens the Monday morning meeting with a misguided, greasy lipped sexual innuendo, who props up the bar in a blazer/T-shirt combo, who gets VIP tickets for big Hyde Park concerts in the summer, who’s all over your Facebook feed with his smug wife and unbearable jokes and endless LAD Bible links. Nate.

He must be hiding a personality somewhere. Maybe it’ll come out in Uncharted 4.

Chris, your arms, yeah, sorry, but they pretty much make you a dickhead

CHRIS REDFIELD (several Resident Evil games)

He’s not as outwardly offensive or irritating as old Natey boy, but God, Chris Redfield is hard work. Easily one of the blandest video game characters ever to have made it through a Capcom brainstorm, Redfield’s the guy who eats eight square meals a day, prepares his chicken breasts and broccoli at home and brings his food into work in little Tupperware boxes. His meals are in the fridge with little Post-Its on them: “Chris R.—do not eat!!!” He takes two-hour lunches to hit up Gymbox, and he has one of those little fold-up bikes. He also probably moves his lips when he reads. Say what you want about Leon Kennedy, but at least he had the balls to wear that sheepskin coat.

Anyway, my ex-girlfriend once told me she wished I had arms as big as Chris’s. So he makes the list by default.

Look Xur, you might move around a lot, but you’re not enigmatic, you’re a dickhead.

XUR (Destiny)

Xur shows his vile mug once a week in Destiny‘s howling narrative wasteland, and he almost always disappoints. He charges exuberant amounts of in-game currency for items everyone already has, and you never know where he’s going to be, so you have to trawl the open sewage pipes of Destiny Twitter trying to find out.

When you find him tucked away in the corner of the Tower, it’s exceptionally common to wonder what the hell you’re doing with your life. Xur is there to rip you off and disappoint you. He’s Destiny‘s own landlord, train company executive, ticket tout. To hell with him and his gormless squid face. Dickhead.

YOU (playing any video game, ever)

You. You’re also a dickhead. You’re the guy who’s waiting by the helicopter in The Division, going rogue, waiting to steal people’s hard-earned loot. You’re the guy who blew up Megaton, who let Kenny survive. You’re the guy who can’t make it past the jumping bits in Destiny raids, who picks Ken and then rage quits after getting perfected in Street Fighter V. You’re the guy bossing around strangers and tutting in casual games of Rainbow Six Siege, who fires that red shell right at the last minute, the guy who takes Halo 5 arena games really seriously. You’re the guy who chugs Estus on the Iron Keep bridge during PVP. You’re the guy trash talking in the lobby, the camper, the guy with shit ping. You.

You probably pick your nose and eat it as well, don’t you?

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