Supazaar!

Author: Ethan Miller

  • The Video Game Sidequests That Feel Exactly Like Dealing With a UK Council Complaints Process

    The Video Game Sidequests That Feel Exactly Like Dealing With a UK Council Complaints Process

    There is a particular flavour of despair that only two situations in life can produce. The first is opening a video game quest log to find an objective that says “speak to the Elder” only to be told by the Elder to “speak to his assistant”, who tells you to come back after a festival, which doesn’t trigger for six in-game days, by which point the original NPC has wandered into a river. The second is lodging a noise complaint with your local council. I’ve experienced both. I’d genuinely struggle to tell you which left the deeper psychological scar.

    Video game sidequests and UK council bureaucracy are, I’m now convinced, designed by the same person. A person who hates you specifically, has never once met a human being, and gets paid per redirect.

    Frustrated gamer overwhelmed by video game sidequests UK council complaints funny quest log
    Photo by Yan Krukau on Pexels

    The fetch quest that refers you to another fetch quest

    Classic scenario. You need the Amulet of Whatever to progress. The blacksmith has it, but he won’t give it to you until you bring him three wolf pelts. You get the pelts. Now he needs a gemstone. The gemstone merchant has one, but she needs a signed letter from the mayor. The mayor is away on council business. You wait. He returns. The letter requires a stamp from the archivist. The archivist is dead.

    I played about forty hours of this in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered earlier this year and felt an uncanny recognition I couldn’t place. Then I remembered: that’s exactly what happened when I tried to report a broken streetlamp to my local council in 2024. You submit the online form. You get an automated reply saying your case has been logged. Three weeks later, a second email arrives telling you to use the correct reporting portal. The correct portal 404s. You call the number. The number plays hold music for eleven minutes before disconnecting. You are the wolf pelts. You have always been the wolf pelts.

    Objectives that reset for absolutely no stated reason

    This one is special. You’ve done everything right. You gathered the items, spoke to every NPC, navigated the dungeon, and handed in the quest. Quest complete. Except the next morning the objective is back in your log, marked as incomplete, with a helpful note saying “see the clerk”. The clerk says the same thing she said at the start. There is no explanation. The game does not acknowledge this has happened.

    Bethesda games are the obvious culprit, but honestly any open-world RPG with a complex quest flag system has done this to me at least once. And yes, it maps perfectly onto the experience of submitting a planning objection, receiving written confirmation that it has been received, and then receiving a second letter two months later asking you to resubmit because the original form used the wrong reference number. The number that they gave you. On the form they sent.

    For a broader look at how video game worlds handle bureaucratic chaos, our breakdown of which video game cities would fail a UK fire safety inspection is a genuinely cathartic read. Some of those cities would make your local planning committee weep.

    The NPC who sends you to a different NPC

    You ask the guard where to find the guild. He says to talk to the innkeeper. The innkeeper says to talk to the travelling merchant who passes through on Tuesdays. It is Wednesday. You return the following Tuesday. The merchant says the guild moved to the next town. In the next town, the first NPC you find says to talk to the guard.

    I’ve lived this. I spent three weeks trying to get an answer about a missed bin collection that went: council website (directs to phone line), phone line (directs to online portal), online portal (says to contact your local ward councillor), ward councillor’s office (auto-reply pointing back to the council website). At no point did anyone collect the bins. My wheelie bin became a monument to circular logic.

    The video game characters who’d be flagged by Ofcom on a UK chat show article touched on this kind of NPC uselessness, and honestly some of those characters would make better council representatives than the actual system. Duke Nukem would at least give you a direct answer, even if that answer was unbroadcastable.

    The timed quest that expires before you can complete it

    You have seven in-game days to deliver a parcel across the map. The parcel-giver does not mention that three of those days will be consumed by a mandatory story cutscene. You get to the destination on day six. The quest has failed. The NPC who issued it says nothing and stands there smiling. You reload. The cutscene is unskippable.

    The council equivalent: you receive a letter saying you have 21 days to respond to a licensing consultation. The letter was postmarked 17 days ago. You go online to respond. The consultation closed yesterday. There is a phone number. It rings out. There is a note on the website that says “for further information, please attend the next public meeting”. The next public meeting was last Thursday.

    According to GOV.UK’s Freedom of Information guidance, public bodies must respond to FOI requests within 20 working days. In practice, submitting an FOI about why your local council’s consultation system is broken feels only marginally less absurd than retrying a failed timed quest by reloading a save from three hours ago.

    The reward that isn’t worth the quest

    You’ve done it. After seventeen steps, four redirects, two dead NPCs, one reset objective, and a unskippable cutscene, the quest resolves. Your reward is 40 gold coins and a piece of leather armour you outlevelled six hours ago. The questgiver says “you have my thanks”. He does not mean it. You can see it in his procedurally generated eyes.

    The council version: after six weeks of emails, two phone calls, one formal written complaint, and a subject access request, you receive a letter confirming that the streetlamp has been logged for repair “within the next financial year”. The lamp is still broken. It is November.

    I’ve spent time reading about how game designers deliberately structure friction into sidequests to extend playtime, and I believe local council complaints departments have studied the same literature. Possibly the same spreadsheet. There is something almost impressive about a system so perfectly calibrated to exhaust the person using it without ever technically failing.

    The quest that asks you to wait

    “Return in three days.” That’s it. That’s the quest update. You return in three days. “I’m not ready yet, come back tomorrow.” You come back tomorrow. “The person you need to speak to has gone home for the evening.” It is 11am. You come back. They have gone on holiday for a fortnight.

    My local council’s complaints team once told me to expect a response within ten working days. On day eleven, I chased up. I was told the original email had not been received and I should resubmit. I resubmitted. On day twelve I received the original auto-reply from day one, confirming receipt. On day twenty-three I received a reply. It asked me to clarify what my complaint was about. The original complaint was six paragraphs long and included photographs.

    For pure structural comedy, the movie heists falling apart at a UK car park barrier piece captures the same energy: elaborate systems, confident protagonists, completely undone by a mundane British obstacle nobody thought to plan for. Swap the barrier for a council ticketing system and you’ve got my life from April to June last year.

    So what does this mean for us?

    Honestly, I think games have been training us for council complaints processes for decades and nobody told us. Every fetch quest was practice. Every reset objective was a drill. Every NPC who says “I’d love to help but you need to speak to Gerald” is preparing you for the moment Gerald’s voicemail says to email Sandra and Sandra’s out-of-office points you back to the main switchboard.

    The difference is that in games, you can reload a save. In real life, the bin just stays full, the lamp stays dark, and the noise from next door continues unabated at 1am on a Tuesday whilst the council’s automated system cheerfully informs you that your reference number has been updated.

    Game developers: I’m not complaining. Well. I am. But keep going. You’re clearly the only ones who understand how this country actually works.

  • Every Type of Player You Encounter in a UK Gaming Café, Ranked by How Deeply Unsettling They Are

    Every Type of Player You Encounter in a UK Gaming Café, Ranked by How Deeply Unsettling They Are

    Gaming cafés are having a proper moment in the UK. According to the BBC’s tech coverage, the esports and gaming lounge scene across British cities has grown significantly since 2022, with venues popping up everywhere from Manchester’s Northern Quarter to random retail units above chip shops in Swindon. And with that boom comes something nobody warned you about: the people. The utterly, magnificently unhinged people. I’ve spent more time than I’d like to admit in these places, and I can confirm that UK gaming café types of players funny enough to write an entire article about do absolutely exist. Every single one of them. All the time.

    Comic book style illustration of UK gaming café types of players at glowing PC setups
    Photo by Yan Krukau on Pexels

    The Red Bull hoarder

    You spot them immediately. Four cans arranged in a precise diagonal line to the left of the keyboard. A fifth already open. They are not drinking the fifth. The fifth is structural. It is load-bearing. Nobody at the venue has ever seen them eat. There is a small theory amongst the staff that they subsist entirely on taurine and the ambient glow of RGB lighting. They are aggressively good at whatever they’re playing, which makes it worse. You want to dislike them but you also want whatever they have.

    The Football Manager monk

    Completely still. Completely silent. Staring at a spreadsheet that, if you squint, might be a tactical formation but could also be a personal tax return. They arrived before the café opened. They will leave after it closes. Nobody has spoken to them. Nobody dares. There is something almost meditative about the Football Manager monk, they have achieved a level of focus that most people only reach during a genuine crisis. I once sat next to one for three hours and the only sound he made was a single, barely audible “yes” when his reserves drew 0-0 away at Carlisle. It sounded like a prayer being answered.

    The person who brought their own keyboard in a tote bag

    Look. I understand. The café keyboards are fine. They work. But the person who brought their own keyboard in a tote bag does not want “fine”. They want their 60% mechanical board with custom switches they had shipped from a vendor in Japan, lubed by hand over a long weekend. They will spend the first eight minutes of their session plugging it in, adjusting the angle, adjusting the angle again, and then typing four letters to test the feel. Respect them. Fear them slightly. They have opinions about actuation force that they will share with you if you make the mistake of asking. Don’t ask.

    The person on a work call

    Headset on. Teams open. Playing nothing. Just… doing their job. In a gaming café. I’ve seen this three times now and each time I feel like I’ve witnessed something that breaks a fundamental rule of the universe. The gaming café is not an office. It has neon lights and someone is speedrunning Dark Souls two metres to your left. And yet here is Dave, updating a stakeholder on Q2 projections. In fairness, the Wi-Fi is usually excellent.

    The tutorial abandoner

    They’ve never played this game before. They skipped the tutorial. They are in the hardest difficulty setting, somehow, and they are furious about it. They will spend forty minutes fighting a concept they would have understood in three minutes had they just done the tutorial. You can see the tutorial option right there on the pause menu. They cannot see it. Do not tell them it’s there. They need to learn. This is their journey.

    The person who’s definitely playing something they shouldn’t be in public

    The screen is angled away from the room at a very specific 37-degree tilt. They are wearing headphones that are clearly doing a lot of work. I’m not saying it’s anything alarming, it’s probably just an embarrassing amount of Stardew Valley or a very personal anime game, but the energy is unmistakably “this is not for your eyes”. And honestly? Fair enough. We all have our thing. My thing, for the record, is losing spectacularly at fighting games I have no business playing, which brings me neatly to my next entry.

    The person who is just catastrophically bad and having an absolute blast

    This is my people. Grinning. Dying constantly. Probably playing something with a really unforgiving skill curve and treating each death like a minor inconvenience rather than the humiliating defeat it objectively is. They are the reason gaming cafés feel alive. Every venue needs at least one person who is just fully in it for the chaos, the fun, and the extremely loud sound their character makes when they fall off a ledge for the sixth consecutive time. If you’ve ever read our piece on the most catastrophically bad video game menus, you’ll know that games are already conspiring against you, some of us just lean into it.

    The person who has claimed a table with snacks, a hoodie, a second bag, and what appears to be a light lunch

    They have colonised 1.8 square metres of shared space with the quiet confidence of someone filing a planning application. Crisps: two bags. A meal deal sandwich from the Tesco Express next door. Their hoodie draped over the second chair as a territorial marker. A third bag whose purpose remains unclear. They are not being rude, they are simply operating at a logistical level the rest of us haven’t evolved to yet. Genuinely, I find it impressive. The kind of preparation that reminds me of those open world games with suspiciously British town planning decisions, someone has clearly thought hard about territory.

    The one playing a horrifying horror game at full volume

    Headphones are available. The venue provides them. They have chosen not to use headphones. The ambient soundtrack of their game is now everyone’s ambient soundtrack. A jump scare just occurred. Three people across the room flinched. This individual did not flinch. They are beyond flinching. They have ascended.

    The absolute regulars who know all the staff by name

    Every gaming café has them. They arrive, they are greeted by name, they have a usual. They know which PC runs the smoothest, which chair has the wobbly wheel, and which corner gets the best air conditioning. They are not unsettling at all, they are, in fact, the glue that holds these places together. The ecosystem depends on them. They are the NPCs of the gaming café world, and I mean that with full affection. Much like the video game characters who’d be flagged by Ofcom on a UK chat show, they have enormous presence and strong energy. Just significantly less liable to be investigated by a broadcasting regulator.

    Gaming cafés are genuinely one of the better things to have spread across British cities in recent years. They are weird, loud, warmly lit, and full of people who care intensely about something. My ranking of unsettling player types is, for the record, entirely affectionate. I am, depending on the day, at least four of the above simultaneously. The Red Bull is structural. The keyboard is in the bag. The tutorial has been skipped. See you in there.

    Frequently Asked Questions

    How much does it cost to use a UK gaming café?

    Prices vary but most UK gaming cafés charge between £3 and £8 per hour depending on the city and the quality of the setup. Many offer off-peak rates and membership deals if you’re a regular. London venues tend to sit at the higher end, while cities like Leeds or Birmingham often have more competitive pricing.

    What do you need to bring to a gaming café in the UK?

    Generally just yourself and payment, most venues provide everything including PCs, peripherals, and headsets. Some regulars bring their own mechanical keyboards or mice for preference, which is entirely allowed and absolutely judged in the warmest possible way.

    Are UK gaming cafés good for beginners or just serious gamers?

    They genuinely suit all levels. Most venues have a wide range of games installed covering casual titles through to competitive shooters and RPGs. Staff are usually happy to help newcomers find something appropriate, and nobody is going to kick you out for being bad at the game.

  • The Most Catastrophically Bad Video Game Menus, Ranked by Someone Who Has Clearly Never Used the NHS Website

    The Most Catastrophically Bad Video Game Menus, Ranked by Someone Who Has Clearly Never Used the NHS Website

    I’ve spent roughly 40 hours of my life trying to change the brightness setting in a video game. Not because I’m slow. Because game studios, some of them employing hundreds of talented people, routinely design menus so structurally unhinged that the DVLA online portal looks like a spa retreat by comparison. The worst video game menus in history aren’t just annoying. They’re a genre unto themselves. A horror genre.

    Let’s roast them properly.

    Frustrated gamer facing the worst video game menus in comic book art style
    Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko on Pexels

    Why do so many games get menus catastrophically wrong?

    There’s a theory I’ve developed over years of gaming that goes like this: the bigger and more ambitious the game, the worse the menus. It’s as if the design team spent four years perfecting the open-world rendering engine and then, on the final Friday before launch, someone said “oh right, we need a settings screen” and an intern handled it during lunch.

    The result is menus that feel like trying to book a GP appointment at 8am on a Monday. You know what you want. You can almost see it. But every click takes you somewhere slightly more confusing, and you eventually give up and just live with 60% volume forever.

    The NHS website, bless it, does this exact thing. You land on the homepage wanting to check if your local surgery is open over a bank holiday weekend. Twenty minutes later you’ve somehow ended up reading about bunions and booked a repeat prescription you didn’t need. Video game menus pull the same trick. Dragon Age: Origins had a character creator with sub-menus inside sub-menus inside dropdown tabs that required a printed flowchart. I love that game. I will never forgive it.

    The worst offenders, ranked from “frustrating” to “genuinely frightening”

    Deadly Premonition (2010)

    The inventory system in Deadly Premonition is, technically speaking, a war crime. You navigate it using what feels like three different button mappings that were never introduced, across a grid layout that appears to have been designed by someone who once heard the word “interface” at a party. The game itself is wonderful, chaotic and deeply strange. The menu is its spiritual twin. You can actually see the design philosophy: “What if finding your torch felt like renewing a TV licence?”

    Dark Souls (2011)

    Here’s the thing about Dark Souls. The difficulty is the point. Dying is the point. But accidentally unequipping your shield mid-boss fight because the item menu is a minimalist nightmare with no confirmation screen? That’s not difficulty. That’s a filing error. I’ve spoken to people who genuinely believe the menu was designed by Miyazaki as a metaphor for suffering. I’m not ruling it out.

    Close-up of a catastrophically confusing game menu in comic book illustration style
    Photo by Rafael Minguet Delgado on Pexels

    The Elder Scrolls Online (early access version)

    The DVLA’s vehicle registration portal has, at various points, required me to enter my details, lose the session, re-enter my details, get an error code, phone a number that goes to voicemail, and then discover the thing I wanted was on a completely different government website all along. Elder Scrolls Online’s early menus worked almost identically. Bank storage, inventory, crafting bags, guild storage, the costume system: all separate, all slightly different, all pretending they’d met before when they clearly hadn’t. ZeniMax eventually fixed much of it. The DVLA is still working on theirs.

    Final Fantasy XIII

    Final Fantasy XIII is a linear game. Genuinely, almost aggressively linear for the first twenty hours. And yet somehow its menu system managed to feel like a labyrinth. The Crystarium upgrade screen looked gorgeous. Understanding what it was actually doing to your character stats required a separate Google search and an act of faith. I’ve seen convoluted comic book storylines that were easier to parse than the FFXIII status screen.

    Cyberpunk 2077 (launch version)

    At launch, Cyberpunk 2077 had a map that was more misleading than useful, a crafting menu that buried essential items under five separate tabs, and a quest tracker that occasionally pointed you somewhere with all the confidence of a sat-nav directing you into a river. The irony of a hyper-futuristic game set in Night City having a UI that felt like booking a British Rail ticket in 1987 was not lost on anyone. CD Projekt Red spent two years patching it. The game is now very good. The early menus remain a museum piece.

    The NHS website comparison is funnier than it should be

    I want to be clear: I have genuine affection for the NHS. What I do not have affection for is the approximately seventeen different login portals it operates, none of which share credentials, and the way that finding your immunisation history requires you to pass through what feels like a series of escape room puzzles before arriving at a page that says “try the app instead.”

    Game studios making terrible menus aren’t doing anything the public sector hasn’t done for years. The difference is that NHS Digital (now absorbed into NHS England) has at least had the good grace to acknowledge the problem. Some game studios still seem to think their settings menu is fine, actually, and maybe you just need to read the manual. There is no manual. There hasn’t been a manual since 2004.

    Good interface design is its own craft. It’s why a company like WDM exists, why UX as a discipline has entire degree courses attached to it, and why someone, somewhere, is being paid specifically to make sure that clicking on a button does what you expect it to do. Video game studios hiring that person properly would solve a remarkable number of the issues on this list.

    Games that actually got their menus right

    It’s not all grim. Hades has menus so clean and responsive they feel like a personal compliment. God of War (2018) moved everything into a radial wheel that barely interrupted play. Forza Horizon 5 has a map and menu system so intuitive it almost makes up for the fact that, as we’ve noted elsewhere, open world games rarely get British weather quite right. These studios proved it’s possible. The bad ones just chose not to.

    The worst video game menus share a common failure: they were designed by people who already knew how they worked. A developer who built the system will always find it intuitive. They know where the audio slider lives. They put it there. The rest of us, loading the game for the first time at 11pm with the telly too loud, are just guessing. Like renewing a passport. In the dark.

    According to the GOV.UK Service Standard, public-facing digital services must be designed with user needs at the centre. Game studios aren’t bound by that standard. Looking at some of these menus, you’d know.

    Miyazaki, the DVLA, and whoever designed the Final Fantasy XIII Crystarium: all victims of the same curse. All completely convinced their system makes perfect sense. All absolutely wrong.

  • The Movie Heists That Would Completely Fall Apart the Moment They Hit a UK Car Park Barrier

    The Movie Heists That Would Completely Fall Apart the Moment They Hit a UK Car Park Barrier

    I’ve watched Heat, The Italian Job, Ocean’s Eleven and about forty other heist films with the same slack-jawed admiration as everyone else. The choreography. The swagger. The getaway drivers who somehow always find an empty road. And then I think about the last time I tried to exit a Tesco car park with a ticket that wouldn’t scan, and the whole fantasy collapses like a wet paper bag. Movie heists are brilliant precisely because they exist in a world without our infrastructure. But what if they didn’t? What if Danny Ocean had to contend with the Dartford Crossing? What if the Italian Job mini coopers had a Pay & Display to deal with first? Let’s find out exactly where movie heists involving UK infrastructure would have gone catastrophically, hilariously wrong.

    Comic art of a movie heist getaway car stopped by a car park barrier, illustrating how movie heists UK infrastructure would derail
    Photo by Chen EdisoN on Pexels

    Ocean’s Eleven: foiled at the NCP multi-storey

    The crew in Ocean’s Eleven spend weeks drilling into the Bellagio vault through a network of underground tunnels. Sophisticated. Audacious. Completely undetectable. Now transplant that plan to, say, the NCP car park on Great Portland Street in London. First problem: the automated barrier at the entrance doesn’t accept the ticket Brad Pitt’s character forgot to validate at the machine. He reverses. He blocks the ramp. A Ford Focus behind him beeps once, politely. Then again, with more feeling. The rest of the heist team are circling the one-way system for the fourth time because there’s no right turn onto the main road and Google Maps keeps recalculating. By the time anyone actually gets underground, the car park charges £4.50 per half hour and they’ve already spent £27 arguing about which level they parked on.

    This is the quiet tragedy of movie heists UK infrastructure would destroy. It’s not the police. It’s the Pay & Display machine that only takes coins up to 50p, and nobody has coins anymore.

    The Italian Job and the Birmingham ring road

    The 1969 original is a masterpiece. Michael Caine. Three Mini Coopers. Sewers and rooftops and the most satisfying ending in British cinema. But here’s my problem with it as a real-world plan: the escape route relies entirely on unobstructed urban roads in Turin. Turin, not Birmingham. Swap the location to the UK’s second city and those Minis immediately hit the Queensway tunnel on a weekday afternoon. One of them gets stuck behind a council lorry. Another clips a bollard that’s been there since 1987 and has no business being that colour. The third Mini makes it as far as the ring road before the driver, rattled, accidentally joins the M6 and ends up in Coventry.

    I’d genuinely argue the Birmingham ring road is more effective at preventing rapid vehicle movement than any police cordon. As I noted in our piece on open world games with suspiciously British town planning decisions, British urban layout has a particular genius for making fast movement feel personally insulting.

    Comic book panel showing toll cameras catching a getaway car, representing movie heists UK infrastructure challenges like the Dartford Crossing
    Photo by Araf Khan on Pexels

    The Dartford Crossing: nemesis of every getaway driver

    The Dartford Crossing is, in my view, the single greatest passive anti-crime device in the country. Since going cashless in 2014, you have to pay online or via the app by midnight the next day. You can’t pay at the crossing itself. There are no booths. There is no human. Just cameras, and the quiet certainty of a £35 fine if you forget.

    Now put any Hollywood getaway driver through that. They’ve just done the job. They’re heading south on the M25 with the goods in the boot. They’re buzzing. They hit the Dartford Crossing and… nothing happens. They get through. Brilliant. Except three weeks later, a PCN arrives at the registered address of the stolen vehicle they were driving. Which leads investigators directly to the car. Which leads to CCTV. Which leads to the whole crew getting nicked over a £2.50 toll they forgot to pay online. The Dart Charge system has almost certainly done more for public safety than it’s ever been credited for.

    Fast and furious vs the London congestion charge zone

    The Fast and Furious franchise long ago abandoned any pretence of being about cars and is now essentially a superhero series with slightly more torque. But imagine Dominic Toretto and his family pulling their elaborate vehicular nonsense inside the London Congestion Charge Zone. The charge is currently £15 per day for most vehicles, and the zone operates Monday to Friday, 7am to 6pm, plus weekends 12pm to 6pm. Professional criminals planning a job during those hours face an immediate additional overhead that no Hollywood script has ever acknowledged.

    Worse, if any of those lovingly customised muscle cars don’t meet the ULEZ emission standards, they’re looking at another £12.50 on top. Per vehicle. Per day. A five-car convoy doing a week of reconnaissance in central London racks up costs that would make the actual haul barely worth it. The TfL cameras would also capture every plate on every approach road, creating a perfect timestamped record of the entire crew’s movements. Vin Diesel has never once mentioned the Ultra Low Emission Zone. I find that suspicious.

    Heat’s famous downtown shootout, but make it a British town centre on a Saturday

    The heat downtown LA shootout is arguably the greatest action sequence ever filmed. Tactical, brutal, eerily realistic. Robert De Niro’s crew fight their way through wide American boulevards with military precision. Now put that scene in a British town centre on a Saturday afternoon. The crew immediately encounter a pedestrianised zone with bollards every five metres. The getaway car can’t enter. There’s a farmers’ market blocking the only vehicle access point. A man selling artisan cheese does not move out of the way quickly enough. The escape motorbike gets its wheel stuck in the tramlines if we’re being generous enough to give the town trams.

    I’ve always thought, watching that film, that the real unsung heroes are the getaway vehicle logistics people. In the UK, that job is basically impossible. The British high street has a unique talent for being completely impassable at exactly the wrong moment.

    The one heist that might actually work in the UK

    Here’s my genuine take: the only heist film that could plausibly translate to Britain is The Lavender Hill Mob. Alec Guinness. 1951. A mild-mannered bank clerk who is completely overlooked precisely because he seems so ordinary. No car chases. No glamour. Just a man on a bus, hiding in plain sight, not drawing attention to himself. That is peak British criminal methodology. Don’t speed. Pay your congestion charge. Validate your parking ticket. The audacity of the scheme is invisible because the person executing it looks exactly like someone queuing patiently at the post office.

    Modern heist movies could learn something from that. All that flash and horsepower, and they never once ask: what if the plan was just to be extremely polite and boringly compliant with all posted signage?

    There’s something almost poetic about the fact that the most unbreachable security systems in Britain aren’t the ones in the vaults. They’re the car park barriers, the toll roads, the emission zone cameras, and the single-lane contraflow that appears without warning on the A406. For anyone planning something elaborate and cinematic, I’d strongly suggest reconsidering. And perhaps redirect that energy somewhere more constructive, like getting behind a climate action plan for schools in the midlands, which honestly requires less planning and causes fewer problems with CCTV.

    For more appreciation of British infrastructure’s quiet chaos, our breakdown of the worst video game maps for navigation using a tatty AA road atlas is required reading. And if the movie heist angle has you thinking about films that went genuinely dark and weird, the most unhinged video game plot twists piece will scratch that itch nicely.

    Frequently Asked Questions

    Would a getaway driver actually get caught by the Dartford Crossing?

    Almost certainly, yes. The Dart Charge system is fully automated with ANPR cameras that record every plate passing through. If you’re driving a stolen or unregistered vehicle and fail to pay the £2.50 toll online, a fine notice gets generated and linked to the vehicle’s registered address, which could easily expose the wider operation.

    Which real UK city would be hardest for a film-style car chase?

    Most people would say central London, given the congestion charge zone, ULEZ cameras, pedestrianised areas and general gridlock. But Birmingham’s ring road system deserves serious consideration: it’s bewildering even with GPS assistance and has a way of sending you back to where you started no matter which exit you take.

    Does the London ULEZ really cover central London?

    The Ultra Low Emission Zone covers most of Greater London 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Non-compliant vehicles pay £12.50 per day. On top of the congestion charge zone operating weekdays and weekends, it creates a significant financial disincentive for anything involving older, flashier muscle cars.

    What is the Dart Charge and how does it work?

    Dart Charge is the cashless payment system for the Dartford Crossing on the M25, which handles crossings in both directions. You pay online, via the app, or by phone before midnight the following day. There are no booths at the crossing itself, just ANPR cameras. Miss the deadline and you receive a £35 penalty charge notice.

    Are there any real heist films set in Britain worth watching?

    The Lavender Hill Mob (1951) is genuinely brilliant and actually engages with the mundane realities of British life as cover. More recently, the Guy Ritchie films like Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels have fun with British criminal culture, even if they stretch credibility in their own ways.

  • Ranked: The Most Unrealistic Hacking Scenes in Games and Movies (A UK Cybersecurity Nerd’s Nightmare)

    Ranked: The Most Unrealistic Hacking Scenes in Games and Movies (A UK Cybersecurity Nerd’s Nightmare)

    Somewhere right now, a UK IT support worker is watching a film where a teenager types furiously for four seconds, shouts “I’m in!”, and gains access to the Pentagon’s mainframe. That IT support worker is quietly weeping into their third cup of tea of the morning. They’ve just spent forty-five minutes resetting a colleague’s password because it needed a capital letter and a symbol and “no, Karen, a full stop does not count as a symbol.” This is the reality of cybersecurity in Britain. Hollywood has absolutely no idea.

    From blockbuster films to AAA video games, unrealistic hacking scenes have been a staple of entertainment for decades. We love them. They’re ridiculous. They’re glorious nonsense. And if the National Cyber Security Centre ever sat down to watch them all, there would be a strongly worded advisory notice issued before the credits rolled.

    Comic book art of a UK IT worker horrified by unrealistic hacking scenes on a cinema screen
    Comic book art of a UK IT worker horrified by unrealistic hacking scenes on a cinema screen

    What Does Real Hacking Actually Look Like?

    Spoiler: it involves a lot of staring at text, drinking cold coffee, and Googling things you already know just to double-check. Real cybersecurity professionals spend hours, sometimes days, probing systems methodically. There are no spinning 3D cubes. Nobody yells. There is no dramatic orchestral swell when a firewall is breached. It’s closer to doing a very stressful crossword puzzle in a dark room than anything you’ve seen at the cinema.

    With that context firmly established, let’s rank the most gloriously unrealistic hacking scenes ever committed to screen or cartridge.

    The Worst Offenders: Unrealistic Hacking Scenes Ranked

    1. Watch Dogs (2014) – The Entire Game, Basically

    Watch Dogs promised us that one bloke with a phone could hack every traffic light, every bridge, every CCTV camera, and every bank account in Chicago simultaneously. Aiden Pearce is essentially functioning as a one-man GCHQ, except he does it while wearing a cap and brooding. The idea that a single mobile device could interface with every piece of urban infrastructure in real time is the kind of thing that would give an actual network architect a nosebleed. Still an absolute banger of a concept though, and the sequels leaned even harder into the absurdity. Full marks for entertainment. Zero marks for plausibility.

    2. Hackers (1995) – The Sacred Text of Nonsense

    The 1995 film Hackers is essentially a religious document at this point. A teenage Jonny Lee Miller rollerblades into a plot involving a garbage file, a supercomputer called “The Gibson”, and a villain called The Plague. The hacking itself is portrayed as navigating a literal 3D city made of skyscrapers, each representing a different file system. It looks extraordinary. It bears absolutely no resemblance to anything that has ever happened on a real computer. NCSC analysts presumably keep a copy in the office purely for morale purposes.

    Comic book art showing two people typing on one keyboard illustrating unrealistic hacking scenes
    Comic book art showing two people typing on one keyboard illustrating unrealistic hacking scenes

    3. Die Hard 4.0 (2007) – A Fire Sale on Common Sense

    Bruce Willis’s fourth outing as John McClane introduced us to the concept of a “fire sale”: a coordinated cyberattack on every critical infrastructure system in America at once. Roads, power grids, financial systems, all crumbling because a small team of people typed very quickly. The actual Cyber Resilience Centre network in the UK has entire frameworks dedicated to preventing exactly this kind of cascading failure, and those frameworks involve rather more than one man and a laptop in a van. Timothy Olyphant’s villain does at least seem to understand what he’s doing, which puts him ahead of 90% of fictional hackers.

    4. NCIS (TV Series) – Two People, One Keyboard

    Any episode of NCIS where McGee and Abby face a cyberattack deserves a mention. The solution, on multiple occasions, has involved two characters sitting at a single keyboard and typing simultaneously. This is not a thing. This has never been a thing. If two people tried to type on one keyboard at the same time in a real IT department, they would produce gibberish and HR would be involved. This scene has been parodied more times than almost any other moment in television history, and rightly so.

    5. Skyfall (2012) – Q Branch’s Slightly Embarrassing Moment

    Skyfall is a masterpiece of a Bond film. However, the moment where Q plugs Silva’s captured laptop directly into MI6’s network to “analyse” it, and is then shocked when it immediately begins hacking MI6 from the inside, made cybersecurity professionals across Britain collectively put their heads on their desks. Air-gapping. Sandboxed environments. These exist. Q apparently skipped that module. Even the most junior IT apprentice at a UK managed services firm would know you do not plug an unknown device from a known threat actor directly into your primary network. Q got fired, presumably.

    6. Swordfish (2001) – Hacking Under Pressure

    Hugh Jackman is forced to hack a government system in sixty seconds while a gun is pointed at his head and a woman is nearby for reasons the film apparently thought were important. He succeeds, naturally. The actual logistics of breaking government-grade encryption in under a minute are slightly beyond what any human being has ever achieved, regardless of how many monitors they have. The multi-screen setup at least became a meme that accurately predicted every tech YouTuber’s desk setup by 2020.

    Why Does Hollywood Keep Getting This Wrong?

    The honest answer is that real hacking is visually boring and emotionally undramatic. It doesn’t make for compelling cinema. Watching someone run a port scanner and wait isn’t tense, it’s Tuesday afternoon in a network operations centre. So filmmakers invent visual metaphors, add countdown timers, and give us glowing interfaces that look more like a rave than a terminal window.

    The knock-on effect, though, is that it shapes public perception of what cybersecurity actually involves. People assume it’s exotic and instantaneous, when in reality it’s methodical, patient, and deeply unglamorous. The UK has a genuine shortage of cybersecurity professionals, partly because the job sounds less exciting than the films suggest and partly because the actual work is hard. Understanding the basics matters more than Hollywood admits, whether that’s using a decent wordpress security plugin on your personal site or understanding why you shouldn’t reuse passwords across fifty accounts.

    The Games That Got It Slightly More Right

    Not everyone fumbles it. Hacknet, an indie gem available on PC, is basically a hacking simulator that feels plausible and genuinely teaches you something. Deus Ex has always treated its hacking mechanics with a bit more respect than most, building systems with logic gates and countermeasures that feel grounded. And Cyberpunk 2077, while absolutely science fiction, at least acknowledges that hacking has costs, risks, and countermeasures rather than just being a magic button.

    The gap between these thoughtful examples and “I’m in!” typed on a MacBook in a thriller from 2009 is vast. One feels like it respects the audience. The other feels like it was written by someone whose only experience of computers was defragging a hard drive in 2003.

    Final Verdict: Brilliant Nonsense We’d Never Give Up

    Here’s the thing: we love these scenes anyway. Hackers is in the cultural canon. Die Hard 4.0 is a great action film. Watch Dogs is enormous fun. The unrealistic hacking scenes are part of what makes these stories entertaining rather than being dry technical documentaries. We just shouldn’t confuse them for anything approaching reality.

    The NCSC, for its part, does genuinely good work communicating what actual cyber threats look like to UK businesses and individuals. If only their advisories came with a Hackers-style 3D city interface, more people might read them. Someone get Timothy Olyphant on the phone.

    Frequently Asked Questions

    What are the most unrealistic hacking scenes in movies?

    Hackers (1995), Swordfish (2001), and Die Hard 4.0 (2007) are widely considered the most egregiously unrealistic. Common offences include hacking completed in seconds, 3D visual interfaces that bear no resemblance to real systems, and single individuals compromising entire national infrastructures. They’re brilliant entertainment, just catastrophically inaccurate.

    Do any video games portray hacking realistically?

    Hacknet is probably the closest to realistic, using actual command-line style interfaces and logical system structures. Deus Ex and Cyberpunk 2077 do better than most big-budget games by building in risk and countermeasures. Watch Dogs and the majority of open-world games treat hacking as a magic ability with essentially no technical grounding.

    What does the NCSC say about cybersecurity awareness in the UK?

    The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) publishes regular guidance for UK individuals and businesses on topics including password management, phishing threats, and software vulnerabilities. Their website at ncsc.gov.uk is genuinely useful and a lot more reliable than anything you’ve seen in a Bond film.

    Why do films always make hacking look so dramatic?

    Real hacking involves methodical, patient work that is visually dull and often takes hours or days. Filmmakers use visual metaphors, countdown timers, and dramatic interfaces to create tension and make technical processes legible to a general audience. It works for entertainment purposes but creates wildly inaccurate public perceptions of cybersecurity.

    Is the NCIS 'two people on one keyboard' hacking scene real?

    No, absolutely not. Two people cannot meaningfully operate a single keyboard simultaneously to speed up a process. The scene, which appeared in multiple NCIS episodes, has become one of the most parodied moments in television history among tech professionals. It is, by a comfortable margin, physically and technically impossible.

  • The Video Games That Nailed British Architecture So Well It Feels Like Google Street View

    The Video Games That Nailed British Architecture So Well It Feels Like Google Street View

    There is a very specific kind of joy that hits you when you’re wandering through a video game world and you spot something that looks exactly like the Arndale Centre in Manchester, or a row of terraced houses that could absolutely be somewhere off the A58 in Bolton. Your brain does a little backflip. You point at the screen. You say, out loud, to nobody, “That’s proper British, that is.” It doesn’t happen often. But when it does? Glorious.

    Video games with authentic British architecture are genuinely rare creatures. Most developers default to generic fantasy kingdoms or suspiciously sun-drenched American cities. Getting Britain right, with its grey skies, red phone boxes that nobody uses anymore, and the specific sadness of a Wetherspoons at 11am, takes real commitment. Here are the games that actually pulled it off.

    Comic book style illustration of Victorian London in a video game with authentic British architecture
    Comic book style illustration of Victorian London in a video game with authentic British architecture

    Assassin’s Creed Syndicate: Victorian London Done Properly

    Let’s start with the obvious one, because it earns its place. Ubisoft’s 2015 open-world romp through 1868 London is, genuinely, a love letter to Victorian Britain. The Thames, the rookeries of Whitechapel, the wrought iron bridges, the fog that sits on everything like the city is permanently trying to hide itself from visitors. It’s all there.

    What makes Syndicate feel authentic rather than just “vaguely old and British” is the texture of it. The way the buildings crowd each other. The narrow alleys between market stalls. The class divide stitched into the actual geography of the map, with the poorer East End districts looking genuinely grimier and more cramped than the West End’s wide, well-lit boulevards. Ubisoft clearly did their homework, and the result is one of the most detailed recreations of Victorian London ever committed to pixels. You can almost smell the coal smoke.

    The Getaway: A PS2-Era Love Letter to South London

    Here’s one that doesn’t get nearly enough credit. Released in 2002 for the PlayStation 2, The Getaway was built around a painstakingly recreated square mile of central London. Developer Team Soho drove around the actual streets with cameras strapped to vehicles to capture the city’s texture. The result? A gritty, low-res (by today’s standards) but deeply authentic slice of South London gangster life, where you could recognise Shaftesbury Avenue and the Barbican in the same afternoon.

    For its time, this was genuinely mind-blowing. No HUD, no minimap, just characters signalling left and right turns with their hands. Very British problem-solving, that. The game is set firmly in the world of proper old London crime drama and it commits to the bit completely. Soho, Southwark, Shoreditch. The specific washed-out palette of early 2000s Britain. Perfection.

    Comic art depiction of a brutalist British estate in a video game with authentic British architecture
    Comic art depiction of a brutalist British estate in a video game with authentic British architecture

    Strange Brigade and the Curious Case of Portmeirion

    Rebellion’s 2018 co-op shooter Strange Brigade isn’t set in Britain per se, but its aesthetic roots are deeply embedded in British Imperial-era design, and the opening sequences lean heavily on the kind of stately English architecture that screams “National Trust car park” in the best possible way. Worth a mention for anyone who likes their bullets served with a side of Edwardian stonework.

    Concrete Genie and Urban British Grit

    This underrated 2019 gem from PixelOpus (published by Sony) is set in the fictional Scottish fishing town of Denska, which is clearly inspired by real declining British coastal towns. The brutalist harbour walls, the shuttered shops, the general sense that the council has given up but the community hasn’t quite, it’s painfully, beautifully accurate to places like Hartlepool or Grimsby or Margate before the hipsters arrived. That is not an insult. That is texture. That is Britain.

    80 Days: The Great British Map Game Nobody Talks About

    Inkle Studios, a Cambridge-based developer (yes, British, obviously), made 80 Days in 2014 and it remains one of the most elegantly written games ever created. While it spans the globe, the Victorian London sequences are rendered with such literary precision that you can practically feel the fog on your cravat. The tube stations, the docks, the class-conscious dialogue. Inkle are the quiet genius of British game development and more people should be shouting about them.

    If you want to know more about the broader landscape of UK game development studios producing this sort of culturally specific work, the BBC’s technology section has covered the rise of British indie studios in some depth over recent years. There’s a proper scene here, and it’s brilliant.

    Why British Environments Feel So Rare in Games

    Part of it is market size. The US games market is enormous, and developers naturally skew their settings towards what sells in bulk. But there’s also something harder to pin down. British architecture is genuinely complicated to replicate. You’ve got Roman foundations under Medieval streets under Georgian facades under 1960s concrete carbuncles. Nothing matches. Everything is slightly wrong in a way that somehow works. That randomness is hard to procedurally generate. It has to be felt.

    When a developer gets it right, it’s because someone on that team grew up near a Kwik Save that became a Polish supermarket, or spent their teenage years in a brutalist block that smelled of chip fat and cigarettes. You cannot Google Street View your way to that level of detail. You have to have lived it.

    Indie Games Setting the Pace for Digital Britain

    The indie scene is where things get genuinely exciting for video games with authentic British architecture. Games like We Happy Few (technically Canadian-made but deeply rooted in 1960s British dystopia aesthetics) and Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture by The Chinese Room (a Brighton-based studio, fittingly) demonstrate that smaller studios are often more willing to commit to a specific regional identity than the big publishers.

    Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture in particular deserves a standing ovation. It’s set in a fictional Shropshire village and it is painfully accurate. The phone boxes. The village hall. The dry stone walls. The precise way the English countryside looks at golden hour before something terrible happens. It’s gorgeous and haunting and could not have been made by anyone who hadn’t spent real time in rural Britain.

    Interestingly, the same principle applies across industries. Authenticity matters online too. Whether you’re a game studio or a small business trying to reach a British audience, the details make the difference between something that feels right and something that’s clearly been assembled from a template. Speaking of which, if your own online presence feels as generic as a reskinned American open-world map, it might be worth grabbing a free SEO audit to see what’s actually going on under the bonnet.

    The Games We’re Still Waiting For

    We need a proper open-world game set in modern Britain. Not historical. Not dystopian. Just Britain. A brutalist Birmingham estate at midnight. The M6 at 6am. A Greggs queue. A canal boat in Hebden Bridge. A Reading Festival campsite. Give me the soul-destroying beauty of a British supermarket on Christmas Eve and I will play it for a thousand hours. The bones are there. Someone just needs to build it.

    Until that day arrives, we’ll keep treasuring the games that bother to get it right. Because when they do, there’s nothing quite like walking through a pixelated terrace and thinking: yes. That’s exactly what the gap between a semi-detached and its fence looks like. Someone on that team has been to Wolverhampton. And bless them for it.

    Frequently Asked Questions

    Which video games have the most accurate recreation of London?

    Assassin’s Creed Syndicate and The Getaway are widely regarded as the most detailed recreations of London in gaming history. Syndicate covers Victorian London with impressive architectural fidelity, while The Getaway used real-world photography to recreate a square mile of early 2000s central London.

    Are there any British indie games set in recognisably UK environments?

    Yes, several. Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture by Brighton-based studio The Chinese Room is set in a fictional Shropshire village with remarkable authenticity. Inkle Studios, based in Cambridge, also produce games deeply rooted in British literary and architectural traditions.

    Why don't more video games use British settings and architecture?

    The US gaming market is significantly larger, so most AAA publishers skew their settings toward what sells in volume. British architecture is also notoriously layered and inconsistent, making it genuinely difficult to recreate convincingly without real local knowledge or research.

    Is The Getaway still worth playing in 2026?

    If you can find a way to run it, absolutely yes for historical and cultural interest. The gameplay is dated but the recreation of early 2000s London is genuinely fascinating, especially compared to how those areas look today. It’s a time capsule as much as a game.

    What games have accurately recreated brutalist British architecture?

    Concrete Genie captures the feel of declining British coastal towns and brutalist harbour environments with striking authenticity. We Happy Few also draws heavily on 1960s British urban aesthetics, including the particular grimness of post-war brutalist design, even though it’s set in a dystopian fiction.

  • The Most Overpowered Protagonists in Gaming History and Why We Love Them

    The Most Overpowered Protagonists in Gaming History and Why We Love Them

    There is a very specific joy that comes from being so ridiculously powerful in a video game that enemies don’t just lose, they basically apologise before the screen fades to black. We’re talking about overpowered video game protagonists, the chosen ones, the godkillers, the characters who show up and the final boss genuinely considers going home early. These are the absolute units of gaming history, and I am here to celebrate every single one of them with all the affection and gentle mockery they deserve.

    Comic book art of an overpowered video game protagonist standing victorious on a battlefield
    Comic book art of an overpowered video game protagonist standing victorious on a battlefield

    What Even Makes a Protagonist Overpowered?

    To be truly, magnificently overpowered is an art form. Any game can hand you a sword. It takes special creative energy to hand you a sword, then also give you telekinesis, an immortal dragon soul, a nuclear railgun, and the ability to pause time while wearing armour that absorbs incoming damage and converts it into more power. The benchmark here isn’t just “strong”, it’s “enemies look at you and have an existential crisis”.

    There’s a brilliant psychological reason we keep returning to these characters too. Researchers who study play behaviour note that a sense of competence is one of the core drivers of enjoyment in games. When you feel ludicrously capable, your brain is essentially throwing a small party. And honestly? After a rough Tuesday commute on the Northern line, being a literal demigod for a few hours is the best therapy going. The BBC has covered how gaming can serve as a genuine stress relief mechanism, and I suspect most of that research quietly involves someone playing as Kratos.

    Kratos (God of War), The Gold Standard of Too Much

    If overpowered video game protagonists had a hall of fame, Kratos would be the entire first floor. The man kills Greek gods the way you and I swat flies. He rips the sun out of the sky in one game. By the time the Norse mythology arc rolls around, he’s fighting actual world-ending entities and his primary concern seems to be that his son is eating enough. He exudes the energy of someone who finds the apocalypse mildly inconvenient. Yet we absolutely cannot stop playing as him, because every single encounter feels earned through pure spectacle. You don’t feel cheap playing Kratos. You feel like a force of nature dressed in war paint.

    The Dragonborn (Skyrim), A One-Person Natural Disaster

    Skyrim’s Dragonborn starts the game about to be executed and ends it having absorbed so many dragon souls that the actual fabric of reality bends to accommodate their shouting. The infamous “pacifist mage” build, the sneaky archer who can kill a mammoth from 300 metres, the warrior who wears armour enchanted to the point that it’s practically a second skeleton, all of them end up functionally invincible by act three. And yet we put in 200 hours every single time a new version drops. There’s something deeply comforting about returning to a world where you are, without question, the most dangerous thing in it.

    Close-up comic book art of an overpowered video game protagonist's energy-charged fist
    Close-up comic book art of an overpowered video game protagonist's energy-charged fist

    Dante (Devil May Cry), Overpowered With Excellent Hair

    Dante from Devil May Cry is worth a special mention because he is overpowered in a way that seems almost performatively ridiculous. He surfs rockets. He uses a guitar as a weapon. He eats pizza while in the middle of boss fights. The game is stylish enough that you barely notice the difficulty has essentially been replaced with a dance-off you’re always going to win. And that’s the genius of it, DMC leans so fully into its own absurdity that the power fantasy feels like a feature, not a cheat. You’re not overpowered; you’re just that cool. The game told you so.

    Commander Shepard (Mass Effect), Diplomatically Unstoppable

    The overpowered status of Commander Shepard is interesting because it’s partly mechanical and partly narrative. By Mass Effect 3, a fully specced Shepard is borderline unkillable. But the real power is the galaxy bending around your decisions. Entire species rethink their politics because you walked into a room. Ancient civilisations with millions of years of headstart on humanity are taking your calls. Shepard’s power fantasy is less about combat and more about the idea that one determined person can, in fact, fix everything. Which, given the state of actual current events, hits a little harder than it used to.

    Link (The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom), An Engineer With a God Complex

    Link in Tears of the Kingdom deserves a special overpowered category: emergent chaos. He’s not handed raw power so much as given a toolkit with which he immediately builds something that was never meant to exist and absolutely should not work. Want to attach five rockets to a piece of timber and fly into a Lynel’s face at 200 miles per hour? Go on then. The physics engine genuinely seems afraid of what you’ll do next. The game’s difficulty is entirely self-imposed, and players absolutely lean into that. There are recorded playthroughs where people have defeated Ganondorf using nothing but a wooden plank and pure stubbornness.

    Why We Actually Love Being This Powerful

    Here’s the honest psychological truth behind our obsession with overpowered video game protagonists: real life gives us very little control. You miss a train, the supermarket is out of the biscuits you specifically wanted, and someone has parked across your drive again. But in a game? You are the variable that changes everything. Every enemy, every puzzle, every world-ending threat exists to be dismantled by you specifically. That’s not laziness. That’s catharsis in pixel form.

    There’s also a collector’s mindset at work. Building an overpowered character is genuinely satisfying as a long-term project. You optimise gear, learn mechanics, find the cheese strats that the developers either missed or quietly left in as a gift. It’s almost like putting together the perfect outfit for a big occasion. Knowing every piece slots together perfectly, from the boots to the Zip top handbags, when the whole look comes together, you feel unstoppable. Games tap into that exact same energy.

    The Honourable Mentions You’d Shout at Us for Leaving Out

    A quick and entirely deserved acknowledgement to the characters who nearly made the main list: Geralt of Rivia in a fully maxed build (he turns death into admin), Bayonetta (she fights angels using her own hair and this is considered a normal Tuesday), and any fully upgraded V in Cyberpunk 2077 who has essentially transcended the concept of being killed. Honourable, if slightly terrifying, mentions all round.

    The overpowered video game protagonist is one of gaming’s most enduring archetypes for a reason. We come back to them not because they’re easy but because they’re freeing. In a world that requires patience and compromise and eating your greens, sometimes you just need to be an unstoppable force with a massive sword and absolutely no chill. Gaming gets that. Gaming has always got that. Long may the absolute units reign.

    Frequently Asked Questions

    Who is the most overpowered protagonist in gaming history?

    Kratos from God of War is frequently cited as the benchmark, given he defeats literal gods, Titans, and world-ending threats across multiple mythologies. However, a fully maxed-out Dragonborn in Skyrim or Dante in Devil May Cry 5 are strong contenders depending on your build and tolerance for absurdity.

    Why do players enjoy using overpowered characters in video games?

    Psychologists point to ‘competence’ as a core driver of enjoyment in play, feeling powerful triggers genuine satisfaction and stress relief. Overpowered characters offer a sense of total control that real life rarely provides, making them deeply appealing after a long day.

    Are overpowered protagonists bad for game design?

    Not necessarily. Many overpowered characters are the result of intentional design choices meant to deliver a power fantasy, like in God of War or Devil May Cry. Problems only arise when the power imbalance removes all tension; great games balance the feeling of being unstoppable with moments of genuine challenge or emotional stakes.

    What games let you become the most overpowered character possible?

    Skyrim, The Witcher 3 on Death March then fully upgraded, Cyberpunk 2077 with a late-game netrunner build, and Elden Ring with certain broken weapon combinations are all popular picks. Tears of the Kingdom is a special case because the player essentially engineers their own overpowered status using the game’s physics systems.

    Is Link from Zelda considered an overpowered protagonist?

    In Tears of the Kingdom, Link’s power comes from the Ultrahand and Fuse mechanics rather than raw stats, meaning players create their own broken builds. Veterans of the game have documented strategies so absurd they barely resemble intended gameplay, which many fans consider a feature rather than a flaw.

  • Video Game Cars We’d Actually Drive in Real Life (And the Chaos That Would Follow)

    Video Game Cars We’d Actually Drive in Real Life (And the Chaos That Would Follow)

    There’s a moment in almost every open-world game where you look at the vehicle you’re driving and think: I want this in my actual life. Not in a vague, wistful way. In a very specific, “I would absolutely park this outside Tesco” kind of way. Iconic video game cars have this ridiculous power over us. They’re impractical, often weaponised, and would almost certainly fail a DVLA roadworthiness check. And yet. Here we are.

    So let’s do this properly. Which fictional motors from gaming history would actually survive the British road test? And more importantly, which ones would cause the most absolutely spectacular havoc on a wet Tuesday morning on the M25?

    Iconic video game cars lined up on a British high street in comic book art style
    Iconic video game cars lined up on a British high street in comic book art style

    The Warthog from Halo: Britain’s Most Chaotic 4×4

    The M12 Force Application Vehicle, better known as the Warthog, is the gold standard of video game utility vehicles. It’s essentially a beefed-up off-roader with a mounted turret on the back, which, for the purposes of this article, we will pretend isn’t there. The chassis is enormous. The suspension looks like it could handle any pothole the council hasn’t got round to fixing since 2019. In theory, it’s the perfect British countryside runaround.

    In practice? The steering is absolutely mental. Halo players know this. You tap the analogue stick and suddenly you’re doing a horizontal barrel roll through a field in Shropshire. Still, it would look magnificent tearing through the Peak District. Somebody would definitely film it and post it. It would get 2 million views by Thursday.

    The Mako from Mass Effect: For Off-Road Enthusiasts With No Fear

    The Mako is simultaneously one of gaming’s most beloved and most cursed vehicles. Commander Shepard uses it to traverse alien planets with gravity-defying terrain, and the thing handles like a shopping trolley with opinions. But strip away the extraterrestrial context and what you’ve got is a sealed armoured personnel carrier that can theoretically climb a near-vertical cliff face. In Wales, this would be extraordinarily useful.

    If you’re the sort of person who genuinely loves off-road adventures and isn’t fussed about your vehicle making any kind of rational physical sense, the Mako is your spirit animal. It’s also the kind of machine that would need some serious ongoing maintenance. Speaking of which, anyone who’s ever kept a quirky, unusual vehicle on the road knows the importance of good parts suppliers. Whether you’re tracking down obscure components for a classic Mitsubishi, sourcing Mitsubishi delica parts for a legendary people carrier, or trying to keep an ageing Land Rover breathing, finding the right specialist makes all the difference.

    The Batmobile (Arkham Knight Version): Illegal in 47 Countries

    Let’s be honest, the Arkham Knight Batmobile is the peak. It’s a turbine-powered, cannon-equipped, tank-mode-activating monster that makes the Tumbler look like a sensible estate car. The sound design alone is cinematic. The moment that engine fires up, you feel it in your chest.

    Could it function on UK roads? Absolutely not. The width alone would make most town centre streets completely impassable. A quick visit to GOV.UK’s vehicle approval guidance makes clear just how many hoops any modified vehicle has to jump through to be considered roadworthy, and the Batmobile would fail before the assessor even got to the cannon. But none of that matters when it looks this good. Batman would just park on the pavement, obviously.

    Close-up of an iconic video game car cockpit interior in comic book art style
    Close-up of an iconic video game car cockpit interior in comic book art style

    The Regalia from Final Fantasy XV: Road Trip Goals

    Now here’s an iconic video game car that feels almost plausible. The Regalia is a sleek, vintage-styled convertible that Noctis and his squad cruise around in, windows down, hair flowing, boyband energy fully activated. It’s gorgeous. It seats four. It has a radio. These are all very normal car features.

    The fantasy of loading up the Regalia and driving from Edinburgh down to Cornwall on a warm August evening, music playing, stopping at a Little Chef (yes, some still exist), staring at the stars in a layby somewhere in Somerset. It’s genuinely aspirational. The Regalia represents something most video game cars don’t bother with: the simple joy of the journey. Not every car needs guns. Some just need good vibes and a decent playlist.

    The Nomad from Cyberpunk 2077: Built for British Winters

    Cyberpunk 2077 has a whole garage of wild vehicles, but the Nomad rigs deserve special attention. These battered, heavily modified, post-apocalyptic lorry-trucks feel like something a very determined Glaswegian mechanic built in a lock-up in 1997 and just kept adding to. They’re enormous, they look indestructible, and crucially, they’d probably handle Scottish winters without complaint.

    There’s something deeply appealing about the whole Nomad aesthetic for UK drivers. Practical. Armoured. Doesn’t care what the weather is doing. Has probably got a spare tyre in four locations simultaneously. The Nomads are what happens when survival instinct meets engineering. We respect it enormously.

    Burnout’s Crash Mode Cars: A Love Letter to Chaos

    Look, we can’t talk about iconic video game cars without acknowledging Burnout. Specifically Burnout 3: Takedown, which remains a masterpiece of joyful automotive destruction. The cars in Burnout are not memorable for their design. They’re memorable for what happens to them. Slow-motion crashes with debris flying in every direction, the camera swinging round to capture the wreckage. Deeply, deeply satisfying in a way that is completely impossible to explain to someone who hasn’t played it.

    In real life, obviously, we do not want any of this. But as a gaming experience? Peak. The Burnout series understood something profound: sometimes you just want to watch a car fly through a junction at 160mph and take out seventeen other vehicles. That’s not a violent impulse. That’s artistic expression.

    The Real Question: Which One Actually Works on British Roads?

    Honestly? None of them fully work. But that’s not the point. Iconic video game cars aren’t meant to work in the mundane sense. They’re designed to make you feel something, whether that’s power (Batmobile), freedom (Regalia), chaos (Warthog), or battered resilience (Nomad rig). They’re fantasy objects that tell us something about what we actually want from driving, even when we’re sitting in a Ford Focus on the A38 at 7:45 in the morning wondering why the traffic report lied to us again.

    The appeal of these machines lives in the same place as the appeal of gaming itself: the permission to experience something bigger, wilder, and more interesting than the everyday. And honestly? That’s worth celebrating. Even if the Mako would absolutely roll itself down a hill in the Cotswolds within twenty minutes of arrival.

    Right. Somebody sort out the Warthog. I’ll bring snacks. We’re taking it to Scotland.

    Frequently Asked Questions

    What are the most iconic video game cars of all time?

    Some of the most iconic video game cars include the Warthog from Halo, the Batmobile from the Arkham series, the Regalia from Final Fantasy XV, and the Mako from Mass Effect. Each has become a cultural touchstone for gamers, recognised far beyond their original titles.

    Which video game car would be most fun to drive in real life?

    The Regalia from Final Fantasy XV is arguably the most genuinely enjoyable real-world prospect, being a stylish vintage convertible built for road trips. The Warthog would be the most chaotic, and the Batmobile would be immediately impounded.

    Has anyone ever built a real-life version of a video game car?

    Yes, quite a few fans and studios have commissioned real-world builds. The Warthog has been recreated several times for events, and various Batmobile variants exist as working vehicles. Most are built for display purposes rather than actual road use, as they would fail UK road approval tests.

    Why do video game cars feel so much more exciting than real ones?

    Video game cars are designed purely around feel and fantasy, with no regard for practicality, fuel economy, or insurance costs. They’re built to make players feel powerful or free, which is exactly what a Ford Fiesta on the school run does not do.

    What game has the best driving mechanics and vehicle selection?

    Forza Horizon 5 and Gran Turismo 7 are widely considered the benchmarks for driving mechanics and vehicle selection, with hundreds of licensed real-world cars. For pure arcade fun with iconic fictional vehicles, the Burnout series and the original Halo titles are hard to beat.

  • The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Collecting Comic Books in 2026

    The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Collecting Comic Books in 2026

    Right. You’ve watched one too many superhero films, you’ve spotted a gorgeous variant cover in a shop window, and something inside you has clicked. You want in. Welcome to the wonderfully chaotic, occasionally expensive, and genuinely brilliant world of comic book collecting. The good news is that figuring out how to start collecting comic books is a lot less daunting than it looks. The bad news? Your shelf space is about to take a serious hit.

    This guide is for absolute beginners. No judgement, no gatekeeping, no one asking why you only know Batman from the films. We’ll cover the basics of publishers, grading, which issues are actually worth hunting for, and how not to get stung by a dodgy eBay seller flogging a reading copy as “near mint.” Let’s crack on.

    A vibrant comic shop interior in the UK style for beginners learning how to start collecting comic books
    A vibrant comic shop interior in the UK style for beginners learning how to start collecting comic books

    Marvel, DC, and the Rest: Picking Your Corner

    The two big dogs are Marvel and DC. You already know this. Marvel gave us Spider-Man, the X-Men, and the entire Avengers roster. DC gave us Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, and a frankly chaotic relationship with its own cinematic continuity. Both have decades of stories, iconic characters, and enough back issues to fill a warehouse.

    But don’t sleep on the independent publishers. Image Comics is responsible for Saga, Invincible, and The Walking Dead, all of which are absolute stone-cold classics. Dark Horse has Hellboy. BOOM! Studios has some crackers. IDW does brilliant licensed stuff like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The indie world is massive, and sometimes it’s where the most interesting storytelling lives.

    For beginners, the smartest move is to start with a character or story you already love. Are you obsessed with the MCU? Pick up Avengers Disassembled or Civil War. Mad for The Batman films? Try The Long Halloween or Batman: Year One. Following your existing passion means you’ll actually read the comics instead of just stacking them in a corner feeling guilty.

    Understanding Comic Book Grading (Without a Degree in It)

    Grading is how collectors measure the condition of a comic. It runs from Poor (basically tatters) to Gem Mint 10.0 (basically never existed outside a climate-controlled vault). The standard numerical scale used by the two main grading companies, CGC and CBCS, goes from 0.5 to 10.0.

    Here’s the quick cheat sheet:

    • 9.8 (Near Mint/Mint): Practically perfect. These command serious money.
    • 9.0-9.6 (Very Fine/Near Mint): Lovely condition. Tiny flaws, barely visible.
    • 8.0-8.5 (Very Fine): Still great. Light wear, no major defects.
    • 6.0-7.5 (Fine): Readable, some obvious wear. Good for reading copies.
    • Below 5.0: Noticeable damage. Buy these to read, not to invest.

    For casual collectors who just want to enjoy the stories, grades don’t matter much. But if you’re hunting key issues with an eye on value, condition is everything. A Amazing Fantasy #15 (first appearance of Spider-Man) in 9.8 is worth an entirely different universe of money compared to a tattered 3.0.

    Close-up of a comic being stored in a bag and board showing how to start collecting comic books properly
    Close-up of a comic being stored in a bag and board showing how to start collecting comic books properly

    Which Issues Are Actually Worth Hunting For?

    Key issues are comics that mark a significant moment: first appearances, origin stories, deaths of major characters, or debut storylines that shaped everything that came after. These tend to hold value and are the ones collectors get genuinely excited about.

    Some classics to keep an eye out for:

    • Amazing Fantasy #15 (1962): First appearance of Spider-Man. Expensive but iconic.
    • Incredible Hulk #181 (1974): First full appearance of Wolverine.
    • Batman: The Killing Joke (1988): Alan Moore at his darkest. A modern classic.
    • New Mutants #98 (1991): First appearance of Deadpool. Now astronomically desirable.
    • Walking Dead #1 (2003): A more affordable key issue that still commands good prices.

    You don’t need to go straight for the golden age grails. Plenty of brilliant, collectible comics from the 1980s and 1990s are still reasonably priced. The key is to research before you buy. The BBC’s Culture section has a great overview of influential comics if you want a broader cultural grounding before you start spending.

    How to Avoid Getting Ripped Off Online

    This is the part nobody tells you until it’s too late. Online marketplaces like eBay are brilliant for finding comics, and also brilliant for parting you from your money unfairly. Here’s what to watch for.

    Vague condition descriptions are a red flag. If a seller says “good condition” without using the standard grading scale, that means absolutely nothing. “Good” in collector terms is actually a grade of around 2.0, which is pretty rough. Always ask for detailed photos.

    Check the seller’s feedback obsessively. A seller with 500 positive reviews and a history of selling comics is very different from someone with 12 reviews who usually sells garden furniture. Buy from specialists where possible.

    Be suspicious of suspiciously cheap key issues. If someone is selling a first appearance of Wolverine for £15, either they don’t know what they have (possible, but rare) or the comic has significant undisclosed damage, is a reprint, or is outright fake. Use price guides like GoCollect or ComicsPriceGuide to sanity-check before clicking buy.

    Look for CGC or CBCS certified copies. These are comics that have been professionally graded, sealed in a hard plastic slab, and assigned an official grade. They cost more, but you know exactly what you’re buying. For anything valuable, a slabbed copy is worth the premium.

    Visit your local comic shop. Seriously. The UK has hundreds of brilliant independent comic shops. Travelling to a physical shop means you can inspect condition yourself, ask questions, and build a relationship with the staff who often get first dibs on interesting stock. It’s also just enormously good fun.

    Practical Tips for Keeping Your Collection in Good Shape

    Once you’ve got comics, you want to keep them nice. The basics are simple and cheap.

    Bags and boards: Polypropylene bags with an acid-free backing board inside. These are the standard storage method and cost pennies each. Slide your comic in, fold the flap, job done.

    Long boxes or short boxes: Cardboard storage boxes designed for comics. Long boxes hold around 250-300 comics. Short boxes hold around 100-150. Store them upright, not stacked flat.

    Keep them away from sunlight and damp. UV light yellows pages and fades covers. Damp causes foxing, mould, and spine damage. A cool, dry, dark spot is ideal. Under a bed, inside a wardrobe, or in a dry spare room works well.

    Handle with care. Hold comics by the spine, not the cover. If a comic is particularly valuable, handle it as little as possible and consider storing it in a resealable bag.

    Getting Started: Your First Month as a Collector

    If you’re genuinely wondering how to start collecting comic books without wasting money, here’s the honest beginner’s plan. Spend your first fortnight just reading. Hit your local comic shop or order a few trade paperbacks (collected editions) of stories you’re curious about. No bags, no boards, no pressure. Just enjoy the medium.

    Then, once you’ve found a character or universe you love, start picking up individual issues. Set a monthly budget, even if it’s just £20 or £30. Join a few UK-based comic communities on Reddit (r/comicbookcollecting) or Facebook groups to get advice from people who’ve been doing this for years. Most collectors are lovely and will happily point you in the right direction.

    The hobby has a learning curve, but it’s a fun one. And there’s genuinely nothing quite like holding a beautiful original printing of a story you love. Once you’ve got one, you’ll understand completely why the shelves keep filling up.

    Frequently Asked Questions

    How much money do I need to start collecting comic books?

    You can get started for as little as £20-£30 a month. New issues from Marvel and DC typically cost around £4-£5 each, and trade paperbacks (collected editions) usually run between £12 and £20. Key back issues can get expensive, but there’s no rule saying you have to start there.

    What is CGC grading and do I need it as a beginner?

    CGC (Certified Guaranty Company) is a professional comic grading service that assesses a comic’s condition on a scale of 0.5 to 10.0 and seals it in a tamper-proof plastic case. Beginners generally don’t need graded copies unless they’re buying expensive key issues, but a CGC grade gives you certainty about condition and can protect your investment on pricier purchases.

    Where can I buy comics in the UK?

    Independent comic shops across the UK are the best starting point, as staff can guide you and you can inspect condition in person. Online, eBay and Forbidden Planet are popular options. For new issues, you can set up a subscription with a local shop so they hold your regular titles each week.

    Should I collect to read or collect to invest?

    That’s entirely up to you, but most people who stick with the hobby long-term start because they love the stories. Collecting purely for investment can take the joy out of it, and the market is unpredictable. Many collectors do both, keeping valuable issues bagged and boarded while buying reading copies of titles they actually want to enjoy.

    What are the best comic books for absolute beginners to read first?

    For Marvel, try Ms. Marvel (Kamala Khan) or Ultimate Spider-Man for accessible entry points. For DC, Batman: Year One or Superman: For All Seasons are excellent. For something completely different, Saga by Brian K. Vaughan (Image Comics) is one of the most widely loved modern comics and requires zero prior knowledge.

  • The Most Iconic Comic Book Villains of All Time and Why We Secretly Love Them

    The Most Iconic Comic Book Villains of All Time and Why We Secretly Love Them

    There is something deeply, wonderfully wrong with all of us. We buy the hero’s merchandise, we cheer when they win, we cry when they sacrifice themselves dramatically in the rain whilst orchestral music swells. And then, quietly, privately, we spend the rest of the week thinking about the villain. The best comic book villains of all time do not just threaten the hero. They steal the entire story, fold it into their coat pocket, and walk off cackling into the darkness. And we absolutely love them for it.

    So let us have an honest conversation about why the bad guys are often the best guys. No guilt. No shame. Just pure, uncut appreciation for chaos, capes, and questionable life choices.

    Comic book art style close-up of a powerful gauntlet representing the best comic book villains of all time
    Comic book art style close-up of a powerful gauntlet representing the best comic book villains of all time

    What Makes a Comic Book Villain Truly Unforgettable?

    Before we get into the list, it is worth asking the question properly. What actually separates a memorable villain from a forgettable one? Because the comic book world is absolutely littered with two-dimensional baddie-shaped cardboard cutouts who exist only to get punched by someone in spandex.

    The greats have a few things in common. First, they have a point. Not necessarily a correct point, but a coherent one. Thanos wiping out half of all life because he genuinely believes the universe is heading for resource-driven extinction is deeply, fascinatingly wrong. But you follow his logic, even as your jaw drops. Second, the best villains have style. Doctor Doom does not just want to conquer the world. He does it whilst wearing a metal mask and a green cloak, ruling his own country, and writing poetry. That is commitment to a brand. Third, and perhaps most importantly, great villains hold up a mirror to the hero and ask an uncomfortable question: what is actually the difference between us?

    That tension is where the magic lives.

    The Joker: Chaos as a Philosophy

    It would be genuinely irresponsible to write about the best comic book villains of all time without leading with the Clown Prince of Crime. The Joker is not just a villain. He is a cultural institution. From his debut in Batman #1 back in 1940 to Alan Moore’s harrowing The Killing Joke, through to Grant Morrison’s utterly terrifying take in Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth, the Joker has consistently been reinvented without ever losing what makes him essential.

    His genius lies in the fact that he does not want money, power, or revenge. He wants Batman to crack. He wants to prove that one bad day is all it takes to turn anyone into him. That is a genuinely philosophical argument dressed up in face paint and a purple suit. And it works because, somewhere very deep and very uncomfortable, we wonder if he might be right.

    He is also funny. Which is terrifying.

    Thanos: The Universe’s Most Motivated Life Coach

    Thanos arrived in Marvel comics in 1973, courtesy of Jim Starlin, and spent decades being one of the most formidable forces in the universe. But it was Jonathan Hickman’s run on Infinity and, of course, the Infinity Gauntlet storyline that cemented him as truly legendary.

    What makes Thanos so compelling is that he genuinely believes he is the hero. He is not twirling a moustache. He is not cackling in a swivel chair. He is sitting on a pile of cosmic rubble, genuinely convinced that his horrific plan is an act of mercy. That kind of self-righteous mass murder is uniquely unsettling because it mirrors real-world ideologues who commit atrocities whilst believing themselves to be saviours.

    Also, he once defeated the entire Marvel universe using jewellery. You have to respect the audacity.

    Doctor Doom: The Villain Who Thinks He Is the Protagonist

    Victor Von Doom does not consider himself a villain. He considers himself a visionary. Ruler of Latveria, master of both science and sorcery, and possessor of an ego so vast it has its own gravitational pull, Doctor Doom is arguably the most complex character in Marvel’s entire back catalogue.

    The thing that makes Doom extraordinary is that he is often right. He has saved the world multiple times. He has occasionally wielded the power of a god with more restraint than the heroes would. In Secret Wars, he literally became God and rebuilt the entire universe. Not perfectly, admittedly, but he gave it a serious go. Reed Richards would not have managed a Tuesday afternoon with that kind of pressure.

    Doom is the argument for benevolent dictatorship wrapped in armour and delivered with impeccable arrogance. He is also, somehow, deeply sympathetic once you know his backstory. A mother trapped in Hell. A disfigurement. A rivalry born from wounded pride. He deserves better. He would also absolutely hate you for saying that.

    Magneto: The Villain Whose Cause You Understand Completely

    If any character on this list makes readers genuinely question whose side they are on, it is Magneto. A Holocaust survivor who watches the world begin to persecute mutants, his decision to become a radical is not a descent into evil. It is a trauma response dressed in a bucket helmet.

    Chris Claremont’s work on the X-Men transformed Magneto from a generic evil mastermind into one of the most morally complex figures in comics. He and Professor X represent two very different responses to oppression, and the terrifying thing is that history often seems to support Magneto’s pessimism more than Xavier’s optimism. The BBC has a good piece on the real-world inspirations behind the X-Men, and the parallels are genuinely striking: BBC Culture on the X-Men’s secret history.

    Magneto is not a villain who wants to watch the world burn. He is a villain who has already watched it burn and refuses to let it happen again. That is not evil. That is grief with a cape.

    Lex Luthor: The Villain Who Makes the Best Point

    Lex Luthor spends enormous amounts of energy hating Superman, which from the outside looks petty. From the inside, though, his argument is actually rather coherent. An all-powerful alien has arrived on Earth and everyone is fine with that because he seems nice. Luthor, the smartest human on the planet, sees the vulnerability in that arrangement and is horrified by it.

    The best Lex Luthor stories, particularly in the comics, show a man who could genuinely be the greatest human being alive redirecting all of his brilliance into resentment. That waste is its own kind of tragedy. And occasionally, in runs like All-Star Superman, you catch a glimpse of what he might have been. Which is heartbreaking. Which is exactly the point.

    Why We Root for the Villain (And Why That’s Fine)

    The best comic book villains of all time succeed because they are written as full human beings, or at least as full beings, rather than obstacles. They have histories, desires, wounds, and moments of genuine humanity that make them impossible to dismiss. They also, frequently, have better dialogue and more interesting problems than the hero.

    Heroes are often defined by their restraint. They have power and choose not to use it fully. Villains are defined by their commitment. They see something they want, they decide they deserve it, and they go for it with everything they have. There is something almost admirable about that, in a completely deranged way.

    It also helps that the villain usually has a better wardrobe.

    Comics have always been a space where morality gets complicated, where the line between hero and villain blurs, and where readers are invited to sit with their discomfort rather than resolve it neatly. That is what makes them brilliant. That is what makes us, quietly, secretly, cheer for the person wearing the cape with the wrong colour scheme.

    Now if you will excuse me, I have a Magneto helmet to try on and a world to quietly dominate.

    Frequently Asked Questions

    Who is considered the greatest comic book villain of all time?

    The Joker is widely regarded as the greatest comic book villain of all time, with Thanos and Doctor Doom also regularly topping fan polls. The answer depends somewhat on which publisher you favour, but these three consistently dominate the conversation across both Marvel and DC.

    Why do people root for villains in comic books?

    The best comic book villains are written with genuine motivations, complex backstories, and coherent (if extreme) worldviews that make readers understand, if not agree with, their choices. Characters like Magneto and Thanos hold up uncomfortable mirrors to society, making them compelling in ways that straightforward heroes sometimes are not.

    Which comic book villain has the most compelling origin story?

    Magneto arguably has the most emotionally powerful origin story in comics, as a Holocaust survivor who witnesses mutant persecution and concludes that he must protect his people by any means necessary. Doctor Doom’s origin, involving a mother trapped in Hell and a disfigurement blamed on Reed Richards, is a close second.

    What is the difference between a good villain and a forgettable one in comics?

    The best villains have clear motivations beyond simply being evil, they challenge the hero philosophically rather than just physically, and they feel like fully developed characters rather than plot devices. A forgettable villain exists only to be defeated; a great one makes you question the hero’s assumptions.

    Which comic book villains have been turned into heroes?

    Magneto and Doctor Doom have both served as heroes at various points in their comic histories, with Doom even becoming the Infamous Iron Man for a period. Thanos has occasionally worked alongside heroes, though his motivations are always somewhat ambiguous. These shifts work precisely because the characters were always complex enough to support them.

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