Yeah! I wish I could say all that stuff, but I suck at words.

That is probably the biggest reason that I love The Witcher games. No right or wrong, no good or evil. Just choices. Choices that will have negative and positive effects.

I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve played through ME 1 and 2, ME 3 I think only 7 or 8 play-throughs and only two times taking Shepard through all three games. I might even have gone through all the dialog options as well, doing renegade and paragon only runs through the NG + second play-through, too. I’ve found that I like to start my Shepards off on a renegade path, and then as events unfold, Shepard is turned toward the paragon path. It can also be done the other way around, but I prefer the paragon path in general.

I don’t mind a bit of evil, all in good fun, though I tend to play characters that end up being more lawful or chaotic neutral in that respect...

Other than being possessed with extreme kleptomania, I have difficulty playing as an purely evil character.

To me, it all boils down to what I'm being asked to enjoy. If the "evil" is being played up for its comedic value, I'm fine with it. But if I'm actually supposed to be getting my jollies from the suffering and degradation the character inflicts on others, then no, I want none of it. I can play grand theft auto games all day and don't feel the slightest twinge of conscience running over hundreds of random pedestrians, but Postal just made me feel... dirty.

It's basically the same reason that I love horror movies but hate torture porn.

Most of the time I usually play as the guy good, but I might play as the villain when I'm bored or curious how different it plays.

I always play only characters that mostly would be considered evil, whenever a game allows it, because in most games the main character is always a goody two-shoes out to save the world / humanity / whatever. And to me, playing those types got boring ages ago. I have plenty of character "bases" I use, with more evil and less evil characters. My characters aren't "black and white" however, and depending on the point of view, not always doing things that everyone would call evil.

I liked Manhunt, where being a repulsive murderous scumbag was a central part of the game. Likewise Grand Theft Auto. On the other hand, I'm almost incapable of choosing the evil path in games with morality choices.

I hate to be the bad guy in games too. I also usually end up picking the "good guy" options and just end up screwing myself over that way.

If the dialogue options are good - then sure, i have no trouble playing as "bad guy". For example Kotor had some preetty hilarious stuff on the sith side of dialogues - especially with the mind trick.

...then again, when people play "open" games like Oblivion, they tend to play "evil" all the time. I mean c'mon, walking in peoples houses, lifting everything with you what you can possibly take, killing possible house animals for the exp and breaking all the boxes and whatever containers can be found. In Outcast you break lots and lots of pots...and at certain place you have the chance to meet the potter who made them all, nice touch there ;)

I like playing as a villain when it's well-done, and "evil" options amount to more than just killing people because they're in the way, or much of the time just because. Unfortunately, that's not the case in most games, and I'm still waiting for a game that would allow me to be a manipulative evil protagonist.

I thoroughly relish and very much enjoy being the villain in games for two main reasons.

1) I've played 95% of games where you are stuck only being good and saving the kingdom, princess, civilization, etc. That can be boring =/

2) It's the exact opposite of my nature in RL. So yes, being evil and destructive is quite invigorating after a tough day which is sometimes quite often.
I really enjoyed Manhunt, I got quite far however never finished. The sequel I have too although I haven't played =/ They had censored some scenes in Manhunt 2 unfortunately =/ for console at least. Grand Theft Auto is great fun to play the bad guy, they really done the bad guy thing well.

The only game I encountered where it was tough to be evil was Bioshock of having to harvest the little sisters which was difficult going down the bad path. Granted they weren't fully human and just pixels, was still difficult =/

Being forced to play as a good guy is the plague of modern games. I tend to think of it as a byproduct of the fact that mainstream American culture has no moral flexibility or shades of grey.

Even when the main character is supposed to be a "bad boy", they still end up saving the world/galaxy/universe, but somehow they are "bad" because they drop a few F-bombs, and give the finger to a bureaucratic authority a few times. Herp derp

You can clearly see this decline if you compare Legacy of Kain - Blood Omen with Legacy of Kain - Soul Reaver. In BO you play as an evil vampire who murders his way through the game and converts the world to vampirism. In Soul Reaver the devs were too afraid to continue with this route so they made you play as Raziel, they try so hard to make him seem "bad", he's betrayed by Kain and resurrected from the abyss by Death himself. But nothing can disguise that the story is nothing but a cheaply disguised good vs evil plot cause apparently your average American/Westerner can't take morally twisted or ambiguous main characters or plots.

I think Kain was right, the whole world must be bathed in blood.

Being the bad guy doesn't mean to choice "bad" options in dialogue menus.

Being a bad guy means being the destroyer of the worlds, being the dungeon keeper.

I mean, playing the 3rd Reich in Hearts of Iron, not being an asshole.

Still too little games allow you to be the villain. It's much more than stealing a candy from a baby.

I freakin love that game Blood Omen. I never liked what the developers did to Soul Reaver. Blood Omen had so much story and depth as why you got stuck being a vampire and out for vengeance and truth of what was going on, or something like that. Then the developers tossed that away with the Soul Reaver games =( Along with ditching the top down RPG view of the first game =(

Playing an evil character can be terrific, only problem is that it is hard to pull off. Modern games are all geared toward a good character.
For example take Mass Effect where you have to reach the same goal no matter what option you pick. So basically you are doing the same things, only with the "evil" option you just end up acting like an asshole about it. That's just terrible.

You can do an evil character in two ways. First way about going about it is having a preset character like Kain in Blood Omen, where you have a well written character that you can understand why he does the things he does. The world pushes you and the character pushes back and in that while his actions are justified he is seen by the world as evil.

The second way is much harder and it boils down to giving a player an abundance of different options. Planescape and Fallout come to mind because they give you options of tormenting, selling your companions to slavery, getting rich on prostitution and doing all around terrible stuff with grave consequences for the characters involved and sometimes the world in general.
Of course this is much harder as the developer must foresee and include all the possibilities and options the player could imagine and want to follow.