Best Games About Rebelling Against Society

Best Games About Rebelling Against Society



Key Takeaways

  • Video games can serve as a platform for counter-culture narratives, opposing societal ideals.
  • Titles like Hi-Fi Rush and Umurangi Generation portray fighting oppressive systems.
  • Jet Set Radio exemplifies counter-culture with vibrant fashion.

Many of us are not quite satisfied with the way the world is. Hunger and homelessness, war and bloodshed, all upheld in the service of someone else’s growing offshore bank account. It can be hard to direct that rage. That’s where counter-culture was born.

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Counter-culture is all about the opposition to the status quo, making your very existence oppositional to the ideals currently governing the world. It doesn’t always need to have an eng goal other than upsetting those that rule over you, and these games hold a little bit of that spark in them.

9 Life Is Strange: Before The Storm

Life Is Strange Before The Storm screenshot of Chloe in her outfit during the Tempest play.

Life Is Strange: Before the Storm

Graphic Adventure

Interactive Narrative

Mystery

Released
August 31, 2017

Developer(s)
Deck Nine

When many of us are young, it can feel so hard to be expressive. Any deviations are strictly punished by parents. ‘Just be normal’ they say, justifying it as a means of giving you an easy life. Sometimes, it can feel like your parents are theh ardest thing to handle in your life.

Much of that is what defines Chloe Price in Life Is Strang: Before The Storm. An authoritarian step-dad, a school that punishes her for expressing her emotions, and a girl that shows her that breaking the status quo is just the first step to living a free life.

8 Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland

selecting a skate in tony hawks american wasteland

Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland

Released
October 18, 2005

Developer(s)
Neversoft

Growing up in the 90s, skateboarding became the face of counter-culture. It was a means of transport that relied so much of using the world around you, rather than using custom-built areas. Skateboards could be an expression of yourself, the rage and passion associated with the act of skateboarding.

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The Tony Hawk games brought that sensation into video games, and that peaked with American Wasteland. You didn’t just skate, you used graffiti. You defaced public property, you used public infrastructure as part of your skating. Because it was fun, and the police really hated it.

7 Mirror’s Edge

mirror's edge screenshot of faith engaging in combat

Released
November 11, 2008

Developer(s)
DICE

Many works of counter-culture like to set themselves in contemporary times, showing how you can oppose the powers that oppress you right now. But sometimes, that force puts you under so much pressure that, for a little while, it wins.

That’s what Mirror’s Edge depicts. Colour is drained from the world, towers scale to the clouds, and everything is sharp, defined, clean. No ambiguity, nowhere to hide. Faith is the only person with colour, and the very parkour she performs features more expression than the entire city. Her very existence runs counter to the world she lives in.

6 Hi-Fi Rush

Chai and 808 in Hi-Fi Rush's ending.

Released
January 25, 2023

Developer(s)
Tango Gameworks

When Hi-Fi Rush was announced, it came as something of a shock. Famed horror developers diving into a bombastic, colourful character-action game seems like a far cry. But horror games thrive on depicting our fears, the oppression of others. That’s a medium very easily converted into an opposition to that oppression.

Chai is an experiment gone wrong, and discarded by the company that made him as a defect. But he doesn’t accept that, oh no. Instead, Chai bands up with plenty of others who have suffered in this world, and takes them down with the power of music and community. Nothing hurts a faceless corporation more than individuality.

5 Disco Elysium

Cops wander about the snowy streets in Disco Elysium (Steam).

Released
October 15, 2019

Developer(s)
ZA/UM

Publisher(s)
ZA/UM

There’s no one angle to tackle Disco Elysium from. Even calling it counter-culture is hard because you can very much be a protector of the oppressive culture that destroyed Revachol. What makes Disco Elysium inherently counter-culture, even if Harry is not, is the honesty with which it depicts it all.

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Harry is just a cop. No matter how much he calls himself a world-ruling fascist, or a self-avowed communist who will rewrite the world, he is just a cop. No one respects him. He’s just another cog in the machine. It’s coming to that awareness that highlights the counter-culture of everyone else in Revachol, and how difficult it can be to actually fight back.

4 1000xResist

1000xresist a glowing red entity looms over a school

Sci-Fi

Thriller

Visual Novel

Adventure

Released
May 9, 2024

Developer
Sunset Visitor

Publisher(s)
Fellow Traveller

Why those who rule are so hard to defeat is because nothing is ever simple. No evil in the world starts at a single point, but is the result of years, generations, and eons of shifting borders that create a world so entangled in itself that knowing right from wrong is so hard to define.

1000xResist showcases this world, where the way things are are simply assumed. Until you see the reality of what built this world and even then, you can’t pinpoint one singular point at which things went wrong. It’s too entwined. But things must change. There is no silver bullet that fixes everything, but you have to try. Anything new is better.

3 Cyberpunk 2077

Viktor Vektor sits in his office.

Released
December 10, 2020

There’s something to be said for a cyberpunk setting that is developed by a billionaire, but that then becomes a part of the meta-critique, doesn’t it? Making a game that criticises the world circumstances in which is was built.

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Those circumstances will always colour the politics of Cyberpunk 2077, with it’s oddly cop-friendly demeanour. But that doesn’t remove the work of everyone else. The smaller parts of the game that show those living under the rule of corporations, and the proud ways in which they utilise the very systems of those rulers to fight back against them.

2 Jet Set Radio

Grinding on a rail as Gum in Jet Set Radio

Jet Set Radio

Released
October 31, 2000

Developer(s)
Smilebit , BlitWorks

When it comes to the purest expression of counter-culture, it always comes back to two things – fashion and transport. No one will bat an eye an another person wearing the typical outfits advertised to you on mannequins, or those of us that drive our bland cars to work day-in and day-out.

Jet Set Radio combines both. Vibrant colours and mismatched articles of clothing. Rollerskates and skateboards. Graffiti to brighten up those walls ridden with corporate messaging and advertisement. You exist in a world that can’t help but notice you. And you look good doing it.

1 Umurangi Generation

umurangi generation cars and people

Umurangi Generation

Indie Games

Adventure

Simulation

Released
May 19, 2020

Developer
ORIGAME DIGITAL

Publisher
ORIGAME DIGITAL, Playism

The scale at which counterculture is portrayed is almost always directly proportional to your welath and place in the world. The rich, even when progressive, will not resort to graffiti and outlandish clothing to battle these systems. Umurangi Generation shows the reality of how the lowest in society have to act to exist in a world that doesn’t want them.

You’re a photographer at the end of the world. You still need to eat, you still need to pay rent. But at least you can shine a light on the issues plaguing the world. You go through neglected slums, military checkpoints, and even protests for the rights of Aotearoa. You’re in the face of it, just you and your camera. And a few friends.

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