10 Evil Horror Video Game Villains You Couldn’t Wait To Kill
This lot were asking for it.
Sometimes, there are simply no words for the rage a good villain can cause in players.
From the grotesque to the just plain annoying, the horror genre’s frequently been a hot bed of villainous activity. The immersive nature of video games allows players to connect with the characters and environment more than any other entertainment medium.
In turn, skin-crawling antagonists are that much more loathsome to witness. Firmly in the protagonist’s shoes, the player can’t help but get caught up in the moment and obsessed with teaching the villain a lesson.
In many games, the good news here is that the plot provides the set-up and pay-off of executing the bad guy for the player to enjoy. Some, however, might flirt with subverting expectations, either saving a scumbag’s comeuppance for a sequel or just denying it from the player altogether.
The following villains all displayed varying levels of depravity, fearsomeness and, in some cases, insufferably huge egos. The more the player gets to know them, the more they want to remove them from the game world. In many cases here, the boss fights couldn’t come soon enough.
10. Nemesis - Resident Evil III
Sometimes, size really does matter.
Remarkably brainy by the rather low standards of the undead, Nemesis dwarfs the human protagonists on offer here and terrorises them with gusto throughout its video game debut. Born in a laboratory, this monstrous rocket launcher enthusiast is unleashed in a bid by the Umbrella Corporation to silence the STARS police team from outing their - shall we say - unethical experiments.
Protagonist Jill Valentine spends the whole game trying to shake this unrelenting menace. For players, it's a cool villain who gets increasingly infuriating to deal with as it just keeps coming back for another round violence.
Valentine first gets the great displeasure of meeting Nemesis when it savagely kills the often hapless Brad Vickers. It's a cruel bit of irony given Vickers' determination to not be involved with anymore Umbrella shenanigans.
It's also effective (much more so than his overhauled, zombified demise in the controversial 2020 remake) in establishing Nemesis as a heartless brute out to wipe out STARS completely, regardless of the individual's involvement with Umbrella.
Perhaps the biggest aspect of Nemesis that just makes it so damn killable is the endless mutating in the closing stretch of the game. Every time the player seemingly gets the better of the monster, it grows tentacles or vomits poison everywhere. Needless to say, when the player gets to choose between executing Nemesis and leaving it to likely die in an impending nuclear blast (yeah, this game was pretty wild), most are jumping on that first option.