10 Great Video Game Villains Who Were Totally Wasted

10. Frank Fontaine - BioShock

The moment that BioShock's true villain reveals himself is absolutely unforgettable, when we learn that our support character throughout the game, Atlas, is actually the uber-criminal Frank Fontaine.

Fontaine faked his own death, established himself as Atlas, and orchestrated a devious plan to kill his rival Andrew Ryan, leaving him free to take control of the underwater city of Rapture.

It's a superbly executed twist which instantly establishes Fontaine as one of gaming's most fascinatingly Machiavellian antagonists, so it's a shame that the end of the game sees him devolve into something decidedly less interesting.

When the player reaches Fontaine's lair, Fontaine injects himself with a ton of the mutagenic material ADAM, transforming him into a laughable-looking golem-thing for the final boss fight.

It's the sort of immensely lame character design we tend to call "AI created" these days, and to make matters worse the fight itself is a woefully unimaginative slug-fest that's doing nothing even remotely imaginative mechanically.

The Friday afternoon energy is strong with the end of BioShock, which leaves such a lackluster impression of its Big Bad that it almost undoes everything that was so brilliant about him beforehand.