20 Video Game Villains You Couldn’t Wait To Kill
They upset and annoyed you so much, you stuck with games you didn't like just to see them dead.
When people ask what's most important in a game, we usually reach for graphics, mechanics, unique features or overall playtime. Sure, some us are focused on the story, others on the characters, but rarely is the first thing we think of the villain. And yet so many games' successes turn on just that.
Ever since the earlier days of gaming, we have had iconic villains to rival the movies. Who doesn't know Bowser, Eggman, N Cortex and Team Rocket? And since then, the canon has been filled to bursting with demons, rogues, maniacs and money men, all designed to get a rise out of us.
From Far Cry New Dawn’s snotty brats to Borderlands’ scenery-chewing, maniacal evil; the Jokers and Brainiacs who do deeply terrible and upsetting things, to the Dane Vogels of this world, who just need a good shutting up – we’ve hunted them all, and had a damned good time doing it. But who amongst them is the worst? Who could we just not wait to pop a cap in or cleave in two with an axe?
They baited us, made us wait multiple games and proved just about impossible to take down 1v1. Sure, some of them are cool and charismatic, but that doesn't mean you couldn't wait to pull the trigger on these 20 when the time came.
20. Dane Vogel - Saints Row 2 (2008)
Released the same year as GTA IV, Saints Row 2 gave players the opportunity to explore a sandbox world in which realistic physics and graphics weren’t nearly as important as OTT weaponry, high speed crashes and blowing the ever-loving heck out of everything. And you’d be lying if you said you didn’t take time off from the mean streets of Liberty City to visit Stilwater and swing a giant dildo.
The second and best instalment in the Saints series returns us to reform the 3rd Street Saints gang and take back the territories controlled by the comically two-dimensional Brotherhood, Sons of Samedi and Ronin. And while there are plenty of larger-than-life figures to latch onto within the ranks of the gangs, the one man we all set our sights on is Dane Vogel, CEO of Ultor, which has been gutting and gentrifying Stilwater for some time.
Vogel is the puppeteer pulling the gangs’ strings throughout, driving down property prices, buying up land and enforcing his agenda with a large private security force. He is the ultimate corporate, opportunistic, capitalist grub and is a good representation of something all too real in a game that prides itself on unbelievability. So it’s a sweet, cathartic release when we finally have him begging and pleading, and get to shoot him through the mouth and put him out the window of his own tower.