10 Great Video Game Villains Who Were Totally Wasted

Insomniac's Spider-Man 2 was hugely anticipated for many reasons, not least that players would go toe-to-toe with one of the web-slinger's most popular and iconic foes, Venom.

The marketing did a fantastic job of selling fans on Venom as the game's primary villain - he looked fantastic and was lucky enough to be voiced by the late, great Tony Todd.

But ultimately Venom doesn't show up until the later hours of Spider-Man 2, and his plan to infect all of New York with symbiotes is pretty much the most generic, boring supervillain scheme imaginable.

Despite how great he looks and how superbly menacing he sounds, this is a resoundingly one-note depiction of the character that fails to use the game's expanded storytelling canvas to do anything particularly noteworthy.

Considering all of Insomniac's successes on the first game, Venom should've been a slam dunk villain in the sequel, yet he ends up getting a strangely pedestrian treatment here.