10 Merciless One-Hit-Kill Enemies In Video Games

"Ooh, look at me," you'll probably be sneering as your hack your way through waves of mid-game enemies with ease, "check out this badass!"

By the law of karma, then, your swaggering self is bound to get some comeuppance the minute you start thinking you've mastered the game. Right on cue, in stomps something twice your size that unfurls its sharpest appendages and turns you into a shoddily organised pile of mini sausage rolls.

In ONE hit.

Yep, you may have been level two-million and had the legendary Golden Greatsword of Saint Buggerlugs III, but that don't matter one bit to the one enemy who can send you to your maker in a single blood-curdling move.

Feared by all and burned into our minds for all the wrong reasons, these are the foes whose one-hit-kill attacks wipe the smug grins off every gamer's face. Whether deceptively strong or every bit as deadly as they look, one wrong move when squaring up to these guys and it's an instant game over for you - end of story.

Long before Dark Souls, treasure chests had come to be both loved and hated by fans of the Japanese RPG. On one hand, they can contain a valuable item or a much-needed refill for your health or ammo. But on the other hand, certain chests take far more than they give, for they're not chests at all - they're MIMICS!

So, although this trope was already well-established before FromSoftware picked it up and ran with it, the Dark Souls series manages to make these disguised creatures creepier and more destructive than they ever have been before.

Veterans of the series will, of course, be able to tell the difference between a mimic and a normal chest by the shape of the chain dangling down from it. But on your first playthrough, the only way to find this out is the hard way.

Attempting to open a chest that is really a Mimic will result in your character being chewed up and eaten by the hundred-fanged foe. Regardless of your stats, this move is always a one-hit kill.

And even if you attack the Mimic and get it to stand up, don't think you're out of danger, because unless you have extremely high vitality, its grab attack will end just as bloodily for your poor Chosen Undead.