20 Video Game Villains You Couldn’t Wait To Kill

It has been over a decade since Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain dropped, and while this game kept us going for a long time, we have now been waiting for another chapter in the saga of Snakes for even longer.

V gives us control of Venom Snake, the original Big Boss’s body double, and now, in 1984, commander of the Diamond Dogs mercenary unit, operating from his Mother Base out in the ocean. Dropping into Afghanistan and Central Africa, we uncover a plot by the leader of the XOF, Skull Face – a heavily scarred and burned, Stetson-wearing creep pulled straight out of our nightmares.

Vile in pretty much every way, it is his work, as much as the man himself, that turns us so squarely against him and has us on tenterhooks to get a proper showdown. The game opens with video and records of him relentlessly torturing Cipher spy Paz Andrade and child soldier Chico, including implanting Paz with bombs that set off a chain of attacks resulting in the destruction of the former Mother Base, Snake’s ten-year coma and then Kazuhira Miller’s capture and severe disfigurement.

After tracking Skull Face through half the game, witnessing the atrocities he’s responsible for, we finally get our shot at him in Afghanistan. With him trapped, Snake and Miller share a curious moment of homoerotic bonding as they join arms to blast away his legs and other parts. We only wish it was less cutscene and more direct control.