8 Outstanding Tales Of Vengeance In Video Games

2. Jack - Bioshock

Let me start by saying that I didn't like Bioshock. I thought the environment was universally depressing, the characters were static and irritating, and the gameplay was so unbalanced that it made Lindsay Lohan look like the Dalai Lama. You play as Jack, an otherwise average Joe that gets stuck in Rapture, an underwater dystopia. Your only friend is a guy named Atlas, who communicates with you via walkie-talkie.

Your mission is to free Atlas' family and then escape to the surface. Conveniently, Andrew Ryan, the maniacal founder of Rapture, kills Atlas' family right as you're about to free them. From that point on, you spend the rest of the game tearing through Rapture so you can bash Andrew Ryan's face in. Pretty standard vengeful narrative so far.

If the game ended after you fought your way to Ryan and killed him, I would've punched myself in the head so I could forget what a terrible experience Bioshock was. Luckily for my skull, Andrew Ryan isn't the real enemy. The real enemy is Atlas, who tells you that he's been controlling you from the start, and now that you've removed Ryan, Atlas can take control of Rapture. So, the target of Jack's vengeance immediately transitions from your eternal nemesis to your only friend. This sudden redirect of vengeance was a stroke of genius, and the only reason why I didn't huck my PlayStation out the window after beating it.