By Alec Meer on September 2nd, 2008 at 6:08 pm.
Heh. I just stumbled across this randomly, having had no idea it had ever gone online – a pop piece I wrote for PC Gamer last March on PC gaming’s finest villains. Well, the finest that fit easily within an A-Z list, anyway. No, your favourite villain is not in there, and yes, shame on me for the oversight. How dare I call myself a PC gamer, etc. Why don’t you mention him/her/it/them/[no suitable pronoun in the English language] below instead?
Here’s a couple of random entries:
Ethereals – as seen in UFO: Enemy Unknown
The first X-COM did a splendid job of cleverly regurgitating sci-fi tropes to create its alien races, but these creepy, floating robes turned up late in the game and shook our faith in our own abilities. Unnervingly resistant to conventional weaponry and largely attacking with psychic powers rather than the guns of other races, they were the silent masterminds of the alien invasion of Earth. When you finally managed to capture one and dissect it for research, it turned out that, underneath the Jawa chic, it was a spindly pink thing a schoolboy could rough up.
The Pope – as seen in Medieval: Total War I and II
Calm down, Catholics – no matter how much he might look like Emperor Palpatine, we’re not calling the current Pope a villain. In Medieval, however, he’s a colossal pain in the behind. Consistently spoiling your fun (if France can’t be invaded, then what’s it there for?), he makes petulant demands of his own, then punishes you if you can’t meet them in the stingy amount of time allotted. He’s often your single greatest impediment to building a mighty empire. Revenge can be had in Medieval II, where you can kill or kidnap him and a new, similarly vulnerable Pope soon pops up – enabling mass papacide in the space of just of a few turns. It’s an angry atheist’s dream.
02/09/2008 at 18:23 CrashT says:
Doesn’t this break Godwin’s Law almost instantly?
02/09/2008 at 18:24 Chris Evans says:
So that was odd, had the details of a ‘Jaxtrasi’ there instead of mine, a DB issue?
Anyway this was a great list, going to go and enjoy reading it again :D
02/09/2008 at 18:41 Carra says:
Ah yes, HK-47 sure was lots of fun.
That and no alien like in AvP?
02/09/2008 at 18:42 Punjab says:
Ha, Conroy Bumpus, that brings back memories.
Irenicus, hell yeah!
02/09/2008 at 18:45 sbs says:
Same here, Chris. Also, the “Opinion away!”-button was missing. Then the story vanished from the frontpage and turned up again just now.
I fully expected Shub-Niggurath to be on that list. That was a brilliant bossfight, if just for the fact that you have to telefrag her to claim victory ;)
02/09/2008 at 19:05 sana says:
http://img215.imageshack.us/img215/5564/ihavethepowerty4.jpg
That was interesting!
02/09/2008 at 19:07 Jaxtrasi says:
KNEEL, MINIONS!
02/09/2008 at 19:07 suchchoices says:
that endless torrent of sodding popups from gamesradar is pretty evil.
but… milkman conspiracy? the listpeople confuse evil with bloody hilarious.
02/09/2008 at 19:09 Jaxtrasi says:
On a separate note, I nominate Pyramid Head as the deepest enemy on that list.
02/09/2008 at 19:09 suchchoices says:
re: sana
ah, so it wasn’t just me. what a little harlot the rps bloggo-authentication-thing is.
02/09/2008 at 19:09 Alec Meer says:
Well, that little tech-apocalypse was fun. Carry on, everyone.
02/09/2008 at 19:10 James G says:
I guess GLADoS would make an instant entry onto any updated list.
Must admit, there are few bad guys that spring to mind in anything other than the ‘comic-book villain’ mould. I’m actually having difficulty in remember the last gaming bad-guy who I actually felt ‘My god, what a vile piece of work, I shall have to thwart their plans.’ GLADoS I just ended up feeling sorry for for example.
(Phew, the site no longer thinks I’m Alec)
02/09/2008 at 19:13 sana says:
You may be the real one, but I will forever remain Alec Meer in the people’s hearts!
If I were SHODAN, I would be insulted by appearing on the list right next to a level 35 Warcraft elite abomination, my magnificence being compared with a weak bag of meat like that..
02/09/2008 at 19:15 suchchoices says:
eeeeeeeeeeeeevil
02/09/2008 at 19:21 Alex says:
Out of interest, mr. Meer – how do you go about making one of these lists? We seem them pop up on sites here, there and everywhere, some are better than others – it’d be nice to get some “behind the scenes” information.
02/09/2008 at 19:25 Alec Meer says:
In my case, I sat racking my brains in front of a mostly blank Word document for several hours, whilst muttering stuff like “oh god, is there /anything/ for Q?”
02/09/2008 at 19:26 Gene says:
my inner evil is satisfied. great job on that list :)
02/09/2008 at 19:26 Kevlmess says:
I never saw The Milkman as a villain. The Rainbow Squirts, on the other hand, were quite unsettling and clearly evil.
Also, glad to see my brief Alec-ness has waned.
02/09/2008 at 19:57 Devan says:
I nominate Dmitri Volkov from the No One Lives Forever series. I mean, he’s the head of HARM, which is the classic benchmark of evil organizations.
02/09/2008 at 20:20 MetalCircus says:
That was a good fun read Alec. Cheers big ears.
And I agree with the Dimitri Volkov nomination. In NOLF 2 he was in a full body cast which shot rockets from his foot. Class.
02/09/2008 at 20:27 Cooper says:
Avatar.
That trumped up wizard in a metal box, thinking him and his heoric limp-wristed lords can stifle my minions in the bowels of my dungeon. pah.
02/09/2008 at 20:28 spd from Russia says:
Where is Sarevok from BG, where is tragic mutant Master from Fallout and the scary Encalves`s Carrigan from Fallout2? Those are some of the best written and involved villians in games.
Glados from Portal is just a weak Shodan wanna-be/ripoff so its not worthy.
02/09/2008 at 20:29 Little Green Man says:
Oh yeah I got really scared that I was actually the REAL Alec Meer and this life of going to school was just a dream in my head. Ahh… oh and apperently I am also John Walker. Crazy conspiracy theories abound.
02/09/2008 at 21:13 Bobby says:
Huh, come on. Ethereals for X-Com instead of the Chrysalids? Or were they just struggling to find stuff to put under E?
02/09/2008 at 22:07 Ozzie says:
Weird list.
I have the feeling that the entry of the Milkman was just another way to mention Psychonauts again. Yeah, I absolutely adore this level, but the Milkman isn’t a villain at all. The Den Mother is, but not a particularly good one, neither anyone of the main plot. Great villains isn’t the strength of Psychonauts.
And Ignus……well, he’s unquestionably evil and selfish, but I never felt threated by him and I was kinda sad when I had to finish him off.
Conroy Bumpus, another weird choice.
He’s an unquestionably dislikable country singer. He captures a Bigfoot and the giraffe girl and forces them to play in his band or they’ll receive electro shocks.
But he doesn’t play a big role in the game. Sure, he turns up at the end again, but it’s easy to get rid of him.
No mention of Purpure Tentacle? What an oversight!
Hm, can’t think of any personal favorites.
Many adventure gamers think of the villain of GK2 as a great one, though. I’m just playing it, so I can’t tell for sure, but so far he seems promising.
02/09/2008 at 22:09 Diogo Ribeiro says:
I’m fine with people not remembering Fallout’s Master – even if he was much more complex than whatever “MWAHAHA” rabble passed for “deep” at the time, like Sephiroth or Sarevok, it’s understandable that he was forgotten thanks to Fallout not being as successful as other games – but it’s always interesting to see Revan being given more consideration than The Transcendant One, who was basically a more well developed ancestor of the same idea, but lost out thanks to KotOR being just like Torment, only remade for thickies.
I’m generally speaking, though, not harping against Alec :)
02/09/2008 at 22:10 Ozzie says:
GK2 = Gabriel Knight 2
Kinda expected that everyone would know. ;)
02/09/2008 at 22:11 Ozzie says:
Ehm, he’s on the list…
02/09/2008 at 22:26 Alec Meer says:
A few of the entries have been heavily edited back to fit onto PC Gamer’s pages (The Transcendent One being a notable example, which is why it doesn’t entirely make sense), as I recall I overwrote the piece massively :(
02/09/2008 at 22:39 sinister agent says:
Huh, come on. Ethereals for X-Com instead of the Chrysalids? Or were they just struggling to find stuff to put under E?
Yeah, I thought the same. Psi powers were a pain in the rear, but you could largely avoid the ethereals until your soldiers were ready, and once your weaker soldiers were dead, Ethereals were largely defenceless. Chryssalids, though, were pure rampaging evil. And Lobstermen from the second one were hell on a stick, being practically invincible and chumming up with the Chryssalids’ hellish ‘flying’ cousins to boot.
Still, made for some fun light reading, even if you do have to awkwardly resize your browser to read the 15% of the screen that isn’t flashing adverts.
02/09/2008 at 22:39 Pidesco says:
All No One Lives Forever villains are conspicuously missing from the list.
Where are Dmitri Volkov, Magnus Armstrong, Tom Goodman or the Mime King? Surely these were all better villains than half of the bad guys on that list.
02/09/2008 at 22:39 sinister agent says:
Huh, come on. Ethereals for X-Com instead of the Chrysalids? Or were they just struggling to find stuff to put under E?
Yeah, I thought the same. Psi powers were a pain in the rear, but you could laregly avoid the ethereals until your soldiers were ready, and once your weaker soldiers were dead, Ethereals were largely defenceless. Chryssalids, though, were pure rampaging evil. And Lobstermen from the second one were hell on a stick, being practically invincible and chumming up with the Chryssalids’ hellish ‘flying’ cousins to boot.
Still, made for some fun light reading, even if you do have to awkwardly resize your browser to read the 15% of the screen that isn’t flashing adverts.
02/09/2008 at 22:42 Pidesco says:
All No One Lives Forever villains are conspicuously missing from the list.
Where are Dmitri Volkov, Magnus Armstrong, Tom Goodman, the hand puppet, the Director or the Mime King? Surely these were all better villains than half of the bad guys on that list.
02/09/2008 at 23:23 Pidesco says:
The above double post is RPS’s fault.
02/09/2008 at 23:26 Max says:
Hitler is the best boss ever. Are there any games other than Bionic Commando (and BC: Rearmed) and Wolfenstein 3D that have Hitler as a boss?
02/09/2008 at 23:28 Sax says:
The Pig isn’t dead, as seen in the Beyong Good&Evil 2 Teaser.
02/09/2008 at 23:30 El Stevo says:
Oooh, the T-Rex from Tomb Raider. It’s a shame they made it into a proper boss fight in Tomb Raider Anniversary, with a proper intro cut scene and everything, rather than having the fucker suddenly burst out of the mist.
02/09/2008 at 23:38 Alex says:
I’d like to have seen Constantine/The Trickster or Karras from the Thief games, I think. Or maybe the Cradle itself, that could’ve been a good one.
03/09/2008 at 00:24 sinister agent says:
Ooh, yeah, Karras out of Thief 2 was brilliant, considering you never really meet him, and he sounded like a complete tool, but managed to be an enormous threat simply through cunning and unscrupulous manipulation. And when he screeches your name over the intercom, brrr.
03/09/2008 at 00:28 edwardoka says:
Karras wasn’t that effective a villain TBH. The Mechanists were pretty vile enemies but Karras sounded too much like Droopy to be sinister. I can’t see how a cult of personality could possibly form around him.
03/09/2008 at 00:41 luminosity says:
Avery Marx from Shadowman is one villain I’ll always remember as being very scary to hunt down at the time.
03/09/2008 at 01:01 Nimic says:
I nominate AI France in EU3. Anyone who hasn’t played it won’t know what I’m talking about. Anyone who has definitely will.
03/09/2008 at 01:19 sinister agent says:
It wasn’t a cult of personality. It was a cult of … well, cult. The pope’s hardly a barrel of laughs, and most people couldn’t even name the head of the cult of scientology. You don’t need a cult of personality if you’ve got a hypnotic creed.
03/09/2008 at 03:37 Tim says:
Okay, I have to admit that my favorite part was the the Empire from Elite — where Alec deftly combines “shameless slave trade,” “extreme right-wing,” and “the Confederates” — just because I’d love to see the comic books they hand out in the UK on US history. :)
03/09/2008 at 04:46 grumpy says:
but perhaps not as *evil* as the ethereals.
Anyway, thanks for reminding me of those. I could deal with the lobstermen. As long as you spotted them first, they went down to a few sonic cannon rounds.
Those flying purple broccoli stalks though… I’m gonna have nightmares tonight… Of all my soldiers being turned to zombies with purple flying broccoli monsters inside them :(
03/09/2008 at 04:55 No Picnic says:
I was ticked off that Return to Castle Wolfenstein didn’t have Hitler or even Himmler as a boss, only freakin’ Rob Zombie. Of course, that would have made it difficult to write a sequel. What could be more satisfying in a video game than killing Hitler? The man was a real-life monster. id shouldn’t take the story so seriously. Who honestly cared about the story in RtcW (and wasn’t let down by it)?
Wolf3D had it right. Killing robot-suit Hitler was one of the most memorable moments in my “career” as a gamer.
03/09/2008 at 09:59 Forceflow says:
No Painkiller baddies ? Some of them really scared the poop out of me !
03/09/2008 at 10:04 The Sombrero Kid says:
theres another reason why zombies are popular baddies convincingly dumb AI is easier than convincingly smart AI
03/09/2008 at 10:29 Smee says:
Steinman from Bioshock. By the time I reached the final confrontation with him I wanted to absolutely murder the sick son of a bitch.
That’s…never happened to me before.
03/09/2008 at 10:32 Alec Meer says:
Actually, the Elite entry is the only one not written by me – that was Craig on Gamer, who was insistent they be featured.
03/09/2008 at 10:41 The Sombrero Kid says:
clickerscraymen from thief03/09/2008 at 10:44 phil says:
Jack Krauser, you, a knife, good times.
03/09/2008 at 10:46 Ian says:
I don’t care how maligned QTEs are (and most of them deserve it) the knife fight with Krauser rules. On console anyway, I haven’t been near Resi 4 on PC.
03/09/2008 at 10:50 The Sombrero Kid says:
the reason they are maligned is because it would be much more awesome if they managed to design a 21st century game that achieves the same thing instead you get a short FMV game without the benefit of the FMV, it’s very lazy on the part of the designer
03/09/2008 at 11:11 cullnean says:
finest villians?
every one but my corp mates in eve
03/09/2008 at 11:17 Ian says:
Yes but that “solution” to QTEs is surely implausible short of some sort of magical games controller of the future? Given the kind of (stupid?) shit that goes on in most of them anyway.
Regardless, I wasn’t saying QTEs don’t deserve the stick they get and I’d happily see them booted from gaming, just that I very much enjoyed the fight with Krauser.
03/09/2008 at 11:23 The Shed says:
I still don’t get why everyone detests QTE so much… Shenmue had it awesome, God of War had it awesome, and Resi 4 had it pretty good. It’s just a different manner of interaction.
03/09/2008 at 11:46 Ian says:
Shenmue’s were an incredibly mixed bag and a fine reflection of why many people have a love/hate (or hate/hate) relationship with them. For example, I’d sooner use my own spine to make a pogo stick than play those series of QTEs that have you scaling a building by walking over planks spanning holes and broken floors for approximately 78 floors.
03/09/2008 at 12:24 The Sombrero Kid says:
@The Shed
it’s a lesser interaction, it’s less like you are doing those things it’s even less interaction than an FMV game so i take that back as it’s offensive to FMV game designers
03/09/2008 at 14:37 phil says:
@Ian,
Though Shenue II is not on PC, I’d nominate the butch, chainsaw wielding, lady boy chasing you up that dilapidated building as one of the most memorable villian encounters gaming, QTE or not.
03/09/2008 at 15:10 Ian says:
I just had to search Youtube to remind myself of the part you were talking about. Pretty good but I’d say the part where the huge guy charges you down the corridor and you have to leap to the next building is even better. Not least because the first time I died after a panicky bit of button-mashing because it involved pushing multiple buttons simultaneously. :p
03/09/2008 at 15:12 Willem says:
I quite like the idea of The Cradle being viewed as a villain, as has been mentioned.
How about the Plague in Pathologic? Or the Executors? (I’m only 3 in-game hours into the game and I’m already scared senseless ;_; )
03/09/2008 at 16:07 Diogo Ribeiro says:
@Ozzie:
Didn’t say he was not featured, just that for many, Revan takes precedence over The Transcendent One.
03/09/2008 at 18:23 Blue team says:
You left out the evilest of all: those Red team scum.
03/09/2008 at 18:23 Red team says:
Add the filthy Blue team!
03/09/2008 at 19:09 sinister agent says:
but perhaps not as *evil* as the ethereals.
Ah! Excellent point, and the same goes for the chryssalids too, I suppose. Everyone but the ethereals was just a pawn really, however monstrous. I withdraw my objection.
03/09/2008 at 19:20 Pseudonym says:
Like your list Alec. On my list, I would place someone from Freedom Force, either Nuclear Winter or the Timemaster. And the Kohr-Ah from Star Control 2.
Oh, and the thing I like the best about Karras is that he is voiced by the same actor who voices Garret. Dude is talented.
04/09/2008 at 00:24 _Nocturnal says:
Wait, that doesn’t have anything to do with the true reason they’re evil!
Namely, it’s because they send you to that goddamned hotel where you shit your pants off!
Oh, the abuse I took from that place…