The second in a series of cross-site top things list with our fellow Irish online magazine, the manly site for men, Boob.ie (occasional NSFW). Here is Chronic Reload’s Top 5 Gaming Villains. Hand selected according to how well written, or in some cases laughably badly written, they are. A good villian can provide excellent justification for finishing an entire game or can simply provide a challenge in a boss battle. Click on through to have a read, tell us what you think and then pop on over to Boob.ie and see their version, this time round “its the assholes who aren’t part of the games themselves, but still have a huge effect upon them”. Feel free to angrily express how wrong either party is. You can see our previous Top Five List, Top 5 Video Game Characters here.

Albert Wesker

#5 – Albert Wesker

First Appearance: Resident Evil, Playstation, 1996

Strengths: Terrible dialogue, terrible voice acting, red eyes, has been killed multiple times, sunglasses.

Moment of Shame: Having survived being killed by a Tyrant Wesker was eventually killed for good by lava, in a volcano, in the middle of the ocean.

Albert Wesker is the pinnacle of so bad it’s good voice acting and writing in video games. As time went on and Wesker gained more and more powers he went from stereotypical corrupt cop in a small town to stereotypical super-villain with a good chance of taking over the world.  A transition that happened seamlessly from Resident Evil to Resident Evil: Code Veronica.

Psycho Mantis

#4 – Psycho Mantis

First Appearance: Metal Gear Solid, Playstation, 1998

Strengths: Ability to read memory cards, move controllers and break the forth wall.

Moment of Shame: Unable to move Wavebird Gamecube controllers… Highly embarrassing.

Physco Mantis makes it not for being a leading bad guy but for being a great boss. The only way to get around his mind reading powers was to switch the controller to another port so he couldn’t tell what you were doing. Later in Metal Gear Solid 4, Screaming Mantis (who was channelling Psycho Mantis) over came this problem. Reassigning the controller to another port simple left Snake confused and unable to move.

Sephiroth

#3 – Sephiroth

First Appearance: Final Fantasy VII, Playstation, 1997

Strengths: Badass Hair, badass Sword, badass theme music, badass ability to murder an entire village including it’s children, Worshipped by badass emo teenage nerds

Moment of Shame: As with nearly all Final Fantasy Character, he can be beaten by Donald and Goofy in Kingdom Hearts.

Sephiroth represents a lot of thing you want in a villain. A rich and deep history that’s very similar to the leading character only at some point he choose the evil path. If Cloud is light the Sephiroth is dark but a dark you can sympathises with in many ways. Although he’s been brought back many time in weaker moments since Final Fantasy VII, the Sephiroth of this game will always be remembered as that last boss that seemed so strong it was terrifying to face him.

Nazi

#2-Generic Enemy Nazi

First Appearance: World War II

Strengths: Socialism, Cult of Personality, No excuse to live, occasional magic Nazi powers.

Moment of Shame: Earning the 2nd place spot on this list.

Nazi are the perfect video game grunt, everyone knows they’re the bad guys, history says so! No reason to worry about the morality of taking human life, they’re Nazis! EVIL! At this point its fair to say that the average gamer has killed more Nazis than the Allies did in World War II, who clearly never thought to duck behind something until the red got off their faces.

GlaDOS

#1 – GlaDOS

First Appearance: Portal, PC and Xbox 360, 2007

Strengths: Excellent writing, comedy, binary, cake, lies, nuerotoxin, psychological manipulation and the power of song.

Moment of Shame: None.