These game villains who still need their punishment

Usually, the main appeal of a video game villain is that you can see him hoisted by his own petard by the end of the game. You take out the big bad, you save the day, the credits roll, and everyone goes home happy. If we are lucky, their downfall will even be ironic compared to their grandiose plans.

However, this is not always the case. Some villains get away with their actions, or others are set for a later release that never happened. The boldest ones will even flaunt their lack of consequences towards you. Here are the villains in video games who still need their share of punishment.

10 General Serrano – Bullet Storm

“You will live to fight another day, thanks to me”

Bulletstorm's bigoted, misogynistic, sadistic General Serrano has been a thorn in Grayson Hunt's side ever since Grayson discovered that Serrano was using Hunt's crew as an illegal death squad. In an act of revenge (or blind drunkenness), Grayson crashes both his and Serrano's ship onto an abandoned planet full of hostile mutants.

While Grayson and his friend Ishii are forced to team up with Serrano for a while, the not-so-good general betrays Hunt and leaves them dead believers, and while Hunt catches up to him and slaps him around a bit, he doesn't finish the job. . The game ends with a sequel stinger from Serrano and a brainwashed Ishii who never received a follow-up.

9 Aaron Griffin – Gears of War

“We'll settle this another time, Fenix.”

Gears Of War 3 was seen as the conclusion of the Locust War era of the Gears series, with the COG's fight against the Locust Queen reaching a bloody finale by the end of the game. What some might forget, though, is that GOW3's fourth act introduces a human character who… well, he's not evil, just a bit of an asshole.

After losing Dom, a destroyed Delta team reaches Char, a city devastated by the COG's Hammer Of Dawn attacks. There they meet a baron of Imulsion named Griffin. Griffin makes his hatred for the COG clear, forcing them to run errands and yelling at Marcus when the Tower is attacked by Lambent and Locust. Griffin leaves with a promise to resolve his and Marcus's dispute at a later date, but we're still waiting to give the guy a shot.

Griffin appeared in the novel Ephyra Rising, set after the events of Gears 3, but he and Marcus do not interact.

8 The G-Man – Half-Life

“Prepare for Unforeseen Consequences”

Look, do we know if The G-Man from Half-Life is a real villain or not? No, for while the mysterious man in the suit is responsible for many of the series' calamitous events and has even been outwardly hostile to Gordon Freeman at times, he has also shown mercy to Freeman and the gang. It's not 100% evil, we'll say that.

Even so, The G-Man is clearly a willful manipulator pulling the strings of Half-Life's narrative, and while the sheer brutality of the Combine is the seemingly most evil part of the game, people don't like being controlled by otherworldly forces. . Certainly not. It would be nice to throw boxes with a gravity gun at G-Man outside G-Mod, that's what we're saying.

7 Lan Di – Shenmue

“You really have a death wish, don't you?”

Gamers since the Dreamcast era have waited decades to give Shenmue's Lan Di some beating after he killed Ryo's father at the start of the game. After killing his father, Lan Di mostly disappears from the series, leaving Ryo to chase his shadow, searching for sailors or racing forklifts. Apparently it's easy to get distracted while seeking revenge.

After Shenmue 2 didn't resolve the conflict, fans had to wait nearly 20 years for a sequel, hoping they could get their pound of flesh from Lan Di. Enter Shenmue 3, which features a fight between Ryo and Lan Di, but Lan sweeps you off the floor and the game ends with a preview of another fight later. However, Shenmue 3's poor reception has likely dashed those chances.

6 Necromorph Moons – Dead Space

“Make Us Whole”

The necromorph scourge in Dead Space is not a traditional villain. Their only motivation is to feed, kill, and perpetuate the cycle of mutation by devouring new organic matter, essentially making them space zombies, but Dead Space 3 reveals a necromorphic hive mind disguised as a moon that is searching for Earth's location. Think of all the delicious humans he can feast on.

Isaac Clarke and his new friend Carver spend the entire game trying to stop the moon Tau Volantis, successfully doing so in the climax. However, the Awakened DLC expansion follows the two as they try to return to Earth, only to find many more Necromorph Moons waiting for them when they get there. Where is the Eclipse Cannon from Sonic Adventure 2 when you need it?

If everyone reading this buys a copy of the Dead Space remake, maybe EA will make another one. Perhaps.

5 Kingpin: The Punisher (2005)

“You have been deceived. Someone is using you to weaken me”

The Punisher isn't usually the type of person to leave bad guys to take their punishment later. You shoot first, you shoot a little later with Frank Castle, and the same could be said for the 2005 video game The Punisher, as Frank slaughters most of his rogues' gallery in that game, including Jigsaw, Bushwacker , The Russian, The Gnuccis and even Bullseye.

One villain who lives to meddle another day is Kingpin. As Frank makes his way through Fisk Tower, for some reason he leaves Wilson Fisk alive. That decision could have backfired on Frank, with a tingle in the credits that had Fisk vowing to take out The Punisher, but no follow-up game was ever made. Too bad, honestly.

4 Angelus – The darkness

“The world has gone too long without my light”

Jackie Estacado has a somewhat complicated life. He's already a seasoned mobster, but on his 21st birthday, a power known as The Darkness awakens within him, which is as demonic as it sounds. Over the course of the first game, his girlfriend Jenny is killed, with Jackie waging a supernatural vengeance for the remainder of the game.

The sequel finds Jackie still grieving, with the ending having Jackie literally battle her inner demons through Hell in an attempt to save Jenny's soul. He does so, only to discover that Jenny is now the new conduit to Angelus, the direct antithesis of The Darkness. Angelus traps Jackie in Hell for eternity, where he remains, as the series hasn't seen a new game in a decade.

3 Rorke-Call Of Duty: Ghosts

“There will be no ghosts…”

I'm sorry to have to remind you of the existence of Call of Duty: Ghosts, but there are literally dozens of people who want some sort of resolution to the game's climax. Set in the post-apocalyptic United States which has subsequently been invaded by a South American coalition known as the Federation, the campaign ends with the Hesh brothers and player character Logan avenging their father by eliminating former ghost Gabriel Rorke.

The final shots of the campaign see an injured Hesh and Logan washing up on a beach, celebrating a job well done, only for a still-alive Rorke to take the brothers by surprise, beat them everywhere, and then kidnap Logan. The implication is that Logan would have been brainwashed like Rorke, creating a sequel that never came.

Has Rorke reappeared as a Warzone character? Did Activision just abandon Ghosts completely?

2 Isabela Keyes – Deaths on the rise

“You're the one who caused this nightmare”

If there was ever a character in video games who can get away with it, it's Isabela Keyes. She was instrumental in orchestrating the outbreak of the first Dead Rising, and while she was remorseful, working with Frank West after seeing the horror unleashed by his brother Carlito, she is far from innocent.

Keyes was forced to work with Phenotrans to develop Zombrex, although Phenotrans eventually began intentionally causing epidemics to harvest the queens needed to create Zombrex. Then, in Dead Rising 3's post-credits scene, it is revealed that Keyes started that game's outbreak in an attempt to reveal Nick's location and develop a real cure, all to clean up his family's reputation. This is definitely a sacrifice worth a few hundred thousand freshly transformed zombies.

1 Victor Donovan – Dead or Alive

“So is Phase 4 ready to proceed?”

Fighting game villains tend to get their comeuppance quite often, either as part of the game's story or simply because you can load up a match with that character and complain about it yourself. It may not be a traditional punishment, but beating up an inactive Kazuya is a good stress reliever after Tekken 7's story mode. His boss fight was brutal.

One villain who managed to dodge a beating, though, is Dead Or Alive's Donovan. The shadowy corporate figure in charge of the Dead Or Alive tournaments, Donovan, has kidnapped fighters for cloning experiments to create the ultimate fighter. His plans are usually foiled, but Donovan is like a Saturday morning cartoon villain, already on the helicopter planning his next phase the moment the heroes blow up his base.