Our Favorite Video Game Villains | GameSided Roundtable

Greetings! This is our weekly GameSided Roundtable feature, where our writers converge to provide their opinions, wishes, statements or critical thought on one general topic centered around video games. Sometimes it can be funny, sometimes it can be serious. Contemporary, classic; we hope to cover a wide variety of things in this segment as a group. If you wish to submit an idea for a GameSided Roundtable discussion topic, you can leave the editor an email at: daniel.george@fansided.com. We’ll totally give you (and your Twitter account, if applicable) a shoutout!

This week’s GameSided Roundtable topic: “Who is your favorite video game villain?”

This week’s topic dives into spoiler territory for The Last of Us and Final Fantasy VI. Viewer discretion is advised.

Martin Benn (Twitter)

I am going to go old school, but with a twist. Donkey Kong is my favorite video game villain. I know, I know, you do not exactly understand this selection. But Donkey Kong is one of the greatest villains in video game history and the greatest in the Nintendo stable, even more so than Bowser. He was such a good villain people even loved playing as the bad guy. To start, Donkey Kong was an obvious brute, on the wrong side of history’s obsession with ape aggression. Then Nintendo and Rare tried to pull the wool over the eyes. Donkey Kong Country pivots the Kong as the good guy suffering from a loss of bananas at the hands of a greater foe.

If you are like me you saw right through this viewpoint, though. Donkey Kong was one of a few apes on an island filled with reptiles and other animals that were clearly tired of his oppressive tactics and hoarding of fruity flavor. Donkey and Cranky Kong were tyrants. How do I know? Look at the map of Donkey Kong Country again. What is it shaped like? Donkey Kong. He had been enslaving all those creatures to make statues of himself! When met with an alternative and someone who would knock their oppressor down a peg, of course they chose to side against him.

Still, I love playing as Donkey Kong. One of my favorite games on the Nintendo 64 was Donkey Kong 64. Donkey Kong equipped with a coconut gun and a kong crew of villains comes to take all the bananas back from all the rest of the animals in his world. How can you not love someone so nefarious that you also get to play as? Donkey Kong may just be the greatest video game villain ever.

Keith Myers (Twitter)

Obvious The Last of Us spoiler warning. This might be a controversial answer, but I believe my answer has to be Joel from The Last of Us.

I know what you’re thinking: “Umm.. isn’t he the protagonist?” Well, yes, he is. I also believe that he is the villain of his own game.

This of it this way. After decades of smuggling and killing, he murdered the entire resistance group fighting against the oppressive military regime that rules the country. He also doomed the entire human race to a slow eventual extinction by eliminating the only possible chance at a vaccine that could save it.

It doesn’t really matter what his motivations were. That he couldn’t see the forest through the trees only makes it worse.

I know that many of you will disagree. This is why The Last of Us was such a masterful piece of storytelling, perhaps my favorite game of all time, and why Joel is definitely my favorite video game villain.

Fraser Gilbert (Twitter)

I may be a little biased with this one, but I’m going with William Carver from The Walking Dead Season Two. After previously alluding to his presence, we’re finally introduced to Carver in the second episode of Season Two, and as time goes on we are presented with the true horror of what this man is able to accomplish, and his lack of remorse for doing so.

A battle to survive the walking dead turns into a struggle to resist the threats of this man and his group of followers, and Carver shows no hesitation in brutally beating or killing those who he deems worthy of such a punishment. His cold and calculated persona creates tension and a sense of desperation in the player to escape him at all costs.

All of these elements combined with his destructive nature ensures that Carver’s scenes are highly memorable.

Next: Team Ico Represents, Plus A Clown Who Becomes A God.