10 Best Horror Game Villains, Ranked

Heroes are beloved across video games. They are the star that drives fans to return. However, horror might be the exception as the villain often eclipses the hero. There are so many different types of horror stories such as psychological, sci-fi, and fantasy that these villains can take many different forms, some literally straight out of our nightmares.

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Defeating them is what makes video games a triumphant success, but this isn’t always the case with horror. Sometimes the villains win, which makes them all the more special and appealing to horror lovers. Here’s a list of some of the best in gaming.

10 Paxton Fettel

While Alma Wade is the undisputed main villain of the FEAR franchise, her demented son, Paxton Fettel, also plays a big role. In many ways, this story is about how the government screwed with Alma so much that it turned her to become violent and vicious.

By extension, Paxton suffered in much the same way. While not as strong as his mother, in many ways he’s more frightening as he’s able to taunt the player more through dialogue rather than Alma’s psychic attacks. He returns throughout the series to take many different roles, but he always remains a threat.

9 Leland Vanhorn

The detective versus serial killer trope is a classic storytelling mechanism. The Condemned series has the player go up against a pretty ruthless killer that goes by the name Serial Killer X. His real name is Leland Vanhorn, and he is a particularly nasty fellow. In the world of fiction, serial killers can take many different forms.

They can be silent and ominous like Michael Myers or sympathetic like Jigsaw. Leland is sadistic in the most horrific ways possible. He takes great pleasure in his role as the villain and doesn’t want to be anything else.

8 Adam Crowley

As 3D games started to expand into the horror genre, Nightmare Creatures emerged as an early contender for a series that had a lot of legs. It might have fallen by the wayside in modern times, but Adam Crowley’s presence in the game was a big one.

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The time period itself was perfect for Victorian horror and excellently designed monsters roaming the streets of London. Crowley himself would become one of these creatures for the final battle, and it’s a game that wholeheartedly deserves a remake.

7 Jigsaw

The Saw franchise really isn’t a series of movies that seems obvious to translate for video games, and yet somehow the first game and its sequel delivered both scares and puzzles. Even though he didn’t appear as a foreboding presence, Jigsaw’s fingerprints are all over this gaming experience.

The player has to move from one room to the next, avoiding other people trapped in the building while also solving puzzles. It’s a madhouse that Jigsaw designed to torture the player every step of the way.

6 Jason Voorhees

Jason Voorhees as a symbol is an iconic figure that even non-horror fans can recognize. The thought of making a game around him is interesting, especially since that game was multiplayer-driven. The premise is simple.

Several players are counselors and have to escape one player that is Jason. For one player, Jason isn’t a villain. He’s actually a hero to be embodied. But for everyone else, the gameplay is terrifying as Jason methodically stalks the counselors all around the campsite, making him one of the most terrifying villains in any video game ever.

5 Slenderman

Slenderman is a strange character that existed in the public consciousness before he was part of any tangible franchise. That changed once he made the transition to video games. Very rarely do games focus so much on gameplay that a story largely becomes irrelevant.

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In fact, Slenderman was the game’s entire appeal, and he did not disappoint. He chases the player around, causing psychological distress with his presence alone. It made for a very haunting experience that shouldn’t be played at night with the lights out.

4 Kendra Daniels

The great thing about sci-fi games like Dead Space is that the overarching villain isn’t a single person but rather a wave of horror and torment that mutates everything it touches, including the mind.

However, these games also focus on characters that perpetuate the evil the player has to fight. Kendra Daniels takes that role in the first Dead Space game to the extreme. She’s emblematic of what can happen when humanity flies too close to the sun. It twisted her for the worse and became the focus of the player’s battle against the necromorphs.

3 Nemesis

Resident Evil is known for its many monsters and creatures that it throws at its many heroes. These range from simple zombies to ravenous dogs, and more. They also range from mindless drones to deviant intelligence.

The Tyrants are held up as the pinnacle of the Resident Evil monster, and in that class, Nemesis stands out above all else. He just has such a relentlessly menacing appearance that fans can’t help but grow fond of him. He consistently ranks not just high among Resident Evil monsters but also all villains in gaming.

2 Pyramid Head

The strongest villains are ones that don’t just terrorize on a physical level but also on a psychological one. Pyramid Head takes the latter to an extreme as he is more or less the embodiment of the main character’s psychological torment in Silent Hill. He doesn’t taunt. He doesn’t threaten.

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He’s just there, always unwavering and always torturing. His place has shifted in future installments, but his appeal has always remained. Pyramid Head ranks consistently as one of the best villains of the PS2 era.

1 Alma Wade

It’s hard to pin down exactly why children are creepy. When it comes to kids and video games, it’s harder to think of anyone scarier than Alma Wade. What’s even creepier about her is that she’s not actually a child.

She was when she was first experimented on, but she has since grown up to be a woman in isolation. The girl people see haunting them is Alma’s psychological projection. The sheer amount of power she showcases in the FEAR series allows her to top the list.

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