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Real life couldn't have created an enemy more terrifying than your standard police officer; after all, what other civil servant has the state-sanctioned power to murder us, both with military-grade weaponry and egregious parking fines? True, most of your garden variety cops spend their shifts hassling non-violent drug offenders and telling rude teens to stop skateboarding on things, but a small minority employs the power of the badge to abuse their authority with criminal intent. Thankfully, the medium of video games allows us to seek vengeance against those who've fallen over to the icky side of the thin blue line — a more gratifying fate than seeing the traditional crooked cop punishment of extended paid vacation.

(WARNING: Some pretty significant spoilers lie within)

10. Officer Frank Tenpenny (Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas)

Since 1994's Pulp Fiction, the casting of Samuel L. Jackson in any role serves as a sort of shorthand for the audience, as if to say "this expletive-shouting man may be dangerous and unstable." If he's on the protagonist's side, then victory's in the bag, and the creative vulgarities can fly freely without caution; unfortunately, the first five minutes Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas spell out the fact that Officer Frank Tenpenny is a very, very bad man. His behind-the-scenes string-pulling gives our hero CJ the mass-murderer status demanded by every Grand Theft Auto installment to date, and Tenpenny's own crimes eventually lead to a full-scale riot the aging hardware of the PlayStation 2 did its best to simulate. Close to ten years later, and Grand Theft Auto as a whole has yet to come up with a more enigmatic villain — or at least one voiced by a guy with some clearly defined snake boundaries.

Since the beginning of videogames, one thing has been clear: marketing executives have no idea what the appropriate time would be to use rap in commercials and advertisements. Or how rap should sound. Or what it should be about. But "having no idea what we're doing" has never stopped an executive, so terrible/awkward raps became one of the cornerstones of the videogame ad industry. These are the 8 worst raps in videogame marketing history.

8. Supersonic Controller

The Supersonic Controller had a lot of hurdles this commercial tried (and failed) to leap: selling a wireless controller when the technology wasn't good enough to make that work, selling a controller shaped like a triangle (great shape for pizza, terrible shape for a controller), and convincing you it would work for the Nintendo – even though it was a third-party non-Nintendo-approved hunk of plastic that would embarrass MadCatz.

And what better way to stumble through this all than with a family-friendly rap (thus defeating the main appeal of rap in the 80's)? The problem is (besides being awful) that the rap can't even muster up the self-confidence to sell itself. They actually include the line "It will do." It's essentially saying that it gets the job done, but "Meh, It Works, Sorta" isn't exactly the ringing endorsement they thought it was.

The entire concept of having animals evolve into insanely-powerful beast monsters by beating the crap out of others in battle (or by being exposed to stones, being traded, etc.) is pretty ridiculous in and of itself. But it's not too difficult suspending your disbelief when the end result is a fire-breathing dragon who remains loyal to you (despite the fact you're forcing it to fight a bird who shoots lightning). But there are some specific evolutions that are extremely weird, even in the already-weird field of Pokemon evolutions. These are the 10 weirdest evolutions in Pokemon.

10. Cubone into Marowak

Cubone's life kinda sucks – he's so upset at the death of his mother (remember, this is an entire species of Pokemon, meaning they all are bereaved over the deaths of each of their individual mothers), that he literally wears her skull, which may not be the most emotionally-healthy coping tactic. Then again, in some deeply, deeply messed up way, his mother is still protecting poor little Cubone – since her skull now acts as his helmet. It's definitely indicative of some kind of creepy Norman Bates/Mother relationship, but it's mostly harmless.

Where it gets weird is when Cubone evolves into Marowak. Essentially, Marowak's just a bigger Cubone, which isn't all that weird. What is weird is that Marowak is defined by having gotten over the death of its mother (remember: AS A SPECIES, Marowaks have ALL gotten over the deaths of their individual mothers), but still wears a skull on its head. But it's specifically NOT its mother's! Meaning…Marowak found some random dead Pokemon's bigger skull and is wearing that now? Something tells me Marowak hasn't quite reached the closure it claims to have.

Time travel has been a super popular theme in movies, books and games ever since the first time machine was invented in the year of our Lord Zenithox 33270XX, so naturally there have been plenty of virtual heroes zipping through the space-time continuum. Even with so many cool games featuring time travel, these eighteen veteran characters stand out for going the distance in the past, present and future. Their heroic chrono-adventures have taught us all that no matter how far into the past or future we go, bad guys and logic puzzles span across all history.

18. Bernard, Hoagie, Laverne (Day of the Tentacle)

Way back in an earlier epoch VH-1 historians now refer to as "the early '90s", the forward-looking game scientists at LucasArts developed Day of the Tentacle. The point-and-click adventure game followed a guy, a girl, and another guy in their efforts to foil a sentient purple tentacle's plot to take over the world. The course of human and tentacle events leads to each character being stranded in the mansion at a different period of time. The game played around with the unique temporal level structure, allowing the player to eventually switch between the three time periods, trade items, and show how the effects of a change to one period could have puzzle-solving consequences in future areas. The game's quirky sense of humor and cartoony visuals masked an educational journey, as the kids playing learned more about the Founding Fathers than they ever would have at school. For instance, did you know that John Hancock made the first bad Woody Allen impression in recorded history in Maniac Mansion over 200 years ago? Knowledge.

Sadly, the untimely demise of LucasArts means that this series is likely…history. More time-travel wordplay to follow.

If you asked a kid what their favorite things were, odds are you'd hear a lot of them say "pizza" and "videogames." Really, most adults would say the same thing – because pizza is (arguably) the best food there is, and videogames are the best things to do while eating food or not eating food. So combining the two seems like a natural fit – and while many have tried to cash in on our collective love of dough combined with sauce and cheese over the years, only a few have done it memorably. These are the 10 Tastiest Pizzas in Videogame History.

10. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

There's a lot of super weird things going on in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. There's an upside-down castle. There's a goofy librarian sitting by himself in a library filled with ghosts and demons that he doesn't seem to notice. Hell – there isn't even a symphony. But the weirdest thing may be the fact that there are a lot of fast food items popping up around the castle, including "New York style pizza." Given that Castlevania takes place in 1797, it seems unlikely that "New York style pizza" would be readily available in Dracula's castle back then, or even exist at all. But since Dracula does have the wizard (hilariously-named wizard, more specifically) Shaft helping him out, maybe it's possible that time and space have been bent to allow some pizza into the mazelike castle. If you hate unnatural magic powers back then, odds are you too would use them to resurrect Dracula and get a fresh Lombardi's pie.

This week saw the release of BioShock Infinite, a game that's notable for many things, but mainly for essentially being one long escort mission that isn't awful. In fact, the game tells you right away to not worry about your escort, and that she can take care of herself. After years of horrible escort missions where you have to protect incompetent bullet-magnets who would sleepwalk through the beaches of Normandy on D-Day, it's hard to express what a joy this is. As a reminder of how well BioShock Infinite pulls this off, let's take a look back at some of the not-so-good escort missions in videogame history.

13. Emma Emmerich (Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty)

So what's the only thing worse than escort missions? Ah yes: water levels. "Stop!" screamed Hideo Kojima. "Let's have a water level escort mission!" Between this and the entire Raiden/Snake switcheroo, Hideo Kojima seems to have made this game in an act of extraordinarily elaborate trolling. Since Emma is also terrified of water, you have to carry her through most of the level, then hold her hand, and get her past bugs (by either getting rid of the bugs while Emma cowers and cries, or – more fun option – knocking her out, because – c'mon – who is THAT afraid of bugs?). And if she's caught by guards, she will literally curl up and scream as loud as she can while being murdered.

Luckily, if you manage to get through the mission, you'll be rewarded with…Emma dying anyways. A great reward because you hate Emma a lot by the end, yet still a great slap in the face, given what you put up with to get her this far. In other words: WELL TROLLED, KOJIMA.

Among the many plagues visited upon gamers over the years, the unresolved cliffhanger ending is one of the worst. Sure, in a game it's the journey that's most important, but would Mario be as popular today if he didn't finally get his cake-baking princess? With the time and hours invested in a game one might think developers would be kind enough to reward us with just a little smidgeon of closure, but too often we're stuck waiting for sequels that may never arrive. The list below includes just a few of the great unfinished game sagas that, unlike this paragraph, never had a fitting end. Actually, even this paragraph never had a

15. Too Human

Like your dystopian robot apocalypse scenarios swimming in Norse mythology? In that case, you're probably one of the very few people who played "Too Human". Developed by Silicon Knights, a studio known for quality titles nobody played like "Eternal Darkness", the series was an action/RPG set in a world in which mankind's war against rampant machinery has left it on the brink of extinction. Survivors huddle in a futuristic metropolis and are watched over by cybernetics-enhanced ubermensch based off Viking gods who seek to end the threat posed by Loki's army – or basically the plot of the movie "Thor" (minus Natalie Portman). The first game was set to be part of a trilogy, ending with Loki uncovering what would likely be a new threat and your character leaving his comrades in a huff after learning a terrible truth about himself and his connection to – oh who cares? Apparently nobody. After ten years in development, crappy reviews and poor sales, it appears that we'll never know what happens to the people of Asgard. Want to play it once just to see what you missed? Too bad! After losing a lawsuit to Epic Games, creators of the game's engine, all extant copies of the game were recalled. So basically the game has become the equivalent of a quickly annulled Vegas wedding: we can't believe we were crazy enough to do it, and now we'll all pretend it never happened.

The launch of the latest SimCity was, to put it mildly, not handled well. To put it spicily, it was a huge unimaginable mess – with people unable to download the game, play the game due to lack of available servers, features being turned off, and with a number of updates released post-launch trying to fix some of the major issues users were experiencing. This didn't go on for just the first few hours of its release though – some of this is still going on, a week after release. For a smaller game and company, this might not be such a surprise – but this is from one of the largest publishers in videogames and one of the biggest franchises in videogames. However, SimCity is not the first game to put users through this kind of launch mess. Here are 9 other games that had terrible launches.

9. World of Warcraft

The game that truly launched MMOs into widespread popularity, and possibly the most profitable game of all-time (also the most life-sucking – it's been played a grand total of 5.93 million years, cumulatively), World of Warcraft started off in a state of total disarray. As the first huge MMO of its kind, Blizzard had no idea what it was walking into, and the servers were instantly overloaded on launch day, with queues reaching the thousands. And even if you did manage to get into the game, everything was slow and glitchy. If this had happened today, it would be a nightmare – SimCity at least has most of their ducks in order a week later – but WoW's woes lasted for over a month, mostly due to outdated servers that were in dire need of upgrading. Thankfully, Blizzard learned their lesson and never had a rocky launch ever agai- OH WAIT…

Satan, El Diablo, EA…he goes by many names, but throughout he is the Devil – an entity of pure evil, usually ruling over Hell, and always causing trouble for the noble heroes of the world. In videogames, it's no different – well, except you can usually defeat him and end evil's reign forever. Here are ten games that took the highway to Hell with devil characters worth button-mashing right back to the underworld, listed in ascending order of soul-rending terror.

10. Devils (Toejam and Earl)

Devils are low-level grunts in the Toejam and Earl universe, so look elsewhere for the moral fright offered by great horror movies and standard Catholic school educations. These red-horned cartoon demons are mixed in with the many Earthlings you need to avoid in the floating-in-space Earth islands you're stranded on. If you were expecting mind-scorching nightmare creatures, please keep in mind you're trying to reassemble your spaceship and return to Planet Funkotron, as a pair of alien rappers who make DJ Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince look like they've seen some shit. It's one of the sillier takes on Satan in gaming, but harshes your vibe just enough to make a fun game trickier (especially when you're caught in a hypnotic hula dance). Still, something tells us this isn't exactly the devil Ozzy Osbourne was singing about.

According to the vast majority of videogames (also: movies, TV, comics, etc.) out there, corporations are mostly huge assholes – constantly trying to wipe out humanity, develop crazy technology, and generally doing all kinds of malevolent acts in the name of the bottom line. They're more than willing to actively murder their customer base, use their employees as glorified guinea pigs, and relentlessly pursue insane goals that must have been really tough to pitch in a board meeting (how many PowerPoints devoted to the pros and cons of a zombie apocalypse have there been?). Below is a list of some of the biggest, meanest job providers to face a miserable third quarter thanks to one plucky hero.

20. Union Aerospace Corporation (Doom)

One of the earliest game corporate villains, the UAC is guilty of conducting research on things they should have known were best left alone. In an attempt to create convenient travel options, the company accidentally unleashed a portal to Hell that turned all of the Martian research station's security personnel into demon zombies. DOOM III, a re-imagining of the original story (with flashlights), adds to the company's shame by making it clear early on that many employees' contracts forcibly induced them to participate in dangerous tests involving portal technology – which sounds like another well-known, but less evil company I know (slightly less evil). The company's corrupt security apparatus systematically wiped out scientists and workers who tried to escape or warn the world about the experiments. And when all Hell (literally) broke loose, the corporate suit sent to clean up the mess makes it clear recovering the expensive technology and erasing evidence of malfeasance trumps the lives of any survivors. Strangely, this is one of the few games where your character not only works for the company, but is also a member of the security force. Although it was your first day, so you didn't get much of a chance to check anything off your immoral to-do list before demons started invading.