Pretty much like Slade in Teen Titans without all the filler episodes to distract you from it. I like that kind of villain, but I did feel like his defeat was a rip-off.
A lot like Slade, yes, but at least Slade was a manipulator and his plans were FOR Robin. It's been a while since I saw that series but I remember most of his plans being him farting around playing mind games and not actually achieving world domination. And yes, I do believe his defeat was kind of crap. And, to be honest, by Season 3, I was sick to death of the guy. There's only so much smug self-entitlement that I can take before I cry foul. He was a cool villain with a solid voice actor, but geez man! The Joker called - he wants his ham back.
And you do have a point about that kind of villain in general. A good story needs a good villain that feels like a threat, but it's a careful balancing act to pull off. If you don't make the villain menacing enough, he ends up a joke like Hector Con Carne. If you make the villain TOO menacing, he ends up a Villain Sue like Amon. If the villains' too weak, defeating him has no meaning. If the villain's too strong, then defeating him feels like cheating.
It's such a fiddly balancing act, I really believe only the best of writers can pull it off. But the thing is, this only happens if you make the story ABOUT the villain, which I frankly think is a mistake. A good story needs a good villain as much as it needs a good hero, and said good hero can be a very good damper on the fine balancing of the villain. The more of the story's conflict that you shift onto the hero, the less the villain has to carry the tone. That's why everyone remembers that one scene where Spider-Man has to lift something heavy to the point it keeps being reused over and over, and why "with great power come great responsibility" has endured for so long. When you give the hero his own story arc, he can carry much of the story and you end up with a clash of equals, in storytelling terms.
To my eyes, the best hero/villain stories are the ones that set both hero and villain on an adventure of their own, such that their paths cross inescapably into a climactic confrontation. Avatar: The Last Airbender does this expertly, both with Aang vs. Zuko, then Aang vs. Azula, then finally Aang vs. Ozai... Even if Mark Hamil's Ozai really isn't a "character." There are a number of "storyline crossovers" along the way with the various other non-title characters, and that's what the series is built on. And that's where the Legend of Korra fails completely. Despite carrying her name, the series really isn't "about" Korra. Or about the Avatar, for that matter. For much of the plot, Korra is basically carryo-on, being dragged through the plot by her hair, accomplishing nothing, achieving nothing and learning nothing. It's Amon's story through and through. You CAN tell a story that's all about the villain if you do it right, but it's VERY difficult, and the Legend of Korra tries so hard that it explodes all over the bedsheets and accomplishes worse than nothing.
I think you may have just clued me into a central source of the "fatalism" problem in modern day video game writing - it's so enamoured with the villains that it fails to give the heroes their half of the story to carry, and a villain-centric story is difficult to write when you put the player in the hero's role. And it doesn't have to be this way - look at Half-Life 2. Gordon Freeman is basically a silent protagonist with zero personality and no say over the plot, yet the game nevertheless tells its entire narrative around him. Bad guys exist - the G-Man, Breen, the Combine, etc. - but this is very clearly Freeman's story. And even THAT has suffered with Episodes 1 and 2 with the introduction of the "Advisors." All of a sudden we have these floating grubs that cause the otherwise tough Alyx to almost break down crying and eat Eli's brain, Starship Trooper's style, and then they dropped the ball and didn't make a sequel for coming on a decade.
I'm getting off track, but I think much of the problem lies in games' preoccupation with villains. They spend too much time inserting the game's villain as the source of all problems, then don't let the player solve them because we need to make the villain a menace. By the end, said villain is either a massive let-down (Bioshock, I'm looking at you!) or a Villain Sue, and it's all because they wrote themselves into a corner. A villain who's never wrong and never loses is a villain that YOU cannot write. I'm looking at you, game designers - YOU cannot write that kind of villain. Maybe someone somewhere can, but YOU can't. So figure out how to make your villain a real character, with his own ups and downs, his own wins and losses, his own moments of despair and moments of inspiration. Make the story as rough on the villain as it is on the hero. Make this a villain I can respect as much as I revile him. Make me want to defeat him not because he disgusts me, but because it's the right thing to do. Then you'll get me invested enough to both want to see him fall and not feel robbed out of closure at the same time.
Darrin Wade is a perfect example of a Villain Sue, actually, at least in the SSA1. Like Amon, everything he tries succeeds and he manages to win pretty much hands down, only for the game to basically do a 180 and go "Well, it was fun but we can't actually have him win. Go beat his ass." Through and through, it was his story, and all the Freedom Phalanx was there to do was serve as fall guys so we could demonstrate how awesome Wade is. And sure, the fight in space is cool and all, but as for closure? What closure? Rularuu beat Wade like we knew he would. What we beat was an Aspect of Rularuu. Wade lost before we ever got to him, there's no closure. And did the Phalanx learn anything? Of course not, because it wasn't their story. And the player character? Nope, not our story, either. It was Wade's story.
Maybe someone could have written that kind of story well, but Doc Aeon wasn't him. And that's not a dig against the guy - that kind of story is a bitch to write. What I hold against him is putting himself in a situation where he HAD to tell that kind of story. It speaks of inexperience, because once you've tried to write a story like this - and I have tried and I have failed - you learn pretty quickly to just not do that. If you have to have an unbeatable villain, then just don't use him as the story focus and tell the story of the other characters surviving in that kind of situation. Don't make it a fight between a Villain Sue and a Butt Monkey hero. There's no way that this will end up as anything other than fatalist, and unless you're VERY good at pulling off fatalist stories, you're going to fail.
Basically, gaming's current preoccupation of villain-centric writing is turning games fatalist.