Snail Games unveils a cadre of malicious foes in new AoW screenshots

Every great hero needs a great villain. Holmes has Moriarty, Superman has Lex Luthor and Spider Man has every oddball in New York.

Today, Snail Games wanted to make it abundantly clear that Age of Wushu will give you plenty of opportunities to prove your valor against some particularly unpleasant miscreants.

Want to know what a wretched hive of scum and villainy the Longmen Inn is? Outside the Great Wall, this brigand is holding children hostage. If you want to make sure you detest a bad guy at first glance, making them child kidnappers is certainly going to get any worthy hero's blood boiling.

The bosses will also get their own bios, so you can read up on what kind of horrific perpetrator of evil they are and see what fighting style and comparative strength they can muster as you hunt them down -- pro tip, avoid Xing's hammer.

Each boss has his bio available via the Mission menu where you can also access the instances within which they lurk. Do you have the Kung Fu prowess to take down this assortment of vile villains?

You can sign up for beta right now, while Age of Wushu is due to launch Spring 2013.

Scott "Jarimor" Hawkes, Editor in Chief