20 of the most disappointing game endings

Game endings. They can make or break the player's experience, but sometimes developers hit us with a finale so weak that it makes us sick in our mouths a little. Dave Cook has a look at 20 particularly heinous game endings.

Spoilers, obviously.

Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days

Thanks Theendingman.

So abrupt you can't help but feel you're being had as part of some cruel joke, the hat-drop ending in Kane & Lynch 2 felt like developer IO Interactive was throwing up its arms and shouting 'We're done.' Seriously, after lots of shooting, getting stripped naked and cut up (a lot), and more PG-13 antics, our despicable anti-heroes simply board a plane and leave.

That's it? What about about the battalion of cops surely waiting for them at the next airport? No, we'll just ignore the numerous felonies involved with taking live firearms onto a passenger jet shall we? Fine, moving on.

Borderlands

Thanks THEJEMS42's channel

This is a long game, so you'd expect there to be some mind-blowing conclusion lying at the end of all that loot and death. Nope, what you get is a boss fight against an ancient vault beast and some lines of dialogue explaining that you had to be there when the chamber opened to stop it. You then get a short scene of Claptrap turning evil for the first DLC expansion and then you're thrown back into the endgame. The lack of consequence and context is remarkable.

Aliens Colonial Marines

Thanks MrGlennDK.

Picking holes in this game is like kicking a toddler while it's down, but all of Aliens: Colonial Marines' final boss fight and following cut-scene are simply woeful, a real kick in the teeth after seeing the buggy campaign through to the end. Your final showdown with the alien queen is less of a boss fight and more of a weak stealth section, as you attempt to hurl the beast out into the recesses of space. It's poorly designed and lacking in tension.

Then, you come face to face with Weyland who we all know by this point is another android and not a real man. It makes the reveal fall flat on its face, knocking all of its teeth out in the process. Hicks - who we still can't accept is alive after having his face burned off by acid in the film - and your pals hack into the android imposter through Bishop. He then says that he managed to download "everything." What is everything? We're told nothing. Game over, man.

Batman Arkham Ayslum

Thanks pocketfudgy.

Oh Rocksteady, your 3D Metroidvania take on Batman was almost the definitive comic book love-letter until mutant Joker showed up. Batters is a tough guy, so it makes sense for him to fight a formidable foe at the end of his quest, but what we got was Joker tripping balls on Titan formula. He looks ridiculous and presents players with little challenge thanks to his predictable attack patterns, not to mention all of the medical questions raised throughout.

Does he just shrink down to size without any serious medical ramifications? We know from Batman: Arkham City that Joker's a bit poorly, but he just sort of deflates back to normal after the fight. The only saving grace is the sight of Killer Croc's claw swiping more Titan at the end, but that doesn't come to pass in the sequel. It just felt a bit, well, rushed.

Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy

Thanks MythicalFlop.

Oh man, the acting in this makes Arnold Schwarzenegger's Commando look like high art, but that's besides the point. We see hero Nick Scryer suddenly proclaiming to remember "everything," whatever that is and then using some mad mind power to fell a group of choppers. What happens next? We don't know because the screen cuts out with a 'To be continued' message and the sequel never got made. Brilliant, cheers guys.

Rage

Thanks CoreGaming.

Some people like this one, but there's a lot of hatred for id Software's ending to Rage. It sees your Ark Survivor enter Capital Prime in the hopes of raising all of the remaining Ark installations on Earth, and thereby forming an army to fight back against the Authority. Makes sense doesn't it? You'd probably like to see what that uprising looks like wouldn't you? Well, too bad.

The survivor activates the release for all of the planet's Arks and we get treated to a painfully short cinematic that sees a satellite in orbit. It then summons all of the buried facilities and we see them starting to rise out of the wasteland soil. One of the Ark doors open, the camera flies in and then the credits roll. So did our guy survive or what? Hello? John Carmack can you hear me? Ah wait, he's off to Oculus isn't he? Oh well.

Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty

Thanks ThreeKnightJTV

The messages in Kojima's long, drawn out ending aren't bad but they're told in the most verbose manner. This ending is 17 minutes long, and it starts with Solidus falling to his death after a katana battle, then trundles on through awkward dialogue, weak acting from Raiden and some live action scenes of people living their daily lives. There's even a close up of a horse in there.

Metal Gear Solid 2's finale is unbearably long and stumbles through a clunky script, but Snake's final monologue about leaving things behind in the digital age was actually quite profound for its time. The sentiment is there, but it could have been much shorter and eloquently put. Sometimes endings are too short, sometimes they are too long, other times they're just told in an ineffective manner. This is the latter.

Crackdown

Thanks StartiSomething

After ridding Pacific City of crime, Crackdown flips on a light switch and reveals that your agency was evil all along, and that its war on crime was only waged to give it space to control the streets. You're treated to a minute of voice-over which explains the plausible yet last-minute scheme before the game ends. It's just too abrupt and weak to be satisfactory, especially if you spent ten years finding all those Agility Orbs. Rubbish.

Dead Rising

Thanks The King's Videos

Let's be clear on this; Dead Rising is not an easy game. It requires lots of trial and error, restarting, anger and stress to reach that ultimate 72-hour mode ending. You need to do everything correctly and ensure that you miss very little to achieve this finale, and all that happens in the end is that Frank's rescue chopper crashes. He slumps back on the mall roof as zombies approach. Thanks for nothing, Capcom.

Bionic Commando

Thanks JUNIO2RBA4RRON

Grin's 2009 Bionic Commando reboot was a darker affair than Capcom's original, but it had some pretty stand-out moments, not to mention a wicked difficulty curve. But it also features an ending that left many gamers coming away confused, underwhelmed and irritated. The problem? Spencer's arm is actually his dead wife.

No really, this is true. It's explained that bionic limbs need to connect with the bearer on some physical and emotional level for them to function, and who better to sync with Spencer than his wife? It's suggested that his wife's body was used to help craft the arm, and it makes the chase to find her come to an unsatisfying halt. Although there's an air of sadness about the revelation, it's maybe not the ending many had hoped for. File it under 'hokum.'

Fallout 3

Thanks TheDarkLegacy

This can go one of two ways, depending on how you played through the game, so we're talking specifically about the ending where the Lone Wanderer gives their life to activate Project Purity. The concept of the hero selflessly giving their life so that humanity can drink clean water again is noble, but it's all over so fast, and in some cases you'll have a follower with you - but you could only send them in your place if you had the Broken Steel DLC installed.

Super mutant Fawkes is radiation-immune so he could do this without issue, or you could send Lyons to her death instead. Either way, it's all a bit abrupt, with only a short montage of images and voice-over discussing what happened afterwards. Then you buy Broken Steel and play it to find your hero survived in the end. It's a bit of a damp conclusion, more underwhelming than out-right terrible.

Too Human

Thanks WhiteCloverXIII

In some ways it's a shame that Too Human will never get a sequel, as it could have blossomed into a beautiful swan of a trilogy, but Silicon Knights folded like soggy cardboard and the franchise imploded. The ending is one of those 'to be continued' affairs that offers very little in the way of resolution, as the background extras of Thor share in a round of grog and some hearty banter before Balder starts crying. Well, not really crying, he just gets in the huff, breaks a table and walks off. Erm... thanks mate?

The one glimmer of hope in this pale resolution comes right at the end. For a fleeting moment we see a giant looming over the shot in a snowy terrain, and then the whole thing fades to black. It was later confirmed that a sequel was planned called Too Human: Rise of the Giants, so there's a connection to that final image, but that's the only positive note here. The rest is just dull, badly-acted and offers little in the way of gratification.

Assassin's Creed

Thanks TK Elite

We pained over this one a little, because the Altair portion of the finale isn't all that bad. Leave it to Desmond to chuck his dick in the gears and bring the whole thing to a grinding halt. Things start off promisingly enough, as the Templars allow Altair passage to take down his corrupt mentor Al Mualim and stop him from using the Piece of Eden. Once old greybeard is dead, Altair sees a map of the planet projected from the device, showing the locations of all the other pieces worldwide.

We then cut back to the modern day to find Abstergo honcho Warren Vidic explaining that the company is going to use this information to find all the pieces, before leaving Desmond alone in the Animus lab. His latent Eagle Vision kicks in to find Subject 16's blood smeared over the walls, painting cryptic nonsense that ultimately bore little relevance to subsequent games. Desmond acts a little shocked - in an oddly-phoned in delivery from Nolan North - and the game fades out. The lack of clarity is irksome.

Killzone 3

Thanks Santaeid.

HOLY S**T! DID YOU SEE THAT? THE WHOLE PLANET OF HELGHAN NUKED AND BILLIONS DEAD? Oh wait, the one guy they were trying to kill survived. Yes, it was one of those annoying epilogue-style second endings that Marvel films are fond of these days. We wouldn't have been surprised if Samuel L. Jackson turned up and offered Stahl a place in The Avengers in some third, post-credits scene. It was just a weak example of endings keeping trilogies open for a fourth game.

Mass Effect 3

Thanks Tvattsvamp

Our controversy scanners are reading off the charts with this one, because some of our team really liked the original, ambiguous ending to Mass Effect 3 because it let us make up our own mind about everything that followed Shepard's demise. It's clear that the internet at large took massive, entitled offence to BioWare's original draft, but this was one case where said entitlement was hard to downplay. After all, you had paid for three games and waited many years to see this story through.

The abrupt, binary nature of Shepard's final choice was met with a short scene that told the player very little about life after the Reaper attacks. BioWare's new ending changed that by showing us the results of our moral decisions, and offering a deal of actual resolution. Others argued that the whole game was an ending in itself, as it tied up all of the main characters in their own story arcs. We agree though, the original was too short and limp to cut it.

Mirror's Edge

Thanks Joyo17

DICE's courier-em-up was more than just a modern reboot of Paperboy, but it was also quite short. Faith emerges on the roof of a giant skyscraper to save her sister Kate from Jacknife, who is trying to drag her into a waiting helicopter. There's a bit of hammy back and forth between both sides, and then the chopper takes off, prompting Faith to leap towards it. She grabs hold and sends the damn thing spinning out of control.

Jacknife is thrown to his death, the chopper explodes and both sisters share a hug. That's it. We get a little bit of audio exposition during the credits revealing that Faith and Kate are still on the run and that the Project Icarus training program is ramping up, rather than going away. So not only did Faith fail, her actions have made life for the runners even more miserable. We're hoping the reboot will give us a better ending.

Crysis

Thanks Ultrarama.

This is one of those endings that feels more like a cut-scene before the final level, rather than a conclusion itself. Nomad destroys the alien warship and watches on as it sinks into the ocean from his chopper. The high-fives are short lived as a transmission confirms that Prophet is still alive somewhere within the island's energy field. Nomad says, "We're going back," the chopper turns around and we don't get to see what happens before the screen fades to black. It only feels like half an ending.

Halo 2

Thanks Jorge Combaluzier

Speaking of half-endings, Halo 2's notorious finale follows in a long tradition of abrupt conclusions that don't really give us much to go on. There's some pay-off when 343 Guilty Spark reveals that the Ark is the key to firing the Halo rings, but when we finally see Master Chief again we find him on the Prophet of Truth's ship.

When asked what he's doing there he just replies, "Sir, finishing this fight." So, what does that mean? Where are you off to next? Can you pick us up some snacks on the way? Oh never mind, he's gone. The post-credits scene with Cortana is equally as vague, and fails to give us much in the way of iron-clad clarity.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2

Thanks ♥ tPJ's kick *ss Channel! ♥

Good lord, there's just so much talking. This is one of those endings that tells you what happens rather than actually showing you, which would have been better. Kreia dispenses plenty of foresight into what will happen to your companions after the game ends, and talks her way through many multiple choice dialogue options. There's no other imagery apart from a scene of your ship going off into space before the credits roll. It's just a bit dull.

Ghostbusters

Thanks Artificialraven

This one's a classic. After forcing players through a meat-grinder of managing budgets, driving across New York in Ecto-1 and barely catching that many ghosts, you're treated to an anti-climactic scene in which the team ascend the staircase of Gozer's tower. It's a hellish slog up flight after flight of stairs, executed by hammering buttons as fast as you can. Your reward is a woeful boss encounter that goes on for far too long.

Then, once Gozer is defeated, you'd think there would be some kind of recompense for your efforts; a Bill Murry gag, a pixelated rendition of Walter Peck being smothered in the Marshmallow Man's gooey entrails. Nope, you get this:

Mother puss bucket...

Truly the benchmark in bad endings. With that, all that's left to say is thanks for reading, and be sure to share your own worst endings below.