Spending $60 on a bad game can be a pretty tough pill to swallow. Putting countless hours into a great one only to find that it falls apart at the very end, however, is considerably worse. After all, that time could have instead been spent replaying The Witcher 3 or Final Fantasy X for the seventeenth time.
The thing about an awful ending in a great game is that it can be incredibly difficult to see coming and is thus almost impossible to emotionally prepare for. Knowing that beloved protagonists may never receive a satisfying conclusion to their character arcs can be truly devastating, as too can being left in a seemingly permanent state of limbo.
10 Fallout 3
The overall narrative in Fallout 3 isn't great at the best of times, but it's a hell of a lot better than the ending. Upon completing the game, players get a simple scene explaining that the Lone Wanderer left Vault 101 to look for their father and then a few other short snippets that are dependent on some of the decisions players made during their playthrough.
Purchasing and completing the Broken Steel DLC does provide a more satisfying conclusion, but even that doesn't come close to the brilliant finale of Fallout: New Vegas. Even if it did, players ideally wouldn't have to shell out extra money just to experience an ending that doesn't suck.
9 Mass Effect 3
The Mass Effect games do a wonderful job of empowering their players by making it feel as though every decision matters. This works incredibly well throughout the vast majority of the original trilogy, although the concept falls apart a little right at the very end.
Were it any other game, the ending of Mass Effect 3 wouldn't actually be too bad, but knowing that so much narrative potential has been sacrificed for the sake of wrapping everything up neatly came as a real kick in the teeth to those who'd been with the series since the very first game. The game's extended cut does rectify the problem somewhat, although it came far too late for many series fans.
8 Assassin's Creed 3
There must be something that makes third entries more difficult to wrap up cleanly than others, as this is also an issue that Assassin's Creed 3 had trouble with. Many consider the game to be one of the worst in the series as it is, but while that is perhaps a matter for debate, that its ending is straight up awful is something that most fans can generally agree on.
First, Connor casually murders Charles Lee over a drink in what is perhaps one of the most anticlimactic endings to a character arc in the history of the series. Next, secondary protagonist Desmond sacrifices his life to save the world from a fiery apocalypse, because reasons.
7 Bionic Commando
Bionic Commando is a pretty cool game with a decent combat system and a fairly compelling, albeit, unspectacular, narrative. To cut a long story short, Major Nathan Spencer agrees to assist the FSA in exchange for information about his missing wife. It sounds good on paper, but in practice it leaves an awful lot to be desired.
It's eventually revealed that Nathan's wife has been with him the whole time, but not in that corny figurative way that movies love to force down their audience's throats. Believe it or not though, that would actually be an improvement. No, part of Emily is literally alive inside Nathan's bionic arm; a premise that is almost as laughable as the hero's hair cut.
6 Borderlands
Borderlands spends pretty much the entire game hyping up the contents of the ancient vault and pretty much everything that the player does throughout the game is centered around gaining access to it. When the time finally comes to crack open the vault though, rather than loot, they're instead faced with yet another generic and tedious boss.
Defeating The Destroyer grants some slightly above average loot and then a quick cut-scene explaining that the vault will be sealed shut for another 200 years. Knowing that some other poor schmuck is going to get tricked into opening it again once that countdown is complete only makes things more depressing.
5 Batman: Arkham Asylum
One of the things that makes The Joker such a memorable villain is his brilliant mind. He is the only DCU villain who has been able to consistently outsmart Batman and is even able to turn the Caper Crusader's own moral compass against him. It's for this reason that the ending to Batman: Arkham Asylum is so very out of character.
Rather than trying to trick the bat, the villain takes some magical serum which mutates him into a muscular freak. Sure, it looks kind of cool, but it ends up being a fairly generic fight once all is said and done. For as excellent as the Batman: Arkham games typically are, this one lets both the side and the character down quite a lot.
4 Fable 2
Although Halo was undoubtedly the star of the show when it came to the OG Xbox, Fable was definitely one of the stronger members of the supporting cast. The core gameplay loop was incredibly enjoyable and the morality based system offered a new and novel way to approach console RPGs. Unfortunately, the narrative wasn't great.
In truth, this is a problem that the series has struggled with since its very inception, although it's Fable 2 where the problem is perhaps most evident. Although there are a few slight variations, the game's ending basically boils down to choosing whether to save the protagonist's loved ones or becoming filthy stinking rich. It's good that there was a choice, at least, although it's a little too on the nose to really matter in the grand scheme of things.
3 Half-Life 2: Episode 2
Had Valve known that Episode 3 of Half-Life 2 was going to be cancelled, one suspects that the developer would have done a much better job of wrapping up Episode 2. Then again, given how popular the franchise is and how much demand there is for a third Half-Life game, it's possible that the creative minds at Valve just have a very different way of looking at things than the average person. Either way, Gordon's story remains very much in limbo.
Following an underwhelming final boss, the hero is thanked by the G-Man before quickly being shoved back into stasis with a vague promise of "further assignments." Sadly, however, these still have not arrived. Ending on a cliffhanger like this isn't too bad when the next part of the story is only a year or so away. Given that it's now been almost 15 though, it kind of has to go down as shoddy storytelling.
2 Halo 2
There are times when Halo 2 feels more like a Marvel movie than a video game. Not because of the stunning action scenes though (although there are plenty of those), but instead because the game kind of serves as once big advertisement for the next one. Well, the ending does, anyway.
Sure, the self-contained story within Halo 2 is perfectly fine, but the ending has a lot of issues. It's not quite as bad as Half-Life 2 as Master Chief and the player do eventually get to take the fight down to earth, but that doesn't make the somewhat sudden climax of the game any less jarring.
1 Vanquish
Thanks to its fast-paced game play and its wonderful visuals, Vanquish had no trouble making a strong impression when it first launched back in 2010. Heck, the tenth anniversary version still holds up pretty well today; at least right up until the ending, anyway.
Where Halo 2 wraps up one storyline only to immediately tease another, Vanquish never really gets around to settling its main plot. The bad guy kind of just escapes and the hero Sam remains lost in space like an ironclad member of the Swiss Family Robinson. Perhaps a sequel was at some point planned, but, as a standalone story, it's an incredibly unfulfilling one.