7 Video Games Where Every Ending Is The BAD Ending

Truly one of the most important aspects of a video game is the feeling that it leaves the player with upon completion.

After spending upwards of hundreds of hours reveling in the worlds, battles, and bosses of the title, gamers are going to be more than a little salty if a title ends with a cut to black with white text reading "and they all did some stuff and I guess the land was saved, cheers for your money suckers" (especially if it was accompanied by a little farty trombone slide).

You could have delivered the best narrative and done so through the lens of some exceptional characters, but if you can't stick the landing it's all anyone is going to talk about.

Yet what's even more of a downer than endings that peace out without much effort, are those that put concerted amounts of work into making you feel utterly terrible.

This is where the games we're covering today step in, as each is a masterclass in sitting the player down and pointing furiously to a whiteboard with only the words "we're al fucked" written on it in huge scrawling letters. So don't get your hopes up as if you do these games will dash them expertly.

Ahhh XCOM, a heart attack delivered with a side of RNG !*$%. My type of meal.

I have feasted upon this ripe and succulent buffet of pain for years now and even though the series has continued to fart in my open mouth with the likes of Chimera and XCOM Legends I still will proclaim my love for the prior tight-as-hell squad-based experiences.

That being said XCOM 2 really started on a bit of a bleak note, didn't it? And by this I mean you are told you lost the war with the aliens and the entire world has been taken over and enslaved by this extraterrestrial menace.

It's honestly a great starting point gameplay-wise because it means that you're on the back foot from the off, but it does paint the events of the original game in a new light, as here in XCOM: Enemy Unknown, no matter whether you saved the Earth from destruction or just bought us more time from the alien threat, the sequel states that canonically you done failed my friend and now we're all dealing with E.T jamming that extra-long finger right into humanities eyes.

Long story short, XCOM is the type of franchise to punish you for winning a game by telling you "Actually no you didn't"