Top 10 Worst Video Game Endings

You spent hours and hours building up to a grand finale, and that anticipation was rewarded with total crap. Welcome to WatchMojo's list of the "Top 10 Worst Video Game Endings."

As you may have guessed, this list contains major spoilers, and is intended for people who have already played, or have no desire to play these games to their final unfulfilling conclusion. You have been warned!

#10: 'Super Mario Sunshine' (2002)

Kicking off our list is the ending that proved that a core Mario game should never even attempt the sort of depth that necessitates dialog from a character like Bowser. The result was an unprecedented level of badly dubbed 80s-esque Saturday morning cartoon show cheese and one hell of a weak sign off. I mean, clearly the sacrifice of a water gun sounded like a tearjerker on paper…

As far as pointless slogs go, Resistance 2 probably takes the ultimate prize. Having played through the campaign as Nathan Hale, who is struggling with an alien virus, gamers expected to find a cure at the end. Instead, Hale becomes totally possessed and begins to say some pretty unsettling things. So his friend puts a bullet in his brain and the screen goes black. Gee, that was satisfying…

Half-Life 2 may have been a tour-de-force, but it’s ending was a jumble of loose ends. So when 3 follow-up “episodes” were announced, fans eagerly awaited a proper ending to their beloved series, with the horrific cliff hanger at the end of episode 2 only further wetting the their appetites. That was in 2007. Years upon years later, dedicated fans are still left wallowing in frustration over this de facto conclusion.

As a vault hunter, you and your friends just spent dozens of hours fighting your way across an alien landscape in search of the Vault, said to contain unimaginable treasure. The suspense was killer, and apparently, so too was the prize. That’s right, inside the vault was a giant freaking monster. No, it wasn’t guarding the treasure; there is no treasure. I guess we should have seen this coming, the planet is called Pandora… doy!

Bioshock contains one of the best twists ever found in video games, almost overshadowing the one found in System Shock 2. But, after practicing their golf swing with Andrew Ryan, players are forced to keep slogging through what was definitely the weakest part of the game up until that point. Then they get a crushingly standard boss fight and a choice of 2 cookie cutter endings. Hooray for morality choices.

#5: 'Ghostbusters' (1984)

There are way too many horrible retro game text endings to list here, so instead we’ll sum them all up with this one. Here it goes, the ultimate worst message. Far from resembling a “great game,” Ghostbusters never really had anything to do with the theme of “justice.” These were ghosts after all, not criminals. So even if the message made sense, what’s with these typos! “Conglaturation”…seriously?

It may have been the middle entry in the trilogy, but if you spent big money and stood in line at midnight to get it, then you expect the fantastic game to have a satisfying conclusion. Instead it leaves off with a sudden black screen cliffhanger! Even worse, Chief had already signed out at the end of the second-to-last stage, so the finale was an Arbiter level…. Did they run out of money or something?

This 50 hour role-playing game had you spend a great deal of time developing your relationships with the supporting characters just to bottleneck at a cheap ending in which absolutely none of that matters. No matter what you do, Kreia collapses and the planet blows up. You never find out why she turned out to be a Sith lord or why you decided to blow up the planet. Seriously, what the hell just happened?

This epic trilogy is tightly focused on the theme of personal choice, even going so far as to carry your decisions and characters over between installments on your quest to stop the Reapers. So when players got to the end and had to pick from one of 3 cataclysmic, all encompassing endings, they were not happy. Neither were they happy when their 100 plus hours of gameplay spanning 3 titles wrapped up in a 2-minute cut scene. What happened to the rest of your crew? Why did the Mass relays have to blow? Does Garrus ever complete his stamp collection? We NEED TO KNOW.

#1: 'Ghosts 'n Goblins' (1985)

Taking the top spot on our list is the nearly impossible 8-bit game that pulled gaming’s most infamous fast one. Here, you finish the entire game only be told that the final fight was an illusion, before sending you back to the beginning! Only by beating the game again immediately, as there is no save option, can you see the real ending. Adding insult to injury, even that read like a badly translated fortune cookie.

For more entertaining and spoiler-filled Top 10s, be sure to subscribe to WatchMojo.com.