The Best and Worst Game Endings on Xbox and Xbox 360

 

SPOILERS!

By the very nature of calling out our favorites (and least favorites), we're treading on spoiler-tastic territory. Proceed with caution if you haven't played the games on these lists.

 

The richest reward for playing a game is the accomplishment you feel when you slop through a tough boss fight, then put down the controller to let the final cinematics rolls. So, which games do we think deserve the shared crown for the most satisfying endings? And which ones simply stunk up the joint?

FIVE BEST ENDINGS

(5) Half-Life 2: Episode Two (The Orange Box)

After you eradicate a seemingly endless supply of Striders and Hunters across White Forest’s huge battleground with experimental sticky explosives, a successful rocket launch closes the huge Combine portal as planned. Just as you think you might actually get away with a happy ending, two Advisors swoop onto the scene and brutally slaughter Eli Vance right in front of his daughter. Dog drives the alien scum off, but it’s too late. The episode ends with Alyx cradling her dead father, and players everywhere are left screaming promises of vengeance.

(4) Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

As you try to escape from Zakhaev’s forces in a jeep, a helicopter gunship takes out a key bridge, leaving you stranded. A gas tanker explodes, the world goes fuzzy, and Imran Zakhaev himself shows up. In one of the most dramatic and intense endings to any shooter, time slows as Captain Price sends his pistol sliding to you across the uneven pavement, and Soap finally gets to plant a few pieces of lead in that murdering bastard’s skull. Rarely has taking out the main bad guy felt so exciting and personally rewarding.

(3) Halo 3

You know you wanted to kill 343 Guilty Spark the minute you met him in Combat Evolved, and you finally got to blow the smug little tin can to kingdom come at the end of the trilogy. After a tense last-moment escape, and a memorial service for our supposedly fallen hero, we got our last look at John-117. As he assumed his lonely place in a cryogenic tank, and floated inexorably toward his next adventure, Master Chief’s final words had a stirring prophetic tilt: “Wake me when you need me.”

(2) Breakdown

Derrick finally defeats Solus, but Nexus turns his own mind against him, and Derrick has to shoot his way through people he’s spent the whole game saving and protecting. In the end, Derrick trusts his heart and mind over his senses, destroys the Nexus, and makes a final tense drive to safety with Alex as Site Zero collapses around them. The final choice to join Alex in her own time was touching, but what stands out in our memory is the tense mix of action and paranoid headtrip that capped off this amazing story’s gameplay.

(1) Mass Effect

Trilogies are often derided for putting off the gratification of a true ending until the third installment, but Mass Effect ’s final moments were more concerned with satisfaction than setting up a sequel. Chasing Saren through the Conduit and to the Citadel Tower delivered some of the best combat encounters in the game, and watching Saren spring back to life to serve Sovereign anew was shocking and momentous. Shepard flies off into the sunset with the full awareness that bigger battles are coming, but securing humanity’s place at the decision-making table felt like a heroic accomplishment.

 

FIVE WORST ENDINGS

 

(5) Hitman: Blood Money

If you opted not to pound buttons or twirl the analog stick during the final credits, Agent 47 descends into a crematorium fire. If you do get the poor guy’s health back up, you slaughter everyone in attendance so no one knows you survived. It’s all downhill from there, though: baldy visits a brothel, expresses interest in whatever’s in the back, and a pair of blood-red curtains descends on the action, leaving you with no useful information whatsoever.

(4) BioShock

If you play nice with the Little Sisters, BioShock turns into a surprisingly sappy visit to the nursing home, where your adopted charges all gaze at you with nauseating affection. If you harvested more than two of the creepy little chicks, Jack gives in to his darkest impulses and slaughters the lot of them for their ADAM stores. For a game in which gray-area moral action plays such a supposedly important role, the black-or-white absolutism of the dual endings feels extraordinarily out of place, and it mars what is otherwise one of the most fulfilling games in recent memory.

(3) Assassin's Creed

After the stealthy gameplay rapidly devolves into a seemingly endless parade of poor swordsmen to slice and dice, Altair defeats Al Mualim to claim a single “Piece of Eden” artifact that can alter men’s perceptions of reality. At this point Altair’s adventure simply shuts off, leaving us only with the Desmond character we know virtually nothing about. That his final moments of play are spent ogling Eagle Vision graffiti filled with obscure references to the apocalypse doesn’t do much to alleviate the letdown.

(2) Halo 2

A bunch of other orbital installations are in danger of being activated, and Master Chief has hitched a high-speed ride on an enemy ship — and then the credits roll. Seemingly taking its final dramatic cues from The Matrix Reloaded, Halo 2 doesn’t so much come to a conclusion as simply arrive at an abrupt and insultingly unsatisfying halt. Players were none too pleased to have to wait almost three years to learn how their favorite Spartan would finish the fight.

(1) Original Xbox

Production on the graphics unit that powered the original Xbox stopped months before the Xbox 360 even launched, marking the premature end to a console that undoubtedly still had plenty of life left in it. The PS2 continued to sell well even after the current generation was in full swing, and there’s every reason to believe the Xbox could’ve enjoyed a similar run. Too bad we’ll never know.