I just finished Bioshock, and it’s a great game, but the ending felt a little lacking. A lot of shooters, even great ones, seem to have crappy endings (I’m looking at you, Half-Life).
Nominate your all-time favorite ending in a first-person shooter.
I’ll go with the first Call of Duty for the PC.
Running up on the roof of the capitol building in Berlin and watching my comrades plant the Russian flag in the building, I actually got goose bumps. Seems corny, but that moment really had an impact for me in a way that games usually don’t manage to pull off.
When your character chooses self-sacrifice over the corrupting powers of Godhood
Which is unfortunately instantly negated with the next scene:
Which totally without explanation shows him having survived his suicide-dive into the sun…what did he do, throw open the door and duck and roll past?!?
After you destroy GladOS and make your way outside, GladOS’s backup systems activate and sing you a nice little tune full of her trademark passive-aggressiveness
I liked the ending of the shareware version of Doom. No simple “Buy the full thing!” message, you get mauled by a horde of hellish creatures, going down in a blaze of bazooka fire or chainsaw clippings
I liked Bioshock’s also, I’d become a bit emotionally attached to saving all of the little girls, and saving them and getting to be a surrogate parent in the final cutscene was the perfect ending.
Doom’s was short and sweet, but brilliant. The slow-pan to the bunny on a stake.
