The Game Show is back with the full crew this week, and the topic is video game endings. Everybody brought their favorites, we got through four rounds of picks, and then we squeezed in a lightning round of the worst before the clock ran out.
The best video game endings, as picked by the crew
Break went old school with Chrono Trigger, Super Metroid, Portal, the original Metroid and Mega Man 2. Chrono Trigger gets the nod for having more than a dozen endings before New Game Plus was even a term. Super Metroid gets it for the baby Metroid sacrifice, which is still one of the best wordless sequences Nintendo has ever made.
Jack stuck with the classics too. Bad Dudes, Final Fantasy VI, Metal Gear Solid 4, Doom and Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus. Final Fantasy VI was his original number one, and it’s hard to argue. Every party member gets a moment during the escape and none of it needs dialogue.
Jess brought the tearjerkers. The Last of Us, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life, What Remains of Edith Finch and the Trespasser DLC for Dragon Age: Inquisition. Harvest Moon was the surprise of the night. You die at the end. Nobody at the table saw that coming.
Logan’s picks were about the feeling of finishing something. Mario Kart Wii, Subnautica, Minecraft, Dino Run and Pac-Man, which landed on both his best and worst lists.
Darria went modern with Alan Wake 2, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, Horizon Forbidden West, the Burning Shores DLC and a childhood pick, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone on PlayStation 1, which she could never finish as a kid because she didn’t have a memory card.
The worst video game endings lightning round
Break: Mega Man X6, because the whole game is a mess and the ending puts a bow on it.
Jack: Bubsy, Mass Effect 3 and the original Pac-Man.
Jess: Resident Evil 7, for whoever that was pretending to be Chris Redfield, and Skyrim, because she genuinely could not remember how it ends.
Logan: Skyrim, for crashing before he ever reached the ending.
Darria: Hogwarts Legacy. Great game, flat finish.
This week in gaming news
The big one is the Xbox layoffs. Another 268 jobs cut, Halo moving to Activision, Obsidian folding into Bethesda, and Playground merging with Turn 10. Jack and Break both know people affected by this round, and the conversation got personal.
Also this week: Control Resonant launches tomorrow, Jess saw the new Resident Evil movie and says it’s the first live action one that actually feels like the games, Sega’s Sonic Team head revealed the company almost cancelled Sonic before the first movie saved it, Tokyo Game Show wrapped with Kojima announcing Bill Skarsgård for Physint, and the DLSS 5 leak has people running it on PS1 emulators.
And yes, someone open sourced a fruit fly brain and it now plays Minecraft.
Watch live
The Game Show airs every Wednesday at 9:00 PM Central on the BreakmanX YouTube channel. Catch the Pokémon Crystal co-stream with Jess and Break on Mondays at 6:00 PM Central, and join the Discord to argue with us about any of these picks.
