10 Bleak Game Over Screens That Crushed You

9. Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns Of The Patriots

An icon of the stealth genre, the Metal Gear franchise has maintained a strong fanbase to this day. From their winding stories to the little details added in by their creator, the series is well established across the board.

Metal Gear Solid has always been known for its mission failed screens. Characters would often chime in over the radio, desperately trying to raise the protagonist and realising what has happened with horror. Yet for the fourth entry Kojima went a step further.

As a very downbeat and unusually depressing tale, Guns Of The Patriots features the icon of the series slowly withering away. Old Snake's final mission tasks him with saving the world before bowing out for good, battling accelerated aging and stiff joints all the way. The world itself is on the verge of total chaos, having been planted under a state of endless war between PMCs and rebel groups.

Triggering an alert and knocking your life gauge down to zero brings a grim conclusion. As Old Snake passes, Otacon's horrified yells over the radio and the memory flashbacks hammer home that all is lost. With different themes and images for each of the game's five acts, dying is something you really want to avoid.

In this post: 
Mass Effect 3
 
First Posted On: 
Contributor

A tough but fair writer and critic broadly covering games, movies and just about every type of entertainment media. Spent a good part of the last seven years blogging and more recently, making amateur videos under "The Cainage Critique". You can follow my work on my website https://robc25.wixsite.com/thecainagecritique and my YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCftJ6WcozDaECFfjvORDk3w