18 Greatest Last Levels In Gaming History

1. Suicide Mission - Mass Effect 2

If an entire game is centred around the build-up to a single mission, then you better hope that said mission is actually worth the 20 hours of preparation players have had to put into it. Pinning the entire plot of Mass Effect 2 around a single "Suicide Mission" could have been disastrous for Bioware had they slipped up, but fortunately the developers managed to pull of the impossible.

The level works so well because it actually lives up to its provocative name. Although more missions than you can count will have been described as "suicide missions" in video games, its rare that they actually feel as dangerous, and usually everyone ends up getting out alive with the exception of maybe a few red-shirts.

But with Mass Effect 2, the last quest more than lived up to its moniker. By planning tasks around the wrong team-mates, not making the right preparations in the lead up to the battle or just not making quick enough enough decisions on the day, every choice you take in this sequel's final mission can get any member of the squad you've been building up and connecting with for over 20 hours brutally murdered.

Even worse, completely mess up and even you can be killed permanently. There's no reload or restarting from a checkpoint, make too many mistakes and not only can get your entire team killed, but the series' main protagonist can end up biting the dust too, resulting in a canonical ending where nobody survives.