8 Terrifying Game Overs That Make Dying Even Worse

The 1994 cult classic strategy game known as X-Com: UFO Defense (later remade as X-Com: Enemy Unknown) was the game that really brought turn-based strategy gaming into the spotlight.

The player is tasked with controlling their individual troops in a series of turn-based tactical missions in an attempt to combat the extraterrestrial forces threatening the planet. At the end of the game, depending on your performance, the game can end with either mankind’s victory, or with their failed attempts at negotiation.

Not content with merely presenting you with the standard ‘Try again?’ screen, X-Com goes the extra mile to explain in great detail the extent of the damage your failure has caused upon the world.

One by one the funding nations attempt to make peace with the aliens, promising them prosperity and peace, but we are given a lengthy detailed explanation of the demise of the human race and the aliens’ conquer of Earth. Humans are transformed into hideous amalgamations and the X-Com project has failed.

That’s just the PC version. The PlayStation port even had a fully animated sequence showing exactly what your efforts for peace have rewarded you, with alien intruders at a peace summit shooting the human leaders and sprinkling the peace treaty on the table with blood.