I enjoy word play, I have to admit… but be under no illusion here, as this article is not just a shameless attempt at using an internet coined meme as a title… there are more spoilers here than the 2010 World Subaru Owners Convention. If you’ve not completed the main quest lines in games such as Fallout: New Vegas and Borderlands, please step away from the article before you get hurt.

In order to fully express my disdain for games which ultimately ruin the enjoyment and, in doing so, negate almost every second invested prior to the endgame, I have to call Fallout: New Vegas to the stand as the most recent offender. When I wrote my Fallout: New Vegas review back in October I was only fifty two hours into the game and made the mistake of assuming that there was an incredible amount yet to do, but it has since transpired that this wasn’t the case. I spent perhaps eight hours finishing off a few of the side quests that were bugging me so that I could concentrate on the main quest and then when I opted to unlock the Explorer perk I figured it’d make sense to do what I enjoy the most and made my way around all of the unvisited locations in the hope of turning over a few rocks and finding the odd side quest here and there. Sadly, that never happened.

Instead, my idle wanderings led me to a plethora of caves, mines, camps, and all manner of aesthetically beautiful locations but with nothing to do once I arrived other than ponder the vast open landscapes from whatever vantage point I could find, in the hopes that a careful sweep through the ‘scope of my Anti-Material Rifle would uncover a distant shimmering pixel that may just end up being something else worth killing or, better yet, another quest holder. Even my trusty companion, ED-E, with his long range motion sensors ended up tuning out and started playing PONG inside his head. That’s an assumption, by the way. If I was lucky, and I mean really lucky, the cave would be inhabited by Nightstalkers or Deathclaws so I’d at least be able to practice my low light sniping, but to what end? With my level already at the maximum, the only purpose it’d serve would be to deplete my already sparse ammo collection and remind me that I needed to repair my rifle once again.

With enough caps to last the likes of Scrooge “Wasteland” McDuck for a lifetime, and no decent purchases for the last twenty or so levels, it was time to make my way back into the main quest and decide which way I’d take my character and, ultimately, the people of New Vegas. I’d already scuppered any chances of completing the game on the side of the Legion after first coming across them at Nipton and deciding that they were bastards, worthy only of death by my hand and so that particular faction decision was made without hesitation, leaving me with the option of siding with either Yes Man, Mr House or the NCR.

This is where the spoiling began. I’d resigned myself to the fact that there was no way I’d be completing the “I Could Make You Care” because my exploratory nature whilst playing RPGs meant that I’d already succeeded in placing Head Paladin Hardin as the new elder of Hidden Valley Bunker, replacing Elder McNamara as part of the “Still In The Dark quest”, thereby preventing the “I Could Make You Care” quest from reaching its conclusion. It left a somewhat bitter taste in my mouth because I had grown very fond of Veronica and genuinely wanted to help her work towards a better future for herself rather than being led by the blinkered and outdated views of the Brotherhood of Steel. I wanted her to be happy. I know she doesn’t exist and is nothing more than a collection of textured polygons on my screen but, hell, Felicia Day’s handling of the characterisation and the scripting just pulled me in to her world and I basked in her sorrow, always hoping that I could absorb some of it through a twisted form of osmosis and allow her to flourish for once. I even went as far as scouring the wasteland for pristine formal wear so I could gift it to her inventory just in case some smart programmer had thought far enough ahead to take the “Is it a dress??” throwaway line to the point where it evoked poignancy. It did. I was warmed to the core by her reaction and it’ll forever remind me of how much I enjoyed the game up until that point.

I can’t possibly explain how much Veronica’s outcome annoyed me until I get as far as the endgame itself and so I have to take artistic license with the timeline here and move swiftly ahead to the inevitable choices facing my character and myself in what was to become the most disappointing and irritating finale to any game I’ve played in the last twenty, perhaps even thirty, years.

As I’d been told by the NCR in no uncertain terms that placing all my eggs in Yes Man’s stainless steel basket would result in my inevitable demise at the hands of their troopers, I’d avoided taking that final step from neutrality towards any particular allegiance and so I created a save point prior to entering Lucky 38 and sending Mr House, who I have to say was beautifully voiced by Rene Auberjonois and, presumably, depicted by an early Don Ameche promo shot, on a lonely and heavily postponed tour of the afterlife. As soon as the life support system was shut down there was no turning back; I was now a pawn of Yes Man and gained immediate infamy with the NCR, although there didn’t appear to be the same level of disdain that I’d experienced from the Powder Gangers or Legion soldiers so either there was a glitch or I had done enough good that they opted to overlook my new found alliance.

Saving President Kimball certainly wasn’t as eventful as the whole Private Ryan malarky. Having to only use my repair skill on his Vertibird to remove a bomb was anticlimactic enough and yet my whole experience in New Vegas was about to become more dissatisfying than I ever thought possible, especially for a game that I’d previously expected to be infinitely better than Fallout 3. Making my way to the Legate’s camp to face my final enemy was a breeze and I was able to handle this particular hurdle in the same manner with which I had the rest of the game: single shot to every enemy’s head from a distance before they have a chance to either recognise the threat or react. This was immediately unsettling as I had a sneaking suspicion, based on the way this quest was worded in my journal, that I had already embarked on that final journey which would not only set the wheels in motion for the final boss battle but would also bring about the premature end of the game. I say premature because by this time, not including my twenty or so hours spent on pointless exploration prior to my allegiance to Yes Man, I had only spent sixty hours in-game and yet had managed to complete every (non-glitched) side quest and reach the end of the actual game.

The Legate’s camp itself was oddly vacant and the few Legion soldiers I encountered there were much easier to kill than the grunting horde of maniacs hell bent on crushing my character’s skull with their bare hands when I dared to enter their territory at Caesar’s Fort earlier in the game. This may have been something to do with the fact I was ten levels less when I ventured into the Fort but somehow I don’t think that’s the reason. I was left standing quizzically in the middle of the camp wondering where the rest of this fabled army of vile murderers were while the corpses of no more than four scantily clad musclebound Mariusz Pudzianowski lookalikes lay at my feet and I, the geeky science and repair expert with no melee skills and barely any strength, stood atop their fleshy mound victorious… and strangely alone.

Moving forward another fifteen or so metres triggered a group of NCR troopers to appear ahead and run towards a previously unnoticed tent on the upper left area of the camp and, with that, another two or three Legion soldiers ran out and subsequently slaughtered the troopers, turning their attention on me as Legate Lanius made his way down the slope towards me. This was it. This was the final boss battle; it was the moment where everything I’d learned and every possible perk would serve me best as I undoubtedly emptied my entire arsenal on the evil tyrant and his best soldiers. In a moment of both panic and self preservation I slipped into VATS mode and aimed my Anti-Material rifle at Legate Lanius’ head, ignoring his minions entirely, and let the first shot ring out through the dusk. To my surprise, his health went dropped to almost half and I quickly switched to my inventory to recover the action points with Jet, UltraJet and Rocket and immediately dropped back into VATS mode to let my second round loose. With that second shot Legate Lanius, the ultimate enemy in the game and the man who stood between me and outright success, dropped to the floor while his remaining minions put their Ballistic Fits to good use for a few seconds before being reduced to smores by the heavy incinerator.

After such a ridiculously easy and non gratifying end to the game I collected the Legate Helmet and Blade Of The East, looking forward to placing them on display in my meagre abode back at Novac until such times as I could use them with whatever DLC followed until yet another entry was added to my journal, instructing me to speak with General Oliver and so I made my way towards the entrance of the Legate’s Camp when suddenly the doors blew open in true Italian Job fashion and there, standing in the fiery dust along with a handful of Veteran Troopers was the General. A few sardonic words were exchanged and, as expected, it was time to send him to the grave after he refused to order the NCR away from the area. Cue end credits.

In case you missed that there, it was the end of the game. Ron Perlman’s narration kicked in to tie all the decisions and allegiances together into a single outcome and subject me to one final kick to the gonads, explaining at one point how Veronica grew increasingly irate with the Brotherhood of Steel and tried to get them to change their ways but ended up dying alone in the wasteland, living out her days as a wandering tinker. Had this been my doing then I would gladly have accepted responsibility and held my hands up at making the wrong decision, sending her to a cruel and lonely demise yet this was not my intention and the only reason this happened was because the engine wouldn’t allow me to complete the “I Could Make You Care” quest no matter how many times I returned to Hidden Valley Bunker to have Veronica impart her information to the Elder. Adding insult to testicular injury there was, as I’d expected, no way to move straight on to the Dead Money DLC without going back to a previous save point, thereby rendering the Legate Helmet and Blade Of The East redundant unless you wait for whatever DLC allows you to continue from the end of the game.

To say that I’m disappointed with New Vegas would be a gross understatement; a game which, until near the end, showed so much promise in the depth of conversation threads and character back story frittered away its chance at glory by throwing in a substandard ending with no option for follow through and a series of quests which clearly had to be completed in a particular order, negating the very nature of the sandbox genre.

Now that I’ve got that off my chest, I’ll turn my attention to a very different anticlimactic beast: Borderlands. The main difference between the huge seething let down of Borderlands and Fallout: New Vegas is that with New Vegas you weren’t spending your entire time aiming for a face to face with Legate Lanius where you’d ultimately take him down in only a few seconds. In fact, I must have wandered around with my eyes closed as I don’t even recall any mention of Legate Lanius until the Eureka quest where the instruction came to destroy the camp. With Borderlands, however, you are immediately introduced to the concept of The Vault and every second you spend in Pandora works towards that inevitable moment where you finally reach the mythical Vault and face whatever guardians stand between you and untold treasure… or power… or knowledge… as it’s never actually explained exactly what the importance or significance of The Vault is.

The journey through Pandora is by no means as time consuming as that through New Vegas but it’s certainly more hokey and more of a rip roaring ammo fest than anything else, with more bullets flying than you could possibly count. The humour is as subtle as a brick superglued to another brick and then smashed into your face by Brick himself, but that’s all part of the Borderlands charm and one of the main reasons I enjoyed playing the game so much. By the time the game had progressed to the point where you were told by the pretty brunette flickery television lady in the black vest top that it was time to face The Destroyer, who protects The Vault from looters, the characters had managed to level up to the point where there really wasn’t much of a game anymore as most enemies could be taken down very easily.

This is no ordinary enemy though, this is The Destroyer; a “godlike being from another dimension” who had been imprisoned by the Eridians for “thousands of years previously at the cost of their entire civilization, in order to prevent the monstrosity from consuming the universe” so we were about to face something vile enough to force an entire race to sacrifice their kind to ensure that this beast couldn’t do to others what it had done to them. It was, suffice it to say, one of those moments where you prepared yourself for countless respawns and endless switches from one weapon type to another as this yonic demon swallowed every round of ammo within your inventory and spat the empty shells back in your face with untold disdain.

Without warning, the huge form of The Destroyer presented itself and immediately took Commander Steele and her minions out of the picture leaving you in a face to face battle which lasted all of sixty seconds and perhaps two hundreds rounds from my Cold Thanatos pistol. Whether it was Gearbox’s way of injecting yet more humour into the game or just one hell of a monumental let down, I have no idea. To make matters worse, however, there’s no treasure at the end of this purple slimy rainbow and certainly no untold power or knowledge. In fact, the opposite could be said as you’re left wondering what the hell the point was to the entire game when opening the vault brought about nothing more than an easy to kill end boss.

It has to be said though, that I have played Borderlands through three times from beginning to end and only a few days ago started a fourth playthrough as a way to pass the time with a friend. It’s a great game, it’s enjoyable, it’s hilarious at times… but the ending sucks and spoils the reward. New Vegas, on the other hand, offers no such recompense for such a disheartening ending, especially when a great character such as Veronica is subjected to a harsh and lonely death because somebody somewhere didn’t think far enough ahead that someone may just use the sandbox functionality and complete quests in a non-linear mode. It’s situations such as these that can serve to ruin the passion for a game and there is now no way that New Vegas will ever be held in such high esteem as I do Fallout 3. The potential was there, absolutely, but it didn’t follow through to the end and that, ultimately, is our final reward for investing so much time.

It is my belief that we’re entitled to an ending worthy of the rest of the game, rather than two head shots from a sniper rifle or a several hundred rounds from an automatic pistol with nothing to show other than a bemused and vacant expression of disbelief.

Last five articles by Mark R

• From Acorns to Fish
• Alone In The Dark
• Why Borderlands is Better Than Borderlands 2
• Falling Short
• The Division: A Guide to Surviving the Dark Zone Solo