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Finally, it’s here. The last Marvel movie came out in March, and the wait has been unbearable. Thankfully, Avengers: Endgame has been dropped on us – a nuclear payload on the cinematic landscape that threatens, or indeed promises, to blast our boredom off the face of the earth. In celebration of this momentous occasion, I’ll be taking a look back at the long road that led us here. Not, as you might presume, at the Marvel movies that led us here but at the avengers and endgames that prepared us, as players of video games, for the very idea of avenging and of endgaming. Here are my favourite avengers’ endgames – meaning, the best endings to games that involved someone looking to avenge something. Got that? Good.
***Massive spoilers, obviously.***
Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver
Raziel was a bad boy. He was a vampire, but he had his jaw burnt off, so he wrapped a scarf around his head and went after the fellow who ordered the burning, Kain – the one whose legacy it all was. Anyway, the endgame saw Raziel fighting Kain in a big time travel chamber, and when Kain got a battering he slunk out of one of the time portals and tempted Raziel in after him. Then a sorcerer came to Raziel and said something about his destiny, and then the game ended. Actually this endgame wasn’t that great, but Raziel was certainly an avenger. You can’t take that away from me.
Grand Theft Auto III
Grand Theft Auto III was a game in which the silent, nameless hero (he was later given a name, but we were left wondering back then) sped and shot his way through the ranks of Liberty City’s underworld. But it’s also a tale of revenge. His erstwhile criminal partner, Catalina, ended their personal and business relationship during a bank robbery, and punctuated her decision by puncturing him with two bullets. Claude gets his revenge eventually, blowing up her helicopter with her in it. What an endgame: simple, effective, poetic.
Splinter Cell: Conviction
I always suspected that Sam Fisher was a man of conviction, but it wasn’t until Splinter Cell: Conviction that those suspicions were confirmed. This game, while by far the weakest in the series, cast Sam – the hero and titular splinter cell, whatever that is – as an avenger. His daughter was killed in a hit-and-run that Sam suspects wasn’t as hitty-and-runny as it at first seemed. The endgame is that Sam finds out the villain is in fact the director of Third Echelon and and that he plans to kill the President – you have the option to kill or not kill him. I killed him. Endgame.
Jak II: Renegade
The Jak of Jak II is not only a renegade; he’s an avenger. He wants revenge against those responsible for imprisoning him and carrying out freaky experiments on that give him dark, edgy powers. Jak II is dark and edgy. The villain is a fellow named Kor, who was responsible for the imprisoning and the experimenting. The endgame is that Jak beheads Kor with a force field energy gate. See? Dark and edgy! And endgamey!
Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance
This game was so severely focussed on revenge that it took to making up words to express its anger. ‘Revengeance’ is a word that applies to its hero, Raiden, who is after Senator Steven Armstrong – an all round arsehole who is bizarrely reminiscent of Donald Trump. Armstrong injects himself with nanomachines and he and Raiden fight atop a burning building. Classic. But wait, there’s more! Wikipedia details the epilogue with the following sentence: “Maverick receives approval to create a new cyborg staffing firm, allowing them to shelter the orphans’ brains and potentially give them a chance at a better life.” What a sentence. What an endgame.
God of War
Kratos was a bastard. In God of War (2005), we found out why he was a bastard and his motivations for behaving like a bastard, and then in God of War (2018) he sort of tried not to be a bastard. Back on the PlayStation 2, he was thirsty for revenge against the Olympians – specifically Ares – after being tricked into killing his own family. Eventually, he opens Pandora’s box and kills Ares, which would have been both endy and gamey enough, but then, at the very last, Athena whisks him to Mount Olympus and makes him the God of War.
Max Payne
Max Payne came home one day to find his wife and child murdered at the hands of drug-addled mercenaries employed by an evil illuminati-style corporation. As revenge stories go, that’s a doozy. The endgame in Max Payne gets extra points for also being where the game begins – the begingame! What actually happens is that he kills everyone. That’s a pretty good endgame. And a good bit of avenging.
Dishonored
At the start of Dishonored, the hero, Corvo Attano, is framed. Being framed is excellent fuel for an avenger, because revenge also entails justice – the setting right of things that have gone wrong, and the honouring of things that lost their honour. At the end of Dishonored, Corvo, after being dishonoured, gets his honour back, and also thumps the villain in the head. This game gets extra points for having alternate endings (endgames).
The Darkness
The Darkness is about Jackie Estocado, a member of a New York crime family, so the degree to which you root for him depends on your moral standing. Personally, I liked him, and when he was betrayed by his ‘uncle,’ Paulie Franchetti (I don’t know to this day if he was his real uncle), it was gratifying to see Jackie go after Paulie with his newfound powers of… The Darkness. The endgame was that Jackie took advantage of a solar eclipse – which heightened his powers of The Darkness – and killed all of Paulie’s men, and then Paulie. Clever.
The Avengers
Highlander: Endgame
