Requital (2006) : a beat'em all/adventure type game, set in an heroic fantasy world. You kill the boss, then you get a game over screen...

... immediately followed by a WTF! moment. I had a good laugh.

Divinity 2 - Ego Draconis. Not going into spoilers too much, but the entire ending screams: "Yes, we the developers, hate you, the gamer! Everything you did in this game was utterly pointless. Here's the crappiest ending we could think of to punish you for playing our game!"

Ghosts 'n Goblins certainly comes to mind. You need to beat the damn game twice to get the real ending.

I remember that i never actually finished Viewtiful Joe because of the endgame which forces you to get through ALL the bosses of the game in one run. If you die you get back to the start and have to fight the bosses all over again. Even on easy it was still nearly impossible.

I don't know of this counts but Settlers 2, the original one. You go through hell, some of those missions can take 10 to 15 hours, you slay all the bad guys, you win it all, and what do you get?
A BAD DRAWING OF A FUCKING BOAT!!!!!!!

C'MON MAN! After all that would some dancing girls kill you? A song, I mean a different song? Maybe a picture of your populace erecting a statue in your honor? How about a simple "You rock!" or "You are a God!" I'd take that. That would work! :D

The endgame of Mother on the NES has no balance whatsoever, so you're best off grinding with your neigh-invincible guest party member to get your levels sufficiently high enough that when the guest party member gets killed you can rush to the final boss fight. Even the game's creator admits that they didn't balance the endgame; they ran out of time.

Advent Rising & Psi Ops The Mindgate Conspiracy i want my sequels damn it

I'm guessing the developers expected no one to actually finish those missions and took an "oh, fuck it" policy at the end.

Far out, never thought of that.

I'm betting AlKim's right, but they've reminded me of something I should have never done as a kid: beat Treasure Cove, from The Learning Company. The most repetitive game I've ever played. Not even the greatest Facebook energy-based click-muncher has come even close, but you know what? It still had a very brief ending, at least in the version that I was playing. A shitty learning game that seemed to be designed to never actually end: they still bothered. And let that stand as an indictment over every game that didn't bother from the early 90s on.

Bit like watching the Matrix when it was first released

Vampire: Bloodlines was a good example.

Story-wise, the ending wasn't bad, but you were able to play about 80% of the way through the game as a stealth/persuasion character, then you were suddenly thrown into multiple tedious boss fights where you were SOL if you didn't have high combat skills.

Oh, and, in between the tedious boss fights, you were thrown into multiple levels with respawning enemies, so you were, again, SOL if you didn't have high combat skills.

I've no idea what they were thinking when they designed that ending. It went from a great game to 'WTF is this crap?' within a few minutes.

Ah, another one. The original F.E.A.R. After you spend all the game fighting mostly intelligent clones, they all shut down, but you still have some way to go. What replaces them? Why, ghosts of course. Dozens of floaty ghosts, that appear out of walls, head for you in a straight line and pop like balloons after a single hit. So exciting...

Divinity 2 had a pretty terrible endgame, it came out of nowhere and was full of trash mob combat. You could tell they just ran out money making the game

First thing I thought of (other than Xen) was Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30.

The entire game is about squad tactics. Trying to be Rambo will get you killed very quickly. It is all about placing your teams - ordering one to suppress the enemy while the other one flanks.

So what happens in the final mission? Your squad gets left behind, while you run through the hedgerows of Normandy alone against enemy infantry and tanks...

Why? It makes no sense...

I want to add Iron Brigade (expansion) to the list.

I really enjoyed this game, right up to the last stage of the expansion boss. I died. A lot. Eventually I looked up what to do on the internet and the answer was...

High DPS. You couldn't possibly survive more than a few seconds, so the only way to win was just unload high DPS at the boss to take it down first. This is where it gets worse:

There are only a few weapons in the game that are capable of this level of damage. If you were planning on using indirect fire or other tactics, tough. But it gets worse still:

These weapons need to be both acquired *AND* have a level requirement before you can even use them. Worst still, if you played through the campain without grinding, you are several hours of grinding away before you can even equip a weapon that you *NEED* to defeat the boss.

Of course, the game won't tell you this.

I was so pissed off.

Edit: Forgot the name changed from Trenched.