The legendary scene in FF7 still upsets me even after all these years and about a hundred playthroughs. Incidentally, the scene in my fanfic 'Requiem' which is linked to that (IE: the last act of chapter 6) is apparantly the one that brings my readers to tears. Seriously. I get messages all the time saying how it made them shed a few tears. So evidently I wasn't the only one upset with the original. I dread to think how these people are gonna handle the epilogue. If they cried at chapter 6 they'll find the final acts to be on a whole new level of tearjerkery.
The ending of Crisis Core upset me too. Even though we all knew from the start what was coming. Our fate was sealed the moment the UMD (or memory card in most cases around here, I'll bet) hit the system. But even though I knew it was coming, it was so amazingly handled that you can't help but shed a tear or two. The way the DMW wheels keep spinning and locking up as his strength begins to fail him. The way we cut away to her reaction in the church and realise that she knew all along in the original what had befallen him. That ending gave a whole new dynamic to the original game, and that's really quite something. Play through it again once you know that certain people knew from the very beginning that something was up.
The last few moments of FFX were expertly done as well. You all know what I mean. Granted, the final battle was kind of an anti-climax (except the music in the battle against your own Aeons, which stands as one of my fave tunes ever) but the ending was TOTALLY worth it. It feels kinda like Empire Strikes Back, in a way. In that it breaks with tradition. You expect the Fayth to pull some magic mcguffin out that'll fix the problem at the last second, but no. In essence what we got was the bad ending, really. That still doesn't justify how poor X2 was though.
Aside from that few games make me cry, but plenty make me angry. Here's a short list of games that outright piss me the fuck off.
- Dragon Age Origins. That's right, I said it. I spent hours romancing Leliana. Then I finally get in her pants and find my gamerscore within. Sweet. But then in the ending she ups and fucks off. What gives with that? Here you are saying I'm the love of your life, and then you piss off after a couple of months. What a complete load.
- F Zero GX. The story mode. From chapter 2 onwards. Who the hell programmed this? It plays like a god damn rom hack.
- Sonic 4. Its very existance offends me. They promised an all new installment in the classic franchise, taking it back to its roots. What they meant by that is copy-pasting pretty much everything from the old games, making it a quarter of the size so they can get more money from this installment bullshit, nerfing the Super Spin Dash, making the special stages unfairly difficult considering this is still in essence a kids game, and generally not putting any serious effort into the entire thing, then having the cheek to want 1200 MS points for it. It's not worth anything over 400 IMHO, but 800 would have been a little more tolerable. Considering that Sonic Adventure is now on XBLA for 800 points and that's bigger, longer, and just all around better, don't you think a price drop on Sonic 4 is necessary?
- Any game with what I call 'brick wall syndrome'. IE: a massive and extremely unfair and unpredictable sudden spike in difficulty. Notable games: FF7 with the Materia Keeper/Demon Wall, Super Meat Boy which officially stops fuckin' around the second you hit world 4, certain missions in the Ace Combat series which are simply impossible on higher difficulties unless you've saved up for a certain aircraft, there are several others but this is already turning into a novel again.