Well, here I go.
I just finished two games within the last two days, New Vegas and the Saboteur. If I had known I was so close to the ending in them, I probably wouldn't have spent so much time in Reach multiplayer, but that's not the point. Also recently finished Fable III
All three of these games had underwhelming, on the verge of terrible endings.
New Vegas:
I spent tons of time in that game just wandering around, trying to level up enough to get the stats I needed for all of Mr. House's quests. I stopped playing for a bit due to other games (Fable III) coming out. In the mean time, some of my more dedicated friends beat the game, and I heard rumors of the Yes Man, whom I had never bothered to seek out. So I found him, and agreed to kill House. After mopping up some clan contacts, and installing an override chip or two, I got the "point of no return" warning. Since I had plenty of previous saves, I went ahead and did that. I was geared up for the final battle, stimpaks, ammo, everything. Then I went in and realized: I don't have to kill anything. My robot companion, plus the securitron following me, evaporated everything in my path. A few speech challenges later, and bam, game over. I didn't shoot a single thing. As I understand it, the easiness of my ending was due to the path I took and my speech skills, but still. Shot nothing? Also the ending monologue kinda bummed me out, insinuating that my character didn't get to rule New Vegas. That was the whole point of going rogue.
The Saboteur:
This game I have less to say about. I started it quite a while ago, so I'm a little hazy on all of the details, but I remember that the first time I encountered the asshole who killed my best friend, I had to fight my way through a burning zeppelin, dying multiple times in the process, if I recall. And even today, when I picked it up again, there were multiple sections where the combat was too much for me to just walk and shoot through, and again, a couple places took two or three tries. And then, I saw it. Only one more secret achievement left, so I knew I was on the ending level. I, again, was bracing for fighting up the Eiffel Tower, tons of ammo, grenades, and whatever else I could find. Do you know what I found? An empty tower with a bunch of dead guys. I went up a few elevators, then a cutscene ensued, where the bad guy gave up before I even shot him. Shot him off the tower anyway, and then bam, game over. Wait, what? On the bright side, I jumped off the tower just to reload the sequence to see if I could melee him off the tower, and ending up landing in a pond and getting another achievement for surviving the fall.
Fable III:
I don't know why i made this one last, I had finished it least recently. Oh well. This ending has been so heavily covered, I don't feel like I really need to talk about it. But after the battle in Aurora, I was scared of the dark things, and thought that when they finally attacked Albion, I would actually have to fight. But, of course, it's Fable. After being unceremoniously thrown into the final battle, (with the starting, surprisingly weak hero weapons, I might add) it was too simple. Walk in a line, kill a few underpowered enemies. Repeat. At least I got to fight to the end this time, if you consider the mass slaughter a fight. Quite frankly, I don't know how my kingdom wasn't able to defend themselves, they could have beaten these guys with a broom stick if they had one. The only thing good was that I actually liked that my decision had a result. As sad as it was to see a nearly dead Albion, I at least had to live with the ramifications of my decisions, unlike the melodramatic monologue of New Vegas.
And that's it for my rant. Sorry for unloading all of this on you guys, but none of my friends have played even two out of those three games, much less finished them, so I didn't have anyone to share my frustrations with.