Videogames really end whenever you stop playing them. If you love them, maybe that's after New Game + or a replay with every character option.

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If you hate them, maybe that's after half an hour of frustration and a checkpoint that's on the wrong side of an unskippable cutscene. That's how it should be anyway, but sometimes we just have to see the credits of a game we're not enjoying, whether out of sheer bloody-mindedness, or because we're reviewing it and feel obliged to, or we just have to know how bad it can really get.Hate's a strong word to use, especially for a videogame. And yet, sometimes they really do shit us to tears.

This week's PCG Q&A asks the question: What game did you finish despite hating every minute of it? Samuel Roberts: Final Fantasy XIII-2I finally beat this Square Enix RPG last weekend, after reaching the game's finale (and one of the many endings) when I reviewed it back in 2015. Hot damn, I did not like the last few hours of that game. I went to one area to grind for hours, then returned to the final stage, overcame some terrible platforming puzzles and killed the same boss four times. There are some clever systems in FFXIII-2, like the ability to level up monsters and have them fight alongside you, a little like Pokemon.

But past a certain point, the game is all busywork. It's all collectables, experience points and backtracking. I wanted it to be over so bad, and now realise why it took me over three years to return to the damn game.Now I'm deliberating whether I want to put myself through Lightning Returns, the final game of the trilogy. The problem with XIII-2 is its characters aren't endearing to me in the way that FFX's or XV's are. This was like playing bad anime.

It wasn't all bad by any means, but the finale tested my patience. Phil Savage: Kane & Lynch 2OK, maybe I didn't hate every minute of it. In fact, I enjoyed IO's second Kane & Lynch for its first half an hour, thanks almost entirely to its distinct presentation. Pretty soon, though, I was just hate-playing—sticking around in the vague hope that it did anything worthwhile. My overriding memory of the game was an endless procession of cover shooting, with no pacing or variety or anything to hold your interest.

Just hours of crouching behind walls, shooting people, broken up only by the occasional cutscene in which the two protagonists shout at each other. The very best thing about Kane & Lynch 2 is that it's only four hours long, and so at least the misery didn't persist for long.There remains a dedicated cadre of game critics—Andy Kelly is one of them—convinced that Kane & Lynch 2 is good. And, assuming they're not just having a mass hallucination, maybe there's something I'm just not getting about four hours of shooting a gun and nothing else. At least there was a happy end: IO returned to Hitman, which was good. Tom Senior: Warhammer 40,000 Gladius—Relics of WarIf I hate a game I never tend to finish it unless, of course, I'm reviewing it. The last review I remember turning into a grueling slog was Warhammer 40,000 Gladius—Relics of War, a well-meaning attempt to turn the Warhammer 40K universe into a 4X strategy game. You do technically explore, expand, exploit and exterminate, but the combat focus was a poor fit for a hex-based game lacking in tactical depth.

The units have stat differences, technically, but that didn't seem to translate into any meaningful battlefield dilemmas. I was just shepherding dozens of units around the map hex by hex, turn by turn, and any fun I was having in the beginning faded into a haze of repetitive drudgery. In the end, I was pretty happy to get it off my hard drive. Jarred Walton: The Crew 2I don't normally play games that I'm not enjoying, but after doing the performance analysis of The Crew 2 and ranting about the idiocy of framerate caps, rubberbanding, and social networking as a type of point system, I kept playing it.

The driving mechanics are okay I guess, once you get used to them, but in general there are just so many things I didn't like. And the storyline was like a really bad movie where I couldn't stop watching, and every time I'd lead in a race only to be passed near the finish because of a small driving error, I'd yell at my PC and at the developers. The ending was as meaningless as I'd expected. 'Hooray, you're the king of Motor City, USA' or something trite like that.Probably the real impetus for my continued play was my 8-year-old son, who wanted me to unlock all the ultimate vehicles—especially the helicopter. Then he was very upset that I couldn't use the helicopter in any races, or upgrade its components. Get used to disappointment, son. Especially in mediocre games.

Jody Macgregor: VA-11 Hall-A: Cyberpunk Bartender ActionEven with the undocumented feature that lets you use keyboard instead of mouse controls, the bartending is boring. I could be generous and assume it's supposed to be, as a comment on how routine bar work is, but I don't feel generous because I didn't like the rest of the game any better—not the characters, or the writing. I stuck with it because people recommended it to me and I didn't want to let them down, but VA-11 Hall-A was really not for me. Psst, hey, you, wanna see something unusual for 80p? Pick up Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days in Square Enix’s Steam sale.

Made by Hitman folks IO Interactive, K&L 2 may be typical for a 2010 cover shooter in a lot of ways but I still find it interesting for:1) An aggressively ugly look riffing on uploaded camera phone videos that are over-compressed, blown-out, glitched, distorted, and censored by video hosts.2) Making you fight for ages with awful guns, scrabbling from cover to cover and desperately trying to grab new guns after yours runs out of ammo.3) A stunning and bustling Shanghai.3) That bit where they’re naked and drenched in blood.(more). Never mind that Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days was first released nearly two years ago (or that it was a bit of a turd), one lawyer in China sure is pissed.According to Global Times (via TechInAsia), Beijing attorney Liu Lin is suing Kane & Lynch's developer, Denmark-based IO Interactive, and its publisher, Square Enix.

'I can't bear it, especially the vicious vilifying of our people,' said Liu, a lawyer from Beijing Shuangli Law Firm. 'They must be taught a lesson.' Liu is seeking 10,000 yuan (US$1,585) in damages. On Tuesday, he filed the suite at the Daxing District People's Court of Beijing. The court, however, has not decided whether it will hear the case.As the Global Times pointed out, Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days is set in Shanghai, and it doesn't exactly depict the city—or the Chinese people—in the best light. It doesn't depict video games in the best light either, for that matter.'

As a Chinese lawyer, I have the obligation to protect the rights of all Chinese,' Liu told the Global Times. The lawyer doesn't seem too concerned about winning, adding, 'My worry is not whether I can win the case but whether the court will put it on record.' Noted!Still, never mind that legal experts are already dismissing this suit. Never mind that the lawyer doesn't care if he loses.

Surviving high school documentary 2016. Just.never mind.Foreign video game 'vilifies' China Global Times via TechInAsia. Danish Hitman developer IO Interactive will work on new IP following the completion of Hitman Absolution.That's what studio head Niels Sorensen is reported to have told Gamasutra.There was, however, no mention of what this new IP will be.Sorensen explained that after Hitman Absolution, released next year, part of IO will go on to collaborate with new studio Square Enix Montreal on a brand new next-gen Hitman game. The rest of IO, Sorensen said, will begin work on the new IP.'

When people work on the same IP for some time, I believe that there's a sort of creative drain,' Sorensen told Gamasutra. 'Thankfully we managed to make sure we keep focusing on different IPs and keeping people fresh.' 'We've built an incubation department whose focus is work on new IP and prototypes, and all sorts of things for existing and new IP.

And that's a really interesting sort of secret place where they cook up a lot of new things.' IO has tried new IP for much of this seventh generation of consoles. The last Hitman game released was Blood Money in 2006, which was a last-gen game tarted up for Xbox 360. And what fun it was.After Blood Money, IO embarked on gritty new co-op shooter Kane & Lynch. The series started confidently in 2007 with Kane & Lynch: Dead Men, but plummeted below average with sequel Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days in 2010.In between the Kane & Lynch games, IO tried yet another new tack: kid-friendly action game Mini Ninjas, which was forgettable but enjoyable.So, where will IO go next?

A recent IO Interactive recruitment call has offered the strongest hint yet that a new Kane & Lynch title is in the works.As spotted by Gamerzines, an ad for senior programmers on the developer's website references an 'unannounced 3rd person game with strong cooperative multiplayer elements.' Recruits will be expected to 'identify problems with existing multiplayer unaware technology and propose solutions,' and 'advise the game teams on how to best solve multiplayer problems.' Should Kane & Lynch 3 prove forthcoming, don't look too surprised.

Despite dismal reviews of 2010's Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days, Square Enix exec Ian Livingstone last year suggested that the franchise was far from dead and buried.' We haven't made any announcements about Kane & Lynch going forward, but we all know that Kane and Lynch are two amazing characters who have a lot of brand equity. People like those guys, so they're not going to disappear,' he said.

Square Enix is blaming a bad year on a 'weak' console performance; the 'continued delay in billing' for embattled MMO Final Fantasy XIV Online; the earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan; and the write-off of goodwill - i.e. Companies bought by the publisher now not being worth as much.Square Enix lost ¥12 billion ($148 million/£90.6 million) during the year ending 31st March 2011. Sales were down 35 per cent on financial year 2010.The gaming high points were Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days and Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 2, which each sold one million units.' Our Group experienced significantly lower sales and profit during the fiscal year mainly due to weak performance of console game titles released during the year as well as the impact of a continued delay in billing for a key online title, which was newly launched during the year,' commented Square Enix boss Yoichi Wada.Final Fantasy XIV Online has been beset by difficulties since its September 2010 launch, causing Square Enix to waive the subscription fee while the game is fixed.

Square Enix is hopeful the game can recover, but whether a competitive MMO market will be sympathetic remains to be seen.Eurogamer awarded Final Fantasy XIV Online 5/10, and tracked down the game's makers months later to find out what went wrong.Nevertheless, there's promise on the Square Enix horizon, mostly due to Eidos' strong catalogue of IP. This includes Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Tomb Raider, Thief 4 and Hitman: Absolution.Square Enix also has Final Fantasy XIII-2 for PS3 and Xbox 360 posed for release this year. There's the the imminent reveal of Dragon Quest X on Wii to look forward to, too.Video: Final Fantasy XIV Online. Square Enix is blaming a bad year on a 'weak' console performance; the 'continued delay in billing' for embattled MMO Final Fantasy XIV Online; the earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan; and the write-off of goodwill - i.e. Companies bought by the publisher now not being worth as much.Square Enix lost ¥12 billion ($148 million/£90.6 million) during the year ending 31st March 2011.

Sales were down 35 per cent on financial year 2010.The gaming high points were Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days and Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 2, which each sold one million units.' Our Group experienced significantly lower sales and profit during the fiscal year mainly due to weak performance of console game titles released during the year as well as the impact of a continued delay in billing for a key online title, which was newly launched during the year,' commented Square Enix boss Yoichi Wada.Final Fantasy XIV Online has been beset by difficulties since its September 2010 launch, causing Square Enix to waive the subscription fee while the game is fixed. Square Enix is hopeful the game can recover, but whether a competitive MMO market will be sympathetic remains to be seen.Eurogamer awarded Final Fantasy XIV Online 5/10, and tracked down the game's makers months later to find out what went wrong.Nevertheless, there's promise on the Square Enix horizon, mostly due to Eidos' strong catalogue of IP. This includes Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Tomb Raider, Thief 4 and Hitman: Absolution.Square Enix also has Final Fantasy XIII-2 for PS3 and Xbox 360 posed for release this year. There's the the imminent reveal of Dragon Quest X on Wii to look forward to, too.Video: Final Fantasy XIV Online.