Gaming has some famous heartbreaks, but what is yours personally?

I was oddly attached to all my soldiers in my first play through of X-COM Enemy Unknown. Alpha and Zero were my snipers, Boomer and Vandal my assault units, Strobe my heavy weapons expert, and Cookie, my support unit.

I had been fairly lucky with my run and got through quite a bit of the game with everyone alive before I really realized what a feat that was. So I made it my mission to keep them all alive. No save scumming, but if I lost someone or even suspected I might, I would gladly replay an entire mission.

Then we reached the final mission. It is a massively long slog through an alien ship and before beginning, I told myself "this is the endgame, do it once and do it right."

It was a well oiled machine as usual. Despite the strange, sprawling and intricate environments, we were handling it in stride. Boomer was my powerhouse. Reaction/proximity shots, shot dodging reflexes, the best armor in the game and an accuracy stat with her shotgun no one came close to, so she lead the charge for most of the run, gaining squad sight for my snipers.

She'd taken some hits, so I sent Cookie to heal. It was routine, but in the end, a massively unlucky sequence of RNG put Cookie in an unwinnable situation. It only took two turns for those damnable aliens to kill my Cookie.

It was so unusually devastating to me. When it happened I paused and just sat there for a while, totally having been taken by surprise. Soured the eventual victory of not just the mission but the entire game.