Worst Games Ever
Tuesday, February 6th, 2007 - 6:28am
I'm planning on writing reviews of some of the worst games ever made. This, unfortunately, requires me to actually play them. But I'm willing to do this for the greater good of all the interwebs. I already have a small list that I've come up with, but I would appreciate any additions. I have at my disposal PC, Gamecube, PS2, and any emulatable system out there - unfortunately I don't have Xbox, so I can't review Drake of the 99 Dragons*. Darn. Anyway, here's the list I've come up with so far:
Big Rigs (PC)
Daikatana (PC)
Disney's Magical Mirror starring Mickey Mouse (Gamecube)
ET (Atari 2600)
South Park: Chef's Luv Shack (N64)
Shaq-Fu (SNES)
Universal Theme Park Adventure (GC)
Aquaman (GC)
Monster Garage (PC)
Superman 64 (N64)
Again, I'd appreciate any suggestions. And please, pray for my sanity.
*Unless there's an emulator out there, in which case I'd be required to bite the bullet.
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"Do I what I do: hate everyone." - Quintin_Stone
Oh, I guess it's cliché by now - Ultima IX. It basically killed the franchise, and I still can't run it decently with a 2005 machine.
But please don't bother with Tresspasser, I see it in every list of worst games ever. Also the pacman for the Atari is well known as a crappy game, and so is ET. Superman 64 was recently named worst game of all time by Gametrailers I think. Total reruns.
So don't bother with those, if you're gonna suffer, try something that hasn't been reviewed many times (unless you derive some sort of pleasure from that. )
You could probably do a new site dealing only with Crap Games. If it shows in your site, people will know to steer away from it.
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I was just planning to post them here as "Games You Shouldn't Play."
As for Trespasser - never even heard of it.
"I'm absolutely retarded. Not 100% sure why." - atom
"Dhelor + intarwebs = Great ideas." - wordsmythe
"Do I what I do: hate everyone." - Quintin_Stone
Wow, you got Shaq-fu in there.
Hook for the NES was pretty horrid if I remember correctly.
Megaman.
I'm just saying what we're all thinking.
Letters to the Internet
Outpost 1 and 2 (PC) - 2 isn't nearly as bad as 1 though. Lots of micromanagement, which takes a while to learn how to keep your colony alive. I actually liked the second one, but I think it was more because I was running a 60MHz pentium, and this game ran fairly well compared to other RTS's on the market at that time.
Dark Reign (PC) - While I always felt that this game had a lot of good ideas, the fact that I could never even get close to beating the last level pissed me off. You're dropped into a small corner of the map, you can build all the units from both factions in the game, you have more resources than you should need, and you have to defeat 2 already established armies that start out fighting each other. As soon as you attack one though, the other typically won't be far behind.
The Adventures of Dr. Franken (SNES) - My parents bought this for me... if you get past the first few levels, let me know. I doubt I got more than 3 levels into that game before chucking it.
Yo Noid! (NES) - Game to advertise Dominoes Pizza I believe. 2d Side-scroller. I don't believe I really need to say anything else about it.
I'll think more on this topic later today... I'm sure I can throw a few more craptastic games on here.
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Wow, where do you start with"worst games ever"?
Atari 2600:
ET
Pac Man
Atari 5200:
Buck Rogers: Planet of Zoom
Congo Bongo
NES:
Abadox
Contra Force
Gameboy V1.0:
Games that scrolled
Lynx:
APB
Saturn:
Sonic R
Johnny Bazookatone
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
Battle Arena Toshinden
Sega 32X:
Metalhead
Cosmic Carnage
Sega CD:
Wolfchild
Cadillacs and Dinosaurs
PSX:
RLH
Gex
Toshinden 2
Batman Forever: The Arcade Game
WWF Wrestlemania: The Arcade Game
PS2:
Fugitive Hunter
Fantavision
MDK 2
XBox:
Army Men "Green Rogue" game
Bad Boys: Miami Takedown
Xbox 360:
Sonic the Hedgehog
Arcade:
Amidar
King Kong
Street Fighter - pinball
Spy Hunter - pinball
MaxShrek .. The reason you keep falling, is there is no bottom.
Horror Vacui
PC: Decent to Undermountain
Was so bad I couldn't even get my character out of the first room.
Grumsh, Troll Mage on Blackhand
Kroe, Tauren Hunter on Blackhand
Khoram's Workshop
No Chiggie! Don't tell me your a Megaman hater? 1,2 and 3 were pretty cool... You can say what you want about the series after that though
Worst games? IMO:
Kreed
Nexus: The jupiter incident (could have been so much more)
Starship troopers
ChampionShip manager 5
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Nexus, while it could have used a bit more polish, was an underselling gem that shouldn't be missed.
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But the interface was cack. Compared with Homeworld 1 and 2 this was clunky. Not to mention that certain missions had a massive learning curve in how to deal with ship encounters. I don't think i ever got passed the mission where you return to earth...
Perhaps it's just not for everyone.
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EGGmen - A European gaming blog *Episode 3 now live*
The most aptly named PC game ever: Odium.
RIP ChronicNecrosis
No list is complete without E.T. for the Atari.
Command & Conquer: Sole Survivor was hideous. I think it actually made it to stores and sat on shelves for about a week. This was right after the first and only expansion for Command and Conquer (the original) came out and online gaming was just starting to catch on. So Westwood made an online version of C&C. But no, it wasn't what you're thinking, standard versus, no, the infrastructure couldn't support that yet. No, it was a C&C game, with the same units, same graphics, and same control interface as the original, but you only controlled ONE unit. You'd use that unit the same way you would any unit in the "real" game, and try to blow up everyone else's unit. Sure you could roll over upgrade crates to try to give yourself an edge (some of which were actually kind of cool... the rapid-fire, spread-shot artillery was nice), but about 1 in 20 crates contained a NUCLEAR BOMB that killed everyone and reset everyone's upgrades back to 0. I was a beta tester for this abortion.
I enjoyed Nexus quite a bit. I also played Starship Troopers through almost to the end (one mission seems to be.. heh heh... buggy and I couldn't beat it).
NOTE: This is not a doodle bug.
Spore
I have to challenge Nexus. While I believe the storyline shows signs of a game rushed to production before it's fully matured, and a system AI which makes combat fairly frustrating, I still believe Nexus wouldn't even make a top 100 worst games list. It had amazing graphics for it's system requirements (detailed explosions that didn't lag my 1.1GHz system astonished me, I admit), pretty nice ship designs, a fair variety of weapons and options to choose from, and a number of different ways to disable/destroy a ship.
Nominee for the "Worst Let Down" list? Definitely. But I still wouldn't say it was as mind-numbingly horrible as some of the others listed here. I just hope Sins of a Solar Empire comes in and fills the gap that Nexus tried to fill.
And Megaman's had his ups and downs. I liked Megaman up to about the X series, but I heard after that it went way downhill.
Edit to reply to a post while I was typing:
I think comparing Nexus to the Homeworld series is not a fair comparison. If I were to compare it to any game, it'd be Starfleet Command. The Homeworld interface was designed for a more RTS feel, more focused on macro-management of your fleet, while Nexus is more of a small fleet space simulator, with more focus on micro-managing each ship.
And I hear ya on the learning curve, especially given that even if you do everything perfectly, you may still lose.
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Tomb Raider Angel of Darkness on the PC (although I'm guessing it was bad on all platforms).
As far as PC games go, the Adventure Company releases some of the worst games that have ever come across my desk. For every Syberia or Evidence, there is an equal and opposite Crime Stories and Keepsake. Blegh.
Speaking of which, Crime Stories is my least favorite game ever. It is a black hole, devouring all happiness and joy from my game shelf. I wish I could sell it, but nobody is stupid enough to take it.
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All time worst game will for me always be Shadow war of Succession by tribecca for the 3do. I still remember buying this from Babbages, and getting home, playing, and taking it back in less than 30 minutes. Sadly buying it again just to show how bad it was to my friends, and then returning it another time. The one thing that sticks out about this game was the difficulty setting, and how it did absolutely nothing. My friends and I who could play any other fighting game with some degree of aptitude would see ourselves tossed endlessly around by the computer. So much so that the game at times didn't seem interactive as much as it was a bad movie.
I actually liked that game, and had fun playing it. If I had to choose a lynx game that was the worst I would say pit fighter. To each their own though.
Daikatana actually wasn't bad, it was just - after all the hype - totally underwhelming. If you are looking for a real abortion, try and locate "Gods & Generals" for the PC. Terrible stuff in all ways.
It's not Wandering Toast. Except in TF2, where it usually is.
If I might interpret this a little differently, I'd like to do something treasonous.
I nominate TES II: Daggerfall. Yes, Oblivion's retarded grandpa, and GOTY (1995, I think). A game I buried hours and hours into, and one that contained full frontal nudity and graphic violence ALL OVER THE DAMN PLACE. A game that contained a single MIDI file, the shop music, that was simultaneously one of the most annoying and one of the most beautiful pieces of game music ever, the only difference being the quality of your sound card's synth.
This was a good "game," I'll give it that, but far more than Morrowind, it was good in spite of BethSoft's handling of it and the codebase it used. It released virtually untested. For months and months after release, BethSoft was still releasing basic play balances in patches (things like how much weight your cart could carry). Out of the box it was virtually unplayable. Falling through the world was not only common, but some quest items existed in rooms that were completely unlinked to the rest of the dungeon, floating out in space. CTDs came like pizzas; 30 minutes or less. Some things were just plain sloppy and nonsensical. You could buy a boat, supposedly for travel, but at any time you could transport yourself there with the click of a button, even if you were in the middle of combat. The boat existed in the game world, out in the corner of the map, so if you so desired you could swim there from the mainland without even buying the boat. The world was 3D (objects and characters were sprite-based), but the game required a 400MHz processor at a time that the standard was 200MHz. It also had quite an HD footprint, if memory serves.
To its credit, it's the only TES game to include respectable Khajiits. Ones that look more like elves with tails than furries. It succeeded due to its scope, in terms of world size (with several hundred dungeons), and flexibility (you could become a vampire, a werewolf, a wereboar, wander around in the wilderness discovering things, or even go to a foreign country, take out a multi-million gold "loan," then skip town without paying it back).
NOTE: This is not a doodle bug.
Spore
Custer's Revenge. Good luck finding it. Good luck living with yourself afterwards.
Patriot. It had a really cool database of units from the first Gulf War, which you arrange in interesting chains of command. That was about it. There was actually no game there. Terrible letdown.
Outpost. One of the worst games ever.
I'm starting to seriously dislike Raving Rabbids.
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BattleCruiser 2000
American McGee's Bad Day LA
Night Trap
Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel
Daikatana wasn't the worst game ever, but probably the most disappointing. I could barely make it past the endless swamp that consisted of a lot of frog-punching. The rest of the game is less irritating, but more forgettable. I turned on cheat codes to whiz through the rest of the game just to see if there was anything redeemable.
I loaded it up the other day for a laugh.. to find there were still active servers, and a couple of people playing online.
SNES
Stanley Cup
Again, perhaps just categoried as disappointing. I enjoyed the NHL series and the thought of mode 7 graphics dazzled me. The game was awful, and I found it incredibly difficult to get a damn goal. My cousin, however, managed to find a way to score a goal with every attempt. He would just dump the puck in the direction of the goalie and it would always whip over the goalie's head into the net. Garbage. I think that game ended at like 20-1, and I all but stopped playing it after that.
Agreed! What a letdown.
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Pfeh. This thread'll get derailed if it turns into "Games that aren't that bad but which piss me off." Those are heartbreakers, and are a totally different deal (see: Troika).
I neglected one of the worst games ever, so bad in fact that Sierra recalled it: NFL Football Pro '99. I wish I had easy access to my tech support supervisor's piece on it, "2nd and Punt: the Football '99 Story." The 9-foot-tall slam-dancing linebackers were my favorite. It was like that damned game from the '70s with the magnets and the little guys who'd go all over Hell's half-acre.
RIP ChronicNecrosis
Weird thing about ET is that I remember loving it when I was a kid. Then I grew up and heard all these stories about it being the worst game ever and I started to wonder what was wrong with me.
I mean, his neck went up, you revived flowers. I was a happy kid.
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Hook for the NES was meh, not a worst game list contendant.
Sentient for PC (Sierra), never played it but seemed absolutely abysmal.
There's a King Arthur action/adventure game for pc that stank big time, same for Top Gun. These I played, I still try to wash the boredom off.
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Gods & Generals, man, I purposely block that out, and I paid $5 for it when I got it.
MaxShrek .. The reason you keep falling, is there is no bottom.
Horror Vacui
I assume you mean the FPS version of the game. Because the RTS version (Starship Troopers: Terran Ascendancy) was awesome. It had...dum dum dum....portable nukes. Nothing has beaten that yet if you ask me.
I can agree with the FPS being a little too buggy. (mandatory pun)
I don't watch, I interact!
This statement amuses me to no end.
NES:
Mappy Land
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Hmm.. there are so many bad games that I'd rather focus on the biggest letdowns.. games that should have been good..and for me two spring to mind
Ultima 8 and 9
ugh.
At least 8 was playable.. and despite being some sort of bastard child of an action RPG had some decent moments.. but after the glorious Ultima 7's it was such a huge letdown to play this game.
And 9 well.. 9 was just horrid.. I actually never finished it.. simply because I couldnt get a system to run it half decently.. and when I finally a year later had a system that was 3 times as powerful as needed to run the game.. it still ran like crap.. and crashed every 15 minutes.
Great Collectors box though
Aint nothing new about the world order..it's been playing since the day they put George Washington on a quarter
85's face the truth you're too dumb.
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Daikatana wasn't that bad, really. Once you got past the goddamn swamp, Greece and the middle ages part were pretty cool.
I can't really think of anything for this list..
Mystic Violet wrote:
Rocket Jockey?! That's on my all-time favorite list. It was not poorly executed or buggy, it had the best soundtrack ever, and it allowed you harpoon people off of rockets and fling them in all directions. I don't think it qualifies as a true bad game...?
"Sometimes I go around saying, 'Kommisar Paulson has seized the commanding heights of the economy!'" - Paul Krugman, asked if recent changes to banking are socialistic.
A friend of mine had this. Every play ended by falling into a pit that was inescapable. After a few hours of this madness we put the cartridge in the street, ran it over with her bicycle, then exploded it will a firecracker. So, in that way, I guess it was kinda fun.
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kaostheory wrote: