The Worst Video Games You've Played

[Ayen]

I got this idea from the 'Worst movies you've seen recently' thread. Forgive me if this been done already, I didn't see a thread like this anywhere so it's either buried deep enough to which a new thread is warranted or I need glasses/contacts. What are some of the worse, and/or the worst of the worse games you have ever played?

There are few games in the world I can say that I honestly hated. Usually the worst a game ever does to me is bore me and then becomes forgettable after I play it and for me that is the worst thing a video game can do. However... there is at least one game out there that I honestly do hate and leaves a sour taste in my mouth every time I think about it.

The one game.

One game to rule them all,
one game to find them,
one game to bring them all
and in the darkness bind them!

WCW_Nitro_Cover.jpg
You thought it was going to be a Lord of the Rings game, didn't you?

The only good thing about this game is the promos that you can watch while on the character select screen. This came out a year after vs. The World and the same year as WCW vs. nWo World Tour, both of which are critically acclaimed games right up there with Revenge which came out a year later. There is no excuse for how bad this game is. It doesn't have any life, any substance and people only played tournament mode so they could hear the rare nWo theme because the internet had maybe five people on it. And this got a N64 re-release *sobs* But it doesn't stop there, oh no. Because what's worse than a bad wrestling game?

WCW_nWo_Thunder_Coverart.png

The same goddamn game re-branded as Thunder and given one match difference from the previous with some added members to the roster! What were they thinking!? This game is an inside-out asshole regurgitating putrid anal fecal matter! I'd rather smurfing yank all the hairs out of my scrotum! I'd rather drink diarrhea vomited out of a buffalo's anus! It sucking smurfs, it smurfing sucks, it smurfing blows, it's a piece of trout... and I don't like it.

[AssassinDX]

Good call with the WCW games, they are horrendous. Good thing they got it right with the N64 games.

the Busby games of the mid-90's are some of the worst I've played, along with a Frantic Flea. They were awful platformers designed as an alternative to Mario as that genre was obviously massive at that time, but they were nothing more than cheap cash-ins.

[Formalhaut]

I thought all wrestling games were varying levels of trite?

[Sephex]

Whatever triple A game is hot right now.[/hipster]

My real answer is Ride to Hell: Retribution. It's hilarious, but it gets old quick.

[Ayen]

Good call with the WCW games, they are horrendous. Good thing they got it right with the N64 games.

They changed developers when they went to Nitro and Thunder. That was their first mistake.

I thought all wrestling games were varying levels of trite?

Maybe if you're not a wrestling fan or got into them late. The latest games by WWE has fallen into the wash, rinse, repeat that a lot of games today do and the industry is less popular than it was in the late nineties. But there were some decent games back when wrestling was still hot to choose from, many of which were made by the same developers. War Zone is praised pretty highly too since it introduced 'Create a Wrestler' and had a lot of good options to choose from that would carry over to the rest of their games. Then there was the introduction of season mode.

tl;dr: Nitro and Thunder set the standard of the trite that none of the others have been able to surpass since their conception.

[Spuuky]

And Yet It Moves is the least fun game I've ever played. It seems like it should just be average, or maybe a little bad, but in reality it is nightmarish.

[Jinx]

Final Fantasy VIII.

[Ayen]

Final Fantasy VIII.

Why do you say things you know will hurt me?

[Pike]

And Yet It Moves is the least fun game I've ever played. It seems like it should just be average, or maybe a little bad, but in reality it is nightmarish.

I actually enjoyed the hour I spent playing it. I mean, it was a glorified flash game and I don't care to spend much time in it, but I've played games that I found much less entertaining.

There are a lot of games I dislike but which I can sort of see the appeal of so I wouldn't call them "Worst" so much as "Games I Do Not Enjoy". FFXII, Hearts of Iron 3, and Civ V are among them. Every time I swear to god that I'm going to force myself to play them and enjoy them but then I load them up and end up quitting after an hour or two because I am simply not enjoying myself. But they all have their die-hard fans so I'm guessing it's a "me" issue more than anything.

I did force myself to beat Oblivion because I wanted to say that I did, but I didn't really enjoy that game until the Shivering Isles content which was great.

[Psychotic]

WCW Mayhem wasn't bad you know.

Splinter Cell is a bag of wank but possibly the worst I've played was Beijing Olympics 2008. Here are my thoughts from five years ago!

(SPOILER)My brother, as he is prone to do, got carried away by the Olympics and bought this game. So I've played it for a bit, and set out for an epic Olympic adventure, pitting the might of the British Empire against the world. By the world I apparently mean Italy, Greece, Spain, Bahrain, South Africa and a couple of other major sporting nations.

This game requires you to "waggle" the control stick in order to run. Running is an important thing, obviously, and not just for running events. You need to run in things like the long jump, throwing a javelin and whatnot. Naturally, with it being such an important thing, they made it extremely easy to use, right? No. No, in fact China hates the West so much they decided to make it a digital kick to the crotch, and then they banged your granny for good measure. Here is a list of the things that do not constitute waggling:

- Moving the stick from side to side.
- Moving the stick up and down.
- Moving the stick in a clockwise circle.
- Moving the stick in an anti-clockwise circle.
- Moving the stick randomly around.
- Screaming "What the smurf do you want from me you smurfing game?"
- Curling up into a ball in the corner and gently sobbing.

The closest I've come to success is to put it on my crotch and then act like I'm having a smurfing spasticated wank with it. Yes. Thank you for that, Sega.

This results in all these AI competitors shooting past me and me waddling like a turtle with diarrhoea. Hurdling adds a lot more fun to the mix. Not only do you have to "waggle" (smurf that word. seriously. It used to be one of my favourites) but you also have to jump when a hurdle comes up. It sounds simple, but my hurdler decided he was too good for jumping, and instead bravely smashed through every single one. When you approach the line you can press RT to do a dip to lower your time, or LT to showboat, Usain Bolt style. So naturally I reached the finish line a good ten seconds after the Italians had claimed gold, my hurdler proudly waved to the crowd, knowing he had served Queen and country. Good job, son. Good job. Go Team GB!

And then, he came. Who is he? A ginger man. A beautiful ginger man. But somehow I won gold in the High Jump and silver in the Long Jump with this man. I don't know how he did it. But he did. And I will forever love him. Me and ginger Dave (he looked like a Dave) shared a moment as he stood proudly on the podium and God Save the Queen played out across the Bird's Nest stadium. It's a nice touch that they have every single nation in the game's anthem on there. I also have to love the attention to detail with the long jump and the throwing events. Men in jackets raise little flags and measure everything. That's wonderful. I think more games need these guys. Although they kept taking their jackets on and putting them back on again between throws. I don't know what was up with that.

Swimming. Oh smurf swimming. No, seriously. I smurfing won that trout. I pumped my fists in the air in victory as I crossed the line first... until apparently I didn't. The results screen came up and apparently I came in 4th with the Chinese claiming victory... HMM, THE HOST NATION, HOW UNSUSPICIOUS. You just know it's a conspiracy by the evil communist Chinese. They've never forgiven us for holding onto Hong Kong for so long. Hilariously, in the other swimming event, I sort of came last. I say "sort of", because I did come last...but the game decides I had actually come in third and handed me a bronze. I have to ask just who it was that let this past quality control? Who just does not give enough of a smurf to allow that through? It seems like it's just one of the easiest things to program. Have the guy who comes in first win the race. And then there was the diving. Which I was none too shabby at, actually! I took gold...just. You see, one of the judges, one of the horrible, ganja smoking, floppy hat wearing, rastafarian judges, whose nation will not be revealed, decided every single dive I did was trout. The other judges were having a merry old wank to my efforts, but not Cool Runnings over here. Oh no. Yeah? Well I've heard farts that sounded better than some of Bob Marley's songs.

Another sport I like is gymnastics. Mostly because it's "press button when we say so!" stuff which is easy to win at, but also because of the brilliant, brilliant attention to detail. As we all know, all gymnastic coaches are paedophiles. Watching little girls contort their bodies in skin-tight outfits? Come on buddy, who do you think you are you fooling? This game has captured that. After your gymnast performs, there is a cutscene of her (or him) sitting down next to an old man in a tracksuit. The old man stares intently at the gymnast for a good 10-15 seconds, while the gymnast awkwardly tries to avoid his steely gaze. Credit where credit is due: Nicely smurfing done, Sega.

Other sports include Cycling, which is also heartily broken as I managed to lap the German team but apparently they had a quicker time than me, Shooting, where keeping a steady aim is apparently a bad thing and instead your gun has to be moving when you shoot if you want to hit anything, Archery, which I excelled at, but the computer AI is smurfing Legolas and Robin Hood all rolled into one and refuses to smurfing choke, Kayaking...which caused me a lot of emotional trauma and I just don't feel like I am ready to talk about it yet, Judo, where you have to put in combinations to throw people, which sounds simple enough, only these combinations are not listed anywhere so you're just destined to get smurfed and smurfed hard, and Table Tennis, which isn't so bad I suppose, but it drags on a bit. I mean, it has variety, yeah, I'll give it that. But the controls are so smurfing broken for certain events that I can easily dominate and get gold with a clear margin on some events first time, but on others I'll perform so badly I would lose at a school sports day. It's just too inconsistent. Plus little errors like not acknowledging who actually won ...well no, that is a major error right there...irk. Not worth buying. Probably not worth renting. I don't think my brother is going to touch it again. I don't think I will either.

[Ayen]

WCW Mayhem wasn't bad you know.

That's why I didn't mention it. A shame they followed it up with Backstage Assault. I have not heard good things.

[Lone Wolf Leonhart]

I always have a hard time answering these. I have this really irrational fear of "hurting the games feelings". It doesn't make sense.

Although to add something to the conversation, I'll say that I've heard E.T. for the Atari and Superman 64 for the N64 are universally panned as being god awful.

[Shauna]

Anything from the atrocious Legend of Spyro series. They turned it into a brawler/beat-em-up style game. I don't know why they did this. What was wrong with the original Spyro way of doing things? Gone is collecting gems and other things. Gone is interesting level design. Everything is just dark and gritty, you could say. You can run out of fire breath. I don't even understand.

What makes these worse than the other PS2 entries to the series? I don't know. Enter the Dragonfly was broken, which made that bad. A Hero's Tail just wasn't very engaging. They just lacked the charm Insomniac brought to the series, I think, but they tried. The Legend of Spyro just disregards charm and tries to make something.... I don't know. It just makes me mad. xD

[Flying Mullet]

Final Fantasy VIII.

This.

[Formalhaut]

I think many of the latter Crash Bandicoot games can be counted as pretty poor as well to be honest.

All our lovely retro mascots, having their name driven into the mud!