Top 5 Worst Games

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Someone mentioned it in the best games thread, so I just took the idea. What are the top 5 worst games of all time, in your opinion? Yes, you can have more than 5, but let's try to keep it to that number.

Warcraft - Though popular to everyone except me, I don't see the attraction. It's the RTS that is annoying. Call me a , but being able to pause isn't a sin.

Anachronox - This game is bad only for the programming, which is fixable through a patch created by a former designer. The great story can't save this one from the glaring glitches, one being *unable*to*save* at the designated Timeminders!

Singles: Flirt Up Your Life - I love The Sims and thought, how bad can this game be? That bad. The camera angles are too hard for me to look around and aren't helped by the fact I can't make the walls 'disappear' or drop away. Also, I was unable to find the pause key.

Tetris Worlds - I miss Tetris. I can't play Tetris on this game. I'm forced into a PvP mode to save some world or universe or wtf it is. You know how bad a game is when you can't trade it in, not because of age, but because it has no value.

Multiplayer - There are too many to list, so I'll give them this section. Any game that puts more detail into online multiplay than anything else in the package gets pitched. Don't get me wrong. I like multiplayer mode, but not when that's the whole game. Everquest and Shadowbane are games that caught my attention as ones I would *love* to play. They look so indepth! Oh, you can only play online.

My list is very tetchy because I (and hubby) don't own games we hate or can't play. BTW, he owns the Warcraft genre, not me.

 

Describing some games as the worst of all time, even in your own opinion is always a bit tricky. There are games you don't have to like (such as Half Life) in my case, but can appreciate as being good.

I'm still to figure out the appeal of Diablo II, but that probably shouldn't make a worst list. Even for my opinion.

I'm stuggling to create one.

Actually, does that Star Trek: Starship Creator (or whatever it was actually called) count as a game? That was bad.

 

Ah, that's going to be fun :devil:

Harvester - probably the single worst game I ever had the displeasure of playing.
C&C Generals - I was never really a great fan of the series, but the others were at least OK. This one was just BAD.
The Dark Half - Charles Ardai (reviewer for CGW at the time) called it the "worst adventure game of the decade". For good reason.
The House of the Dead 2 - Simply dreadful. The acting, oh god the acting....
Halo - Get the most boring game award. There is simply no excuse I can think of for pasting one small set of hallways (the EXACT SAME ONE) a dozen times to make a larger level.

I'm sure there's many others I could come up with if I scratch my head, but those five really get the cake I think.

 

Contra: Legacy of War [PSone]
E.T. [Atari 2600]
Sunday Funday [NES]
Taboo: The Sixth Sense[NES]
Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex [Xbox]

*shudders*

Now I have to go start thinking about good games again, this is too depressing...

PS. Anachronox is actually one of my favorite games... Have you seen the movie? Quite possibly the single best machinema film ever. Even better than Shenmue: The Movie.

 

Most game adaptations of movies - I say most because some are good. Most, however, are dull, repititive and feature graphics so brain-fryingly terrible, that it makes me want to *shudder* get a life.

Soulbringer - I bought this with Planescape: Torment, which is the only reason I have played it. There is no emoticon to describe my utter, utter hatred for this game. This comes close though .

Myst - Sure Myst is pretty, but egad is it dull.

Daikatana - I think this needs no explaination.

And the worst for last...

Ultima IX - This, to me, is the worst game ever created. Here's why:
The graphics, for the time were good. Too good. They were so good, even on the lowest settings, it still had framerate problems.
Combat is just "click at it till it dies" and blocking is completely useless. Dodging is quite impossible, but most enemies just stand there and let you kill them, so [sarcasm]no problems there[/sarcasm]. Another thing; every enemy drops gold, no matter what they are, even the rats! I'm convinced that this is a programmer joke, because it is that stupid.
Now let's get down to the real problems.
First of all, the Avatar is a retard. I am not exaggerating; he doesn't know what, for example, Gargoyles or Paladins are, even when he was declared the False Prophet and made peace with the former and has known the latter since the first game. A popular theory on why this is, is that he spent so much time jumping around in Pagan (Ultima VIII) that he banged his head and got amnesia.
The voice acting, is uniformly horrible - the Avatar himself has a monotonous, expressionless voice. Just about every other voice is almost comicly terrible, so [sarcasm]it's not a total loss[/sarcasm].
The plot is this: the people of Britannia are corrupt because of the Guardian. How does the Avatar stop this? By going through many repetitive dungeons and retreving runes, as soon as you've performed a ritual at a shrine, everyone is happy again. This implies that people are ruled by the Virtues (which is the philosphy of the series), which goes against every other Ultima there is. Not only that, but it literally ignores every other Ultima except for small references, most of which are inaccurate.
Now I'm getting restless, so I'll say that there is an entire site to point out the points I missed here and that the final insult to the already crippling injury was that this was the end of my favourite series of games (except for the online thing). This could be considered a blessing, since it can't get any worse, but I personally don't like to see my favourite series of games, which I grew up with, end with a whimper.

EDIT: I forgot two extremely dishonourable mentions: Pac-man and E.T. for the Atari 2600. I've never played either, but I've heard they were so bad, that they caused the Great Video Game Crash of 1983 (this did happen)

[ October 16, 2005, 05:01: Message edited by: Lost Meme ]

 

E.T. was terrible, but Pac-man was a huge best-seller. I've heard that Pac-man was the first videogame marketed with a character other than the player, but cannot verify this myself. However, Pac-mania swept quickly through arcades across the U.S. In no way can Pac-man be considered a "bad game" unless you're referring to the Atari 2600 port, in which case the gameplay is still solid, but the graphics are poor.

Also, the industry crash was not caused by any single game. Most attribute the blame to a single company, however, Atari. Atari would publish any title. Seriously. it didn't have to be a complete game (E.T. was a bunch of random falling into holes and trying to get out). Just slap a picture on the cover, write up a snappy marketing slogan for the box, and the "game" would appear in stores. This of course over-saturated the industry with crappy titles and flashy box art. After a time the industry simply couldn't be trusted. There was no way of knowing if your hard-earned money was being spent of a decent game, or a piece of garbage. That's what killed the industry.

Nintendo revived the industry in the U.S. starting with the arcade Donkey Kong. When they created the NES they revised the way the industry was seen as a business. In some ways good and in some ways bad. This is part of the reason I hate Nintendo's business practices (I don't let anything bias my decision about a game however.) A good change was the Nintendo Seal of Approval, which gave them more control of the games released on their own platform. This way, only quality games would be published to prevent another industry crash. However, i believe it was wrong of nintendo to demand total loyalty from developers. While it was good for Nintendo's business, it hurt the competition too much (Sega's far superior Master System was over-shadowed by Nintendo's large third-party support base. Nintendo would not let a developer develop titles for other platforms if they wanted to continue doing business with the guranteed money-maker, the NES.) A lack of decent competition drives prices up and quality down. We had Nintendo keeping an eye on the quality, but a competition spurs an improvement to quality, rather than a consistent status quo. For this reason, I consider Sega to have had the biggest influence on today's console games. Sega has innovated more in an attempt to compete with Nintendo, than any other company has. Sega has been the only company ever to survive in the industry without third-party support, constantly fighting to maintain a number 2 position. It's sad how often today's gamers overlook Sega's place in our beloved industry's history. Atari Killed us. Nintendo revived us, but tried to rule us. Sega rescued us and made us what we are today.

Of course, these are my own opinions. I don't claim the above to be fact. I'm no fanboy.

[ October 17, 2005, 01:09: Message edited by: Vae ]

 

If a game is bad, I won't buy it. If I get a bad game, it's only because it's bundled with good games.

Soulbringer: bundled with Planescape: Torment.
Awful controls, graphics, voice-acting. Just bad.

Archangel: bundled with Arx Fatalis.
As above really, with a very generic plot. You are the "chosen one" blahblah.

Civilisation 3: bundled with Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.
Dull dull dull dull dull. And a useless tutorial that told me almost nothing.

Outlive: bundled with nothing! It was a birthday present.
Generic RTS.

That's all the awful games I own.

 

Excuse me? What Anachronox movie? The only thing that was bad about it was the shoddy programming, though should I be surprised at that knowing John Romero did additional level design.

 

The Anachronox Movie

 

Ah, so Machinima just sliced and spliced the cut scenes. Phew! Thought someone might have actually plotted a movie.

 

Anachronox would be a great game, were it not for the bugs. I'm stuck right at the beginning. I'm meant to follow someone, but every time he crosses an area transition, he vanishes! Maybe soon I'll give it a reinstall, but that game-killing bug is what put me off.

 

It IS a movie. Machinema is a type of film-making. try actually watching it. It's a feature-length movie. Machinema is defined as a type of film-making filmed entirely in game engines. It's also ideal for storyboarding live action movies.

If you watch the Anachranox movie you wil notice the incredible amount of technical reprogramming of the Quake II engine that went into the creation of those "sliced and spliced" cutscenes. The movie took around 2 years to create, AFTER the game was released.

I find your words insulting. I deeply respect every person, especially the programmers, who worked on Anachronox. They didn't deserve to be fired. That patch you refer to was developed by chinaman, one of the developers, in his FREE time. Respect the developers. respect the industry.

 

Daikatana, Shadow Man, Schorched Earth 3D, Harry Potter, Tarzan.

 

1. Dungeon Seige
2. Gangsters 2
3. Ecco the Dolphin
4. Evil Dead
5. Halo

 

LMAO ditto

can't really think of anything that was REALLY bad because I don't play that many games and those I do get I only buy after many recommendations..

there WAS this one game though, for the ps2 called.. man it's so bad i can't even remember it i think it was called knights of the order. horrible. fight club for ps2 also sucked major ass. what a disappointment after such a cool movie.

 

1. The Sims (PC)
2. The Lion King (PS)
3. Another World (Sega Saturn)
4. Counterstrike (PC) Sorry, I just don't like it!
5. Snooker games (any) Snooker's boring enough on TV, why make a game of it to bore yourself even further!

 

Not in any order:

The Sims.
Halo.
Counterstrike.

Eh, those are the top three that come to mind, I can't remember any others, really.

 

1. Lionheart - First hour of gameplay is great and then sinks into the realm of utter crap.

2. Desperados - I read somewhere that this had a following and tried it. The worst graphics and clunkiest controls in a modern game ever.

3. Prince of Persia: Sands of Time - The savepoints (this is a PC game) and brutal combat make this game fall into a "fire the disc across the room" category. And people love it?

4. Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor - With the worst combat sequences, D&D monsters with unreal drain powers (Master Shadows) and huge levels so you get lost and fed up, this game is simply terrible. I think I started this one four or five times and never even got halfway.

5. Morrowind: The Elder Scrolls - Sorry guys, don't see the attraction. Runnning whinny ninny across a world that takes up 90% of the gameplay is not my idea of fun. And those damn fish and cliff racers make the game unbearable.

 

edit - whoops, just noticed I already posted in this thread

 

To increase the excitement (we all know that you're just dying to know which games I loathe the most, and why ) I'll begin from the bottom and work my way to the top!

5. All the new Prince of Persia games. The Prince of Persia was a classic, which I spend countless hours playing when I was little, imho the "resurrection" (i.e. the new games) are just blasphemy. And they're not very good either .

4. Icewind Dale. Played this after playing both BG1 and 2, it seemed very dull in comparison, and I never managed to finish the game (it's indeed still collecting dust on the shelf, and I've never taken it out ever since first ditching it).

3. Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance. Need I say anymore?

2. Red Alert: Tiberian Sun. C&C and Red Alert were great games that I really loved; Tiberian Sun ruined C&C for good, and even though I hear Zero Hour (the new one, I'm not sure if that's generals or Zero hour or whatever that it's called) should be a good game, I simply cannot go back to those games.

1. *drums* Icewind DaleII is the worst game I've ever played (and yes, I loathe both of the IWD games wholeheartedly)! The idea behind the game itself is decent enough, but the outcome... The dialogue is crappy, the NPCs doesn't really have that much dept and the sole fact that there's no joinable NPC's, makes out for an overall very flat experience (Yes, the NwN OC is ever so much better than this piece of ****).


There you have.

@ Shell