Worst game ever (badness category awards?)
polycounter lvl 18
For some reason there seem to have been some really bad games turning up lately (and some really good ones).
Unfortunatly i have had the misfortune to play a fair few of them too,
Hopefully playing them can be avoided
So what was the worst game you have ever, or recently, played, how long did you play it for and why was it so bad???
tpe
my recent (and possibly all time) one has to be the new lesure suit larry demo, no game play, repedative but still totally unaddictive, butchering what should have been good characters, cheapo pinup pics, no way to set options in the demo and crappy key binds. Totally un fun, illogical and uninventive (sorry to those who made it
) basically not a game, managed 15 mins before deletion, the punisher 10 mins, bad controlls, graphics, gameplay (was it for a console?). Breed, but not for any special reason than it had all the bad bits of unreal2 and made them worse so was just not interesting enough to get hooked on (most mindnumbing?). Gangland, a multiplayer stratagy game sold as a singleplayer fps (with prise for most wasted potential). And a strange one, HL2 for being the decades best fps with the worst ever RL artwork).
BTW, this isnt to bitch about bad games, but to avoid buying them and avoid making the same mistakes and putting them in new games.
Unfortunatly i have had the misfortune to play a fair few of them too,
Hopefully playing them can be avoided
So what was the worst game you have ever, or recently, played, how long did you play it for and why was it so bad???
tpe
my recent (and possibly all time) one has to be the new lesure suit larry demo, no game play, repedative but still totally unaddictive, butchering what should have been good characters, cheapo pinup pics, no way to set options in the demo and crappy key binds. Totally un fun, illogical and uninventive (sorry to those who made it
) basically not a game, managed 15 mins before deletion, the punisher 10 mins, bad controlls, graphics, gameplay (was it for a console?). Breed, but not for any special reason than it had all the bad bits of unreal2 and made them worse so was just not interesting enough to get hooked on (most mindnumbing?). Gangland, a multiplayer stratagy game sold as a singleplayer fps (with prise for most wasted potential). And a strange one, HL2 for being the decades best fps with the worst ever RL artwork).BTW, this isnt to bitch about bad games, but to avoid buying them and avoid making the same mistakes and putting them in new games.
Replies
Scott
Sim Theme Park. Not XP compatible because of an issue with font files. Simple fix, but EA fails to acknowledge the game's existance.
Prince Of Persia: Warrior Within. This one needs no explaination, but I need to vent again. I now have a Godsmack live DVD, and I always skip a certain song since this game ruined it for me. And that goddamn power chord riff that always plays during the game. Did they pull some punk off the street to compose the music for this game? This was a birthday gift from my gf, because she loved watching me play the first one. I'm sorry she wasted her money. I played about 2 hours into it, and we were both sick of it. I'm hoping God of War will take the shelf space this game once occupied.
remember those crazy old Duke 3D alphas they released to show how far the game was developed from where it was? playing the Psychotoxic demo felt like playing one of those alphas. 'polishing' a game is apparently a foreign concept, to say nothing of the recycled enemy types and braindead AI.
and this might raise a stink, but i think i was as equally impressed by how awesome the SC Chaost Theory SP demo was as i was shocked at how bad the multiplayer demo was.
the Japanese tea house level looks ripped out of 1998. featureless, drab, square everything and questionable scale with a layout that seemed similarly uninspired. after about 10 minutes trying to wrangle a game together (my brother couldn't get the unnecessary cd key system to work on his computer), and i won by default in the least exciting match i've ever played. i uninstalled it shortly after. i love splinter cell and can't wait for Chaos Theory SP, but here's hoping that they decided to put the weakest level of the bunch in the MP demo.
voice acting-crap
gui-crap
control-crap
the story was ok. the plot twist i have to admit was pretty good but other than that it w as a mediocre game made damn near unplayable because of shitty control and bitchy carth
X-Men: Legends - Who let this one out the door? and who play tested it and forgot to mention that it is nearly unplable.
Star Ocean: Beyond the stars - most painful cinimatics ever.
Golden Sun 1 for GBA - Sub-par, standardized RPG with bizarre and complex japanese-based storyline and alot of conversations that have "..." in them.
Dragon Warrior7 - I worked on this for 5 months+, omg how did this piece of shit ever get "game of the year"????? Im a huge DW/DQ fanboy and this game seriously let me down.
FinalFantasy 7 & 8 - WTF? Could the plot be anymore stupidly confusing and should it take 20 mins per battle because the god damn animations take so long? (great looking, but way too long).
Ugg...I could go on, but the lifeforce is draining from my corpse.
Halo 2 - everything about this game was painful, and now I work in retail selling it and must listen to those Halo freaks rave about how "revolutionary" it is.
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bless you, sir.
Lets talk about REALLY bad games
1: Any Sonic 3D game completly ruins the memory of the old school Sonic 2D games .
2: Golden Tea Golf ...why the F is it in every bar in America ?? It's horrible and boring !
3: Any Superman game...especially Superman 64 ...every person who worked on the game should be banned from game making.
4 Any Terminator game
5: Any Tomg Raider game after the original
6: I thought the newest spy hunter game was complete assware
7: Everquest ..while I have not owned the game myself I have watched people play and it put me to sleep literally more then once
8: BMXXX nuff said "
9: Big Rigs ..seen it on gamespot and it got the lowest score of all time ..LOL
10 : Mary & Ashley Game ...in the name of God why ...
As for your number 3, the reason why Superman games tend to suck is because of the IP owner (DC or Marvel... I'm not much into comics) making stupid demands. Make a fighting game where the main character can't be injured. Where he can fly anywhere almost instantaneously. Where he's not allowed to kick. I pity the designers who had to try and pull together a decent game out of that mess.
10 : Mary & Ashley Game ...in the name of God why ...
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Which one? There's like, six
But as fas as bad.. I keep thinking of these NES games made by the same company that just put in different sprites basically... Namco? I can't remember. Anyhow, horrible.
Modern game: Messiah. I played through just because to say I did.
Anyway, two games I had to work on was Sven Goran Erikkson World Cup Manager/Challenge. They had forgetton to build the stadia for the game, so myself and 2 others built the 10 Korean stadia in 4 weeks.
The game I got was SGE WC Challenge, was absolute arse. The select and confirm controls on the GUI changed from screen to screen. It had the ball control of a horny elephant with premature problems. It stank.
Recently I was looking at a list of PS2 games by score rating. at number one was San Andreas with 98%, and at around 980 was SGEWCC was a blistering 3%.
Yes i know it's an anicent speccy game, but its still worthy of all the derision the world can heap upon it, after all these years. Walk left along a totally empty horizontal plane for 10 minutes. Press fire. Walk right along a totally empty horizontal plane for 10 minutes. Repeat. Repeat. Chronic.
http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseek.cgi?regexp=^Thing%21$&pub=^Players+Premier+Software$
Rez (PS2): Well, yeah, nice graphics but seriously, how about some gameplay? Rez looks as good as most demos (as in demoscene) nowadays but plays about as well. Just point at the enemies and release the fire button, repeat. I don't get why people praise it to heaven.
Darwinia (demo): Same problem as Rez, looks nice but that's where it ends. It's a realtime strategy game where strategy means "make a squad, send them to the enemy and hold fire". No automated attacking (or even attack orders, you select a squad and hold fire, they start shooting in the direction of your cursor) so tactics involving multiple squads won't work, no loss condition, no ressource management and a borked collision system (honestly, how high above those lines on the floor are you allowed to shoot while still hitting them? Five kilometres?).
.kkrieger: Same problem as the two above with the main difference being that this "game" was actually produced by demosceners and is at least impressive by demo standards.
Burnout 2 (GC): A "racing game". Problem is that it's less about racing and more about avoiding obstacles. The rubberbanding is so extreme there's no point in driving well, even if you screw up the whole time if you manage to drive the last few minutes without hitting a wall or oncoming traffic you'll usually win. The boost is completely pointless because no matter how fast you drive, as soon as you disengage the boost the CPU players will catch up.
Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life (GC): Who would have thought farming can be fun? Well, probably those who played the previous HM games. AWL suffers from going the realistic route where its predecessors went with more arcadey mechanics that made what is usually a chore feel fun. Now you see farming for what it is: A job, not a game. HM:AWL qualifies as slightly worse than Lineage 2 on the "this is not a game, this is fucking work!" scale. Which brings us to
Lineage 2 (open beta): Someone decided that making an RPG where your character is roughly as versatile as an RTS unit but completely alone would be fun or at least profitable. The game consists of clicking on an enemy, waiting for he fight to finish, sitting down and waiting for HP/MP to refill, then go to the next enemy and repeat until some numbers increase and you have a slightly better chance in those fights. Table calculation in Excel is more fun.
danr: You know, most people would say E.T. is worse.
My least favorite recent game was probably KotR. The fights and story were too boring to let me fall back to one or the other, but the thing that made me stop playing was that I had no choice whether or not to become a Jedi. See, when I play a role-playing game, I revert back to my pen-and-paper RPGer sensibilities and let myself imagine the character, his hopes, his dreams, his predjudices, beyond what the story gives me. It sounds dorky; I call it "extending the value of an RPG". In this case, my character hated Jedis. He was a salt-of-the-earth type who trusted a blaster before all else, sneering at these mystic hippies and their laser-phalluses and stupid religion. Fuck 'em. ... oh, and now I have to be one? Uninstall! Partly my fault for being more interested in role-playing than the developers who never gave me an inkling, not the merest whiff of foreshadowing, that I'd be obliged to take this path at any point in the game, sure.
My most disappointing gaming experience of late was Warlords Battlecry 3. I loved the first two games for their simple resource control, addictive hero system, and emphasis on big fun stupid swarming battles. The art wasn't at all impressive but it wasn't a deal-breaker. By the third game, it'd gotten so bad that I just couldn't stand it anymore. Would it kill the developers to hire some artists? I know they're trying to keep costs low, it is a budget game after all, but each incarnation becomes more of an eyesore. There should also be a rule that by the time you get to part 3, you can no longer reuse assets from part 1. Right alongside the rule that one-eyed piles of shambling goo are not acceptible character design. Geeze, come on.
I'm developing a beef with World of Warcraft for being repetitious and boring but also completely addicting. I've become tolerant but remain dependent and maybe I need to join the Salvation Army to help me kick. It's like IRC.
I didn't like KOTOR or Halo 2. In fact, I couldnt stand them. But I still don't believe they qualify for worst game ever.
I agree with Scott. "Godai" is a good candidate for worst game ever. In fact, I have brain damage just knowing of its existence.
NOLF2 was a decent game, standardized FPS with some secret agent comedy, but good.
You want to talk crap, lets just say ANY and ALL football, baseball, hockey, basketball, golf or sportfishing game EVER made. Not a personal hatred or preference, but it just seems that these sports games have no love put into the making of them.
I'll jump on the Halo2 hate bandwagon too. Halo1 was a so-so fps, nothing spectacular. Halo2 is more like small expansion pack, not even worthy of the "2" in the title.
Boy if i had to listen all day about how great it is, I'd probally have to punch somebody in the face.
And thanks for robbing me of my cherished right to hate, fucker!!
I don't personally play console games, except for Dreamcast, DS and SNES. 18 wheeler sucked for such a great game in the arcades.
Scott
While on the subject of being disappointment, is there anyone lurking on this board that was involved with 'Into the Shadows' ?
I was so hyped for this game, it was in development at the time of Q1 and in competition with it , in the eyes of the magazine previews anyway. It was a gorgeus looking 3d polygon D&D action adventure set in amazing castle backdrops that looking very impressive to me.
I even downloaded the teaser videos and demos on the net and then all information about it disappeared and when I started at reflections I found out from someone there that the whole thing had been faked with photoshop compositing and there had never really been an engine to speak of at all!
That was when I lost my innocence about the games industry heh
They had a jump move, but you couldn't jump over the enemy, and I don't think you could do attacks while in the air - what was the point of the jump!?
Funnily enough, the tiny little overworked computer shop in my town, had a copy of Rise of the Robots for the Atari on the shelf until about 2001, for £35. Ahahaha!
Scott: Wow, sorry to hear you had to work on that turd, even if it was just 6 weeks, but wow, Godai was worse than that? Fuck, I'll avoid that one if ever anyone tries to force me to play it
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Well, people asked "Worst Game" ot games I hate, and Godai I think was one of the most inept and shoddy, night unto criminal abuses of Sony's good will in the service of the ego of a guy with no talent and personality, I think ever to make it to the shelves of a major retail chain. I was kind of glad I got transfered off the team for "not being a team player" of that game and onto Johnny Moseley: Mad Trix. I think "Games you hate" are a separate category. But worst games, Really should be the sorts of projects that are so broken or so badly done, that they would have been killed if the company did not have a case if ego over common sense.
Actually Godai is so bad, it's almost funny...almost. The head designer was a heavy metal kid from the central valleywho had a whole lot of "mulletude".
As to "Rise of the Robots"... Well we were involved in trying to see of we could port the game to the Genesis or the SNES, I remember our producer was a aggravated by the creator of the game, and it basically ended up that the graphic compromises needed to bring it to the console was insurmountable, or became unacceptable to the creator, and we bowed out. Oh those Accolade Days...
Scott
I'd never realized how horrible movie to game conversions tended to be until I played this game.
The worst part of the game had to be the viewpoint; semi topdown camera in a 3d environment = bad mix. That coupled with the crappy controls (and this was when using a mouse) made certain parts of the game near impossible to get through without cheating, and even then it was difficult because you could only use cheats a certain amount of times during the course of the game.
The fighting system was pathetic; your entire combat repetoire consisted of three attacks, and you couldn't effectively block against lightsabers, which turned combat against another jedi into a pillow fight with lightsabers (I hit you, you hit me, back and forth until one of us drops) . . . guess who that usually turned out to be :S
It's as if they put no effort into the gameplay. How . . . lazy.
The only good thing that came of me playing this game is that from then on I've looked at who's the developer before I actually buy a game.
Dont worry about how you feel, it needed mega improvement. The game is so-so. But look on the bright side... Volition is going to do things better next time. I came into punisher in mid production. So all I did was make characters. Now that I'm starting fresh on a new project. I've given tons of suggestions and comments how things need to get improved.
RTX redrock. by Lucasarts. I interned on this game for 3 months. I knew it would flop the second I heard about it. I played it myself a year later when i saw it in stores (bought it for 5.99 brand new)
Deus Ex 2. I just wasnt feelin it at all. I sold it 3 days after i bought it. Maybe ill give it a second try some day.
Doom3. except the engine.. Horrible game. Crappy suspence, lame cutscenes. Uninstalled if after beating on Godmode near the end (just to get through it fast, cuz it was pulling my teeth out)
Other than that.. most games I buy are good and I'm not disapointed.
I remember our producer was a aggravated by the creator of the game
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yep, that'll happen ...
Slipstream - i worked on the GBC version of that game, (which evolved a different title altogether in the end). It (theirs, not ours) was shocking - i think the semi-top-down view was a last-minute change, added to stop the chronic slowdown that you'd get from other camera views in the dev version. It sped the game up a bit, but made it absolutely impossible to play. But who cares - whack it in a box, ship it out, move on to the next one.
about the same time, anyone else remember romero's original insaneo hype on the topic of how great Quake was going to be? back when the mysterious dragon screenies were out and all the HUD had was a blood-red 100? the game was some dark fantasy type deal with THE HAMMER and on and on... the more i think about it, the imaginary game he was hyping still sounds like it'd be fun to play
I remember thinking Into the shadows looked a lot better though now I know it was all fake!
The worst? aaah so many. Probably RC Copter(?name) for the PS1 it was basically impossible to control the thing. The RC copters in GTA VC were easy to control in comparison.
Volition is going to do things better next time. I came into punisher in mid production. So all I did was make characters. Now that I'm starting fresh on a new project. I've given tons of suggestions and comments how things need to get improved.
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Freespace 3?
Actually i was being unfair to the punisher but i have an excuse. First off i had just paid for it so i and felt letdown so venting on it, sorry it is unfairly subjective but...
Secondly i think most trad game making has had to go through a minirevolution in the last 6 months or so. Up untill U2k3 you would make a model/character or whatever and texture it, and slap it in the game, if the lighting got dynamic you could take a few of the shadows and highlights out of the texture and it would still look cool. but nowdays the length of time has at least doubled or tripled to make the same resourse, with normal mapping, high poly versions, specular maps have to be made as well etc. But basically in the last 6 months there have been a lot of small or not so small grafical improvements appearing in games and after having played quite a few of them (Riddick/HL2/Doom3, etc) recently i got used to them and the bar got raised, looking at a game now that is just a model with a diffuse texture on it just appears so old school, and when you see colour bands appearing in the greys etc it just looks painfull. I know it is not fair to compare the characters in the punisher to those in doom or riddick (getting fair on riddick?) but from now on i think that is what they will be compared to.
Any company that is making artwork for xbox and ps2 at the same time as PC has to seriously concider either dropping the pc version because of the extra time needed to make the resources, or realise that they have to make it look as good as all the other titles out there or accept that the pc version is not much more (financial return wise) than a very expencive publicity stunt that may go sour.
I think there are a lot of companies out ther that are going to suffer a lot by not having adopted recent changes in art resources, those that try and publish on older tech are likly to get people like me saying that the games look rubbish even when they dont just because they are used to newer tech???
ugg that was longwinded
tpe