Worst video games you ever played?

[Metalhead]

I imagine many of you will go for the easy bait that was known as QWOP.

I will go for Leisure Suit Larry - Box Office Bust on the Xbox 360. Which is a shame, because I loved the '80s PC adventure games that actually had a good sense of humor behind them.

Sonic 2006 is also one of the worst video games I ever tried to play.

What are the worst video games you ever played?

 

[Wulven]

Lately the "new" releases. All of them seem to have game cripplingly bugs in them. Which hurts when you actually like and want to play said game.

Worst ever. Probably original Xbox Superman. PS4 Battlefield 5 glitches fest.
Any with the line internet connection required on the box.

 

[AGXStarseed]

LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy for Nintendo DS.
I found that game pretty much broken and outright impossible to complete, which is weird considering the version I played on the PlayStation 2 had no issues and the previous game (LEGO Star Wars) for the Gameboy Advance played fine.

 

[Misery]

Honestly QWOP wasnt really a bad game; quite a bit more popular than you might think. I mean the entire point was the hilarity from the awkward controls. Surgeon Simulator, which became very popular and is generally hilarious, was born out of inspiration from QWOP. As were some other games.

As for the ones I personally hated most:

1. Disgaea. I'm sorry, I get that it's popular, but holy heck was it just ultra boring to me.

2. Nethack. Roguelikes are great, they really are. Easily my main genre. Nethack, however... BLEH. It does an absolutely astonishing number of things badly. All the unidentified EVERYTHING, for instance... gee, my FREAKING WIZARD cant be very good at his job considering that he doesnt know what ANY of the scrolls or potions do, and my warrior cant even figure out how a sword works. Or the hilariously stupid "mechanics". The less said about the whole "Elbereth" thing, the better... that honestly gets my award for the single dumbest game mechanic ever created. Worst of all though is that half the bloody genre tries to copy Nethack instead of, you know, doing any other bloody thing. I'll never, ever understand why anyone likes this one.

3. Most recent AAA games. I'm so, so glad I got into indies instead.

 

[Skittlebisquit]

Tough one Len, I've played some real stinkers. The absolute worst? I'm going to go with " kane and lynch, dead men". A real lemon. It was used, and I paid $3.99 for it, which is less than a cheap sandwich. I wish I got a sandwich instead. Or some chapstick, or a pen, or just about anything really.

 

[AGXStarseed]

Tough one Len, I've played some real stinkers. The absolute worst? I'm going to go with " kane and lynch, dead men". A real lemon. It was used, and I paid $3.99 for it, which is less than a cheap sandwich. I wish I got a sandwich instead. Or some chapstick, or a pen, or just about anything really.

In regards to that game, one of the people who reviewed it - Jeff Gerstmann (a senior editor at Gamespot who tended to be more honest with games, instead of just doing the usual of giving 7/10 scores to games that were virtually unplayable) - ended up getting fired over the game.

The reason?
The marketing department had done a lot of work promoting the game (even having a massive background image on their website at the time), only for Jeff to give the game an average score of 6/10. For the record, even IO Interactive thought the game was a bit rubbish, and they made it.
Despite this, Gerstmann was sacked from Gamespot over his honesty - with several other Gamespot employees also leaving with him (stating they couldn't work for a company that fired their journalists because of advertising pressure).
Gerstmann and the journalists who left with him later formed Giant Bomb in 2008 - which became popular for continuing to push their honest reviews of games - while Gamespot fired its executives and tried to win back some support following what had happened.
Ironically, both Gamespot and Giant Bomb are now owned by CBS Interactive.

 

[Yeshuasdaughter]

It's a video game mashup of Sonic the Hedgehog and Thomas the Tank Engine. It's so terrible that it's wonderful. Try it out.

Sonic the Very Useful Engine - Play Game Online

 

[Yeshuasdaughter]

Do you remember the old Commodore 64 system? There was this game called "Tooth Invaders". Basically the whole premise of the game is that you are a tiny little man in a giant mouth (get your mind out of the gutter), and you tried to kill germs with a man-sized toothbrush, and brushed away plaque.

It was actually quite fun when I was a kid, but looking back, all I can ask is: who designed this game? How did they come up with it? At what point were they like, "Oh I know, I'll make a strategy game about dental hygiene. Kids love that stuff!"?

 

[Misery]

Do you remember the old Commodore 64 system? There was this game called "Tooth Invaders". Basically the whole premise of the game is that you are a tiny little man in a giant mouth (get your mind out of the gutter), and you tried to kill germs with a man-sized toothbrush, and brushed away plaque.

It was actually quite fun when I was a kid, but looking back, all I can ask is: who designed this game? How did they come up with it? At what point were they like, "Oh I know, I'll make a strategy game about dental hygiene. Kids love that stuff!"?

That reminds me of this:

Plaque Attack, by Activision. And yes, it is good. Food items spawn either near the top or bottom and move towards the opposite side, and they'll start dissolving teeth they come in contact with, so you shoot them with the toothpaste thing, and it can move in any direction and fire both up and down. It gets very frantic very fast. A unique approach to the typical Invaders concept.

Activision absolutely blows goat chunks these days, but back then, they were the best in the business. How the mighty have fallen...

Oh, right, this thread is supposed to be about BAD games.

Uh, let's see... bad 2600 games... And no, ET is not one of them. That game is actually quite good, it's just that most people were too lazy to actually read the blasted manual.

Ah, here we go, the one that I always thought was not only the worst of the 2600 library, but one of the worst games ever made... I do apologize in advance for what you're about to witness:

Games like this one are why the Crash happened.

I genuinely like most games on that console, but even I think that one is terrible.

 

[Yeshuasdaughter]

That reminds me of this:

View attachment 69809

Plaque Attack, by Activision. And yes, it is good. Food items spawn either near the top or bottom and move towards the opposite side, and they'll start dissolving teeth they come in contact with, so you shoot them with the toothpaste thing, and it can move in any direction and fire both up and down. It gets very frantic very fast. A unique approach to the typical Invaders concept.

Activision absolutely blows goat chunks these days, but back then, they were the best in the business. How the mighty have fallen...

Oh, right, this thread is supposed to be about BAD games.

Uh, let's see... bad 2600 games... And no, ET is not one of them. That game is actually quite good, it's just that most people were too lazy to actually read the blasted manual.

Ah, here we go, the one that I always thought was not only the worst of the 2600 library, but one of the worst games ever made... I do apologize in advance for what you're about to witness:

Games like this one are why the Crash happened.

I genuinely like most games on that console, but even I think that one is terrible.

Oh my gosh, Misery, you are warming my heart with all that nostalgia!!

I never said I hated tooth invaders. It was one of my favorite games as a kid. It was just a weird premise. Yes!! I remember Plaque Attack!! That was a good one too.

And ET was the very, very first video game I ever played. We had an Atari. All systems nowadays should have wood paneling. Nothing says class like it.

Okay, maybe I never understood it, but Myst was a sucky game. You just wander around, lost in a weird world, feeling like you just got laughing gas at the dentists, looking for clues and pieces to a puzzle. It was so boring and confusing.

 

[Misery]

All systems nowadays should have wood paneling. Nothing says class like it.

Yes indeed.

Also notable is that the things tend to still work. Those things were SOLID. Whereas consoles these days tend to break if you look at them too hard. Red ring of death, indeed.

I could rant about the 2600 all day. In fact, one of the reasons I bought not just this computer, but my entire VR setup was the discovery of a program that could create a virtual 80s bedroom, complete with TVs, and it acts as an emulator to play these on those TVs. Like most VR programs, it is mindblowing. Easily my most frequently played VR game.

This is the one I've been playing a lot recently when in there:

Bank Heist! A rather strange game, I'd never heard of this one till I found it in the rom archive. It's pretty great.

Oh, right, BAD games. Okay, another, uh...

Karate, also on the 2600. Basically the worst fighting game ever made. If the name "Froggo" means anything to you, well... yeah, this is what you'd expect from them.

Oh, and here's a bad one that's also weird:

This one is called "I Want My Mommy". Yes, really. Bloody strange game. Use lasers to climb to the top of that thing to get either the giant apple or this creepy bear thing, and avoid the "dream demons" on each floor. It is stupidly easy and very, very short. 2 levels and then it's entirely over, it doesnt even loop. Marketed as a "kids game". I tell ya, the actual box is even weirder.

Okay, maybe I never understood it, but Myst was a sucky game. You just wander around, lost in a weird world, feeling like you just got laughing gas at the dentists, looking for clues and pieces to a puzzle. It was so boring and confusing.

Yeah, I was never quite sure why Myst got to be so popular.

 

[Yeshuasdaughter]

Yes indeed.

Also notable is that the things tend to still work. Those things were SOLID. Whereas consoles these days tend to break if you look at them too hard. Red ring of death, indeed.

I could rant about the 2600 all day. In fact, one of the reasons I bought not just this computer, but my entire VR setup was the discovery of a program that could create a virtual 80s bedroom, complete with TVs, and it acts as an emulator to play these on those TVs. Like most VR programs, it is mindblowing. Easily my most frequently played VR game.

This is the one I've been playing a lot recently when in there:

View attachment 69813

Bank Heist! A rather strange game, I'd never heard of this one till I found it in the rom archive. It's pretty great.

Oh, right, BAD games. Okay, another, uh...

View attachment 69814

Karate, also on the 2600. Basically the worst fighting game ever made. If the name "Froggo" means anything to you, well... yeah, this is what you'd expect from them.

Oh, and here's a bad one that's also weird:

View attachment 69815

This one is called "I Want My Mommy". Yes, really. Bloody strange game. Use lasers to climb to the top of that thing to get either the giant apple or this creepy bear thing, and avoid the "dream demons" on each floor. It is stupidly easy and very, very short. 2 levels and then it's entirely over, it doesnt even loop. Marketed as a "kids game". I tell ya, the actual box is even weirder.



Yeah, I was never quite sure why Myst got to be so popular.

OMG I love you! BANK HEIST!!???!! That game was the bomb dot com!

You want to know a game that was sooooooooo gooooood???? Diablo 2. That was my jam.

 

[Judge]

The worst? That's easy. The ones I have so easily forgotten over the years. Leaving me only to remember those I really liked. Though "Pong" did bore both myself and my brother pretty quickly. Duh...lol!

I still recall though how bummed I was after buying Lucas Arts' "Battle of Britain" only to find that it wouldn't work on my PC. -"Not enough conventional memory". WTH does that mean??? Didn't have a clue.

A situation which launched a whole new hobby for me. To learn how to "sculpt" my DOS 5.0 autoexec.bat and config.sys files to make such games run. And I did. But at that point becoming a computer geek became more satisfying than playing computer games. Then I discovered website design, eventually applying my skills being employed by a well-known computer gaming entity in the late 90s. My bad.

320x320 resolution games were visually primitive back in the late 80s, but at that time you didn't need a robust computer to play them with fluid frame rates. A "golden era" for me running DOS 5 and Windows 3.1. When games ran fine, whether you liked them or not. When you were "in like Flynn" just having a 256 color VESA card.

 

[tkcartoonist]

Blood Omen 2 on PS2 for me. Besides being a mediocre game at best, it's extremely glitchy. So glitchy that your save file can accidentally get corrupted because the game locks up while saving at certain points. Kinda sucks it's associated with the otherwise-decent Legacy of Kain series.

 

[Trophonius]

Ok, this is not an easy questions. I and lot of us I believe have played a fair share of bad games, but most of them are probably online games that were never intended to be much more than meme games (qwops for example).

Now I want to focus and games that were actually created by a team, hyped up by the company, and very much sucked. Here I want to mention Fallout 76: the game was boring to begin with, it was released unfinished, and everything in it was broken.
This game had THE marketing campaign, promising everyone it would be a revolutionary videogame as never seen before. They were right, no game before Fallout 76 had so many glitches.

I'm sure there are worse games... but other bad games never hyped me up too much before experiencing them.

 

[Lemon Zing]

So, this was a pretty awful PS1 game, based on a science fiction horror movie with Jamie Lee Curtis.

 

[Yeshuasdaughter]

You want to play a real bad one? May I present to you the playable version of Sonic XL:

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 XL - Play Game Online