Worst Games You have ever played (in your opinion)

[Arron Oberon]

Be nice to me, please.
I'm going to have to say Tetris
Sure It's fun but it won't really keep me hooked for that long a close second would be 2048

[Rynjin]

I genuinely and sincerely envy you that the worst game you've ever played is one you even admit is fun.

I think the worst game I've ever played is still the Van Helsing game for the PS2, which was a tie-in to the Hugh Jackman movie that came out around that time. It's one of those games that actively fights your attempts just to PLAY it, with constant crashes, a camera that just does whatever it feels like doing at the time, and nut-crushingly tedious levels filled with damage sponge enemies you can't even see half the time due to the aforementioned terrible camera.

Honorable mention goes to Hitman 2: Silent Assassin for being a game where you play a genetically engineered super-assassin whose base walking speed is slower than your targets' and who gets spotted at the drop of a hat. It's the only Hitman game I beat by just going in guns blazing and killing everything in every level from start to finish because any attempt at stealth or nonlethal takedowns ended in abject disaster.

Honorable mention 2 goes to Dragon Age Inquisition for being literally non-functional on release and having a plot that seems to exist to systematically eliminate everything creative and interesting about the setting laid out in the first game.

[factotum]

Battlecruiser 3000AD. Even if you ignore the UI that looks like a keyboard threw up on the screen, the game itself was buggy as all heck and borderline unplayable. Which is a crying shame, because I remember once getting into a fighter and watching my main battlecruiser slowly move past like something out of an SF movie, and thinking how awesome it looked...

[veti]

Battlecruiser 3000AD. Even if you ignore the UI that looks like a keyboard threw up on the screen, the game itself was buggy as all heck and borderline unplayable.

Hah. At least you got to play it. The damn game wouldn't even run for me.

I'm going to nominate Heroes of Might and Magic V, mostly because I loved the whole series up to then but V was tedious and soulless. Even on its own terms it sucked, its interminable cutscenes combining jjuvenile writing with middle-school-level artwork. In a similar vein, Neverwinter Nights 2 deserves some kind of award for most crushingly disappointing sequel.

[houlio]

As far as games I’ve actually played to completion, it’s probably Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles. A couple friends and I managed to get the requisite link cables and gameboy advances together a few years ago and did a play through of it. The gameplay and plot are entirely forgettable, the soundtrack is admittedly nice, but a game seemingly focused entirely on multiplayer requiring so many peripherals is awful.

[Eternal Dharma]

Conan Exiles was one of the worst games that I have ever played. I know there was some that were worse, but I can't remember their names. I had unrealistically high hopes for Conan Exiles due to being a fan of the old comics and the Schwarzenegger adaptations for them. Apart from some nice physiques and bodily aesthetics, there wasn't really too much going on. The controls were clunky, the crafting system was lackluster, combat felt like you were hitting jello people with balloon animals because of the lack of impact physics and visceral sound effects, and I fell through the world about ten times and ended up right back at where you first spawn into the game. It was a horrible experience.

Fallout 76 is right behind Conan Exiles though and only ranks slightly higher because at least the gunplay felt decent. That game is still one of the worst things ever and, if I were a particularly superstitious man, all of the things happening with things even tangentially-related to that game, like the power armor helmet recalls, would lead me to believe that it is cursed.

The worst AAA title I have ever played though would be, hands-down Mass Effect Andromeda. All you need to do is apply some Google-fu and you can see why that game was awful. Plasticine faces, bad combat, lifeless worlds, unlikable characters, and a really disjointed story all made the game something Bioware should be ashamed of.

[Dienekes]

Honorable mention 2 goes to Dragon Age Inquisition for being literally non-functional on release and having a plot that seems to exist to systematically eliminate everything creative and interesting about the setting laid out in the first game.

Interesting take. Out of curiosity what makes you think this. Honestly I felt that it expanded some of the things I found interesting. Especially pointing out the mage problem was an eternal repeating occurrence. Something it always should have been portrayed as.

Anyway, worst game I’ve played was Superman 64, but I played that to experience the horribleness so I’m not certain I should count it. I mean sure it’s the worst but I knew what I was getting into on that one.

Worst game I was hoping to enjoy and play but just found terrible was Godzilla for the gameboy. I bought a Godzilla game. I wanted to play Godzilla fighting monsters, shooting atomic breath, destroying cities. What is this boulder moving crap? Why can I only punch? I can’t even fight Ghidorah? I have to run away the whole game? What Godzilla movies were these people watching?

[Vinyadan]

Arma (Operation Flashpoint CWC). As it is now, it's prone to bugs, and I believe they did some odd updates that made the game difficult to the point of being unplayable in single player.

Beyond Divinity. Game made in 18 months with the only purpose of quick money to keep the studio afloat. You lead a party of two. If one dies, both die. Even choosing what skill to upgrade after you go up a level is, interface-wise, sluggish. Impossible fights early on if you aren't geared for combat. Monsters were made in 3d to be able to reuse the same animations across different creatures.

[Narkis]

I have heard talk that there exists a game called "Command and Conquer 4". That's a lie. Such a game has never been made. And if it were, I'm sure Westwood would have created a great game, a proper ending to the Tiberium war and Kane's story, and not at all a soulless moneygrabbing thing with little in common to one of the best RTS series ever made. And it would have definitely not been the worst game someone had played.

[The Glyphstone]

I have heard talk that there exists a game called "Command and Conquer 4". That's a lie. Such a game has never been made. And if it were, I'm sure Westwood would have created a great game, a proper ending to the Tiberium war and Kane's story, and not at all a soulless moneygrabbing thing with little in common to one of the best RTS series ever made. And it would have definitely not been the worst game someone had played.

Similarly, I'm glad the Red Alert series ended with Yuri's Revenge. Someday they'll make Red Alert 3, and I'm sure it won't be a warped parody of its own franchise that kills off/retcons the only entertaining characters, hires big-name actors and criminally underutilizes them, and grafts the whole thing into a frustrating system designed to force online/co-op play in a single-player campaign.

[Keltest]

Personally, Dungeon Siege 3. Its not a terrible game in and of itself, but as somebody who enjoyed the gameplay of the first two, it really dropped the ball completely. The plot also hinges on a particularly unexplored (and therefore rather weak) aspect of the setting, the metaphysics, and doesn't really mesh with what was established by the previous games very well.

[Antonok]

I think the worst game I've ever played is still the Van Helsing game for the PS2, which was a tie-in to the Hugh Jackman movie that came out around that time. It's one of those games that actively fights your attempts just to PLAY it, with constant crashes, a camera that just does whatever it feels like doing at the time, and nut-crushingly tedious levels filled with damage sponge enemies you can't even see half the time due to the aforementioned terrible camera.


This.... scarily summarizes to my playthrough of Mass Effect: Andromeda. Console release of that game was just straight up bad.

[Yora]

Star Wars Episode 1.

I was 15 and loved all the Star Wars I could get, so I completed this game at least once, possibly even twice. But it's just so horribly bad.

[Vinyadan]

Star Wars Episode 1.

I was 15 and loved all the Star Wars I could get, so I completed this game at least once, possibly even twice. But it's just so horribly bad.

This reminds me of Star Wars Rebellion, a grand strategy game with the clunkiest interface ever devised by Man.

[Yora]

I actually really liked that one.

[Narkis]

Yeah, me too. The interface was really bad, no doubt, but the game itself was pretty good.

And on the bright side, that experience was invaluable when I later got into Paradox games. They were a stroll in the park in comparison.

[Tvtyrant]

Naruto ultimate warrior for the ps2. It stands out for its terrible plot and having one completely broken move that you just spam the entire time, being explosive note tosses.

[Zevox]

Hm, that's hard to say, honestly. One that comes to mind quickly for me is Final Fantasy 13, as that's a game where I legitimately feel like I've gotten more entertainment out of complaining about how bad its story was with friends who also played it than I did actually playing it. And yet I wouldn't even call that the worst Final Fantasy game I've played, as its gameplay was at least decent enough that I did play it all the way through, something I can't say for Final Fantasy 8, which was just so bad all around that I did not get far before giving up on it entirely.

But there are definitely more poorly made games out there than FF8, some of which I've played. Sonic and the Secret Rings comes to mind, for instance, as one that had such terrible motion controls that I very quickly gave up on it as basically unplayable. That one might take the crown for games I can clearly remember playing, honestly, just because of how fundamental that issue is.

But I also know that when I was a kid I used to rent games (NES, Sega Genesis, and N64) from a local video store regularly, and I'm sure I must have run across some awful games back then; I just largely don't remember them at this point. I do know that at times I considered renting the infamous Superman 64, for instance, but I don't think I ever did, as when I've seen videos of that game's first levels they don't look familiar. I did rent Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero at least once, though, and when I've seen that played on youtube in recent years, wow, I did not remember how terrible it was, I just recalled having enough trouble with it that I never got far into it. That one might be a top contender for the crown of worst I've ever played personally, at least that I can remember playing.

[DarthArminius]

Captain Planet and the Planeteers was a stupid unfun , unplayable mess in the toilet of Gaming.

[Rynjin]

Interesting take. Out of curiosity what makes you think this. Honestly I felt that it expanded some of the things I found interesting. Especially pointing out the mage problem was an eternal repeating occurrence. Something it always should have been portrayed as.

Dragon Age Inquisition and to a lesser extent 2 suffers from the "both sides problem".

In Origins, you have very clearly oppressed groups: Elves and Mages. The former is oppressed due to simple bigotry and a clear disdain for their traditional way of life. The latter is due to a slightly more understandable fear of the power they wield, and ingrained religious intolerance. It's a complex world where sometimes bad things happen because people suck; strip out all the fantasy elements and it's pretty true to life. Life isn't fair.

Inquisition decides that this is too nuanced and interesting. Elves need to be oppressed as some sort of cosmic karma for what they were like thousands of years ago, and mages deserve to be oppressed because "look, see? Look away from them for FIVE MINUTES and they commit atrocities against god and man! Get 'em!".

It goes from "this is ****ty but understandable" to "**** worldbuilding, I need a plot".

[DarthArminius]

Dragon Age Inquisition and to a lesser extent 2 suffers from the "both sides problem".

In Origins, you have very clearly oppressed groups: Elves and Mages. The former is oppressed due to simple bigotry and a clear disdain for their traditional way of life. The latter is due to a slightly more understandable fear of the power they wield, and ingrained religious intolerance. It's a complex world where sometimes bad things happen because people suck; strip out all the fantasy elements and it's pretty true to life. Life isn't fair.

Inquisition decides that this is too nuanced and interesting. Elves need to be oppressed as some sort of cosmic karma for what they were like thousands of years ago, and mages deserve to be oppressed because "look, see? Look away from them for FIVE MINUTES and they commit atrocities against god and man! Get 'em!".

It goes from "this is ****ty but understandable" to "**** worldbuilding, I need a plot".

Eh, I disagree. I never got the idea that Elves were blamed for what their ancestors did by the developers, and the mage problem, while still there, was introduced by Dragon Age 2.

[Keltest]

Eh, I disagree. I never got the idea that Elves were blamed for what their ancestors did by the developers, and the mage problem, while still there, was introduced by Dragon Age 2.

Agreed. Inquisition also runs with the idea that maybe mages wouldn't be so quick to fly off the handle if they didn't have an army of religious devotees out there dedicated specifically to killing them. And Inquisition doesn't really touch on the plight of city elves at all, even if the Dalish come out looking like gits.

[Kitten Champion]

I don't know how I'd measure "worst" in terms of games. There are quite a lot of games which I've played which were barely functional or downright broken, games which might've been passable at the time but are excruciatingly dated, games which left such little impact on me that I've forgotten I played them, games which I had actual expectations for that failed to meet them, games that have punishing difficulty that merely serves to frustrate after a point, or games which have online communities so rancid that they fill me with existential despair.

But even with those, I can appreciate the effort some have put into making a thing on some level... so I'd pick several mobile games I've tried - the specific one doesn't matter as they generally have the same mechanics and failings - where the "game" is mostly waiting and largely plays itself. With heavy advertising, constant attempts to connect me to the game via social media, an intentionally confusing UI and in-game economy to disorient me, and even if I did theoretically spend money to get through the paywall mechanics... it's not much of a game in the first place. A lot of games I've disliked playing over my lifetime have failed somewhere in the process, but they still try to be games to begin with. These start from the idea of conning people out of money using now well-established psychological tricks and then the rest of the game exists as as excuse to justify any of it.

[Dienekes]

Dragon Age Inquisition and to a lesser extent 2 suffers from the "both sides problem".

In Origins, you have very clearly oppressed groups: Elves and Mages. The former is oppressed due to simple bigotry and a clear disdain for their traditional way of life. The latter is due to a slightly more understandable fear of the power they wield, and ingrained religious intolerance. It's a complex world where sometimes bad things happen because people suck; strip out all the fantasy elements and it's pretty true to life. Life isn't fair.

Inquisition decides that this is too nuanced and interesting. Elves need to be oppressed as some sort of cosmic karma for what they were like thousands of years ago, and mages deserve to be oppressed because "look, see? Look away from them for FIVE MINUTES and they commit atrocities against god and man! Get 'em!".

It goes from "this is ****ty but understandable" to "**** worldbuilding, I need a plot".

Ahh. You see I find I’m drawn to the opposite thinking. “Here are oppressed groups!” I found honestly pretty boring. Especially when placed as part of decision based rpg. Who are you going to side with? The oppressed group. Always the oppressed group. There’s nothing really interesting for me there.

I actually greatly prefer where the decision is an actual difficult decision. Especially since for the mage problem all the way back in DA:O the setting is set up to make mage dominance so easy. The quickest and most efficient ways for Mages to gain power are to side with demons and sacrifice other people with blood magic. In that setting the question then becomes “why don’t a small cabal of supremely powerful blood drunk mages rule the world?” To me, exploring that specific question is good world building, since the magic system designed by the world should directly reach that conclusion.

This can then be leveraged into the decisions of the player. How can someone find a way to avoid mage dominance without becoming oppressors yourself? And I’ve found that question fascinating.

In the same way I found the king of the dwarves question fascinating back in DAO. Can you stomach putting a murderous backstabbing little sociopath on the throne if he’s the best chance for social reform?

But honestly the games themselves only kinda allude to that question and instead just gave a bunch of stupid or evil people to untangle. That’s what I’ve always thought to be the weakness of the DA series. It presents the outline for these brilliantly complicated philosophical questions. But answers them with storytelling logic instead of exploring the systems created.

[Wardog]

Oh, you young-uns, with your modern, sub-standard games, with mere bad gameplay and poorly-thoughtout plots. You should see what we oldies had to suffer through back in 8-bit days.

Behold: the horror of Roland on the Ropes, on the Amstrad CPC.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6bJnZkNSQ8

And yes, that flickering is original, not an artefact of the recording. I never even got out of the first level, because the graphics and sfx always gave me a terrible headache before I could find my way out.

[factotum]

The problem is, the entry point for writing a game was far lower back then, so naturally you got a lot more dross. It's actually harder to write a truly dreadful game nowadays because it takes a lot more effort to do so, assuming we're not talking about crappy Unity store asset flips.

[Kesnit]

Heretic Kingdoms: The Inquisition (https://www.amazon.com/Heretic-Kingdoms-Inquisition-PC/dp/B0007KQ6EW/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=heretic&qid=1571654996&s=videogames&sr=1-4)

I tried to play this a little over 10 years ago and maybe got 15 minutes in. That includes the time I spent looking for a way to heal after a bear attacked me and left me at 1/4 health. I never did find a way to heal, meaning anything I encountered after that would one-shot me.

[Hunter Noventa]

Sword of Hope 2 for the Gameboy was...aggressively mediocre. Didn't help that you could softlock in the first dungeon, from what I recall. I beat it, but it's still an awful game.

[DeTess]

Hmmm, I've got an odd one. Not counting any games that where so 'meh' that I just can't remember them, I think it has to be Divinity: original sin 2. Now, please, hear me out here before jumping down my throat about why I feel this way about such a generally well-liked RPG. I think Divinity's story was absolutely great, and the basic loop of its gameplay could be pretty nice as well. However, its combat and overall world design is so damn punishing that it sucked a lot of the fun out of the game for me. You're basically required to find and do every last side-quest to remain on-level, even if some of those side-quests are things your character really wouldn't want to be involved in. Even then, a lot of combats are ambushes where the opponents go first and if you hadn't spread out the party to the most optimal positions beforehand, you'd just die before even getting to have a turn. Playing Divinity is like playing DnD with a killer DM whose only claim to fairness is that the DMG technically doesn't forbid sending CR10 encounters at level 4 parties without any warning or foreshadowing.

Now maybe I should have just gotten good. However, Divinity presented itself as a story-driven RPG about making choices and going on quests, not as a difficult grind requiring endless repetition and reading of guides to 'git gud'. When I want to play a game like that I'll just pick up a soulslike, most of which are designed for that loop and at least feel fair while they kill you over and over and over again. Divinity: original sin 2 just never felt fair to me, and that's a shame as it has a really nice story and tries to do some really nice things with freedom of choice and consequence in an RPG.

/rant

[Keltest]

Hmmm, I've got an odd one. Not counting any games that where so 'meh' that I just can't remember them, I think it has to be Divinity: original sin 2. Now, please, hear me out here before jumping down my throat about why I feel this way about such a generally well-liked RPG. I think Divinity's story was absolutely great, and the basic loop of its gameplay could be pretty nice as well. However, its combat and overall world design is so damn punishing that it sucked a lot of the fun out of the game for me. You're basically required to find and do every last side-quest to remain on-level, even if some of those side-quests are things your character really wouldn't want to be involved in. Even then, a lot of combats are ambushes where the opponents go first and if you hadn't spread out the party to the most optimal positions beforehand, you'd just die before even getting to have a turn. Playing Divinity is like playing DnD with a killer DM whose only claim to fairness is that the DMG technically doesn't forbid sending CR10 encounters at level 4 parties without any warning or foreshadowing.

Now maybe I should have just gotten good. However, Divinity presented itself as a story-driven RPG about making choices and going on quests, not as a difficult grind requiring endless repetition and reading of guides to 'git gud'. When I want to play a game like that I'll just pick up a soulslike, most of which are designed for that loop and at least feel fair while they kill you over and over and over again. Divinity: original sin 2 just never felt fair to me, and that's a shame as it has a really nice story and tries to do some really nice things with freedom of choice and consequence in an RPG.

/rant


Divinity pretty clearly expects save scumming, and they ran with it. I can see why it wouldn't be to somebody's tastes, especially if they want to get a "perfect" playthrough without using a guide, but its definitely a feature, not a bug. If you lose in a fight (say, one where you get ambushed by a bunch of earth-and-fire-immune monsters, cough cough) when you die the first time, they want you to be able to go back and train your fire wizard to blast ice instead, and then win the fight that way.

[Manticoran]

Divinity pretty clearly expects save scumming, and they ran with it. I can see why it wouldn't be to somebody's tastes, especially if they want to get a "perfect" playthrough without using a guide, but its definitely a feature, not a bug. If you lose in a fight (say, one where you get ambushed by a bunch of earth-and-fire-immune monsters, cough cough) when you die the first time, they want you to be able to go back and train your fire wizard to blast ice instead, and then win the fight that way.

I'll also note I found the game perfectly easy on a casual playthrough on a low difficulty, almost to the point I considered increasing it.

[halfeye]

Anco's Jump Jet on the Atari ST, it was (reduced to?) £5 and still a rip off.

[PraetorDragoon]

I have actually played Limbo of the Lost, just to see what the fuss is about.

It was bad.

[factotum]

I have actually played Limbo of the Lost, just to see what the fuss is about.

It was bad.

Most of the fuss about the game wasn't due to it being bad (although it was pretty terrible, true--I mean, you put a monster to sleep using a potion made from his own snot? How does that make any sort of sense, especially since said monster was already asleep before you fed him the potion?) but due to its liberal usage of stolen assets from other games, as I recall.

[PraetorDragoon]

Most of the fuss about the game wasn't due to it being bad (although it was pretty terrible, true--I mean, you put a monster to sleep using a potion made from his own snot? How does that make any sort of sense, especially since said monster was already asleep before you fed him the potion?) but due to its liberal usage of stolen assets from other games, as I recall.

Most of the assets were plagiarized indeed. (and the main reason for the infamy) Gameplaywise it was even worse, as it was a pixel-hunt adventure game that made moon-logic sierra games look sensible.

[Brother Oni]

Since this is an opinion thread...

Anthem - after spending a couple hours of downloading the demo, the game wouldn't even start. Half an hour googling later revealed that the game doesn't support my quad-core processor; this isn't mentioned in any of the spec information and was buried in the depths of the game's hardware problems sub-forum.

Mario Kart - I absolutely loathe the game design decision to make all races as close as possible to keep the entertainment up, from the lead position only ever getting bananas and other weak power-ups, to the sheer [redacted] that is the blue shell and complete non-explanation of game mechanics (mini turbo turns, turbo boosting off the race line, etc).

Super Smash Brothers - ropey controls, camera interfering with your ability to keep track of what your character is doing, no explanation as to what each powerup does or how they work, sheer RNG of the powerups... I honestly couldn't think of a worse fighting game and I've played the original Streetfighter with the pressure sensitive punch and kick buttons.


As an anecdote as to how bad the above two games were, my son got a Switch with both games for Christmas and Spiderman for the PS4 from his uncle. After about 2-3 days, I got kicked off the PS4 to let him play Spiderman instead (I was playing my Christmas present of AC Odyssey).

[Spore]

Pillars of Eternity - now hear me out before you take out your pitch forks. I am incredibly picky when it comes to controls (they're passable) and presentation (not only graphics but mainly). Pillars did not hook with its story in the beginning. It did not amaze me with the character building nor with anything else. It is just standard RPG stuff. Stuff I played on pen and paper before, in a better form.

Also Tyranny but mainly because I expected an game ala Spellforce where you move the evil armies. Instead you got an "choose your preferred evil" adventure book. I am not one for choose your own adventure. The novelty has worn off (yes I am aware I recommended Stories: Path of Destinies before, that is because it was done really WELL in that game). I'm just not the type to replay games 5 times to get all endings.

[Rydiro]

Black&White : Glorious ideas, godawful execution.

Moving objects 6D ( 3 space dimensions and 3 rotational ones) with a 2D mouse and extra clunky.

Horrible creature interface. Tried to pet my creature for spellcasting. It farted when I entered the interaction screen. From then on it always farted if i interacted with it. That made me throw the game for my second try i gave it, because "surely it could not have been that bad and maybe its playable with my now faster hardware".

[factotum]

I once heard Black and White described as a third-rate RTS combined with a Tamagotchi, and having played it, I can't find much to fault with that assessment. I did once see a very funny forum thread about it where someone had leashed his creature to a friendly "good" creature in one of the missions, assuming that it would learn only good habits, only to find that it had acquired the unbreakable urge to poop whenever it saw friendly villagers!

[Yora]

I remember that hype. And the actual game turning out to be pretty bad.

Which I think is how it always works with Molyneaux games.

[Kitten Champion]

I remember that hype. And the actual game turning out to be pretty bad.

Which I think is how it always works with Molyneaux games.

I haven't played most of Molyneaux's oeuvre, aside from the first Fable. Which, while I wouldn't call it "bad", the mechanics it had to differentiate itself rang pretty hollow. Rather than integrating you into the world and giving you a sense of moral agency with a morality meter, houses, and a spouse, you mostly just feel like the bog standard murderhobo but given more opportunities to dumbly troll the NPCs.

I understand they get more disappointing as the series goes on.

[danzibr]

I think the worst of the worst is RPG Maker junk you can get on Steam. Or just download from random website.

[factotum]

Which I think is how it always works with Molyneaux games.

I think Molyneaux games would be fine if they would only tie him up somewhere and not let him speak to anyone during the development phase. He's always promising fantastic features that somehow never make it into the final game--he was Sean Murray long before No Man's Sky was even a design document.

[Telwar]

Master of Orion III.

I played it for weeks, trying to get into it, because I loved MOO2 so bad.

It wasn't the cringing threats in the diplomacy that got me.

It wasn't that my fleet would vent out all its missiles (anti-ship *and* counter-missiles!) in one fell swoop that would wander the field of battle seeking the enemy fleet.

It wasn't that my fleets that had a mix of types would run into beam range to use their beams and die horribly (to be absolutely fair, that was mostly on me).

It wasn't I couldn't figure out which world the gas-world entity powered armor regiment came from (because, to be fair, that's hilarious, I just wanted more).

It wasn't just the horrific interface.

It's all that, plus I was pushing an enemy down the starline, and they disappeared, only to reappear later much, much farther along the starline with a different color and apparently a completely different personality, and the intervening colonies had just vanished.

After that, I was done.

Though a friend of a friend gave it much, much less time than I did. He had taken the day off launch day, installed, played, and then just went in to work.

[Rodin]

I had a lot of fun with Black and White as a creature simulator. The problem with it was that they welded this weird god game/RTS "thing" to it. I think Molyneux would have done a lot better not having opposing factions and simply focusing on making the creature a more complete experience.


Master of Orion III.

I played it for weeks, trying to get into it, because I loved MOO2 so bad.

It wasn't the cringing threats in the diplomacy that got me.

It wasn't that my fleet would vent out all its missiles (anti-ship *and* counter-missiles!) in one fell swoop that would wander the field of battle seeking the enemy fleet.

It wasn't that my fleets that had a mix of types would run into beam range to use their beams and die horribly (to be absolutely fair, that was mostly on me).

It wasn't I couldn't figure out which world the gas-world entity powered armor regiment came from (because, to be fair, that's hilarious, I just wanted more).

It wasn't just the horrific interface.

It's all that, plus I was pushing an enemy down the starline, and they disappeared, only to reappear later much, much farther along the starline with a different color and apparently a completely different personality, and the intervening colonies had just vanished.

After that, I was done.

Though a friend of a friend gave it much, much less time than I did. He had taken the day off launch day, installed, played, and then just went in to work.

Ninja'd for the one I wanted to add. MOO3 easily wins my "most disappointing" award, as the developers promised the moon and released a broken down set of spreadsheets. Other games have disappointed, but they were always from developers where I knew to keep one eye on them. The failure of MOO3 was so complete and so unexpected it still rankles to this day.

[Starwulf]

Elemental: War of Magic. Not because it was a bad game, it wasn't, it was actually really damn fun, but it was incredibly incomplete, and the developers(Stardock) decided that it was just to much work to try to fix it via patches, so they just gave up on it. Game had an immense amount of potential, but fell woefully short because of their publishers wanted the game out waaaayyy before Stardock was ready for it come out.

Fallen Enchantress also suffered from this, but they actually stuck with it and managed to mostly fix it via patches. Their next game though, Sorcerer Kings wasn't nearly as good, and even with their patches I don't really feel like it ever made it's way into "Fun game" territory. And trying to install community made patches/mods is quite a trial(took me several hours and messaging back and forth with the creator of a major mod/patcher who knew how to incorporate all the major community made patch fixes), and actually puts enough stress on the engine that the game stops working after an hour or two, and after that you have to start a new one because your save file will no longer load or crash shortly after loading.

So yeah, Elemental and Sorcerer Kings ><.

Edit: Clearly I'm getting old and senile, because I totally forgot the absolute worst game I've ever played: Final Fantasy Mystic Quest. Worst freaking game in the history of games as far as I'm concerned ><.

[veti]

Ninja'd for the one I wanted to add. MOO3 easily wins my "most disappointing" award, as the developers promised the moon and released a broken down set of spreadsheets. Other games have disappointed, but they were always from developers where I knew to keep one eye on them. The failure of MOO3 was so complete and so unexpected it still rankles to this day.

I thought about nominating MOO3, but for some reason it didn't leave as bad a taste in my memory as NWN2 or HOMM5.

I agree, it was a horrible letdown from the glory that was MOO2 (which I still play, occasionally). But I think I rationalised it as simply an overload of micromanagement, and thought that if only I had the patience and the attention, it might be perfectly fine. So that was on me.

[Starwulf]

I thought about nominating MOO3, but for some reason it didn't leave as bad a taste in my memory as NWN2 or HOMM5.

I agree, it was a horrible letdown from the glory that was MOO2 (which I still play, occasionally). But I think I rationalised it as simply an overload of micromanagement, and thought that if only I had the patience and the attention, it might be perfectly fine. So that was on me.

Hmm, I had totally forgotten about NWN2, though for me it really falls more into the same territory as Fallen Enchantress. NWN2 was literally unplayable at the start for almost everyone that had pre-ordered the game(like me). We got a black screen of death that we had to reset our computers to get out of. It wasn't even particularly playable until the 6th patch(1.6) and wasn't free of most of the bugs until 1.11, and then they broke the entire game again at either 1.12 or 1.13, which was kinda funny. Then they brought out the first expansion(pretty sure it got two, Masks of Betrayer and another one) and it got significantly better, and by the time they stopped patching the game after the 2nd x-pac release, it was honestly quite enjoyable, I did a playthrough about 2 years ago and it was quite smooth and fun.

HOMM5 is such a divisive game, but honestly I feel HOMM4 is where the series took a turn for the worst. They completely changed everything about the game from 3 to 4, from how many monster buildings you got in a castle, to the fact that they replenished per day instead of per week, or how about the fact that the skills were entirely different and you got different classes based on which skills you got. Or the fact that your heroes literally fought with your monsters, and if you leveled them up enough there was literally no point in having monsters in your army, as a full roster of heroes that were well leveled and equipped were far beyond even an entire army of level 4 creatures(which were the highest).

Then of course the monsters moved, so if you were within range of them, you were getting attacked during the time between turns, which could often be disastrous.

A multitude of other issues/changes/frustrations with HOMM4 that I don't feel like getting into as this post would end up becoming a book. The game was alright, even fun at times, but it was NOT a HOMM game at all, despite bearing the name.

HOMM6 is a game that I can't stand, like 4 it changed a lot about how the game played, and even got rid of multiple resources, and allowed you to convert castles to your primary one, which took a lot of strategy out of the game(You no longer have to worry about how mixing troops from other castles affect your army morale, don't have to possibly waste a skill or an artifact slot to boost said morale to offset mixing). Heroes were once again drastically altered, as were how their skills functioned and were chosen. I spent maybe a dozen hours playing the game and couldn't freaking stand it. Another HOMM game that was HOMM only in title.

At least HOMM5 had all the classic elements of 1-3, just 3d animation and more skills. Granted the creature balancing was a bit off, but the game was still fun, and I'm pretty sure you could get a few unofficial patches to fix up the balancing issues. There was no fixing of 4 or 6, no matter what kind of mods you downloaded.

[veti]

HOMM5 is such a divisive game, but honestly I feel HOMM4 is where the series took a turn for the worst.

A lot of people thought that, but I disagree. 4 was a radical change in gameplay, most importantly in putting the hero directly into battle, but it was recognisably the same setting and basically the same game, just with more emphasis on the hero. (I particularly enjoyed playing the barbarian campaign with no troops at all in the later stages.) Above all, it had the minimalistic but absorbing (text-based) storytelling of the earlier games.

HOMM5 replaced that with cutscenes. Scenes that took forever to watch, were badly voiced, badly animated, badly written and managed to highlight the absurdly bad costume and monster design. Combined with the glacial speed at which heroes moved around the map, it killed my interest by the time I finished the tutorial.

[factotum]

NWN2 was literally unplayable at the start for almost everyone that had pre-ordered the game(like me). We got a black screen of death that we had to reset our computers to get out of.

If we're going to call games the worst because they were buggy on release then we'd have to include the likes of Half-Life 2! When that game came out it just didn't work properly with Soundblaster sound cards, at the time the most popular ones around, to the extent that I was literally getting "bluescreen and reset computer" every ten minutes when I got to the city section at the end. The fact I pushed through and finished the game despite that shows why it definitely doesn't belong on any worst game list! (The game is a lot more stable nowadays, obviously, they've had 15 years to refine the Source engine).

[Yora]

I completely forgot about that. That Episode 1 game was awful, but I completed it.

NWN2 was so terrible that I think it's the only game I ever ragequit. The writing for the party members was the most offensive writing aside from hate speech that I've ever seen.

[Spore]

I haven't played most of Molyneaux's oeuvre, aside from the first Fable. Which, while I wouldn't call it "bad", the mechanics it had to differentiate itself rang pretty hollow. Rather than integrating you into the world and giving you a sense of moral agency with a morality meter, houses, and a spouse, you mostly just feel like the bog standard murderhobo but given more opportunities to dumbly troll the NPCs.

I understand they get more disappointing as the series goes on.

To jump in at that angle again. Fable was released when I was 16. I had just gotten Morrowind, a game which I read about and was extremely happy with. Fable was already eclipsed by World of Warcraft's release and honestly, I always feel like games' journalists need to be more cynical like Totalbiscuit. Of course they'd add to the hype when a game releases because it means they sell their publication for people still unsure to buy these expensive games.

And Molyneux (written without an a by the way) was already known to the public as someone who incredibly overstated his promises. So it felt weird to me that people believed in all that hubbub he promised about Fable. When I played it as a bargain bin game a year later, I was entertained, if only for a single evening.

[Vinyadan]

If we're going to call games the worst because they were buggy on release then we'd have to include the likes of Half-Life 2! When that game came out it just didn't work properly with Soundblaster sound cards, at the time the most popular ones around, to the extent that I was literally getting "bluescreen and reset computer" every ten minutes when I got to the city section at the end. The fact I pushed through and finished the game despite that shows why it definitely doesn't belong on any worst game list! (The game is a lot more stable nowadays, obviously, they've had 15 years to refine the Source engine).

Then Stalker Clear Sky should also be on the list. The game per se was good (although they removed the scarcity of goods that characterised the first game, and they modified the damage formula turning enemies into bullet sponges), but it was plagued by just so many bugs. The game crashed often, and, while it included dynamic combat between factions, it was so badly implemented, that it could be effectively impossible to win. The game also reused a lot of levels from the previous game, but putting different quests on them, which didn't really use the strengths of the maps. And there was a scripted moment in which you simply had to lose your whole equipment and your money. While you could recover your equipment fighting an unfair fight, your money was gone forever and without warning. It also wasn't a special moment in the story, it just sort of happened. The final part was short and underwhelming.

You also were incentivised not to do certain sidequests. For example, there was a walled compound with neutral stalkers in it, and, nearby, there was a sewer entrance from which brigands emerged and attacked the compound. Both groups respawned, which meant that the fighting would be constant. A quest required you to end the brigand invasion. However, if you didn't, you had an endless stream of dead bodies to loot, which meant endless money, because there was a merchant in a safe location the compound. You could buy yourself the best armour and get the best upgrades for your weapons, as long as you didn't complete the quest. And, since the fighting was actually great, it wasn't even boring.

This is the thing with Clear Sky, it's actually a game where you explore and you shoot things that shoot back at you, and it did both things wonderfully. It also added the artefact detector, a great way to enhance artefact hunting, and incentivised just going out on the map and having fun in a dynamic world. But it also was made in haste, and it really shows.

[Razade]

I'll add voice to just plain hating Neverwinter Nights 2. I stuck it out to the end only for it to be...just one of the worst endings of a game I could ever hope to see. The DLC apparently fixed this, but it's a pretty soul sucking business practice and I can't support it. Hating every single NPC didn't help, special loathing goes to the Gnome who I never used for being just the worst companion in an RPG ever. When you make your Bard spoony and silly and goofy, that's annoying and cliche. When you add "GNOME" to the mix, and all their cliches, it's just unbearable. Bishop, your human Ranger, was also really bad as the only actual evil party member. I kept asking why he had to be on the team whe I knew he was going to betray us. Only for him to betray us.

Mass Effect 1...certainly gets on the list with the Mako. Some of the writing is good but overall I was really unimpressed. Two was fine, certainly the best of the trilogy, and I outright resented 3. The ending of the story not included. Not the worst games mechanically (other than the Mako), but worst in terms of investment to payout. One was clunky, slow and had the Mako. Two changed the combat, for the better imho, but it showed that no one was at the helm of wold building or trying to actually figure out where the hell the story was going. It was all just kinda thrown together. The characters were the best here though, so it made up for it. Three was just boring. Tying the best ending to having to play the multiplayer was the signal that EA had ruined what good Bioware had. The multiplayer itself was...ok. My friends all played so it was fun to play with them but it was clear EA and Bioware didn't actually care to make it a fun experience. Every new content update created more bugs. Bugs that never got fixed. Ever. We once had a match where a Geth Juggernaught walked off the map, into the sky. It took thirty minutes for it to walk so far into the sky we couldn't see it anymore. We stayed to see what would happen. Keep in mind that the matches were how you got the currency to get more gear and unlock classes. We couldn't beat the game we'd invested time in because we couldn't kill the Ascendant Geth so we just wasted our time. By the time we all quit, three or four out of ten games ended in similar, if way less amusing, situations. Either we didn't get the credit for winning or the game would crash and kick us to the lobby and not count or any other number of problems.

I could probably dredge up some older games but most of the bad ones I've just plain forgotten. In modern games...I think one of my least favorite and overall worst games is Undertale. The writing was awful, the NPCs were either annoying or trying too hard for a joke. The combat was uninteresting and clunky. I know it was made by one guy but at least when I played I couldn't get a controller to work. Using the arrow keys to move in a bullet hell game isn't great. Give me some mobility please and thank you. Games that try to be cute, like deleting things from the game files or closing the game and needing you to re-open the game, aren't. It's a hassle, it's frustrating and it breaks the flow. If I was enjoying the game, it'd just annoy me because it'd break my immersion. I already know I'm playing a video game, I don't need you to hit me over the head with that fact. When I'm not enjoying the game, it's just incentive not to turn the game on again.

The only thing Undertale had going for it was the music. As far as that's concerned....A+. Toby Fox has an incredible talent for making music and it shows through the whole of the game. What he can't do is write convincing characters that actually generate emotional connections to people playing the game, which...is a big deal for me in an RPG. If I don't care about the characters, I'm not going to care what happens to them. I'm not invested in them as characters, they're just text on a screen I have to scroll through to get to the next objective. When they're just atrocious, and the dialog box is glacial, it's just torture. There were times I just wanted to end the game, especially when Sans and...I forget the other Skeleton's name is...were around.

Darkest Dungeon is probably my other mention. Awful RNG, game design choices that intentionally throw salt in your eyes to make the game more difficult simply for the sake of difficulty...cliche ending. The final boss who just outright kills characters without any kind of chance to avoid it. A game that requires you to grind but punishes you for doing so. I backed it on Kickstarter because the idea of an RPG with real, deep psychological aspects appealed to me greatly. That's not what we got with Darkest Dungeon.

The psychological aspects of the game are covered by malus's you get at the end of adventures. But these malus are assigned randomly. There's no rhythm or reason to them, they're just negative traits for the sake of having malus to various stats and conditions. They're an impediment that doesn't enrich the game other than ticking number boxes. You can remove them in town but those people are out of the fight. So you need to level a few crews, to cycle people in and out while you repair and rest others. That'd be a fine concept as well except if you level too much you can't go into various dungeons. They've got a level range.

This all ties in with the mental health aspect of the game, where your people can just lose their sanity. Which causes your other characters in the party to lose their sanity. So you can get what was lovingly termed Cascading, where one person drops below the sanity threshold...and then the whole team follows. All because them losing sanity lowers everyone else's. Some characters, as you gain perks, can be alright out of their mind. Most often you just lose turns or attack teammates or other random things you have no control over. Add to this that your damage and health compared to enemy damage and health (not to mention the enemies getting moves that just target your sanity and the resist rates are super low) diverges exponentially, you're always on the backfoot in combat. Combat also uses resources, which are difficult to replenish because you need to do more and often harder combats...and it's just a slow trickle to boredom and frustration. There's lots of other mechanics, like your people just instantly dying from heart attacks, corpses having to be cleared after you kill an enemy in a game where combat is all about positioning so you basically have to kill double the enemies...the list goes on and on. Easily the worst game on principle of what I was expecting and what I got in the end.

[Brother Oni]

If we're going to call games the worst because they were buggy on release then we'd have to include the likes of Half-Life 2! When that game came out it just didn't work properly with Soundblaster sound cards, at the time the most popular ones around, to the extent that I was literally getting "bluescreen and reset computer" every ten minutes when I got to the city section at the end. The fact I pushed through and finished the game despite that shows why it definitely doesn't belong on any worst game list! (The game is a lot more stable nowadays, obviously, they've had 15 years to refine the Source engine).

If we're including games that crashed the computer, then surely Eve Online wins that crown due to the boot.ini incident*?

Anthem comes a close second as it was reportedly overheating consoles, potentially causing them to brick.


*For those not aware, there was a patch released with one of the updated files in the staring directory called boot.ini. This is also the file name of a critical Windows file, without which the computer can't start.
When the patch was applied, it overwrote the Windows boot.ini, therefore many people who had applied the patch and restarted, had to repair/recover their entire operating system (boot disks, external tech support, etc), without the help of their primary device to access the internet to diagnose the issue.

[Vinyadan]

The NWN2 hate surprises me. The ending was obviously underwhelming and ill-placed (it isn't even a dramatic moment), but I had actually forgotten about it. I also didn't really care much for the oddities of the characters, since you can always leave them home. Back then, I really liked the necropolis where you find the spirits of the armies that fought the Dark Guy in antiquity, and combat just felt good. I loved sending my dwarf champion against the berserker, especially because I had had the party cast each and every buff on him beforehand, to the point that I don't think he was even hurt. What I didn't get was why the silver blade had to be a sword (you should have been offered the chance of turning it into a different kind of weapon), or why a perfectly good dwarven fighter had to become a monk.

[Kaptin Keen]

Hm - the worst game I ever played. Ever. I suppose the worst game I ever saw was the Knight Rider adaption. But it's a bit of a stretch to say I played it. I installed it, saw how utterly crap it was, and uninstalled it.

There are games I've actually played despite being hugely disappointed with where the designers decided to take a franchise. Thief 3 for instance is a decent enough game in it's own right, but it's canine feces compared to the first two. Graphically much prettier - but lacking in everything that made the first games good. Which certainly wasn't the graphics.

Similarly Trine 3 manages to fail entirely at being the fun and engaging experience the first two are.

[Rodin]

The NWN2 hate surprises me. The ending was obviously underwhelming and ill-placed (it isn't even a dramatic moment), but I had actually forgotten about it. I also didn't really care much for the oddities of the characters, since you can always leave them home. Back then, I really liked the necropolis where you find the spirits of the armies that fought the Dark Guy in antiquity, and combat just felt good. I loved sending my dwarf champion against the berserker, especially because I had had the party cast each and every buff on him beforehand, to the point that I don't think he was even hurt. What I didn't get was why the silver blade had to be a sword (you should have been offered the chance of turning it into a different kind of weapon), or why a perfectly good dwarven fighter had to become a monk.

I've been surprised by a lot of the games in this thread. There's games that have some jank but I still enjoyed, and others that are on my best all-time list. Darkest Dungeon tops my "hours played" record in Steam at 444 hours, beating out even the original Dark Souls.

It just goes to show how wildly opinions can vary.

[Cozzer]

If we define "worst game" as "worst result, considering the amount of resources and effort that were put into it", then I'm jumping on the Final Fantasy 13 bandwagon. All of that effort, piled on top of basic storytelling and gameplay decisions that were so wrong that the whole experience was miserable from beginning to end, at least for me.

If we're talking about "worst commercial games, period" then yeah, lots of obscure 5$ RPG Maker games. :smalltongue:

[Narkis]

Mentioning the RPG maker assetfips is cheating, since the thread asks for the "worst game you have ever played", and I don't believe anyone here has played one of those.

[Cozzer]

Mentioning the RPG maker assetfips is cheating, since the thread asks for the "worst game you have ever played", and I don't believe anyone here has played one of those.

Joke's on you, since I've been in the RPG Maker scene in the past, and I played quite a few of them!

No, well, maybe the joke is on me.

(To be fair, I was looking for hidden gems and I did find a few of these :smalltongue:)

[Brother Oni]

Darkest Dungeon tops my "hours played" record in Steam at 444 hours, beating out even the original Dark Souls.

*Sweatdrop*

*Hides Steam profile showing hours wasted farmingspent playing Warframe*

[Rockphed]

Captain Planet and the Planeteers was a stupid unfun , unplayable mess in the toilet of Gaming.

Perhaps that was on purpose to get people to stop using so much energy running their computers.

No, I don't really believe that.


*Sweatdrop*

*Hides Steam profile showing hours wasted farmingspent playing Warframe*

*looks at almost 900 hours playing CKII*

Oh, you sweet summer child.

[Tvtyrant]

Perhaps that was on purpose to get people to stop using so much energy running their computers.

No, I don't really believe that.



*looks at almost 900 hours playing CKII*

Oh, you sweet summer child.

Lets not play that game. I have over 1800 in TF2, it was a dang addiction.

[Rynjin]

Lets not play that game. I have over 1800 in TF2, it was a dang addiction.

Between Xbox and PC Versions I'm well over 2000, and I haven't even played it in 4 years or so.

On the bright side I was introduced to most of my online friends and by proxy Tabletop RPGs because of it, and I also learned playing games competitively simply isn't worth it.

[LaZodiac]

I bought the final copy of Sonic The Hedgehog 2006 for a dollar.

The only thing positive from this experience was that I prevented someone from being subjected to this down the line themselves.

[Starwulf]

Lets not play that game. I have over 1800 in TF2, it was a dang addiction.

I had over an actual year of game time in FFXI(8k+ hours). The game only measured time spent logged in, and I wasn't one of those players that left their characters logged in and idling in Upper Jeuno/Batilla Downs to sell stuff either. Not saying that some of it wasn't actually idle time, I'm sure at least a full 25% or so of it was, but that still leaves about 6k hours spent playing the game, lol. 2003-2010 spent playing that game from my couch(didn't have much else to since I don't work because of a permanent, serious back injury). I still have dreams about playing it again, just wandering around the world hunting NM's, or up in Sky hunting the gods(or Sea), or helping out linkshell mates get quests done.

Just talking about it is making me miss it. Really wish I hadn't sold my Monk to my best friend, he kept it for a week and then traded it to his cousin for a freaking bow(like, an actual bow in rl), and his cousin stripped it and turned it into a fishing bot ><. My wonderful, powerful, limit shattering Monk, turned into a lowly fishing bot :-(.

[Zalabim]

When you ask a question like this, the first game that comes to mind is Final Fantasy VIII. On top of frequently corrupting save data so I ended up repeating disc one three times, there were several points where it tried to be too clever for itself by far with interface screws and soup-can puzzles, especially in the final dungeon. There were a few points where you're given no idea how to proceed, no clue what the controls even are for the scene, and graded on how well you do, as if anyone would ever play this game a second time. One particularly poorly chosen puzzle I always remember involved a carpet that was supposed to be a clock face, but in Standard Definition graphics might as well have been another abstract "painting' like the rest of the room's puzzle, and could only be seen from a single one of the room's five or six fixed camera angles anyway. But at least I finished this game, so the worst would have to be one of the ones I didn't.

Speaking of FF8's final dungeon and games I never finished means I have to mention Myst. I couldn't make progress in this game even with a walkthrough, and have no idea why I would want to. It won awards for something, and I just have no clue.

In a similar boat is NWN. Starting with all the stupid mechanics they kept, and all the stupid mechanics they changed, from the 3.x core ruleset, but adding in grindy quest zones and a laughable misunderstanding of the core D&D experience by being a game about a solo adventurer and your choice of a single lower-leveled sidekick at a time. The single player experience was awful. I was told the multiplayer is better, but no. That was worse. Take everything bad about single-player NWN and add cliques, favoritism, and griefing.

A combination of bad design and bad programming put me off of Pillars of Eternity too. Every concept I tried and every character I tested ran into some bizarre gameplay or programming error so I never got past the first town, where all the awful kickstarter backstory characters are stuffed into an inn. For examples, the monk's wound resource is entirely anti-fun, the ranger's damage over time abilities did less damage with increased ability duration from intelligence, enemies would instantly and unerringly target whichever party member is in their range with the lowest defenses, the ghost type enemies would actually have 10-15 more defense than the monster stat screen said, plus auras that lower your accuracy so early combat against them was an eternal slog, druids were allowed one transformation per battle with actually a limited duration but the tooltip says the transformation lasts the whole battle, and the behavior of melee engagement that makes it impossible for your party to leave melee but does nothing to stop the enemy. This one takes some explanation. Basically, it had opportunity attacks and if you were hit by an opportunity attack, your order to move would be canceled, but if you issued the order again quickly enough, you could get away before another opportunity attack could be made. The AI naturally spams move orders if they really want to move, but the player has to do it manually and if you're too slow you'd just take infinite attacks. On top of broken mechanics everywhere I looked, I accidentally completed a quest in that first town just by talking to the guy who starts the quest, in a way I didn't want to complete the quest because I hadn't even started a quest and it wasn't clear there was a quest to start. Some kind of land dispute or something. I couldn't really follow it because it was started and competed in about two dialog choices. My final impression? Pillars of Eternity: Low-effort plot; broken ivory tower mechanics; laggy, unresponsive controls.

There's a further game that probably takes the cake for worst game I've played by combining all these issues and more. Azurik, an action adventure game for the X-box with the gameplay gimmick of enchanting your weapons and armor with one or more of four different elements to fight enemies and navigate the world. The core is 3D platforming. Problems start with the basic combat, which is simple hit-and-run, then each element has a limited pool of energy that you have to get pickups from defeated enemies to refill, enemies that you have to use enchanted attacks to hurt, and basic navigation abilities like double jump and light being tied to an expendable, barely renewable resource. I think you could travel all the way back to the center of the world map to recharge, but areas to explore were huge and enemies would respawn behind you. There are no other people once the game starts. Just you, a world, and vague hints like "now you can glide, go to the fire land." Despite all that, I still really tried to beat this game but got stuck beyond further progress, even with a walkthrough. And I really tried, because I liked the idea of combining elements for different effects. There's a reason this game is nicknamed Assurik.

To play the time played game: Steam has me with 438 hours on FF14, and I only played for the free period. Honorable mention goes out to Dungeon Defenders at 372 hours plus 69 hours on Eternity as games I still like the idea of, and FTL with 66 hours since I bought it on steam, which is impressive considering the kind of game it is. Runner up is Dota 2 with 528 hours and at least I like some heroes even if I can't do the controls ever again, and Smite with 992 hours and battle passes make me never want to play the game. I completed one, barely, by forcing 5-10 games a day, so the next pass was twice as long. Not touching that ever again. The winner is Warframe's 1707 hours and counting.

As far as games I’ve actually played to completion, it’s probably Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles. A couple friends and I managed to get the requisite link cables and gameboy advances together a few years ago and did a play through of it. The gameplay and plot are entirely forgettable, the soundtrack is admittedly nice, but a game seemingly focused entirely on multiplayer requiring so many peripherals is awful.
Irony, thy name would be crystal chronicles, if I hadn't had my memories sucked away by the last boss and starting going by the name Hurdy. I tried to come back to an old save file and rush to the end of the game but the final battle showed no signs of ending after half an hour and I only had about 40 memories going into it to begin with. I always got the impression there was something really interesting going on behind the scenes with all the memory stuff in this game, so it's a shame I can't finish it myself.

[factotum]

Speaking of FF8's final dungeon and games I never finished means I have to mention Myst. I couldn't make progress in this game even with a walkthrough, and have no idea why I would want to. It won awards for something, and I just have no clue.


Myst came out in 1993. For the time, its graphics were absolutely stunning, and the "click a lever somewhere to affect another location" gameplay wasn't actually that far away from the usual point-and-click adventures that were still popular at the time. Nowadays, yes, it's absolute trash, but seen as a product of its time you can understand why it got those awards.

[Zalabim]

Myst came out in 1993. For the time, its graphics were absolutely stunning, and the "click a lever somewhere to affect another location" gameplay wasn't actually that far away from the usual point-and-click adventures that were still popular at the time. Nowadays, yes, it's absolute trash, but seen as a product of its time you can understand why it got those awards.

Well, I tried to play it when it was the new hotness and I did not get it. At least other adventure games had, like, characters, and a setting I was interested in exploring. Yes, I'm old.

[Rockphed]

Well, I tried to play it when it was the new hotness and I did not get it. At least other adventure games had, like, characters, and a setting I was interested in exploring. Yes, I'm old.

Myst has a fairly interesting setting. Myst is also an exercise in frustration with musical cues, cryptic messages, and puzzles that are only hard because the controls are obtuse. So is the sequel Riven, though Riven at least starts with some exposition. I ended up having to use a walkthrough with both because some of the puzzles were not just tedius, but took 5 minutes to test each time I tried them.

[Brother Oni]

*looks at almost 900 hours playing CKII*

Oh, you sweet summer child.

I'm on over 2900hrs and counting (Kuva liches soon!). That said...


I had over an actual year of game time in FFXI(8k+ hours).

I bend my knee to the master.

[Yora]

Now you are talking about games that you really loved.

[Rockphed]

Now you are talking about games that you really loved.

I'm trying to think of the worst game I have ever played more than once, and I don't mean a stupid pay-to-win MMO that I logged in to more than once in order to get an achievement.

It might be "Lords of Magic", which is a cross between an RPG and a turn based strategy game, only it has real time battles with obtuse controls. Also, magic units have to use the same pool of magic for in-battle and strategic spells and healing takes way too long.

Or maybe it is one of the obscure entries in the sim universe, like sim park or sim safari. They weren't horrible, but they were trying too hard to be educational to be fun.

It might be a game for consoles called, if memory serves, "Fantavision", where you were supposed to get points by exploding fireworks. The problem was that it was not well designed, so the game turned into a mashfest.

Then there is "Jak X: Combat Racing", though that might have just been the disk I was playing on. It would bug out seemingly after every race. The game was a not very good mariocart clone with guns.

[factotum]

I'm trying to think of the worst game I have ever played more than once, and I don't mean a stupid pay-to-win MMO that I logged in to more than once in order to get an achievement.

Why do you need to have played it more than once? Surely if the game is that terrible you wouldn't have wanted to play it even once, much less multiple times!

[DarthArminius]

I'm trying to think of the worst game I have ever played more than once, and I don't mean a stupid pay-to-win MMO that I logged in to more than once in order to get an achievement.

It might be "Lords of Magic", which is a cross between an RPG and a turn based strategy game, only it has real time battles with obtuse controls. Also, magic units have to use the same pool of magic for in-battle and strategic spells and healing takes way too long.

Or maybe it is one of the obscure entries in the sim universe, like sim park or sim safari. They weren't horrible, but they were trying too hard to be educational to be fun.

It might be a game for consoles called, if memory serves, "Fantavision", where you were supposed to get points by exploding fireworks. The problem was that it was not well designed, so the game turned into a mashfest.

Then there is "Jak X: Combat Racing", though that might have just been the disk I was playing on. It would bug out seemingly after every race. The game was a not very good mariocart clone with guns.


Yikes! Someone thinks Lords of Magic is a candidate for worst game they ever played! I've never met someone with such a different taste in video games from me.

[danzibr]

Mentioning the RPG maker assetfips is cheating, since the thread asks for the "worst game you have ever played", and I don't believe anyone here has played one of those.

Joke's on you, since I've been in the RPG Maker scene in the past, and I played quite a few of them!

No, well, maybe the joke is on me.

(To be fair, I was looking for hidden gems and I did find a few of these :smalltongue:)
I’m with Cozzer on this one. I’ve played (like actually played) some extremely janky RPG Maker games.

Yikes! Someone thinks Lords of Magic is a candidate for worst game they ever played! I've never met someone with such a different taste in video games from me.
Seconded.

FFVIII: I can see this. FFVIII had some really bad design choices IMO. Bad guys leveling up with you. The junction system. The main antagonist. Granted this is just imo.

Undertale: This... kind of surprises me. I really enjoyed Undertale. One of the few games I beat then immediately did a second playthrough. Still, I can understand how it’s not for everyone.

[Rockphed]

Yikes! Someone thinks Lords of Magic is a candidate for worst game they ever played! I've never met someone with such a different taste in video games from me.

More like it was the game I enjoyed the least compared to how much I wanted to enjoy it. At some point I will have time to try to get good enough at it to beat the game.

As to my caveat of "that I played more than once", it is because only games I played more than once have any chance to stick in my brain.

[Narkis]

Joke's on you, since I've been in the RPG Maker scene in the past, and I played quite a few of them!

No, well, maybe the joke is on me.

(To be fair, I was looking for hidden gems and I did find a few of these :smalltongue:)


I’m with Cozzer on this one. I’ve played (like actually played) some extremely janky RPG Maker games.

I am surprised, though I should probably have expected I was being too absolute. You also have my sincere condolences.

[DaedalusMkV]

I've played some bad games in my day. I rented Superman 64 when I was young, having no idea of the awfulness that was to come. I actually played quite a bit of that game, because damn it I paid for it and I'm going to get value out of it in the time I've got it, but it's notorious for a reason. Similar circumstances for Mario is Missing for the SNES (it's a Mario game! It must be good!) and several god-awful NES games (of which Friday the 13th was probably the least enjoyable). The video and game rental store in my hometown was one of the last of its kind; I've rented terrible games for every system from the NES to the Playstation 3 (remember Haze?). I also had a bad habit a bit later into my childhood of stopping by the Zellers near where I lived and buying some $5 PC game off the discount rack, just on the off-chance it would be good. Got some absolute dreck (good old Blacksite: Area 51, for example) out of that as well, though I did probably get enough good games as well to balance it out.

All of those were bad. I've played disappointing games, too. Star Control 3, for example, or Command and Conquer 4 (which is probably a strong contender for 'worst feature-complete sequel' I've ever seen). There's one worse, though. A game that was so bad, disappointing and unplayable that the company that made it doesn't acknowledge that it exists, and only barely survived it. A game which, on release, shocked and confused an entire community. I'm talking about Sword of the Stars 2.

Now, if you go looking for SotS2 now, you'll find a crummy sequel to a fairly well-loved niche game. Sword of the Stars started a little bit bland, but by the end of the development cycle was pretty much the only good space 4x/RTS hybrid out there; Total War with space ships, if you will. It's one of my favorites, and I still go back and play it when I get the urge to build some space fleets and conquer a galaxy. Expectations for the sequel were high; it was going to be bigger and better than ever, with more depth and tactical options than the original ever had! Pre-order numbers were very high for a relatively obscure PC exclusive, and the forums were abuzz with excitement as the launch date came. We all hopped on Steam, installed the game and... At best, made it to the title screen. Most people couldn't get the game to launch at all, and those that could certainly couldn't get it to do anything. A few hours later, they made an announcement that the wrong version of the file had been uploaded to Steam, and the development team was gone for the weekend. Apologies were made, and promises that once the devs got back on Monday they'd have everything fixed and we'd have the game we were promised.

Monday came, and with it a new patch. There was... Kind of a game there. A lot of people still couldn't launch it, and you had a good 60% chance of crashing on attempting to launch a campaign. Multiplayer was disabled, and most of the game just wasn't there yet. Placeholders everywhere, many missing assets, all that jazz. Loading saved games was impossible; attempting to do so crashed the game. The game suffered from a severe memory leak that made turn timers take exponentially longer as the game went on, to the point that the longest anyone was ever able to make it was about 12 turns. It was, by any definition, unplayable. More apologies followed, and promises of further patches to come. By the end of that week two more patches came and went, and it became clear that what we had was at best an early alpha. Most of the game just wasn't there, and what was there was glitchy, unstable and imbalanced. Another announcement from the Devs: Yeah, the game's not ready yet. If you want, you can keep playing it and we'll continue to keep the Steam version updated with our internal build every week. For everyone else, have patience. We'll keep working on it, and we'll let everyone know when it's done.

Months passed, and they made an announcement: The game's done. Come back and play it. I did. It was... Technically complete. Still glitchy and poorly optimized, with no tutorial, limited or useless tooltips and primitive in-game descriptions. I played for a few hours, had no fun and shut it down in disgust. It now rests in the dustbin of history, rightfully forgotten.

SotS 2 is the game that made me institute a policy of 'no pre-orders, ever, no matter how much I like the developer'. I trusted Kerberos to give me a good experience, and what I got was one of the worst video-game launches of all time (you think Fallout 76 was bad? Try 'there is no game, and there won't be for months'). While what exists now is probably better than Superman 64 or Friday the 13th, it is and likely always will be the worst game I have ever played.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

I've played tons of utterly forgettable games, like, well, none really come to mind at the moment.

:smallamused:

That's kind of funny in and of itself. There are absolutely movies I loathed, laughed at for all the wrong reasons, was utterly annoyed by or just couldn't switch off because I was amazed in horror. Barbarian (2003) is a good example of most of those categories. But for games? Nothing on that level. A few titles that were just plain not really finished, but I tend to just put those down after one or two sessions and move on.

[Zevox]

I've played some bad games in my day. I rented Superman 64 when I was young, having no idea of the awfulness that was to come. I actually played quite a bit of that game, because damn it I paid for it and I'm going to get value out of it in the time I've got it, but it's notorious for a reason. Similar circumstances for Mario is Missing for the SNES (it's a Mario game! It must be good!)
Oh right, Mario is Missing, I rented that once or twice as a kid. I barely remember anything about it besides that I don't think I ever figured out what exactly I was supposed to do in it though, so it's kind of hard to even judge how bad it may have been at this point.

[Vinyadan]

Hmmm, I've got an odd one. Not counting any games that where so 'meh' that I just can't remember them, I think it has to be Divinity: original sin 2. Now, please, hear me out here before jumping down my throat about why I feel this way about such a generally well-liked RPG. I think Divinity's story was absolutely great, and the basic loop of its gameplay could be pretty nice as well. However, its combat and overall world design is so damn punishing that it sucked a lot of the fun out of the game for me. You're basically required to find and do every last side-quest to remain on-level, even if some of those side-quests are things your character really wouldn't want to be involved in. Even then, a lot of combats are ambushes where the opponents go first and if you hadn't spread out the party to the most optimal positions beforehand, you'd just die before even getting to have a turn. Playing Divinity is like playing DnD with a killer DM whose only claim to fairness is that the DMG technically doesn't forbid sending CR10 encounters at level 4 parties without any warning or foreshadowing.

Now maybe I should have just gotten good. However, Divinity presented itself as a story-driven RPG about making choices and going on quests, not as a difficult grind requiring endless repetition and reading of guides to 'git gud'. When I want to play a game like that I'll just pick up a soulslike, most of which are designed for that loop and at least feel fair while they kill you over and over and over again. Divinity: original sin 2 just never felt fair to me, and that's a shame as it has a really nice story and tries to do some really nice things with freedom of choice and consequence in an RPG.

/rant

For me, D:OS1 had similar problems. You have to do things in the right order, or be destroyed. The problem is that combat takes its sweet time (animations cannot be skipped), so mistakes mean hours of attempts. And there is so much combat! After 60 hours, I was just exhausted and left the game. It's not that it's bad. But it is too long for its own good. And then you have bosses like The Guardian in Boogie Winterland, who was simply too weak to be a menace, but was an insane bullet sponge. It was the equivalent of having to defeat a tree by hitting it with a pair of shoes. You are bound to win because the tree can't fight back, but it's a long and tiresome process. I later discovered that the game gave you two ways to insta-win, but I think that, if you have three ways to win a fight, all three should be fun. I also couldn't get over how such a fairly polished game could have interface problems like how, if you had an ability selected, it would ignore the interface if you clicked on an icon and just fire off the spell. Some things that were theoretically optional, like knowing how to speak to animals or the tornado spell, were actually pretty damn important.
And you don't just have lots of combat, you also have lots of items. Now, I remember feeling a dreadful hate towards the inventory system, but I don't remember why. For me, the problem was when the game reduced itself to having to constantly check the merchants to see if I could build something out of an immense crafting list, between an endless stream of fights. It felt overtaxing, and I was rather tired of the fights, so I wasn't very motivated.
Past experiences with heavily front-loaded games also made me wary of going on. It's not just Divinity (although it was true for DD and D2), it's that the earliest levels are usually the first to be programmed and the ones most players will see, so they are given time and care, while it isn't unusual to cut corners on the final ones.
And all the voiced-over, unnecessarily long dialogues. Ugh. There's nothing worse than clicking on an answer, already knowing the reaction, and seeing it written six times longer than needed. Okay, there's a lot of things that are worse, but that's not how you write dialogues. Also, "party face" skills should apply to the whole party, no matter who you have selected.
The spaces also feel too large and movement too slow.

I don't think that the original Divine Divinity lasted that long (I guess around 30-40 hours), and it offered a lot of freedom in what you wanted to do (until you did a certain thing). Divinity 2 with its expansion was fairly long (still much shorter than Original Sin, less than 60 hours), and had pacing problems, but, while far less ambitious, I think made a remarkable job with characters and factions (except Zandalor); your home was also quickly navigable, while in OS it's oversized, making everything take a lot of time. OS is super big, super deep, but I just don't think they added enough padding (setting) to make it sustainable as single player. Divine Divinity is still the best of those I have played (I think it's an exceptional game).

[Yora]

The biggest disappointment that somehow stuck in my mind was Darkstone, I believe. I had been looking forward to it, bought it at launch, and then probably didn't play more than an hour or two. So I am not even sure if it was bad, but somehow I jumped ship almost immediately.

[Spore]

Undertale: This... kind of surprises me. I really enjoyed Undertale. One of the few games I beat then immediately did a second playthrough. Still, I can understand how it’s not for everyone.

Very unsurprising. I LOVED Undertale but it is not a traditional game. It is a neat little story with gameplay in between interactive cutscenes.

[Eldan]

I really didn't like Undertale either. I kind of hated the gameplay and the story, at least in the beginning, was too weak to make up for it. I can't stand bullet hells and I'm terrible at them, and the sort of top down Zelda type stuff was far too easy to be engaging and just tedious to get through. People tell me if I suffer through more of those beginning parts, the story gets really good, but if it did, I never saw it. Closed the game after... less than an hour certainly and never went back to it.

[factotum]

I never bought Undertale, because I saw videos of people playing it and it just looked horrifically ugly. It's the usual thing--people will use a pseudo-8-bit art style but without doing any of the stuff that the actual artists on real 8-bit games did to make their graphics look good. I've seen better and more detailed graphics on 1984 ZX Spectrum games than Undertale has.

[Grif]

Now, if you go looking for SotS2 now, you'll find a crummy sequel to a fairly well-loved niche game. Sword of the Stars started a little bit bland, but by the end of the development cycle was pretty much the only good space 4x/RTS hybrid out there; Total War with space ships, if you will. It's one of my favorites, and I still go back and play it when I get the urge to build some space fleets and conquer a galaxy. Expectations for the sequel were high; it was going to be bigger and better than ever, with more depth and tactical options than the original ever had! Pre-order numbers were very high for a relatively obscure PC exclusive, and the forums were abuzz with excitement as the launch date came. We all hopped on Steam, installed the game and... At best, made it to the title screen. Most people couldn't get the game to launch at all, and those that could certainly couldn't get it to do anything. A few hours later, they made an announcement that the wrong version of the file had been uploaded to Steam, and the development team was gone for the weekend. Apologies were made, and promises that once the devs got back on Monday they'd have everything fixed and we'd have the game we were promised.

Monday came, and with it a new patch. There was... Kind of a game there. A lot of people still couldn't launch it, and you had a good 60% chance of crashing on attempting to launch a campaign. Multiplayer was disabled, and most of the game just wasn't there yet. Placeholders everywhere, many missing assets, all that jazz. Loading saved games was impossible; attempting to do so crashed the game. The game suffered from a severe memory leak that made turn timers take exponentially longer as the game went on, to the point that the longest anyone was ever able to make it was about 12 turns. It was, by any definition, unplayable. More apologies followed, and promises of further patches to come. By the end of that week two more patches came and went, and it became clear that what we had was at best an early alpha. Most of the game just wasn't there, and what was there was glitchy, unstable and imbalanced. Another announcement from the Devs: Yeah, the game's not ready yet. If you want, you can keep playing it and we'll continue to keep the Steam version updated with our internal build every week. For everyone else, have patience. We'll keep working on it, and we'll let everyone know when it's done.

Months passed, and they made an announcement: The game's done. Come back and play it. I did. It was... Technically complete. Still glitchy and poorly optimized, with no tutorial, limited or useless tooltips and primitive in-game descriptions. I played for a few hours, had no fun and shut it down in disgust. It now rests in the dustbin of history, rightfully forgotten.

SotS 2 is the game that made me institute a policy of 'no pre-orders, ever, no matter how much I like the developer'. I trusted Kerberos to give me a good experience, and what I got was one of the worst video-game launches of all time (you think Fallout 76 was bad? Try 'there is no game, and there won't be for months'). While what exists now is probably better than Superman 64 or Friday the 13th, it is and likely always will be the worst game I have ever played.

Ah. I had been scratching my head on what I would consider the worst game. SOTS2 is just that game. A highly disappointing sequel that both suffered from gane-breaking bugs, and frankly bizarre design decisions that made you wonder how this was the team that designed the original SOTS.

Yep. It was bad. So bad I actively forgot about it.

[Hunter Noventa]

Ah. I had been scratching my head on what I would consider the worst game. SOTS2 is just that game. A highly disappointing sequel that both suffered from gane-breaking bugs, and frankly bizarre design decisions that made you wonder how this was the team that designed the original SOTS.

Yep. It was bad. So bad I actively forgot about it.

That's one bullet I'm really glad I dodged. SOTS was so amazing, but I didn't have the money or hype for SOTS2 and after it launched, well...yeah.

[Eurus]

I replayed some Crash Bandicoot games (honestly don't remember which ones) since they keep getting remastered or ported or whatever, and man, even for an old platformer those games were dumb. The camera should not be your biggest enemy in a platformer. I think I liked them as a kid, but then, I didn't exactly have a lot of options back then!

Having tried King's Field as a kid, I pretty much ran around in the dark for a while and gave up in total bafflement. So that one felt like a hell of a bust.

More recently, Pathfinder Adventures. Dice and deckbuilding sounds fun, but they managed to execute it in what felt like the worst possible way. Also, glitches and crashes. So many. Maybe they fixed it eventually, I didn't care enough to check.

[Lord Torath]

Homeworld 2 was one of the biggest disappointments for me. When your biggest claim to fame is "Sequel to the 2000 Game of the Year", you know something's gone wrong.

Homeworld was a beautiful game with an intriguing story. The graphics were really amazing for their time (and still hold up fairly well). Gameplay was fun, the interface was pretty good, and overall it was a joy to play. Granted, it didn't obey real world physics (ships had maximum velocities, and would stop if they turned off their thrusters, projectile weapons had maximum ranges at which their shots just disappeared), but it was still a fun game. And it was easy to mod. There were several fan-made "real world physics" mods you could use if you really wanted to (I never tried them). Camera control was intuitive (and contagious - I found myself trying to rotate my view in other games and even in straight windows).

Homeworld: Cataclysm expanded on the GUI, allowing you to issue combat commands in the Sensor (zoomed WAY out) view, adding waypoints, and allowing the option to Speed up time to make after-combat resource harvesting less boring. They also removed fuel burn, which was a thing for fighters and corvettes in the original (and frankly, something I kind of liked. It was fun to watch your fighters come in and dock with a Support Frigate. Less fun when they ran low on fuel when they were in the middle of luring enemy Ion Cannon Frigates past your salvage corvettes, but still fun.). The story was great, although the dialog was a little clunky at times, and you couldn't get certain upgrades without capturing certain ships in a certain mission, and there was no indication you needed to until after the fact. But overall, a very fun game.

Homeworld 2 was absolutely gorgeous to look at. And crap to play. In the first two games, attacks were handled by the physics engine. If your shot was decently aimed (most were - your ships had an accuracy rating, where they'd only fire if a target was within x degrees of your line of fire) and the target didn't move out of the way, you'd hit. If they did move out of the way (say, fighters changing formation), your shots would miss. Projectiles had mass and speed. In HW2, it was all RNG. Your ships had a percent chance to hit other ships. This made fighters, bombers, corvettes, and any other ships that relied on speed to avoid getting hit useless.

And the story. Urg! In the original, your mothership's hyperdrive was reverse-engineered from one found on one of several colony-ships you discovered on your planet (hence, seeking out your Homeworld - this is not a spoiler as it's spelled out before you even start playing). In HW2, they changed this to there somehow being three "legendary" Hyperdrive Cores, one of which you had had all along. Yes, one of the three most powerful cores in the galaxy was built into (okay, minor spoiler here) one of 20-30 identical colony ships you took into exile 4000 years ago. The Bentusi have one of the others, and the third is in the possession on the bad guys. These Legendary Cores somehow give you mystical hypderdrive powers or some such nonsense. Or maybe you can only move large ships if you have one of the cores? Forgetting the fact that literally every ship bigger than a corvette has its own hyperdrive core. The bad guys have a super weapon that can only be damaged by another ancient ship that's been lost in the center of the galaxy for tens of thousands of years or something, so after you acquire all three Legendary Cores, you have to go into this non-man's zone of neutron stars or whatever and reclaim this ancient relic, bring it back and beat the bad guys. The whole thing made no sense, even if you ignored the first two games.


Unrelated, I also really enjoyed Lords of Magic - once they patched it sufficiently so you didn't wait 5-10 minutes for the transition from overland to combat and back. The Special Edition re-release helped immensely, including a somewhat clunky world builder and alternate worlds/quests/stories to explore. Now there's a fan-modified version which is even better.

[Rodin]

And the story. Urg! In the original, your mothership's hyperdrive was reverse-engineered from one found on one of several colony-ships you discovered on your planet (hence, seeking out your Homeworld - this is not a spoiler as it's spelled out before you even start playing). In HW2, they changed this to there somehow being three "legendary" Hyperdrive Cores, one of which you had had all along. Yes, one of the three most powerful cores in the galaxy was built into (okay, minor spoiler here) one of 20-30 identical colony ships you took into exile 4000 years ago. The Bentusi have one of the others, and the third is in the possession on the bad guys. These Legendary Cores somehow give you mystical hypderdrive powers or some such nonsense. Or maybe you can only move large ships if you have one of the cores? Forgetting the fact that literally every ship bigger than a corvette has its own hyperdrive core. The bad guys have a super weapon that can only be damaged by another ancient ship that's been lost in the center of the galaxy for tens of thousands of years or something, so after you acquire all three Legendary Cores, you have to go into this non-man's zone of neutron stars or whatever and reclaim this ancient relic, bring it back and beat the bad guys. The whole thing made no sense, even if you ignored the first two games.


The backstory (including the first few missions) of the first Homeworld remains one of the most incredible for any game I've played. A people deeply divided on a hell-world where only the polar region is habitable, and they live in constant conflict for thousands of years over the scant resources. Then one day archaeologists discover the wreckage of the colony ship, along with a marker for where "home" is.

The wars end overnight. The entire planet unites, and makes great sacrifices to research the hyperdrive and commit to the colossal undertaking of building the mothership. Hundreds of thousands of people volunteer for deep sleep to go on board the ship in order to leap into the unknown, all for the chance at a better life.

...And then on the first hyperdrive test, they break an ancient law that they didn't even know existed. The mothership returns to find the planet glassed by orbital bombardment, and the stasis pods being systematically eradicated. The entire planetary population is lost, and most of the colonists are too.

That's just the backstory for this game. Adagio For Strings still gets me tearing up sometimes. To say the plot of subsequent games doesn't compare is an understatement.

[Rockphed]

I haven't gotten past mission 4 in Homeworld 2. But if Lord Torath's description is accurate, then that explains a lot of my problems with it. It is just too frenetic and fast paced for me.

And with all the endorsements of Lords of Magic, I guess I have to give it another go. Can anyone suggest a good strategy guide?

[spectralphoenix]

As far as games I actually remember playing much of, I'd probably say Deus Ex 2: Invisible War. I loved the original, but pretty much every new idea that went into 2 was a bad one.

Remember Me is probably in second place. Interesting idea, bad combat and stupid story.

Final Fantasy 8 is probably objectively better, but it's probably the game that's frustrated me the most - I've tried it twice and both times I just couldn't get past the terrible mechanics, obtuse story, and deeply obnoxious characters.

[Magic_Hat]

There was an Aqua Teen Hunger Force golf game. Anyone remember that?:smallannoyed:

[danzibr]

Very unsurprising. I LOVED Undertale but it is not a traditional game. It is a neat little story with gameplay in between interactive cutscenes.
While I can see people not liking it, especially if they haven’t gotten very far, worst of all time? I imagine it’d be subpar at worst, not worst at worst.

I really didn't like Undertale either. I kind of hated the gameplay and the story, at least in the beginning, was too weak to make up for it. I can't stand bullet hells and I'm terrible at them, and the sort of top down Zelda type stuff was far too easy to be engaging and just tedious to get through. People tell me if I suffer through more of those beginning parts, the story gets really good, but if it did, I never saw it. Closed the game after... less than an hour certainly and never went back to it.

I never bought Undertale, because I saw videos of people playing it and it just looked horrifically ugly. It's the usual thing--people will use a pseudo-8-bit art style but without doing any of the stuff that the actual artists on real 8-bit games did to make their graphics look good. I've seen better and more detailed graphics on 1984 ZX Spectrum games than Undertale has.
I feel like a broken record, but again I can understand people not liking it who haven’t beaten it.

Graphics though, that’s hard to argue. It is rather ugly.

[Rodin]

There have been a few games I've refunded on Steam because the gameplay style appeals to me but they went SO primitive with their graphics that I can't tell what's going on. It feels like an excuse to skimp on graphics in the name of being "retro", especially when there are one-man developed games with gorgeous graphics.

[Olinser]

Lands of Lore III (from the 90's).

The term 'unfinished beta' exists to describe games like this. Initially decent but not great game. Standard excuse plot about being cursed, must gather 5 McGuffin parts to remove your curse and finish the game, choose your classes by signing up with a guild and completing a pretty decent opening quest which then lets you gain levels in classes and has 3 'ranks' to unlock abilities, do some quests, find a portal that takes you to another world, and you go through it and explore and finally kill a boss to get the piece.

Then you go to a different world with somewhat of a story that actually has a couple options, then the game just effectively ENDS. The last 3 worlds have effectively no story (two of them have about a 10 second splash cutscene and the other one doesn't even have THAT) so all you do is wander around, kill mobs, until you finally stumble upon the boss. There are literally zero quests at the 2nd and 3rd rank of the guilds (despite it being very obvious there were SUPPOSED to be quest requirements to rank up), and the 3rd rank of every guild is literally useless because there are no actual abilities or stat bonuses unlocked, there are multiple closed-doors that never open (but you can actually pretty easily get behind), that were very clearly MEANT to hold quest features and content, there is a game-breaking bug that you can't actually remove spells from your quickbars so it was actually possible to fill up quickbars with low-tier spells and NEVER be able to cast more powerful ones, and there was a persistent glitch that had a chance of corrupting and invalidating the entire save file at any time. Oh and the alleged 'helper' familiar that you get has such ridiculously bad AI as to be functionally useless, and constantly flits annoyingly all over the screen.

[Son of A Lich!]

I think there was an Addams family JRPG for the NES or Super NES that was literally unplayable. You boot it up, have dung beetle cookies in your inventory and literally couldn't do anything to progress.

I was somewhere around 9 at the time, so maybe I was just too dense to figure it out but I had a friend that stormed through every JRPG he put his hands on and he didn't see a way around the starting area either. Dung Beetle cookies became Jargon for useless stuff you carry around with my friends because of that stupid game, and is the only reason I remember it as the item.

Snag-afritz-en-waste-of-allowance....

[Lord Torath]

I haven't gotten past mission 4 in Homeworld 2. But if Lord Torath's description is accurate, then that explains a lot of my problems with it. It is just too frenetic and fast paced for me.You're not missing much, trust me.


And with all the endorsements of Lords of Magic, I guess I have to give it another go. Can anyone suggest a good strategy guide?I personally like playing Life. My typical combat strategy involves having twice as many archers as cavalry, and mage, warrior, and thief. Put the cavalry up front, and have each horseman defend themselves (adding half their offense to their defense) while the mage casts Bless and the archers pepper the foe with arrows til they die. If you can trade for an air thief, you can send it in solo to any troll encounter, park it over impassible terrain, and level it up quick. Then park it in your thieves' guild to level up your archers.

Overall I think (other than Death) that Water, Life, and Order are the strongest faiths. Air has some powerful spells but it takes forever to get to them. Their melee and ranged units are only meh. Life and water both have very good healing, which is important because you take a lot of damage. Order's cavalry is the best in the game, with Water's right behind. And always try to fight enemies on your preferred terrain. You'll be faster, and they might be slower.

Somewhere online I found a guide that broke each faith down pretty well, but my google-fu is failing me.

[danzibr]

You're not missing much, trust me.

I personally like playing Life. My typical combat strategy involves having twice as many archers as cavalry, and mage, warrior, and thief. Put the cavalry up front, and have each horseman defend themselves (adding half their offense to their defense) while the mage casts Bless and the archers pepper the foe with arrows til they die. If you can trade for an air thief, you can send it in solo to any troll encounter, park it over impassible terrain, and level it up quick. Then park it in your thieves' guild to level up your archers.

Overall I think (other than Death) that Water, Life, and Order are the strongest faiths. Air has some powerful spells but it takes forever to get to them. Their melee and ranged units are only meh. Life and water both have very good healing, which is important because you take a lot of damage. Order's cavalry is the best in the game, with Water's right behind. And always try to fight enemies on your preferred terrain. You'll be faster, and they might be slower.

Somewhere online I found a guide that broke each faith down pretty well, but my google-fu is failing me.
This makes me want to play LoM again :P

[Eurus]

I did find LoM damn near impossible to learn without a guide, which made it feel very un-fun. With a guide it turned out to be pretty interesting, but man, it's a very opaque game and I just don't have the patience for that kind of blind exploration these days. High skill ceiling, good. High skill floor, less good. (For me, anyway.)

[Guancyto]

Gonna lock in my vote for Star Control 3. Games like Undertale or Darkest Dungeon have a niche appeal (even if those niches turned out to be a lot bigger than the authors anticipated) so if they're not your cup of tea, you're going to have a bad time. (Although if you find Darkest Dungeon too RNG or too grindy, they later added Radiant Mode which has a lot of the frustrating parts snipped out or toned down.)

I can't for the life of me figure out what Star Control 3 was even going for. Grotesque puppets and stilted dialogue, with none of the fun or whimsy or snappiness that the previous title had. A nonsensical plot that didn't fit in with the universe, with a million side-tangents that turn out to not even matter. You're given the option to join forces with the first set of bad guys (because the fabric of the universe is under threat and you ain't got time to be messing around with politics), which could have been interesting but you're instantly given a game over if you do. The second group of bad guys (the ones threatening the fabric of the universe) are convinced to go away by treknobabble and hoping at them real hard. The new ships are hilariously unbalanced, which might be fun for a bit but rapidly loses appeal as it becomes clear that they never gave a single balance pass to any of it. The new resource mechanics are a lot of Hurry Up and Wait, as you plonk down colonies and they very, very slowly build themselves into something that's useful to you - but endure that tedium long enough and you'll end up with nigh-infinite resources.

And to make it worse it sets out to knock down all the tantalizing mysteries of Star Control 2 and manages to make every single one of the answers incredibly dull. The legendary ancient precursors turn out to be cows, and the mysterious question that consumed them was "do extradimensional gribblies periodically show up and eat everything sentient" and the answer was "yes." The creepy mysterious UFO guys that have influenced the entire course of human history turn out to just want to steal human bodies. The race that's an extension of some kind of other dimensional horror basically just cusses you out and goes away when you beat enough of their ships. The mysterious artificial worlds turn out to just be really ancient landfills.

I'd be willing to call it worse than an RPGMaker asset flip, just because RPGMaker asset flips only ruin the Steam recommendations page instead of something that was actually good.

[warty goblin]

Worst is hard. I played a number of only vaguely functional Eastern European games about a decade ago that are by most sensible standards the worst things I've played. On the other hand it's also an entirely uninteresting answer, because you don't pick up budget Eastern European games on the assumption they're good; you pick them up thinking they're probably terrible, may be interesting, and every once and a while are actually pretty solid in a super niche sort of way.

Most disappointing, or something along those lines is probably a much more useful answer. To that end:

Skyrim Skyrim is clearly not a bad game. It's basically a slightly tweaked Oblivion, and I quite liked Oblivion. The problem is that I played enough Oblivion that I didn't really want more of it, and Oblivion got an enormous boost in my eyes for being the first game like that I'd ever played. By the time Skyrim rolled around, I'd played games that had first person melee combat that didn't control like a drunken giraffe, and had writing that was actually good, so the mere novelty of stabbing fantasy dudes in the face couldn't cover for just how utterly basic the systems were. It didn't help that it released right at the same time as Saints Row III, which was goofy and funny and just, well, fun.

Minecraft I made it ten minutes. Before me stretched an eternity of punching stuff to get blocks to build stuff so I could craft stuff so I could punch higher level stuff so I could repeat the whole cycle. The ennui broke me on the spot.

Dragon Age 2. I wasn't a fan of Dragon Age 1, and went in with fairly low expectations. I wasn't exactly in love with DA1's art style, but DA2 managed to somehow be one of the most visually unpleasant games I've ever had the misfortune to inflict on my monitor. Even if the writing hadn't turned me off, the idea of looking at the game for hours would have.

Overwatch I played this at the height of one of my occasional flirtations with multiplayer gaming. The hero shooter thing is sort of a turnoff for me because for some reason my ability to engage with a game is crippled when my super-unique hero ends up shooting a clone of themselves in the face, but whatever. That's just a gimmick wrapped around a class based shooter, and I generally like class based shooters; Enemy Territory: Quake Wars is one of my all time favorites. But I rather disliked all the classes in Overwatch, the guns all felt bleh, and charging up ults felt like a poor man's version of actually building an engaging combat sandbox. And as is the case with basically every Blizzard game I've tried, it felt like literally everything vaguely interesting about the game had been sanded off in the name of balance and polish.

[Amechra]

Spyro: A Hero's Tale is probably the worst game that I've ever actually sunk time into - I loved the earlier Spyro games, but A Hero's Tale just felt... soulless.

Also, put me down in the "I don't see where all the fuss about Undertale comes from". I picked up the demo when it first came out, played up to the tutorial fight with the flower, then put it down because I wasn't having any fun. And everything I've heard about the characters and plot just leaves me entirely cold. I thought Space Funeral had better music, anyway :smallwink:

[LaZodiac]

Spyro: A Hero's Tale is probably the worst game that I've ever actually sunk time into - I loved the earlier Spyro games, but A Hero's Tale just felt... soulless.

Also, put me down in the "I don't see where all the fuss about Undertale comes from". I picked up the demo when it first came out, played up to the tutorial fight with the flower, then put it down because I wasn't having any fun. And everything I've heard about the characters and plot just leaves me entirely cold. I thought Space Funeral had better music, anyway :smallwink:

Not for nothing but you... that means you didn't play the game. That's the first thing you do in the game.

[Keltest]

Not for nothing but you... that means you didn't play the game. That's the first thing you do in the game.

I think that's the point. The game wasn't fun/interesting enough to make them want to play. And I feel the same way. If I want a good story, i'll read a book so I don't have to subject myself to gameplay that makes me roll my eyes out of my head.

[warty goblin]

Not for nothing but you... that means you didn't play the game. That's the first thing you do in the game.

That tends to be what people do when they don't like the demo of a game? I don't think I'm alone in not playing large amounts of games I don't like, and thinking my dislike is entirely justified based on what I did play. It may not be an Ultimate Completely Informed Criticism, but operationally it's enough to be getting on with.

[Amechra]

Not for nothing but you... that means you didn't play the game. That's the first thing you do in the game.

I'm perfectly aware of that¹, but eh. If I bounced off it hard enough that I wasn't willing to get past the tutorial... I don't think experiencing more of something I just plain didn't like would change my opinion of that thing. I mean, when I heard that a full-pacifist run was possible, I was intrigued, but then I quickly lost interest again when I learned that the whole bullet hell + dragon quest combat stuff was still going to happen regardless.

¹ I mean, there was some walking around and tutorializing before that in the demo. Not much, but it wasn't the literal first thing :smallwink:.

EDIT: I think I should clarify. The reason I lost interest wasn't just because I didn't enjoy the combat system. It's because I feel that games where fighting is mandatory shouldn't get to say that they have pacifist/peaceful/whatever runs. Because I very much disagree with the idea that violence is A-OK as long as no-one dies.

I can't have a relationship founded on lies, Undertale!

[LaZodiac]

I'm perfectly aware of that¹, but eh. If I bounced off it hard enough that I wasn't willing to get past the tutorial... I don't think experiencing more of something I just plain didn't like would change my opinion of that thing. I mean, when I heard that a full-pacifist run was possible, I was intrigued, but then I quickly lost interest again when I learned that the whole bullet hell + dragon quest combat stuff was still going to happen regardless.

¹ I mean, there was some walking around and tutorializing before that in the demo. Not much, but it wasn't the literal first thing :smallwink:.

EDIT: I think I should clarify. The reason I lost interest wasn't just because I didn't enjoy the combat system. It's because I feel that games where fighting is mandatory shouldn't get to say that they have pacifist/peaceful/whatever runs. Because I very much disagree with the idea that violence is A-OK as long as no-one dies.

I can't have a relationship founded on lies, Undertale!

It... fighting literally isn't mandatory.

Everything you just said makes me think you'd like it if you actually bothered to give it a try.

Anyway, this doesn't matter. We're talking about games we've played that are bad. I have one, but I cannot for the life of me remember what it's called which sucks. It was an indie game where you play as a lady bounty hunter sort of person who is depressed and bored with life, and hates the "woman rule" dystopia she lives in. The twist is that she's trans. The game played horribly and the writing was actually horrendous.

[danzibr]

This came up earlier in the thread iirc.

I think it’s fine to say you didn’t like a game enough to continue past the first few minutes, but another thing to say it’s one of the worst games you ever *played*.

That’d be like saying you read the first chapter (or shoot, first page) of The Hobbit, didn’t like it, then said it’s the worst book you ever read.


Also, put me down in the "I don't see where all the fuss about Undertale comes from". I picked up the demo when it first came out, played up to the tutorial fight with the flower, then put it down because I wasn't having any fun. And everything I've heard about the characters and plot just leaves me entirely cold.
I wonder what you heard.

[Amechra]

This came up earlier in the thread iirc.

I think it’s fine to say you didn’t like a game enough to continue past the first few minutes, but another thing to say it’s one of the worst games you ever *played*.

That’d be like saying you read the first chapter (or shoot, first page) of The Hobbit, didn’t like it, then said it’s the worst book you ever read.

I never said that it was the worst game I've ever played. I've played much worse (mostly garbage small-studio games), but I've never bounced off a "really good" game like that before, other than the time where I was hyped to play Shadow of the Colossus for literal years... and then couldn't actually handle the controls. I'm sorry if my mild disappointment and joking exaggeration came off as "worst game evar".


I wonder what you heard.

I asked a few of my friends who were crazy into the game after it came out. Apparently they gave me faulty information or whatever. Eh.


It... fighting literally isn't mandatory.

Everything you just said makes me think you'd like it if you actually bothered to give it a try.

It isn't? Apparently Wikipedia is also lying to me. Maybe someone should fix that? (I'm actually being serious here - if that's faulty information, it probably should be fixed.)

I also rather dislike internet-style humor. Quite literally the only reason why I was intrigued by "there's a pacifist run" is because I was curious to see how that'd be handled in an RPG.


Anyway, this doesn't matter. We're talking about games we've played that are bad. I have one, but I cannot for the life of me remember what it's called which sucks. It was an indie game where you play as a lady bounty hunter sort of person who is depressed and bored with life, and hates the "woman rule" dystopia she lives in. The twist is that she's trans. The game played horribly and the writing was actually horrendous.

Nothing is showing up on the Google. Hopefully you dreamed it up, and you didn't actually play something that poor?

I'm reminded of all of the RPG Maker Ume Nikki clones that I've... experienced ("played" is too strong a word). There's this weird idea that "but it's art" excuses terrible game design, and that making your star a poor, sad, abused child suffices to make it deep and emotionally resonant. Again, I sometimes doubt that they actually exist.

[Manticoran]

It isn't? Apparently Wikipedia is also lying to me. Maybe someone should fix that? (I'm actually being serious here - if that's faulty information, it probably should be fixed.)

People try to fight you, and you talk them into not fighting you, is basically the tldr there. There isn't a route without fighting, but there is a route where you don't fight back.

[Amechra]

People try to fight you, and you talk them into not fighting you, is basically the tldr there. There isn't a route without fighting, but there is a route where you don't fight back.

Ah, fair enough.

[LaZodiac]

It isn't? Apparently Wikipedia is also lying to me. Maybe someone should fix that? (I'm actually being serious here - if that's faulty information, it probably should be fixed.)

Nothing is showing up on the Google. Hopefully you dreamed it up, and you didn't actually play something that poor?

I'm reminded of all of the RPG Maker Ume Nikki clones that I've... experienced ("played" is too strong a word). There's this weird idea that "but it's art" excuses terrible game design, and that making your star a poor, sad, abused child suffices to make it deep and emotionally resonant. Again, I sometimes doubt that they actually exist.

As people have said, you don't have to fight. You talk people out of hurting you. I'd argue that's not fighting, but to each their own. I also don't really "get" the idea of "internet comedy". It's all jkust comedy, if it's funny it's funny.

I went through the steam game list name by name. It's Aerannis.

[halfeye]

This came up earlier in the thread iirc.

I think it’s fine to say you didn’t like a game enough to continue past the first few minutes, but another thing to say it’s one of the worst games you ever *played*.

That’d be like saying you read the first chapter (or shoot, first page) of The Hobbit, didn’t like it, then said it’s the worst book you ever read.

I wonder what you heard.

I think that's unfair. The first chapter of a book can be entirely enough to tell you that it's very, very bad. The Hobbit isn't one of those books, but there have been some where through bad spelling, bad grammar or (and/or) bad English (supposing it's written in English) you could tell that it was bad from the first page. Publishers don't usually publish books like that, but they have occasionally existed.

I will mention again Anco's Jump Jet (Wikipedia doesn't have a page for it that I can find). It was released before 1990, because that's when I bought my Atari ST and it was one of the first games I bought. The controls were terrible, and the simulation wasn't a simulation. I was that cross with it that I formatted the floppy.

There have been dozens of games that I liked a lot that I didn't fully finish. I don't think it is in any way reasonable to demand that people only rate games that they have fully completed.

[factotum]

As people have said, you don't have to fight. You talk people out of hurting you. I'd argue that's not fighting, but to each their own.

The problem is, from what I've seen taking the pacifist approach doesn't actually prevent you having to play the bullet-hell thing that Undertale has for a combat system--the monster will still attack you until you've managed to figure out the thing to do to make it back off. So, if it's the bullet hell combat that's putting him off, playing pacifist doesn't fix that in the slightest.

[Amechra]

As people have said, you don't have to fight. You talk people out of hurting you. I'd argue that's not fighting, but to each their own.

I was hoping to not have to engage in the combat system at all, perhaps through a cunning series of dialog options and/or kind offerings of knitted goods. I'm the kind of person who kinda wants to play Pokemon again, but wishes that they could skip all the fighting stuff and just do the dog shows Pokemon Contests. Because why do I want my little friends to get hurt?

In any case, I'm reminded of a game that I (thankfully) haven't personally played, but I did watch a full playthrough of. Let's just say that it was a point-n-click adventure game that was lightly concealed Christian propaganda. It had a Jesus-powered mech. It wasn't very good. It wasn't very good at all.

[danzibr]

I never said that it was the worst game I've ever played. I've played much worse (mostly garbage small-studio games), but I've never bounced off a "really good" game like that before, other than the time where I was hyped to play Shadow of the Colossus for literal years... and then couldn't actually handle the controls. I'm sorry if my mild disappointment and joking exaggeration came off as "worst game evar".
Oh yeah, I wasn't meaning you did. I picked up the I-don't-see-where-all-the-fuss-about-Undertale-comes-from bit.

I think that's unfair. The first chapter of a book can be entirely enough to tell you that it's very, very bad. The Hobbit isn't one of those books, but there have been some where through bad spelling, bad grammar or (and/or) bad English (supposing it's written in English) you could tell that it was bad from the first page. Publishers don't usually publish books like that, but they have occasionally existed.

I mean more like... people play a game for the first few minutes and say they, well, played it. Makes it sound like they actually played it.

Man, typing that makes it look weird. Maybe it's all in my head.

[Amechra]

I mean more like... people play a game for the first few minutes and say they, well, played it. Makes it sound like they actually played it.

Man, typing that makes it look weird. Maybe it's all in my head.

Do you mean... "I mean more like... people play a game for the first few minutes and say they, well, played it. Makes it sound like they actually played it (to completion)."

Because that would explain it - I'm not really much of a gamer (I might play a couple hours of videogames once a month, if that). I could, if I felt bothered, list all the games I've ever actually completed, and it would take me, like, a minute. Maybe two. Your belief that I am able to finish things warms my heart, though.

[danzibr]

Do you mean... "I mean more like... people play a game for the first few minutes and say they, well, played it. Makes it sound like they actually played it (to completion)."

Because that would explain it - I'm not really much of a gamer (I might play a couple hours of videogames once a month, if that). I could, if I felt bothered, list all the games I've ever actually completed, and it would take me, like, a minute. Maybe two. Your belief that I am able to finish things warms my heart, though.
Haha, glad that warms your heart :)

And... the more I think about it, yeah, I guess that is what I mean. Or well, maybe at least half of the game. And not just games, books/movies/food/whatever.

"I did X" = "I completed at least 50% of X"

Still sounds funny to me, but more on the right track. If someone were to ask me, "Hey, did you see such-and-such movie?" If I started it but got distracted/didn't like it, I'd respond with, "Yeah, but..." rather than a flat, "Yeah."

[Brother Oni]

I never said that it was the worst game I've ever played. I've played much worse (mostly garbage small-studio games), but I've never bounced off a "really good" game like that before, other than the time where I was hyped to play Shadow of the Colossus for literal years... and then couldn't actually handle the controls.

Reminds me of the time I was hyped to finally play the first Half Life after scrimping and saving to get sufficient parts to build a non-potato PC... only to discover that I suffer from simulation sickness after 10 minutes playing and had to go lie down for a couple of hours with a bucket within arm's reach.

[tyckspoon]

Reminds me of the time I was hyped to finally play the first Half Life after scrimping and saving to get sufficient parts to build a non-potato PC... only to discover that I suffer from simulation sickness after 10 minutes playing and had to go lie down for a couple of hours with a bucket within arm's reach.

I have pretty bad motion-sickness issues from most first-person cameras; can relate. Doesn't matter how good the game is, I will be physically unable to play it for any extended period of time (and let's not even get into the issues of watching *somebody else* play one where I'm not in direct control of the camera!)

[Hunter Noventa]

I have pretty bad motion-sickness issues from most first-person cameras; can relate. Doesn't matter how good the game is, I will be physically unable to play it for any extended period of time (and let's not even get into the issues of watching *somebody else* play one where I'm not in direct control of the camera!)

I have the same problem, last game first-person game I tried was Deus Ex...the more recent version that wasn't a sequel. Made me feel ill relatively fast. It's why I'm so disappointed that Cyberpunk 2077 is all first-person.

Oddly I can watch the games being played with little issue, as long as I don't put it full-screen. but trying to play one just slays me.

[The Patterner]

Conan exiles, so frikking bad.

It looks nice, I really, really liked the nature and choices in character design. and I kind of liked the beginning when you wander around in the desert.

But the crafting system is just so clunky and bothersome, and the combat system is just weird and lacking.

It's like someone took a good idea, and wondered how they best could ruin it while still having it look good on paper.

[Brother Oni]

I have pretty bad motion-sickness issues from most first-person cameras; can relate. Doesn't matter how good the game is, I will be physically unable to play it for any extended period of time (and let's not even get into the issues of watching *somebody else* play one where I'm not in direct control of the camera!)


I have the same problem, last game first-person game I tried was Deus Ex...the more recent version that wasn't a sequel. Made me feel ill relatively fast. It's why I'm so disappointed that Cyberpunk 2077 is all first-person.

Oddly I can watch the games being played with little issue, as long as I don't put it full-screen. but trying to play one just slays me.

I still can't watch a first person camera game being played for long, but I have discovered this neat little trick that helps me stand playing a FP camera game for longer - crank down the mouse sensitivity as low as is playable.

I discovered this when I got the Halo Reach XBox 360 bundle as it was cheaper to buy that and Assassin's Creed Brotherhood than a standard XBox 360 package and AC:B. Curiosity eventually got the better of me and I tried to play Halo Reach on a controller and to my vast surprise, I didn't get motion sick throughout the whole game, except for a single city section map which involves running around inside an office block.

After some experimentation back on my PC, it was the head bob followed by the mouse sensitivity that most affected my sickness, so disabling the option and lowering the mouse sensitivity helped. Certain games still seem to be worse for triggering it (the FP version of the Sherlock Holmes/Cthulhu mythos game was terrible for it even with limiting the frame rate and the mouse sensitivity), but if you get an opportunity, give it a try.

[factotum]

After some experimentation back on my PC, it was the head bob followed by the mouse sensitivity that most affected my sickness, so disabling the option and lowering the mouse sensitivity helped.

Couldn't you just get a controller for your PC and play it that way?

[noob]

I still can't watch a first person camera game being played for long, but I have discovered this neat little trick that helps me stand playing a FP camera game for longer - crank down the mouse sensitivity as low as is playable.

I discovered this when I got the Halo Reach XBox 360 bundle as it was cheaper to buy that and Assassin's Creed Brotherhood than a standard XBox 360 package and AC:B. Curiosity eventually got the better of me and I tried to play Halo Reach on a controller and to my vast surprise, I didn't get motion sick throughout the whole game, except for a single city section map which involves running around inside an office block.

After some experimentation back on my PC, it was the head bob followed by the mouse sensitivity that most affected my sickness, so disabling the option and lowering the mouse sensitivity helped. Certain games still seem to be worse for triggering it (the FP version of the Sherlock Holmes/Cthulhu mythos game was terrible for it even with limiting the frame rate and the mouse sensitivity), but if you get an opportunity, give it a try.

Regardless of the first person game I always disable all the head shaking stuff that can be disabled in general.
I never felt sick from playing first person games(except with an oculus rift) but I always have the feeling that camera shaking lower my accuracy and response time (with a computer screen I do the weird thing of usually pushing sensibility above 100 percent(of the bar in the menu) often reaching things like 200% sensibility and many people say I move too nervously the camera so I am not going to add random headshaking to that)
I also usually get a fov as high as possible.
I wonder if fov influence nausea since the higher the fov is the less things appear and disappear for the same angle to watch(so you need less to watch quickly right and left for seeing a lot of things) but at the same time it increase the deformation so whenever increasing fov helps or hampers with nausea is hard to guess.

Did you try experimenting with the field of view and compare the field of view of the varied games relatively to the nausea they induce(maybe there is an optimum field of view that induce less nausea for you)?

[Brother Oni]

Couldn't you just get a controller for your PC and play it that way?

It's the speed of the camera movement that's the issue, since that triggers the 'eye thinks I'm moving, but the inner ear says I'm not' nausea of my form of motion sickness.

Camera speeds on consoles are significantly slower than that on PC, so playing with a controller with PC camera speeds doesn't alleviate the problem and introduces a new problem of me being completely unable to aim with a controller. :smalltongue:


I wonder if fov influence nausea since the higher the fov is the less things appear and disappear for the same angle to watch(so you need less to watch quickly right and left for seeing a lot of things) but at the same time it increase the deformation so whenever increasing fov helps or hampers with nausea is hard to guess.

Did you try experimenting with the field of view and compare the field of view of the varied games relatively to the nausea they induce(maybe there is an optimum field of view that induce less nausea for you)?

Unfortunately I don't have very many FPS games with a FOV option, but the next time I get an opportunity, I'll give it a shot.

[Tvtyrant]

I never said that it was the worst game I've ever played. I've played much worse (mostly garbage small-studio games), but I've never bounced off a "really good" game like that before, other than the time where I was hyped to play Shadow of the Colossus for literal years... and then couldn't actually handle the controls. I'm sorry if my mild disappointment and joking exaggeration came off as "worst game evar".



I asked a few of my friends who were crazy into the game after it came out. Apparently they gave me faulty information or whatever. Eh.



It isn't? Apparently Wikipedia is also lying to me. Maybe someone should fix that? (I'm actually being serious here - if that's faulty information, it probably should be fixed.)

I also rather dislike internet-style humor. Quite literally the only reason why I was intrigued by "there's a pacifist run" is because I was curious to see how that'd be handled in an RPG.



Nothing is showing up on the Google. Hopefully you dreamed it up, and you didn't actually play something that poor?

I'm reminded of all of the RPG Maker Ume Nikki clones that I've... experienced ("played" is too strong a word). There's this weird idea that "but it's art" excuses terrible game design, and that making your star a poor, sad, abused child suffices to make it deep and emotionally resonant. Again, I sometimes doubt that they actually exist.

My versions of this were Evolve and Fortnite. Evolve was so cool, but the implementation just felt off. Setting it in a city would have been better for feeling like a rampaging monster or a hero, everything moves at lightning speed so the huge map feels really small.

Fortnite never released the mine-craft style mode I wanted. I went in thinking there would eventually be an escalating wave mode until you get overrun and a large persistent world mode, it never gave me either.

[Lord Torath]

Fortnite never released the mine-craft style mode I wanted. I went in thinking there would eventually be an escalating wave mode until you get overrun and a large persistent world mode, it never gave me either.As my kids tell me, "You can play Fortnight in Minecraft, but you can't play Minecraft in Fortnight." :smallwink:

[Varen_Tai]

Minecraft I made it ten minutes. Before me stretched an eternity of punching stuff to get blocks to build stuff so I could craft stuff so I could punch higher level stuff so I could repeat the whole cycle. The ennui broke me on the spot.

Oh man, you put this so well. Amen on so many levels. I hated Minecraft immediately and never had the words until I read this.

Ironically, this is the general route for most RPGs, albeit in a much more funnerest (a real word that I made up) way, and I love those. Just the building dynamic was not for me. Give me a good story, and I'm all in, but building without a story just for the sake of building. Ugh.

[Chalkarts]

Worst gaming experience I've ever endured was WoW.

[Tvtyrant]

As my kids tell me, "You can play Fortnight in Minecraft, but you can't play Minecraft in Fortnight." :smallwink:

I could if they would tweak like three things. :/

Just the brick or stone floor overlays and make them layer the depth of the map and let me keep my map permanently.

[Toric]

I watch a lot of Let'sPlays (shout out to LaZodiac) so I can split this into worst game I've played and worst game I've seen.

The worst game I've played was Go Go Tank! for the original Game Boy. You play - you guessed it - a helicopter. A helicopter whose job is to get the perpetually trundling tank from the start to the end of the stage. The tank that takes damage and about-faces when it hits a wall. The tank that will merrily drive into a pit if you don't hit it with a nonlethal bomb to force it to about-face without depleting its health pool. Your helicopter has a crane you can use to pick up platforms and drop them to make blocky inclines and bridges for your tank buddy. With floaty controls, no ability to hover (like some kind of blimp) or even completely arrest your up/down movement, and momentum that gets transferred to the blocks you drop, the game has a nasty learning curve that doesn't pay off for the limited number of lives you have.

Now the worst game I've ever seen is probably Bloodnet for the PC. It's Shadowrun in video game form, only 1. You're a freshly turned vampire with a time limit until you lose your humanity and 2. The mandatory combat is so weighted toward offense the best strategy is to give everyone the strongest guns you can get your hands on and hope one of your guys wins initiative. The LPer started his series to show this game was an unfairly maligned hidden gem... and ended with an essay on nostalgia and what makes a video game truly bad.

[Eldan]

Well, that's a shame... I mean, "Shadowrun, but you're a vampire", and "You have limited time to achieve your goals before your humanity runs out" sound like a good concept for a game. My mind immediately goes to the idea of a sandbox RPG, where you have, like, three nights to finish unfinished business from your previous life before you turn into a monster. And the player could choose which business to focus on. Like, you went on a run with your gang, but were betrayed and turned into a vampire. Do you save your friends, or finish the job, or take vengeance on the one who cheated you, or try to kill the vampire who created you...

Sorry, went a bit off on a tangent here, but now I really want this game. Which probably has nothing in common with the game you mentioned.

[Zalabim]

I couldn't tell you anything about the mechanical balance, other than one anecdote I'll add at the end, but the story/setting of Bloodnet always entertained me when I experienced it. You can meet a hacker who goes by the name Elvis online, who is strongly implied to be Elvis trapped in cyberspace sometime after faking his original death. You can gather up cyborg body parts and make a fully robotic body to get him out cyberspace and recruit him for your party. The resulting robot is an ace hacker and a combat monster, having strength, speed, and armor that vastly surpasses my poorly made budding-vampire PC, considering I'd spent most of my earnings so far on buying his body. Elvis was killed in the first round of the first combat I brought him to by enemies using a previously-joke-weapon, an EMP gun.

[Deadline]

E.T. the extraterrestrial for the Atari. So, so bad. But given that the library of video games available was really small at the time (compared to the nigh un-countable library of games we have available today), I played it. Often, unfortunately.

It really puts current "worst games ever" items in perspective for me.

For a more current game that I played to completion and found to be a net loss in the fun department, Underrail. As a long-time fan of the original isometric Fallout games, I thought this would be a great nostalgia button to push. The only reason I finished it (once I sat back and said to myself, this really isn't very fun) was that I knew I'd come back to it later and convince myself "it wasn't that bad, was it? I should really finish that." Now I don't have to worry.

[Kesnit]

E.T. the extraterrestrial for the Atari. So, so bad.

I was waiting for someone to mention this one...

I also played E.T. Maybe it was my age (I was rather young.) Maybe I was giving it the benefit of the doubt. Maybe it's because I played on the easiest setting. But I liked the game. When I read many years later about how the cartridges were buried in the desert, I thought it was a joke.

[Rockphed]

I was waiting for someone to mention this one...

I also played E.T. Maybe it was my age (I was rather young.) Maybe I was giving it the benefit of the doubt. Maybe it's because I played on the easiest setting. But I liked the game. When I read many years later about how the cartridges were buried in the desert, I thought it was a joke.

There are at least two different et games for Atari systems. The most commonly derided one is a side scrolling platformer. The one I grew up with is a top down search game where you have to avoid the cops and such while hunting down the parts to build et's phone. Which one did you play?

[factotum]

I don't think even the famously bad ET game is actually all that terrible by the standards of its day. The most silly thing about it was how Atari thought the game would be so popular that they actually created more cartridges than there existed Atari 2600 consoles at the time, assuming it would be a big console seller...alas, they were rather wrong on that front.

[Kesnit]

There are at least two different et games for Atari systems. The most commonly derided one is a side scrolling platformer. The one I grew up with is a top down search game where you have to avoid the cops and such while hunting down the parts to build et's phone. Which one did you play?

I didn't know there were two games. I played the top-down where you have to avoid the cops.


I don't think even the famously bad ET game is actually all that terrible by the standards of its day. The most silly thing about it was how Atari thought the game would be so popular that they actually created more cartridges than there existed Atari 2600 consoles at the time, assuming it would be a big console seller...alas, they were rather wrong on that front.

That explanation makes a lot of sense. Every time I've read about it, it was framed as "the game sold so badly that they had to bury the cartridges." Which is sort-of what you said, but puts it in better context.

[TaRix]

I thought the overproduced one was their much-heard-on-TV Pac-Man game.(One which I played way back when I had no idea games could be any better in a cartridge. Yes, Atari's Pac-Man is painful to watch and play.)

[The Glyphstone]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pac-Man_(Atari_2600)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.T._the_Extra-Terrestrial_(video_game)


Looks like Pac-Man was the game they made too many of expecting it to be a console seller. ET just never sold its copies or had them all returned.

[Rockphed]

I didn't know there were two games. I played the top-down where you have to avoid the cops.

I played that one too. It was fun, after its fashion. I never really understood how to play, so I never got very good at it.

[factotum]

Looks like Pac-Man was the game they made too many of expecting it to be a console seller. ET just never sold its copies or had them all returned.

Oops, sorry, I must have misremembered. Still, ET did apparently sell a good million and a bit units, it's just they expected it to sell four million, so the same sort of idea applies!

[Toric]

I seem to remember hearing about an interview with one of the developers of the top-down ET. It may have been part of a Radiolab episode. The crazy thing about ET in hindsight is the developers had very solid ideas about what would make a fun game that sounded good on paper, it was just way too ambitious for the console's limitations. So the game wasn't shovelware like I thought if you believe this take, it was more of a Peter Molyneux project.

I played this game too. It was sorta fun in an exploratory sense. I could never figure out who the people were who were chasing ET but I was able to learn a fair bit about the game's internal logic through trial and error.

[russdm]

There's this weird idea that "but it's art" excuses terrible game design, and that making your star a poor, sad, abused child suffices to make it deep and emotionally resonant.

Sounds to me like the design philosophy beyond every game made by Peter Molyneux. Just include the warped up moral ideals, and you are good to go

[Spore]

Sounds to me like the design philosophy beyond every game made by Peter Molyneux. Just include the warped up moral ideals, and you are good to go

Fable was fun to be perfectly honest. Its story was not great but the DLCs greatly improved upon it.

But yeah divorcing your wife is more evil than killing a town guard? Uh, mate I don't know.

[Neptunas123]

It's far from being the worst game. Grand Theft Auto III was a revolutionary open-world sandbox for its time but for me personally it was extremely irritating and annoying. Missions were made difficult through timers, it was impossible to use the minimap, had to use the one on google. There was this one really annoying mission. You had to steal three cars. You don't know how they look like, only their names and districts they can usually be found in. You steal them and then you have to get them into a particular garage without damaging them. You can't activate the map in-game (I had to use google) AND it had a time limits. It was a discusting mission and I'm glad the devs learned from their mistakes when they developed Vice City, even though we kept seeing stupid RC plane missions and timers even in future GTA's.

[Vinyadan]

It's far from being the worst game. Grand Theft Auto III was a revolutionary open-world sandbox for its time but for me personally it was extremely irritating and annoying. Missions were made difficult through timers, it was impossible to use the minimap, had to use the one on google. There was this one really annoying mission. You had to steal three cars. You don't know how they look like, only their names and districts they can usually be found in. You steal them and then you have to get them into a particular garage without damaging them. You can't activate the map in-game (I had to use google) AND it had a time limits. It was a discusting mission and I'm glad the devs learned from their mistakes when they developed Vice City, even though we kept seeing stupid RC plane missions and timers even in future GTA's.

For me the problem with GTA3 was that going from 2D to 3D made everything too realistic. It just wasn't as funny any more. Beating up fallen pedestrians with a baseball bat was also way too violent for me.

I also didn't like how the weapons aimed (hard to describe, but the comparison to Max Payne was inclement), or how the cars drove.

It let you play some funny siege situations if you went on a rampage, however. But the missions were really bad. I tried them a couple of time and then accepted that I was never leaving the first stage.

[N7Paladin]

Dragon Age Inquisition.

It was talked up so much, and I had waited for it for so long. I had gotten easily attached to all of my BioWare characters in previous games (at the time I had been very fond of all my Wardens)...

With the Inquisitor, however, I didn't connect with her, no matter how I played her. I felt no emotional involvement, other than a superficial something over seeing a few NPCs from previous games. The fact I felt zero connection with my Inquisitor took away so much value and entertainment from what I had come to get only from BioWare games (it mostly went downhill from there for BW). It was a sad disappointment. Oh well :/

[Wardog]

I'll add some more comments on a couple of games that others have already been mentioned:

1) Deux Ex Invisible Wars. The original Deux Ex was one of my favourite games. I've played through to completion multiple times (plus many incomplete playthroughs), tried every ending, and usually found something new each time. With Invisible Wars, I only played once, and didn't even complete it (I think I got as far as the arcology). The gameplay itself was massively dumbed down, and far less enjoyable. But the real killer IMO was the plot. I just couldn't empathise with anyone (neither the character you were playing, nor the various factions, nor the individual NPCs).

With original DE, you started with what seemed like a straight-forward plot. Terrorists and successionists were attacking everywhere. America was beset by a deadly plague. The NSF had stolen the cure. And you are the cyborg antiterrorism agent who has to be a bad enough dude to save the president. But then, sooner or later (How soon depending on how many emails you hacked and how many guards you spied on), you found out that things weren't what they seemed. (Some) good guys were actually bad guys. (Some) bad guys were actually good guys. Or maybe not. And vice versa. Depending on your perspective.

But with IW, if I remember right, you are almost straight away dumped into the middle of a big, multi-faction conflict, with no reason to think that your starting team are the good guys, with multiple opposing factions asking you to do missions for them, with no compelling reason to side with one over the other - and in most cases you could actually do all the missions, with no consequences other than them complaining that you keep helping their enemies.
***
The other game is the original Bioware Neverwinter Nights, which I had a strange love-hate relationship with (it's massively flawed, and not just the OC, but I've probably played it more than many games I actually really like).

The OC in particular was an extreme example of two things that Bioware likes doing but which I think make for bad gameplay.

The first is irrelivent non-linearity. "Welcome to the hub level. You have four major tasks to complete, one in each of four different zones. You have to do them all, but you can chose the order". Give that you have to do all of them, and the order doesn't make any difference, it doesn't make for interesting or challenging decisions, and doesnt give any benefit for future playthroughs. (A better alternative might be "you have four things that need to be done, but you can only do three of them" so you have to chose which reward/information/alliance you sacrifice).

The second is making all plot-relevant locked door's immune to lockpicking (and most lockpickable door's breakable by a fighter of equivilent level). This means that thief skills are reduced to nothing more than a way to get a little extra loot, rather than (as in Deus Ex) a way to get alternative access to locations and fundamentally change how you play.

(Talking of Deus Ex: when I first started playing NWN, the combination of plague, insurgency, and (obvious) conspiracy made me quit and start over with a fighter/rogue called (I think) Dacy Jenton).

Now, the expansion packs and (some) user-created content were much better in terms of plot, characterisation, etc. But they all imo suffered from a major limitation of the engine, namely you only had direct control over one character. And D&D mechanics make for a really boring CRPG when you are only controlling one character. If you were a fighter or similar, most of the time you could just click a target walk up to it, and just sit back and let the rng and autoattacks kill everything for you. Or if you were a wizard, just like everything, then rest. It didn't help that the enemies were generated so that you were usually fighting level-appropriate hordes of weak enemies.

Compare with e.g. Baldurs Gate, which in terms of actual mechanics was even simpler (no feats or special abilities). But because you were controlling multiple characters (and fighting enemies that were usually powerful enough to ruin your day with a couple of (un)lucky dice rolls), you had to worry about positioning and target priority, which meant combat was a lot more involved.

Plus BG did non-linearity much better IMO - you had a fairly straight forward main quest to follow, but with the option of wandering off and doing your own thing. Which meant you could run into much more dangerous enemies than when following the main path, which in turn meant certain types of enemies were actually scary. (E.g. ogres. In BG, the first ogre you encounter is essentially the boss on an optional request, and it can potentially one-shot most of your party members. In NWN, you encounter ogres when you have levelled up enough that the game thinks hordes of orcs are irrelivent, but hordes or ogres might at least provide a speed bump).

[factotum]

Maybe I'm weird, but I never finished the original Deus Ex. I honestly couldn't tell you what put me off playing it, I just came to a point where I fired up something that interested me more and never went back to it. I never finished Deus Ex: Human Revolution either, but that was mainly down to the god-awful boss fights that utterly ignored any way you chose to build your character that didn't involve shoot bang--I understand they fixed those in the later edition, but I haven't got round to playing that.

[warty goblin]

Maybe I'm weird, but I never finished the original Deus Ex. I honestly couldn't tell you what put me off playing it, I just came to a point where I fired up something that interested me more and never went back to it. I never finished Deus Ex: Human Revolution either, but that was mainly down to the god-awful boss fights that utterly ignored any way you chose to build your character that didn't involve shoot bang--I understand they fixed those in the later edition, but I haven't got round to playing that.

I could never get into Deus Ex, I think because it felt like I had a choice between playing a really crappy shooter and an also crappy stealth game. I'm quite happy to choose my playstyle when I decide which game to play in the first place. Doing it through a skill system in game isn't bad, but it also isn't a mindblowing good, particularly when the actual mechanics are so crude in their implementation.

[Yora]

The other game is the original Bioware Neverwinter Nights, which I had a strange love-hate relationship with (it's massively flawed, and not just the OC, but I've probably played it more than many games I actually really like).

NWN was really interesting as a low entry barrier RPG maker software. I was heavily into fan content for many years. But the campaign that shipped with the software was awful. I was a huge Bioware fanboy at the time, but playing all through NWN took me years, and at the end I wondered why I even bothered.
I have not played Andromeda, but to me it's essily BioWare's worst RPG by a wide margin,

[Toric]

I want to talk about something I call Reverse Sequelitis, where you play a sequel, go back to the original, and miss the improvements. These aren't the worst game I've ever played, but they're significantly the worst in their own series.

I love the Mass Effect trilogy. It's the first series I can recall where your decisions matter from game to game and it does a lot to give each game a specific feel. Mass Effect 2 is one of my favorite games of all time. Mass Effect 1 is painful to go back to. Combat is clunky, the characters take themselves too seriously, and I was truly convinced the Conrad Verner sidequest would end with him turning out to be an assassin because he was so unconvincing as a Commander Shepherd fanboy. (He got much better in the sequels.)

Likewise, Baldur's Gate is a slog compared to Baldur's Gate 2. The companion characters are two-dimensional, one of whom immediately abandons his person quest the moment you leave town in the vanilla version. You can very easily miss the lore you need to fight various monsters (have fun the first time you meet a worg in combat if you aren't an AD&D veteran) and the fight with the unskippable assassin en route to the first inn you're directed to is essentially luck-based.

[factotum]

I love the Mass Effect trilogy. It's the first series I can recall where your decisions matter from game to game and it does a lot to give each game a specific feel. Mass Effect 2 is one of my favorite games of all time. Mass Effect 1 is painful to go back to.

I've said it before--as a *game*, ME2 is definitely light-years ahead of ME1. It's just a shame the main plot is such a disorganised, irrational mess that ignores pretty much every sequel hook the original had.

[Winthur]

the fight with the unskippable assassin en route to the first inn you're directed to is essentially luck-based.

You have up to three disposable party members at that point (five if you simply move past the mage and go into the inn to recruit K&J), are liable to simply run away from his line of sight, town guards actually aggro him because he's disturbing the peace so he often dies without you having to do anything other than run away and Imoen starts with a wand with an instant spell that's excellent for interrupting Mirror Image or any subsequent spellcasts. You make your own luck in this fight. :smalltongue:

[danzibr]

Reverse Sequelitis! I approve. I totally agree with the BG example.

I’d like to cite Suikoden II. They’re both incredible games, but II has some nice QoL changes.

[Man_Over_Game]

I want to talk about something I call Reverse Sequelitis, where you play a sequel, go back to the original, and miss the improvements. These aren't the worst game I've ever played, but they're significantly the worst in their own series.

I am experiencing this with Borderlands right now. Going from Borderlands 3 to Borderlands 2 is like going from Borderlands 1 to Fallout 3.

That is, BL3 has such smooth gunplay and mechanics that anything less feels like an RPG that pretends to be a shooter.

[Hunter Noventa]

Reverse Sequelitis! I approve. I totally agree with the BG example.

I’d like to cite Suikoden II. They’re both incredible games, but II has some nice QoL changes.

Just being able to equip multiple runes and having a shared party inventory were game changers. The Disgaea series and some recent Super Robot Wars games are the same, at least as far as QoL changes go.

[Amechra]

One of my personal examples of reverse sequelitis is the original Spyro trilogy. You start the third game with all the upgrades from the second game (something I wish more games would do), so moving from the third game back to the second involves unlearning certain habits.

[Androgeus]

One of my personal examples of reverse sequelitis is the original Spyro trilogy. You start the third game with all the upgrades from the second game (something I wish more games would do), so moving from the third game back to the second involves unlearning certain habits.

As a kid, I started on Spyro 2 and could never get use to Spyro 1.

[Spore]

like going from Borderlands 1 to Fallout 3.

So an improvement? No forced humor, VATS being an actual decent RPG mechanic, and a world that is imho more alive than the poor diablo reskin Borderlands is.

Seriously I do not like the series. My friends think the humor is GOLD, but it's actually just stupid. Not stupid fun, just dumb. Yea, butt stallion, comedy gold.

[factotum]

I have the probably unpopular opinion that Borderlands 1 was a better game than its sequel. It was better designed for single players, for a start, and while there was a fair bit of silly humour in it (see: Dr Zed) it wasn't quite as non-stop as it was in the second game.

[Erloas]

I'm going to say that the worst game I've ever played is probably lost to time in the NES to PS2 era, something that I completely forgot about decades ago.

So I would go with games I expected to like but couldn't. Which are all RPGs, I think mostly because I generally like the genre and these were supposed to be good games and I just found them painful. Morrowind, Fallout 3, Dragon Age: Origin, and WoW.
The big part with WoW is that I loved MMOs up until that point and pretty much every design decision they made took the genre in directions I didn't like, getting rid of things I like about them. And of course with it's success virtually every MMO afterwards followed those same designs, killing the entire genre for me.
Morrowind may have been because I got to it fairly late so maybe it just didn't age well, but nothing about it pulled me in and a lot of the NPC reactions just pushed me out of the world.
DA:O had some good points, but I found the combat very painful. I've heard I picked one of the worst classes combined with one of the least interesting backgrounds, but I have quite a few painful fights that just sucked all the joy out of playing and hit one fight that I had to do solo that my character simply was unable to do. So the game died there.
And Fallout 3... I wanted a Fallout game and Fallout 3 simply isn't one. A pipboy and vaults doesn't make Fallout. The world design didn't feel right and the story wasn't compelling. And probably most importantly, I found the combat painful. It didn't feel like "my character is low skill" it felt like "someone isn't very good at creating a FPS." And VATS didn't feel like some new and interesting mechanic, it felt like a bandaid over poor controls.

Real time combat with pause is just bad, that doesn't seem to have changed in decades, yet they've been trying it for decades.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

I have a kind of weird case of sequelitis too. As a kid I played some Duke Nukem 2. I never got very far, but it still left an impression. It wasn't until much later that I got access to both part 1 and the acclaimed part 3D, at which point both of those felt off. Part 1 was a downgrade from my nostalgia trip, and part 3D was so far ahead of my nostalgia trip that it felt like just another (by that time) old game.

(Neither deserves any worst game ever awards though.)

[Rynjin]

I have the probably unpopular opinion that Borderlands 1 was a better game than its sequel. It was better designed for single players, for a start, and while there was a fair bit of silly humour in it (see: Dr Zed) it wasn't quite as non-stop as it was in the second game.

BL1 is an absolutely superior game to BL2. More unique character (mechanically and thematically), a more low-key satire element, better gun manufacturers, better DLC (General Knoxx's Armory is one of the best video game DLCs of all time IMO, up there with stuff like The Shivering Isles for Oblivion), an all around superior experience, especially endgame.

[danzibr]

Another reverse sequelitis game comes to mind.

My first game in the Smash Bros. series was Melee. Going back to the original after that... *shudders*

[Quizatzhaderac]

Final Fantasy Type-0. There were a lot of pieces to like, but there were some things that sucked the fun out.

Some of the combat controls were clunky and poorly explained. (For example I would need to pause and check how online each time I wanted to revive a character).

There were fourteen playable characters, twelve of which were introduced at once. The game did a decent job of giving them different personalities and fighting styles, but it never set aside time to introduce them so I didn't really think of them as individuals for most of the game.

There was also a pattern of free time, go to specific place for mission, rinse, repeat for most of the game. I found this to be too regular as it leaves out events putting you in unexpected circumstance and having to think about where you go. (the plot definitely included unexpected political circumstances, but not too much too much that interferes with being home by dinnertime).

[halfeye]

Command and Conquer: Renegade. I bought it cheap (as I mainly do) and didn't like it one bit.

[Rockphed]

Command and Conquer: Renegade. I bought it cheap (as I mainly do) and didn't like it one bit.

To be fair, it was would have been a completely mediocre FPS when C&C came out. It just failed to catch the special whim that was C&C nostalgia.

[halfeye]

To be fair, it was would have been a completely mediocre FPS when C&C came out. It just failed to catch the special whim that was C&C nostalgia.

I would have been happy with an FPS, but as I understood it the thing was a Jeep sim that controlled like a very awkward tank. No control of the thing at all in the first five minutes, which was as much as I could stand.

[Spore]

Command and Conquer: Renegade. I bought it cheap (as I mainly do) and didn't like it one bit.

Its single player is sorely lacking but back in the day it was great for online play. Imagine the original UT team death match, but with tanks and bases. Plus I was a massive C&C fan back in the day, so playing a FPS C&C WITH bases was massively awesome.

As I recall the vastly superior Battlefield 1942 crushed it under its heels with the better graphics, the bigger maps, the better vehicles and more rewarding gunplay (even energy weapons felt like a supersoaker with green water).

[Floogal]

For me personally, Earthworm Jim 3D always jumps to mind first.

I really enjoyed the two Sega Genesis games, as well as the tv series, so I was quite looking forward to this one. Having just 100%'d Banjo Kazooie, and learned from the manual this game was a similar 3D platformer collectathon clone, I was excited.

Of course, a different developer had made the game, and it stunk. The only good things were an entertaining manual, decent (if sparse) voice acting (even got Dan Castellaneta to voice the titular hero, as in the tv series), and a creative premise: Jim is a coma after a cow lands on him, so you're playing as his Superego, running around his brains collecting his lost marbles.

But the game was so unfun to play. The worst 3d camera I've ever dealt with, repetitive level design. Like Mario 64 / Banjo Kazooie, the game only saves your marble (coins, notes) high score, but you need 95% collection rate, barely anything saves, and they're scattered behind every mission completion gate, so if you died you literally have to do almost the entire level all over again. And the Golden Udders (stars, jiggies), you needed to get every single one to challenge the final boss.

But what truely brought this game down for me was the boss "battles". No traditional dodging & shooting, every fight was the same "pork boarding" minigame. Each character on a vehicle, moving around an arena trying to collect all 100 marbles. Which means shooting missiles to make your opponent drop some off their collected ones, but Earthworm Jim also takes damage, while the bosses are invulnerable & have other tricks to mess with you. And the camera is wobbly and awful. The final boss is the worst, its gimmick makes it so easy to lose minutes of progress from a tiny slip-up.

I finished this game out of pure spite and rage. It is, to date, the only game I have ever sold or gotten rid of.

[Man_Over_Game]

So an improvement? No forced humor, VATS being an actual decent RPG mechanic, and a world that is imho more alive than the poor diablo reskin Borderlands is.

Seriously I do not like the series. My friends think the humor is GOLD, but it's actually just stupid. Not stupid fun, just dumb. Yea, butt stallion, comedy gold.

I was referring more to the mechanical aspects.

What I remember playing Fallout 3 was mostly about finding the most efficient ways to utilize the RPG mechanics. VATS tracked distance terribly, but had a much better damage-to-bullet ratio than FPS firing. So if you had a Sniper Rifle, you were better off crouching and taking your Sneak Attack manually, but all of your actual combat damage was best done by using VATS and then running in circles until it recharged. Since ammo, damage, and weapon durability were so poor, I didn't have much choice other than to only fight using the VATS system.

It felt like a weird JRPG where I repeatedly used my Alpha Strike combo, to run away and abuse the fact that enemy life was persistent. Get back into combat, Alpha Strike, run away, repeat. If I ever had to actually play the game as a FPS, I was losing. As a result, trying to rely on any skill I had playing FPSrs was more of a hindrance, as most of my success revolved around abusing the game's RPG mechanics.

Ignoring humor, lore, or anything non-mechanical, Borderlands still felt like a FPS. Even Fallout 4 felt very RPG-heavy, although it's a vast improvement over its predecessors.

[Actana]

I once played Ride to Hell: Retribution from start to finish in one sitting. It was pretty bad.

[Wyldephang]

I have the unfortunate privilege of being able to say that I was among the few who purchased Superman 64 on launch week. I was at a Toys 'R Us, saw it on the shelf, and, despite not knowing anything about it, figured that it was a safe buy. Boy, was I wrong.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

I have the unfortunate privilege of being able to say that I was among the few who purchased Superman 64 on launch week. I was at a Toys 'R Us, saw it on the shelf, and, despite not knowing anything about it, figured that it was a safe buy. Boy, was I wrong.

I just started on Just Cause 3. There are challenges where you have to fly your wingsuit through rings, and I couldn't help but think "Well, I do feel a little like Superman right now."

And I have never even played that game.

[Alabenson]

If I had to pick the single worst game I ever played it would probably be Batman Forever for the SNES.

[oxybe]

Decent platformer for the first half of the game, the SNES Jungle Book game then decides to throw the longest freaking auto-scroll level.

As a kid, I could go "alright, some of these levels are weirdly laid out but I could take my time and do them." Even had a decent boss fight VS Kaa the snake.

Not this long as heck autoscroll. frustrated the heck out of me and just chewed through lives/continues, and the end is punctuated by a save point and bossfight... with some deathpit platforming between the two.

[Kaptin Keen]

I just bought Rise of the Tomb Raider - and I already hate it with fiery intensity. It's a game of cutscenes interrupted by crafting, or vise versa if you like, and neither thing appeals to me. On the rare occasion I get to play an actual game, it's ... sort of halfway decent.

God I hate crafting.

And cutscenes.

[warty goblin]

I just bought Rise of the Tomb Raider - and I already hate it with fiery intensity. It's a game of cutscenes interrupted by crafting, or vise versa if you like, and neither thing appeals to me. On the rare occasion I get to play an actual game, it's ... sort of halfway decent.

God I hate crafting.

And cutscenes.

The crafting gets to be much less of a thing pretty quickly. Not so much the cutscene though. But why would you buy a Tomb Raider game if you hate cutscene? TR games have had lots of them since like Legend, and the reboot trilogy's chockablock with 'em.

[Kaptin Keen]

The crafting gets to be much less of a thing pretty quickly. Not so much the cutscene though. But why would you buy a Tomb Raider game if you hate cutscene? TR games have had lots of them since like Legend, and the reboot trilogy's chockablock with 'em.

Why? Well ... it was cheap, and I liked the first game in the reboot despite the too many cutscenes. And it was very well rated. And I was bored.

But let's be honest - it's not like I went out of my way to buy a TR game, knowing full well it would be a hot cocktail of things I loathe beyond comprehension. More, I was hoping it wouldn't be too bad, but I got schooled =)

[Toric]

If I had to pick the single worst game I ever played it would probably be Batman Forever for the SNES.

I'm gonna have to argue with you there, the combat was really


HOLD ON



Seriously I totally agree with you. Apparently the game's engine was originally used for Mortal Kombat. And it was as much a platformer as it

HOLD ON


was a fighter. I hated that I needed to perform the equivalent of a Shoryuken every time I wanted to use a grappling hook. In a place where a wrong

HOLD ON


move could send you to your death.

Oh and the loading screens were annoying too, especially rare to see on the SNES.

[Hagashager]

One of the worst games I ever played was NARC (2005). I sdmit, I had a morbidly good time with it. NARC is a truly *truly* horrid game but it was not without its share of mindless fun. I equate my time with NARC to eating the most unsatisfying junkfood imagineable.

There was also Two Worlds, but I think TW actually has some redeeming qualities that make it genuinely fun if not very rough.

A game I adored as a child but find absolutely attrocuous now is Sonic Adventure. Even as a game marketed for children that game feels insulting and shoddily developed. Even for its time I think there were better looking games in 1999, which seems to be SA's most fondly remembered quality.

[factotum]

There was also Two Worlds, but I think TW actually has some redeeming qualities that make it genuinely fun if not very rough.


If nothing else, the voice acting in that game is a laugh a minute! The confusingly-named Two Worlds 2 is actually a somewhat better game overall, though.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

I'm going to nominate Heroes of Might and Magic V, mostly because I loved the whole series up to then but V was tedious and soulless. Even on its own terms it sucked, its interminable cutscenes combining jjuvenile writing with middle-school-level artwork.

This SO much. Ubisoft ripped out everything good about that series.

[halfeye]

If nothing else, the voice acting in that game is a laugh a minute! The confusingly-named Two Worlds 2 is actually a somewhat better game overall, though.

Two Worlds 2 is one of the two games I know of where you couldn't die (the other being a Tolkein based travesty, I forget the name)?

[noob]

This SO much. Ubisoft ripped out everything good about that series.

Well depending on how you see the things heroes 4 was possibly worse in multiplayer due to things like horrid balance and how everything is done by heroes (it is not weird to have 3+ heroes in a single doom stack and some castles had units way better than the other castles(life and order had overpowered units))
Unskippable cutscenes however are an horrific thing from nightmares (if they are skippable you can just ignore how bad they are by skipping).

[factotum]

Well depending on how you see the things heroes 4 was possibly worse in multiplayer due to things like horrid balance and how everything is done by heroes

Actually, that tended to cause issues in single player as well. Problem is, if you had an enemy stack with the chance to kill a unit outright (e.g. medusas) they could potentially use that ability against your hero, no matter how high their level and how tough they were--and since there were single player missions you would instantly fail if your main hero died, well, you can see the problem! Somebody at NWC really didn't think that one through. Other than that, though, I actually liked having your hero be another unit on the field--it was a nice change to the gameplay that might otherwise have been a bit stale after three iterations of the same thing.

[noob]

Actually, that tended to cause issues in single player as well. Problem is, if you had an enemy stack with the chance to kill a unit outright (e.g. medusas) they could potentially use that ability against your hero, no matter how high their level and how tough they were--and since there were single player missions you would instantly fail if your main hero died, well, you can see the problem! Somebody at NWC really didn't think that one through. Other than that, though, I actually liked having your hero be another unit on the field--it was a nice change to the gameplay that might otherwise have been a bit stale after three iterations of the same thing.

Does it ignore the effect of the immortality potion(one extra live)?
When I played heroes 4 I used tons of those.
(but in the campaign you probably do not always have access to immortality potions)

[veti]

Actually, that tended to cause issues in single player as well. Problem is, if you had an enemy stack with the chance to kill a unit outright (e.g. medusas) they could potentially use that ability against your hero, no matter how high their level and how tough they were.

In practice the only heroes who could solo their way through the map were barbarians, who could soon be kitted out with 100% magic resistance, then let the medusas do their worst. Until then, just don't try to solo medusas.

[Bohandas]

*Dragonshard
*Master of Orion 3 (actually unplayable. The game basically just ignored my commands and did its own thing)
*Devil May Cry 2
*all the popular D&D videogames (Bladur's Gate, Planescape Torment, etc)
*Half-Life 2 (basically just a crummy infomercial for the source engine; one gimmicky gun does not make up for the plot and gameplay being vastly inferior to the first installment)
*Dead Space and any other game with an over-the-shoulder camera
*McPixel
*anything with permadeath
*anything with limitations on saves
*anything that charges a subscription fee
*anything with microtransactions
*the fourth and fifth levels of Destroy All Humans 2
*the second or third or fourth (I forget which) level of Ratchet and Clank 2. There's one level that's really really badly programmed and causes me to put the game aside for a month every time I try to replay it
*all rhythm games
*Fallout I and II get a mention for their bad interface and for the fact that they somehow run slow even on the computer I have now

EDIT:
SimCity Societies gets an honorable mention because, while I actually love the game, something about it makes me feel physically ill and emotionally drained after playing it for a couple of hours. The game doesn't have any flashing lights, and it doesn't have any visuals that would induce vertigo, but somehow playing it for more than a couple hours at a time leaves me vagguely depressed and feeling as if my brain has been removed and replaced with a crumpled up sweater. It actually reminds me a bit of the Polybius game urban legend (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polybius_(urban_legend))

[Yora]

Bohandas hates everything.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

Well depending on how you see the things heroes 4 was possibly worse in multiplayer due to things like horrid balance and how everything is done by heroes (it is not weird to have 3+ heroes in a single doom stack and some castles had units way better than the other castles(life and order had overpowered units))
Unskippable cutscenes however are an horrific thing from nightmares (if they are skippable you can just ignore how bad they are by skipping).

I don’t see it that way. (I will note that I never did the multiplayer aspect, so I don’t know or care about any issues there.) Heroes IV was different from the rest of the series, but it was still quite playable, and the vanilla game at least had interesting characters and story.

Heroes V was not. It had much higher computer spec requirements in a series that could traditionally be run on very low-end machines. For me at least, it crashed constantly; Heroes IV did not. Ubisoft got rid of interesting lore, story and characters in favor of bland, stupid and generic ones. They removed most of the variety of interesting monster in the towns in favor of ten flavors of dragon and a bunch of women wearing nothing but belts and high heels. The so-special 3D town view was a nightmare to navigate around compared to the nice, efficient single-screen view of every previous game including Heroes IV. The characters were stupid and unlikeable, and they did stupid things just so Ubi could set up the plot of Dark Messiah. The AI would cheat very obviously right up until the player started winning and then completely give up, also very obviously, there was no happy middle ground where the fights were interesting. And yes, the cutscenes were juvenile, bewildering messes of badly-placed animation, but that wasn’t anywhere near the game’s worst or only problem. Heroes V had no saving factors whatsoever.

[Winthur]

Ubisoft got rid of interesting lore, story and characters in favor of bland, stupid and generic ones.

https://i.imgur.com/DJdaONg.png

[Brookshw]

Bohandas hates everything.

Clearly, though I'll give him dragonshard.

For myself, I'll add Xenosaga 2, the first disc took about 6 hours, 5 of which were cutscenes. I don't recall if the gameplay itself was any good, because there was barely any of it.

[Hunter Noventa]

Clearly, though I'll give him dragonshard.

For myself, I'll add Xenosaga 2, the first disc took about 6 hours, 5 of which were cutscenes. I don't recall if the gameplay itself was any good, because there was barely any of it.

It really wasn't. The actual battle mechanics were boring and relied on trial and error, and it took a solid two seconds to load each model into the battle. One at a time.

But if you played Xenosaga 1, you really should have expected the sheer quantity of cutscenes.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

https://i.imgur.com/DJdaONg.png

If you're trying to tell me that Spazz Maticus is somehow dumber than Isabel, then you're going to have to do more than quote a picture. :smalltongue:

[BeerMug Paladin]

SimCity Societies gets an honorable mention because, while I actually love the game, something about it makes me feel physically ill and emotionally drained after playing it for a couple of hours. The game doesn't have any flashing lights, and it doesn't have any visuals that would induce vertigo, but somehow playing it for more than a couple hours at a time leaves me vagguely depressed and feeling as if my brain has been removed and replaced with a crumpled up sweater. It actually reminds me a bit of the Polybius game urban legend (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polybius_(urban_legend))

Other than the emotional draining I have this reaction to Doom, Doom 2 and even years later, Doom 64. I've played other, similar titles before like Heretic or ROT and neither one has prompted that reaction in me, and no other games (even the weird-3d era of the original Playstation) has given me this same reaction. I don't experience motion sickness in general, even from reading in moving cars.

It's a weird experience, to be sure.

[danzibr]

Clearly, though I'll give him dragonshard.

For myself, I'll add Xenosaga 2, the first disc took about 6 hours, 5 of which were cutscenes. I don't recall if the gameplay itself was any good, because there was barely any of it.

It really wasn't. The actual battle mechanics were boring and relied on trial and error, and it took a solid two seconds to load each model into the battle. One at a time.

But if you played Xenosaga 1, you really should have expected the sheer quantity of cutscenes.
Worst game in the xeno series by far. They botched the gear/E.S. mechanics so bad.

[taha16]

In my opinion Devastation is the worst game i have played.

[Hunter Noventa]

Worst game in the xeno series by far. They botched the gear/E.S. mechanics so bad.

Agreed. XS3 was the best of that trilogy. Apparently a remaster of the whole thing was briefly on the table, but Namco Bandai said 'too expensive and too niche' so we'll never see it done.

[Toric]

Speaking of "games released incomplete" in the Old Game Trends thread, I've played McKids for the NES. McKids the McDonald's advertisement disguised as a platformer.

More importantly, I've played McKids up to the point where you need to ride a moving platform through a pool of lava to progress. In a game that has no invincibility or Varia Suit powerup. Which renders the game unbeatable by legitimate means.