Superman 64 was a hell of a mess
Seconding this one. I was like 11 years old and it’s the first time I can remember being disappointed when getting a game. Went from like Mario 64 to OOT to Banjo to Superman 64 and hoo boy what a drop off.
Same for me. It was my first flop I played and boy was it bad.
You didn’t like flying through 150 rings?
There are way more rings than that, and they’re actually the best parts of the game. It gets so much worse in the levels without rings. Awful combat, terrible puzzles, inconsistent framerate, and thoroughly unclear objectives.
Oh, and everyone’s favorite: escort missions!
escort missions
Clark Kent must really have not made much money as a reporter if he had to walk the streets at night too
Hard disagree. You just need to play it long enough for the Stockholm syndrome to kick in. Once it has its claws in you, you can’t stop playing it. Trying to figure out what makes this garbage puzzle box tick.
Same as a lot of other gen-xers: E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
A bunch of early access survival crafting games on steam in the early days of early access. One was trying to be like starship troopers and it got like one update
Oh god, survival crafting games were a dime a dozen back then. Though I am eagerly awaiting the 1.0 release of Satisfactory next month so clearly I never got my fill :p
The factory must grow, whether in 2d or 3d
I wouldn’t say worst, but maybe greatest difference in expectation vs reality - “My Time at Portia”.
Cutscenes and voice acting were janky. The UI felt like it was originally an MMO and feels odd for a single player game. The gameplay loop felt tedious and seemed to disrespect the player’s time.
Maybe I needed to give it more time, but for a game that I thought had generally good/great reviews, it wasn’t clicking for me.
The Bible Game. It’s a game that was originally released on the GBC or GBA; I honestly can’t even remember which… I downloaded a ROM pack for my retropie and discovered it hidden inside. My buddy and I got drunk one evening, and decided to boot it up for shiggles.
It has you running around trying to answer bible verse questions to get keys from demons. It’s the single most boring and unintuitive game I’ve played. It also blatantly got several of the Bible verses wrong. We looked it up online, and there’s also a version that was on the Xbox, but it apparently had wildly different gameplay and was more like a game show, where the players answered trivia questions.
This is not what you are talking about, but reading this reminded me of the “Super Noah’s Ark” rom I downloaded in high school which was a reskin of the original Wolfenstein where all the animals were restless meaning that you (Noah) would need to shoot feed at them so they could take their naps.
Super Noah’s Ark is on my rg35xx. It’s amazing.
My cousin had a couple Bible themed NES games. Spiritual Warfare seemed decent.
There used to be a store called Heaven & Earth that sold all kinds of Christian stuff for Sunday school teachers or whatever plus books, cheap Bible toys, etc. She bought it there.
Christmas Day, we just got a PS1 years after everyone else. My brother and I are ecstatic to play. My mum and sister are smiling at our reaction, since they went to the game store and asked the guy what a good game would be to play.
Formula One '98. We played a lap each, and then turned off the console. I can still recall the commentary “it looks like he’s stuck in the kitty litter!”
*hands shake*
I looked up some gameplay on YouTube and it doesn’t look that bad. A bit slow but that’s all
What was so bad about it to counterweigh the “wowwwww it’s 3d !!!11!” effect ?
just a super boring game for two 9 year olds to play. It would be like if she got us a golf game.
Adult me would probably really enjoy both games
They can’t all be Lee Carvallo’s Putting Challenge.
As a former 9yo I would have liked a Formula One game
Different strokes for different folks
Different strokes for different folks
That’s doubly true for the golf game.
Desert Bus.
Back to the Future on NES. All I remember is a series of pain in the ass mini games having little to nothing to do with the plot. One of them was called “That Sinking Feeling”, where Marty apparently had to platform his way out of his own stomach.
And E.T. of course, fuck that game.
Im sure there are games that wouldnt even work so i technically didnt even play them but ill list a couple of games that i tried playing, hated, and uninstalled almost immediately
They both had the same problem.
Days gone and Red Dead Redemption 2.
I tried to force myself into enjoying rdr2 because it was supposedly that good. For the first few hours i kept asking myself when does the game start? When do i actually get to play?
Days gone i only made it maybe an hour before i quit and uninstalled.
I want to play a game not watch an interactive movie
RDR2 is very much not for everybody. It is intentionally tedious. It’s the kind of game you sit down and play for at least 2-3 hours every time you play it because that’s just how long it takes to get anything done. You aren’t fast traveling. You aren’t doing things instantaneously in a menu. Your time as a human being is an in-game resource. If you’re in the middle of nowhere and your horse dies, a ton of your shit was being carried in the saddle; you need to walk your ass to the nearest town lugging that saddle, vulnerable to wild animals and robbers. It’s a game about getting things done with your own two hands at the turn of the century when that was becoming much less valued. It’s a game about subsistence. You could have an easier, more prosperous life, but at what cost? At whose cost? It’s a game about nature and living in a natural world as a natural being, criticizing the transition into industrial exploitation of our fellow natural world and natural animals, including natural humans. It’s not a rootin’ tootin’ spaghetti western adventure; it’s an interactive classic American novel that can occasionally have funny or fun moments depending on your tastes. I fully understand that it’s wasn’t a game that you or millions of other people enjoyed, but I think it’s wholly unjust to label it a “bad” game for that. It did exactly what it set out to do, and evoked impactful emotion in sharing its message as intended for the people who wanted to be open to it. It’s successful art, but not all art is for you and not all art is for me. You may have gone in with the wrong expectations for it. I think it really sucks that every rockstar game since the early 2000s seems to be marketed as “GTA but ___” because the Red Dead games and LA Noire are very much not GTA. They’re 3rd person open worlds with similar engines, but that’s where the similarities end.
If you ever try it again, come in with a similar mindset to wanting to sit down and watch The Godfather, not The Avengers. There’s a lot to get out of it if you just focus on the story and the characters and the beautiful setting. Enjoy the honest work, and lament the shootouts and heists.
There were parts of RDR2 that I adored and parts I loathed. Riding around exploring, hunting, and discovering the environment was a joy. I put a ton of hours into the game just doing that.
The quests were a nightmare to me. Ride to location A to get the quest. Ride to location B to start the quest. Ride to location C as part of the quest and if you dare to wander off the exact route or try an innovative solution and you FAIL
All that work spent making you feel like you’re living the character makes the ending so much more poignant. What a beautiful game.
I’d recommend trying RDR1 before RDR2, but then again that might make you hate the tutorial section RDR2 had even more lol
RDR2 is excellent, but it almost feels like it’s trying too hard. RDR1 was just a classic IMO, literally revolutionary for its time. I thought it would be just GTA with horses but honestly it felt so much more than that, they completely nailed the atmosphere and everything else about it. I still play RDR1 sometimes these days.
There’s a lot of bad games that I’ve played, but I’m going to go with any Simpsons game pre GameCube era (except for the arcade game). So many janky controls and games that didn’t utilize the Simpsons IP well.
I don’t even remember all the trash games i tried to played just to delete them after few minutes.
But the ones being remembered are instead the biggest disappointments, games which were supposed to be great or were supposed to be improved sequels of great games.
In this cathegory trashcan lid medal goes definitely to REBEL GALAXY 2. I played first part like 10 times and only ever wanted more of it, but 2nd problem was not that it was bad or not (it was though), but that it was entirely different game.
Dishonorable mentions for few more:
- Dragon Age Inquisition for being a solo player simulator of a boring MMO instead of a awaited resurrection of series and even sub-genre
- Marvel Midnight Suns, again for being supposed to be next X-Com but in reality being poorly optimised card game
- Pandora: First Contact, supposed spiritual successor to Sid Meier Alpha Centuari. Well it was spiritual in sense i wanted to get drunk on spirits because no chance to play this turd while sober.
- Starfield, i don’t think i have to comment on this
- Less specific but every Dune game since Emperor: Battle for Dune and probably every Dune game in the future as long as the unFuncom have the licence
- Gladius: Relics of War: for a game that had so much development and DLC’s it’s still shallow as puddle. Which, along with Pandora above leds me to:
- Everything published by Sltherine i played maybe except Armageddon in good way and Pandora in bad way. Somehow nearly every good idea for a game that this company make into reality turns out to be the mediocriest of mediocrest game ever.
EDIT: oh and the one i tried to forget so hard but other poster made me remember it: “X-Com” Chimera Squad. No, just fucking no, the pathetic death of series after glorious predecessor is just too much.
Master of Orion III. A 4X game for PC that had had all the fun carefully eliminated during development. It was like playing a spreadsheet.
My greatest shame is that I actually bought it twice because years later I couldn’t believe it had been that bad and risked a bargain bin copy. It was exactly that bad.
I was happy that the next release was pretty good.
Moo2 forever, though.
Agreed.
Flatout 3. I just checked on steam, and it’s tagged as “psychological horror”. Being a fan of the first one, and still having spent lots of hours playing the second one, I was totally not prepared for the utter monstrosity of the third one
Never played 1, but I really liked 2. I didn’t know 3 existed until now, and I’m having a blast reading the reviews. I think I might have to buy it (with the intention of refunding) just so I can experience the horror firsthand.
My first thought is The Fortress of Doctor Radiaki for DOS.
A game I never played but is still memorable is early 2000s there was a game in Babbages in my local mall called “Prison Tycoon” that had a cop beating a black man on the box.
Looking through the lens of relativity, I’d have to say Witcher I. The fact that the fucking masterpiece that is Witcher III and not-amazing-but-definitely-worth-a-playthrough that is Witcher II both stemmed from the comically bad dumpster fire that was #1 is nothing short of a miracle.
The franchise *should* have died at #1, but I’m sure glad it didn’t.
I think that’s maybe a bit harsh compared to a lot of the games mentioned here. Witcher 1 definitely has a lot of problems compared to 2 and 3 but it had a lot going for it as well. Sure the combat was broken as hell once you got all the spinning moves and it was super sexist with the women as trading cards thing. But the story and world building were still fun and Geralt was well characterised. It’s not a great game but it did well enough to get them the sequels. Definitely nowhere near the worst game I’ve played.
I think that’s maybe a bit harsh compared to a lot of the games mentioned here.
For sure - by “looking at it through the lens of relativity” I guess I failed to specify what I was holding it relative to - where my brain’s at W1 as a starting point, and the quality of W2 and W3… Relative to other trilogies that actually did well, Witcher’s starting point is hot trash. Like, a game that bad doesn’t generally go on to have good sequels, but the degree of improvement in both W2 and W3 is fucking astounding.
W1 still has probably the best writing and script of any of the three games. I definitely prefer the third for gameplay but W1 is just an artifact of the awkward time it came out, when there was a lot less consensus on how 3rd person action games controlled.
I remember playing Witcher 1 and being thoroughly underwhelmed by it, so I’m glad to feel validated here instead of just having to label myself as a game troglodyte
