Worst Games of All Time thread

We haven't actually slotted that theme in yet, but if you want to do that for October, that's fine with me.

Edit: Or December, I don't care.

Hmm, I'll have to think hard on this one. Two that come to mind though would be Red Faction 2 and Perfect Dark Zero. Utterly flat sequels to beloved games (okay Red Faction was maybe a little underrated?), Red Faction in particular was like this cool FPS Total Recall on Mars with a neat emphasis on environmental destruction and blowing up holes to the point where you could create tunnels tunnels in caves and stuff. Very cool for its time. Red Faction 2 on the other hand I think took place on Earth and like literally 70% of the game if I remember right, was on rails (you can't move around other than aim, think Time Crisis. Which is fine, but not when you go in expecting a traditional FPS) and the environmental destruction gimmick was toned down a lot. Horrendous stuff. Perfect Dark Zero was just like straight up unplayable with hilariously bad physics.This one was extra funny since I owned a copy a bit before I got a 360, since I LOVED the original Perfect Dark so much. I was in for a rude awakening when I finally got to play some at a friends.

I super agree, both of these disappointed me too. I loved the original Red Faction, but its immediate sequel is just trash in comparison. The original Red Faction was designed with mature audience PC gamers in mind, but the sequel seemed to be targeting young teens because the PS2 was the primary development platform. Which was a complete misunderstanding and screw up by the devs. Maybe it was their publisher's fault, pushing them to that corner, I don't know. Red Faction 2 sucks ass.

I was never a big fan of the original Perfect Dark, but I would never say it isn't a high quality game. And although I didn't care for PD's single player much, I put a LOT of time into PD's multiplayer mode. So when I finally got around to playing PDZ, I was kinda shocked at how dismal it is. First I tried to co-op campaign its single player mode with my daughter (spit screen), we both couldn't be bothered to finish the first mission it was so awful. Then we hit up the multiplayer mode with my wife. The three of us had a moderate amount of fun doing that, but it wasn't addictive in any sense, and we never came back. Seventh gen Rare sucked.

It's funny with this thread, I'm having a hard time thinking of the worst video games I've ever played. I think this has to do with the way my brain works. Apparently my brain puts no value into bad games, and therefore doesn't bother keeping track of them. Especially to the extent of "worst game of all time". I can at least remember a few games I was personally very disappointed in, one of the first that comes to mind:



Shogo: Mobile Armor Division was a 1998 FPS released by Monolith Productions. Like most every other Monolith Productions game I've played, this game is wildly overrated. I often find myself shaking my head in confusion when I play lauded Monolith Productions titles, being entirely nonplussed. However Shogo was an extreme case of this. I forced myself to beat this way back in 2001; eighteen years later I still remember a fair bit of why I hated it.

Shogo attempts to create an FPS that is half on-foot, half in a mech. It also attempts to have an anime aesthetic throughout. The visual style instead comes off as nerdy white guys trying to ape an aesthetic that they clearly didn't understand. In turn "video game critics" of the time, also being clueless nerds without enough of a frame of reference, were apparently fooled enough to think the art was great. It wasn't, it was amateur hour schlock.

Beyond the shoddy art stuff, the gameplay is straight up appalling. I remember the level designs being god awful, and the scenario setups being pure ass. The proprietary game engine didn't run very well, the shooting mechanics were sloppy, and the writing/plot was atrocious. Just a terrible experience all around. And yet somehow this game garnered hugely glowing reviews both from "professional video game critics" as well as regular Joe gamers. To this day I do not understand what people saw in this naked assed emperor.

Yeah the cover art is the only decent part of the whole thing. And even then, it's a complete ripoff of Shirow Masamune's mech art style of the time.