Difficulty-wise, The Lion King on SNES. This game shattered my childhood.
Made at a time where video game rentals were popular so they had to make games impossible to beat in 2 or 3 days.
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.
It's a classic answer, E.T. on the Atari 2600.
That shitty mobile version of SimCity.
Took a beloved childhood classic (the original SimCity) and took a giant free-to-pay shit all over it.
There are probably worst games I've played that I don't recall, but there was a Roller Coaster Tycoon knockoff for the Playstation once. First impressions were "I bet this is going to be as customizable a sandbox game as the computer version". Nope. It's like the actual Roller Coaster Tycoon, except the parks are tiny, so much of the land is unusable, everything costs a bajillion dollars to make, the parks get demolished every time you "succeed" (since it was level-based), and you get absolutely no warning before a game over screen just drops in on you because you took out the wrong loans. Even being a real park owner probably has less checks and balances than it.
Mostly any modern mobile game. Piles of shit with p2w and gambling addictive mechanics that aren't fun but stressful...
ROTFL
Mario is missing. Imagine being a young kid thinking this is Mario 3/4 (can’t remember where it fit in) and it’s a platformer not realizing it’s an educational game when you got it. What a pos, greatest let down of my life.
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
Sonic 06. This is coming from someone who eagerly wanted to be optimistic about the game, especially given how, on paper, it seemed very reminiscent of the Adventure games. I purchased an Xbox 360 and the game to try it out, to see if it really was as bad as people say it is.
It was...very sloppy. There are glitches everywhere, to the point where a significant amount of deaths will occur due to them, such as wall running physics just randomly breaking, causing you to fall into pits of lava, having to hit the jump button 10 times just so Knuckles jumps off of a wall every time, and even when not considering the glitches, the controls just feel awkward and clunky, Sonic himself is slow and the physics leave a lot to be desired. I enjoyed the story much more than what the gameplay had to offer.
I'm going to say Battletoads. The game was mostly pretty fun, until you got the jetski section where it was biologically impossible for a human to react in time. The only way to get past this level was to perfectly memorize the sequence of buttons to push.
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.
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.
Who Framed Roger Rabbit on NES. Ghostbusters was more disappointing, but I've at least kinda figured out how to play it over my lifetime. WFRR I'm clueless on. I think it's some kind of point and click, but I'm not really sure. There's a part where you have to call a real life telephone number to progress.
Pretty accurate depictions of what it feels like to play these games.
Superman 64.
Weeks and months of hype (the era of print gaming journalism), Blockbuster stocking 100 copies on launch day for "guaranteed availability" etc.
Then I finally popped the cart in, and this thing was so bad it just defied all logic. Horrific controls, shitty graphics, unclear user interface and objectives, terrible draw distance. Timed level segments and insane difficulty.
There might be "worse" games but I have never been more disappointed in a release than Superman 64.
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.
I remember buying Duke Nukem Forever in a Humble Bundle, a bundle that I had virtually every other game for the price. I remember only paying $1 and I gave *all* that money to charity.
I played DNF. I still felt robbed. To this day I haven't completed it due to how terrible it is (if my memory serves me, I've been minaturised and I'm driving around in a tiny car? But the controls are awful and Duke now seems like a Trump like character whose charm is entirely devoid in modern times. It was already wearing thin back when it was released, too).
Resident Evil 6, on PC.
I normally try to play a game for a minimum of 10 hours just to give it a chance in case it grows on me, but this was just such a piece of shit I couldn't even reach half that...
Top Gun for the nes. I never actually finished the first mission. I could beat Mike Tyson but that aircraft carrier kicked my ass.
Worst that I can recall playing was Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero. You had to hit the B button to turn around. It was frustrating as hell.
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:
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.
I wrote that essay back in 2021, and three years later time proved all of it correct. This game straight up killed the series.
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.
This game is awful
I used to play it just because I was so confused by it I thought there was something I was missing.
No. It's just a horrible game.
Paper Mario Sticker Star. Moreso disappointed rather than hate, but it left a bad taste in my mouth for the whole RPG genre (when I played it for the first time, I was 6, and thought all RPGs were like that) until I played the TTYD remake a few months ago
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
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.
..It has to be Drakengard. What a thing. I literally couldn't finish it, and I'm close to finishing Final Fantasy XIII. I have a high tolerance, but good LORD is it a slog.
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.
Probably Call of Juarez: The Cartel. I wanted to play the entire franchise back to back, but it wasn't being sold on Steam, so I had to hunt down a copy on some key reseller. Boy, do I see why it's not on sale anymore. runs like absolute shit, incredibly buggy, cheesy as hell and with some pretty questionable game design choices. Still, it was somewhat entertaining in a "so bad it's good" sense, and it ties into the previous games in a fairly interesting way, so I don't regret playing it. It was certainly an experience, but it's a very bad game by pretty much all metrics.
Wrestslemania x8 on the gamecube. Didn't even have a frigging campaign mode...
My uncle gave me an Atari 800 when I was a kid. Came with a stack of old carts and games.
One of them was E.T. Which was one of my fave movies at the time.
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