Ask Lemmy

It's hard to narrow it down to a single game, but all of the worst games I can think of were licensed games on earlier consoles. E.T. on the Atari 2600 is an obvious example, but the NES was chock full of garbage tier licensed games like Jaws, Ghostbusters, Last Action Hero, Dark Man, Superman, Robocop, Mad Max, Wayne's World, Hook, Back to the Future... it just goes on and on (Weirdly I don't think Friday the 13th belongs on this list, I actually like that game). All that being said, Superman 64 for the N64 is probably the absolute worst. The game is bad at every level. Ugly, buggy, and unfun. It's not even fun to try it on an emulator to see how bad it is. Consider it toxic waste.

I have played many, many games. I remember some of the best. I forget the others. Why would I remember the worst?

RoboCop for the NES. Just terrible.

I played some kind of sex-themed bullet hell game where you were a disembodied penis flying around shooting things with little sperms. And if you got shot, instead of dying you would go limp and you could somehow slowly get erect again. Maybe it was popping pills or catching porn or maybe it was time based.

Anyway, that's not the worst game I've ever played, but it was one of the more memorable ones that popped into mind.

The worst would probably be some free or dirt cheap PlayStation game. It was not an indie gem. They had one mechanic: stand in the middle of an arena, spin/move around, and shoot the charging enemies until you killed enough and went to the next completely identical level.

Big Bass Fishing on PS1. Most boring game in existence.

I bought Sonic 2006 when it came out. It was my first experience with a truly terrible, broken game. I'd played things that weren't up my alley or were subpar somehow, but that was the first time I was truly blown away by how bad a game could be.

Most bad games aren't really a terrible experience. Usually, it takes a few minutes, maybe an hour max, to realize "wow this game is bad and not worth putting any more time into".

I think the worst games are the ones that can suck you in with the promise of being good. For me, that was Catherine.

The game has 3 main phases. The main "gameplay" is 3D block pushing puzzles that are presented as dream sequences for the main character. They start off simple, but add mechanics and complexity as you would expect from any good puzzle game. Then there is the time you spend with the main character awake hanging out at a bar, talking to other characters as a social sim game. The characters seem varies and like they could be interesting. Finally, there are animated cutscenes that are pretty good looking that show what your main character does throughout the day, between waking up and ending up at the bar every evening.

The biggest problem is the writing. The main character starts off as a pretty shitty, selfish asshole. At first I played hoping to see him learn and grow as a character. When it became clear that wasn't going to happen I instead started to hope that he at least suffered some consequences for his actions. But... No, he doesn't. He just stays an asshole the whole time. None of the other characters really go anywhere either. And while the gameplay started off good, it quickly burns through all of the block pushing mechanics they thought of and turns into a repetitive slog. It really felt like they only made the first 1/3rd of a complete game and decided to just copy and paste that to pad out time instead of actually finishing the game.

Recently: avowed 😣

I've got 2 that I didn't see anyone else mention...

First one I might get hate for, but Escape from Tarkov. Absolutely hated it. I don't know how to explain it, but the controls didn't "feel good". Literally just moving around and aiming felt like the system was fighting me and I uninstalled it after less than 2 hours. I would have refunded it if the game wasn't bought for me as a gift...

Second one is Global Agenda. The game wouldn't have been that bad if the devs didn't seem to hate it. The gameplay loop was fun, I liked the different classes and the customizations. But there was a big pvp "world map" thing that happened on like a 2 week schedule, set times of day for attacking or defending other clans' territories to earn resources to unlock rewards - it was the primary "end game". Out of no where, the entire world map was broken, nothing was working right in the middle of the like 2-3 hour time slot where you could do anything with it. Obviously, a TON of support tickets were put in asking for something to be done about it. Devs got salty about all the tickets (I'm sure some of which we not nicely written) and sent a global message to everyone that was online that said "'Fixing the game' is not in the cards right now, players should 'try harder' to win." Basically killed the game imo, several big clans just noped out. The devs were already showing signs that they wanted people to stop playing GA and move to their new game (Tribes: Ascend), and that just solidified it.

I can think of at least one Commodore 64 game from back in the day that was hard to play, but I only remember the name of one of them: Quake Minus One. It was not a prequel to the 3D shooter Quake.

Killer Bunnies.

With an honorable mention to Cthulhu Dice, Fluxx, and Chicken of the Sea (that last one literally, literally unplayable)

I'm not that much of a gamer, but I remember many years ago I bought a Spawn game for the PSOne because I wanted to buy something and Spawn was still somewhat cool (don't know if it still is, really). It was slow, ugly, with awkward controls and whenever you confronted an enemy the game play changed into something like Tekken or Bloody Roar, but with much worse controls. After you defeated the enemy it changed back to a 3rd person perspective. I didn't even make it to the first boss, I simply put it away and went to play Syphon Filter for the 30th time.

Kane and Lynch 2 was pretty awful.

Diablo Immortal was and still is a dumpster fire. Diablo 4 sucked too.

E.T. for the 2600. It was so bad it quickly went on sale. As a result it became a birthday present. I tried to figure it out but it was simply terrible. It quickly went to bottom of the pile.

Deep-cut but does anyone remember a game called like "the emo game" or something. It was browser based, would've been out around the 2010s. Super dark edgelord humour. I'm certain it was fucking terrible but I played through it all. I think about it from time to time but have never found it again.

Anything from Illusion. Something something Rapelay.

Space Ace on the 3DO.

Naughty Bear. At the time I expected to be a funny, dark humor game. Unfortunately it was almost unplayable. I remember multiple times being unable to advance because the game just broke. I didn't suffer through it very long

Lunar Genesis/Dragon Song. It looks like ass, the story is told with the eloquence of a farting butthole, and the gameplay... Mein gott, losing HP for running on the field isn't even Game Arts' worst design decision in this game. There's nothing to save here.

A serious answer is Turning Point: Fall of Liberty. The premise was fascinating and I looked forward to it. They put out a demo on PS3 and it seemed okay. The launch game was worse than the demo. Just garbage. I finally actually played the entire game like 15 years later. It was very interesting and worth a lazy play, but not a very good game.

I can't pick between "Bioshock Infinite" and "Borderlands". I did push through Bioshock though, because the worldbuilding was cool, as with previous entries. But Borderlands was so utterly boring I must have played 2hrs tops

Real life.