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Games Entertainment

Videogames You Love To Hate 149

Posted by simoniker from the gleeful-disgust dept.
Thanks to FiringSquad for their editorial discussing why sheer wretchedness is (allegedly) a good thing in gaming. The author rhapsodizes: "Bad experiences define this hobby. As much as we all enjoy sharing love stories about great moments in gaming, we tend to play up the bad stuff even more. Even though I'll always have fond memories about racking up 400,000 points in Donkey Kong... while a crowd cheered me on... the time that Daikatana taught me the true meaning of sorrow will somehow always be more powerful." Which legendarily bad games have given you fondly hateful memories?
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Videogames You Love To Hate More

Videogames You Love To Hate

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  • sheer wretchedness (Score:5, Funny)

    by patch-rustem ( 641321 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @05:02AM (#6683750) Homepage Journal
    From the editorial:
    Computer and video gaming is probably the only pastime on the planet where sheer wretchedness is one of the main drawing cards.
    He obviously hasn't watched alot of US television.
    • Having lived in the US and a few other countries as well, I feel safe saying that US television is heaven compared to most other countries' television offerings. I don't like much of it, but man, it's so much better than what else is out there. There are some good shows, but most of it is beyond belief for wretchedness.

  • Hmm (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by NanoGator ( 522640 )
    Is it Slashdotted or MSBlastered?

  • Extreme Paintbrawl (Score:4, Informative)

    by PurpleFloyd ( 149812 ) <zeno20@@@attbi...com> on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @05:45AM (#6683851) Homepage
    A few years ago, a friend handed me a CD that'd seen its share of abuse; it was called "Extreme Paintbrawl." Quite simply, it was the worst game I've ever played. It's a credit to the creators to call the piece of trash a game. It was done in the Build engine (same as Duke Nukem 3D), at a time when Quake III was just out. Although it's certainly possible to make a good game [nethack.org] with older technology, the game was full of errors: half the sprites weren't done correctly: some models, you'd only ever see the back (even if they were facing you). The AI was miserable: your own "teammates" would jump around like they were having a seizure, while the enemy would manage to both look like idiots and land every single shot. Not only that, but the damned thing was absolutely chock-full of bugs. I would have been seriously pissed if I had paid money for it; I've seen it still languishing in bargain bins here and there for $5 or so. On the positive side, though, it provided a great joke among friends. Any buggy, crappy, or half-finished game immediately draws comparisons to the Great Evil Game, Extreme Paintbrawl.

    On a more serious note, the one game I've had serious expectations for that turned out to be a waste of money was the original Outpost; it had a wonderful premise and lots of interesting concepts, but was awfully buggy and had a user-hostile UI. Sadly, the sequel was fairly good but was saddled by the "Outpost" name and tanked. Still, I was able to get my space-colony sim fix five years later with Alpha Centauri, which I still play to this day. That's a game worth getting out of the bargain bin.

    • Re:Extreme Paintbrawl (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The company that made Extreme Paintbrawl, HeadGames, has also made quite a few other crappy games. My favorite of the bunch is Extreme Rodeo. I think I'd rather stab myself with broken shards from the CD than play that one again. =P

    • Re:Extreme Paintbrawl (Score:2, Informative)

      by Bazouel ( 105242 )
      This game earned one of the lowest PC Gamer [pcgamer.com] score ever. I think it was 6 % but I'm not sure. Reading the review was quite entertaining :)
      • I believe the article commented on the fact that the game was made in only 3-4 weeks. Since HeadGames is (was?) a cash-cow development house, what little they made far eclipsed the cost of getting it out the door.

        • Re:Extreme Paintbrawl (Score:5, Funny)

          by PurpleFloyd ( 149812 ) <zeno20@@@attbi...com> on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @10:00AM (#6685182) Homepage
          How do you figure that? No matter what, the game had to have certain costs: pressing CDs, printing a manual (even if it's just a single sheet describing how to install Acrobat Reader), printing the box, shipping to retailers, and of course paying employees. While it's certainly possible to make a profit making bargain-bin games (look at Serious Sam), costs like pressing the first run of CDs and paying developers, marketroids, and managers are constant no matter how many copies you sell. While corners weren't as much cut as bombarded with tactical nuclear devices, I still can't see HeadGames making more than $5 per copy sold, or maybe $2.50 on the bare jewel case versions released after a while.

          It seems to me that HeadGames went after the less PC-savvy market with the "Extreme" series of games; people who play paintball would probably, on average, have less computer knowledge than the general population (although I do know a few sysadmins, programmers and the like who play paintball, most of the people I know who like paintball aren't the computer-savvy type). Thus, it's possible to rip them off once or twice before they're turned off to HeadGames or gaming in general.

          Another possiblity is a Producers-style scam; for some reason, the upper management wanted the company to fail. After all, word does get around about software, especially something as outstandingly awful as Extreme Paintbrawl. To ignore this fact is rather naive, and I am surprised that whoever was providing HeadGames with financial backing would continue supporting them after they saw a product as awful as Extreme Paintbrawl. Perhaps someone needed to lose money fast for some reason (taxes, laundering?) and decided to sink it into a POS company and run it into the ground.

          • I think they kept the games development time to a bare minimum, and got distribution thought walmart at a budget price, since the game was less than $20 and there was excellent foot traffic at walmart, it sold well enough to cover all their costs and make a ton of cash. HeadGames probably didn't need cash support after their first game was released.
        • The programmer who worked on the game wrote a letter to PCGamer that said he did all of the programming in only 2 weeks. Since the game was several months behind schedule, they had to leave a few things out. The AI was one of them. They added that later in a patch.
      • Here's what I never "got" about paintball videogames...

        Paintball is supposed to be "simulated warfare," as you have real guns, real-like forrest settings (or other settings) and you can "kill" people with accuracy and stealth and intelligence, etc - but you're not actually shooting real bullets (that would, sorta, um... kill your friends). But on a videogame, you can use real digital bullets and kill everyone because, again, it's not "real." So to me, paintball videogames is a simulation of a simulation
      • I think another HeadGames game beat it for the lowest score...

        Extreme Swamp Buggy Racing (or something like that). I remember the reviewer breaking down in tears during the review...since as part of being a reviewer he *had* to play all the way through the game :)

        Poor guy. But then, maybe it was the Vede, so forget it.

        Steven V.

    • Re:Extreme Paintbrawl (Score:3, Interesting)

      by dead sun ( 104217 )
      Funny you should mention Outpost, it's one of the games I was considering for worst game I've played. I'm certain I've played worse games, but I can't think of another that let me down in the same way that the original Outpost did.

      I think I still have the manual around; I should go and dig it out for a laugh. If I remember correctly, there were a whole ton of things that got cut from the game as it ran behind, like creating a second colony and all the stuff that went along with that. Oh goody... Also the CD

      • The sad thing about Outpost was that it had such incredible potential. I remember that Sierra was very proud of the fact they had NASA doing science consultation on the game; if they had put half the effort used in marketing towards designing a good UI and doing a decent beta launch, Outpost would have had the potential to be a true classic. Hell, they would've had gamers lining up around the block three deep to get a chance to beta-test Outpost. It wasn't just the hype: people saw the potential in the c
        • I never really had the problem of my colony dying out, it just got to be an exercise in pointlessness after a while. I actually let the thing skip 100 turns once, just to see what would happen. Well, it ground overnight on a POS Cyrix 486DLC and guess what, not much, I had more useless tech and that was it. Getting to the point of being self sustaining was, I thought, easy enough. There was just nothing to do after building that far. No branching out, no exciting new buildings, nothing to do but hit turn at

  • One game springs to mind. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Yorrike ( 322502 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @05:54AM (#6683879) Journal
    And that game is Starfox Adventures. Of all the games I've played on my GameCube, SFA (heh), was the one I originally had extremely high hopes for (when it was revealed as Dinosaur Planet on the N64).

    After Nintendo hyjacked the project and added the Starfox characters in there, I lost all interest in the game (Starfox in a Zelda game? Pfft).

    Upon seeing the results of the game being transferred to the GameCube and having the characters so wonderfully modelled (with fur!), I was once again excited about the game.

    What followed my short stint in the game was cries of frustration and a solid opinion that Rare had lost the plot. Truely the most disappointing game I've come across.

    • Mac Casino. I played it ten years ago, but it's probably significantly older than that. Not that being ancient makes it a bad game per se; it could have been reasonably cool; you had slots, roulette, blackjack (I think), and you could go from table to table, trying to increase your funds.

      The only problem with it was that they forgot to reseed the randomiser function when you loaded the game, rendering the whole thing utterly useless.
    • I have to agree. I held such high hopes for Starfox Adventures, as Rare had a history of good games, even if the later ones weren't as good as the previous ones. But not only is it an extremely blatent Ocarina of Time knockoff, but a second rate one at that. The game was totally linear. I don't think there are any events you have a choice of the order you do them in. Combat is easier than in Wind Waker, as even if you are in the middle of a group of enemies, only one will ever attack at a time. The sidekick

  • My Defining Video Game Disappointment (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Babbster ( 107076 ) <aaronbabb&gmail,com> on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @06:20AM (#6683933) Homepage
    Mine is probably the same as many: Pac-Man for the Atari 2600. I can't even describe the disappointment I felt as a little tyke when my grandparents and I got to their house and plugged that game in. Even then (elementary school), I knew that there was no way it would be an arcade-perfect translation but I had played so many really fun games for the 2600 that I felt it was a "can't miss" proposition. Boy, was I wrong.

    I noticed immediately that the graphics were atrocious. Again, it wasn't that I was expecting an arcade game but the COLORS! They were simply awful. I was prepared to accept the hideous colors because, well, it was still Pac-Man, darn it! It HAD to at least play well! As I started the game and clutched my joystick...upside down - one of my little quirks was that I always held Atari-style joysticks upside down because I felt like I should be hitting the button with my right thumb, a belief vindicated later by virtually every other game console...but I digress. So, I'm holding my joystick as I start the game and I move the stick to the left and...well...Pac-Man...moved...so...slowly. I started working myself into a rage. Atari was ruining Pac-Man, a gaming classic. As I continued to move about the maze, I of course noticed that the ghosts looked horrible, the dots weren't even dots anymore (little rectangles) and my frustration boiled to a point I had never reached before while playing a video game.

    Even then, I was a pretty calm, "good" kid. I put my joystick down, got up, turned the console off, removed Pac-Man and put it into one of the game cases (big, beautiful plastic things that held 20 cartridges a piece). I placed the instruction manual carefully in the provided slot in the case and took out another game - ANY other game (don't remember specifically as we had many) - and tried to calm myself down. I didn't even tell my grandparents how angry I was since I didn't want to seem ungrateful for the gift.

    For the remainder of my time playing the Atari 2600, whenever I played any game that I thought was bad I always compared it to the miserable abortion that was Pac-Man and so I managed to stay fairly satisfied. To put it into even more perspective, that attitude even helped me find enjoyment in E.T. and M.A.S.H.!

    Pac-Man for the Atari 2600:
    Worst...gaming...experience...ever.

    • I always hated later video game controllers for putting buttons under my right hand, I want my good coordinated hand to be the one controlling where I went with preciseness and control, I can then use my weak left hand to stab at the button with all the accuracy I could ever muster with it.
    • I have found memories of this game. It was one of the only games ever that my whole family played, including my mother.

      Sure it was awful, the same board never changing, the "secret" passage going from top to bottom rather than side to side. Awful graphics with sound to match, but we were always trying for new high scores.

      Also Asteroid was loads of fun, this game was as awful as Pac-Man, but the thing I always remeber was god-forbid if you gave that ship a little bit of thrust because you could never get i

    • I have a similar fond-less memory regarding Pac-Man for the Atari. I remember making a big stink about hoping to get it for my birthday. My proud parents watched as my wishes came true, opening my present -- that was, until I played the game. I seem to recall my face turning beet red in embarassment at the nerve Atari had to hype me up to get this game.

      Thankfully I also got some money for my birthday so I could go to the arcade and play the real thing some more.

    • A short postscript:

      Many early 2600 adopters might not remember it as well, having moved on to other Atari systems, Commodore 64 (my vice), Colecovision, Nintendo, etc., but Atari did redeem themselves [somewhat] very late in the life of the 2600 by releasing a pretty darned good version of Ms. Pac-Man - considering, of course, the great limitations of the console. It was, literally, the last game I played on that system and it at least ensured I left on a positive Pac note.

  • Zero Wing! (Score:1, Redundant)

    by Zocalo ( 252965 )
    Surely "All your base are belong to us!" means *something* around here - it starts off like this:

    In A.D. 2101

    War was beginning

    Captain: What happen?
    Mechanic: Somebody set up us the bomb.
    Operator: We get signal.
    Captain: What!
    Operator: Main screen turn on.
    Captain: It's You!!
    Cats: How are you gentlemen!!
    Cats: All your base are belong to us.
    Cats: You are on the way to destruction.
    Captain: What you say!!
    Cats: You have no chance to survive make your time.
    Cats: Ha Ha Ha

    • Zero Wing may have had one of the worst translations ever, but FF4's translation to FF2 was also pretty bad (especially with all the censorship- but we already talked about that stuff a few days ago) but the game itself was still great. Zero Wing was actually a pretty mediocre game; it was you basic side-view shooter along the lines of Gradius and R-Type, with the added gimmick of being able to grab some enemy ships with a tractor beam and either shoot them back at another enemy or use it as a shield. It ke

  • So many to choose from ... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I've played lots of bad games, more than I care
    to remember.

    My most recent torment was caused by Masters of Orion 3. I loved 1 and 2 and anxiously awaited the release of the third. In my opinion all they had to do was update the graphics and add a couple of bells and whistles to get another truly outstanding title.

    Instead I got the biggest load of crap I've ever played. The interface was torturous the mechanics beyond tedious. The AI is a moron when it works for you and genius when it's against you. I

  • Q3 anyone? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by sevenofnine ( 617237 )
    I think THE one game i absolutly hate is quake3... I was an avid q2 player, and for some reason (call me crazy, or anything else you'd like), it just didnt have the expected feel that i had hoped... but then in q3's defense, i didnt really give it a shot (pun intended) when i saw how horribly far away from the atmosphere of q2 it was...
    • I always dislike the new iD game when it first comes out (doom, then quake, then quake 2, then quake 3, and then probably doom 3), but after giving it a shot I come around (except maybe q2, perhaps!). In my opinion, Quake I and Quake III are their best.
      • I enjoyed Q2 as just a game, but I hated the multiplayer. I thought Q3 returned a bit more to the feel of Q1 and I like that a lot more.

        I've finished all three Quakes, though, single player. lol.

        I absolutely thought Doom was a pile of shit for multiplayer. Played it a few times on the in-home LAN, and shelved it and didn't really play multiplayer games again until Descent came out.

    • I have exactly the opposite reaction. I never finished Q2. After getting my ass kicked countless times early on in the game, I gave up with indifference. I guess after playing Quake 1 to completion, I was expecting something better than an ass-whooping.

      Quake3 changed everything for me. It made me WANT to play online. I still play Q3 at least once a week. To be fair, I never tried Q2 online. I've heard that QuakeWorld was better than Q3, in some respects.

      Check out the LOVE DUMP for fun Q3 action
    • I was the same way, I enjoyed Q2 online, Didn't like Q3 very much at all.
    • You know, I was non-plussed when I first bought and played Quake 3. I think buying and playing Unreal Tournament ruined Quake 3 for me. In the pit of my stomach, I think that the scenario is about to repeat, with Doom 3 getting overshadowed by Half-Life 2.


      Quake 3 was /is a good game, but I was expecting a *great* game.

  • Battle Monsters (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Prof_Falken ( 692037 )
    If you've ever played or even seen 'Battle Monsters' on the sega saturn, you'll know its up there amongst the highest level of 'bad gaming'.

    But, for this reason, for me it's one of the most memorable games i've ever owned. For those of you that have never seen 'Battle Monsters', it's basically a 2D fighter. Probably designed to cash in on the mortal combat series, but failed miserablly. Remember how mortal combat had terrible backgrounds? Well times that by about a thousand and you'll get the backgrounds t
  • I have one too: Loom: I loved Monkey Island, and that pirate said the game was good, so I got it... Loom sucked
    • I dont know what crack your smoking, Loom rocked. Next youll be telling us that Leisure Suit Larry was bad too!

      Or maybe i just have the rose colored glasses on again. Maqn do i miss point and click adventures... Monkey Island here i come.

    • Monkey Island was the best classic game ever. I used to play it on an old MAC (emulating DOS). The sequels were really good too... Besides that worthless piece-of-trash 4th one. I still chuckle when I hear anything about 'rubber trees'.
    • Hey, I thought loom was pretty good. If there was a worse disappointment, it was Monkey Island 4!
    • Loom was great! The article on Maniac Mansion inspired me to break out my LucasArts Classic Adventures collection...7 floppies of classic point and click goodness! Unfortunately Maniac Mansion won't install, but other than that they run great with SCUMMvm.

  • Some of the old games from the 8-bit era were updated and brought out again, but not all were really much better, and some were definately worse.

    I spent a fair amount of time playing Frontier: First Encounters, which was nearly a really good game. The idea (based on Elite if you don't know it) was good, but the implementation was pretty poor. After the 5th or 6th patch came out, it didn't crash too often, but there were still a number of bugs, which made some missions impossible.

    Speaking of which, I a

    • Hmm, Frontier.... Reminds me of a little story.

      There once was a (hypothetical, of course) game that suffered from appaling bugs. The word in the industry at the time was that the software publishers decided to bring the release forward without telling the developers, i.e. before the product had passed testing and been cleared for release.

      It was alleged that some numpty at the publishers, in the absence of any final release disks from the developers, sent out a load of late alpha and beta disks to the re

  • I blame the marketeers (Score:3, Interesting)

    by carndearg ( 696084 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @09:30AM (#6684901) Homepage Journal
    If I were asked to name the worst game I ever played it would have to be Banzai Bug [grolier.com]. I have a special reason to comment on the awfulness of this game because running the helpdesk for the publisher I not only had to play it rather a lot but I saw some of the management decisions that led to the awful state of the released product.

    There are certain projects with little real substance but well crafted gloss that cruise the games industry waiting for gullible publishers to snap them up believing them to be "the next (insert name of gaming fad of the time here, Lemmings, Tomb Raider, Quake etc)". Such was Banzai Bug, a 3d game where you had to fly an insect through a series of adventures to escape an exterminator. It could probably have been made quite good with the right publisher, but sadly with a publishing company run by marketeers with little game playing experience that wasnt going to happen.

    They signed it in the first place on the basis of an intro video, they were very proud of the fact that they'd had some input on the gameplay despite their games testers telling them it was very poor, and to cap it all when it was finally released they tried to market it as a flight simulator because you were flying the insect character. Naturally this went down well with the flight sim crowd:)

    So dont necessarily blame the developers if a game turns out to be a turkey. They will almost certainly know it's a turkey and won't be able to do much about it. Responsibility rests squarely on the publishing company who, blinded by marketeer's self-belief, almost certainly made it that way all by themselves.

  • Worst game?

    Thats tough but Ephemeral Fantasia on the PS2 has to be one of the worse RPGs in existence. I can't even begin with how bad it was, if you really want to know: just pick it up in a discount bin (should be about $1 by now) then take the disc and without bending or breaking it, shove it up your nose. Thats what it feels like.

    Now the main feature:

    I remember back when the X-box had just launched, and good titles were hard to come by, you had HALO, and then you had a lot of other stuff that s

  • ET? Nobody's mentioned ET? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by HomeGroove ( 527053 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @09:51AM (#6685094)
    I'm surprised that ET for the 2600 hasn't been mentioned yet. Jeeze, what a piece of crap that was. Crappy enough for Atari to dump 5 million copies down Mexico way [snopes.com].
  • ...that has to be the worst game I've played. I'm sure there are worse out there, but of the ones I've played, ETM takes the #1 prize. Horrid little piece of crap.

    The one I love to hate, however, is the Atari 2600 E.T.. It has nothing to do with the movie, it isn't all that fun any more...but, damn, I loved it as a kid. I really enjoyed that game - and I still have it. And haven't forgotten how to play it.

    Unlike ETM, which I'm already blocking from my memory.

    • What was so bad about Enter the Matrix? Sure, it's at best an average 3rd person run-and-gun, but I found it to be a decently enjoyable game, if a bit short. There was nothing original about it, it felt "rushed," and it wasn't exactly worth what I paid, but it wasn't microwave-the-CD awful.

      The big stumbling block for most people, I think, was the hype: Written by the Wachowski Brothers! Cost as much as a movie! Best thing to hit gaming since Pong! It turned out to be thoroughly average, with Powerade a

      • There were many problems with Enter The Matrix. I had posted a few messages (non-flaming or trolling) to the Atari message boards regarding them, but they were deleted and considered "off-topic", and I am now banned from using the board.

        Problems range from video (GeForce users cannot use the "focus" ability; the FPS drops to 1 or worse when it's in use) to audio (nForce2 APU users will experience feedback and echoing to death on nearly all large levels) to the game engine itself (most textures are unfilter
      • I didn't even pay for the game - my brother-in-law bought it and then lent it to me. I finished the game, with both characters, in less than 13 hours.

        It was just dull. I actually got bored playing the thing. If I hadn't been home sick with pneumonia, I may have never finished it.

        I must admit - I've never played Outpost or Daikatana, so I can't compare ETM to those. But the game blew and the bugs were annoying - I got stuck in walls, enemies would float in mid-air after I killed them, aiming was a jo

  • The worst game I've played in years is Square's infamous Unlimited SaGa [gamefaqs.com]. Generally, I have the good sense to avoid things like this, but I've always had a weakness for Square games, and I thoroughly enjoyed its predecessor, SaGa Frontier 2.

    Sure, every publication in the world slammed this game. But none of them managed to adequately portray how miserable it is. The game looks gorgeous, but beauty can be severely misleading. I've never had a worse gameplay experience. It's so bad that it defies descrip

  • Tegals Mercenaries (Score:4, Informative)

    by anon*127.0.0.1 ( 637224 ) <slashdot@@@baudkarma...com> on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @09:55AM (#6685121) Journal
    My "worst game ever" experience. It was about hmmmm.. 10 years ago.

    1. Box has a little piece of paper with manual errata. Stuff like "though the manual says you can blow walls up, you really can't". Game was hurried out the door, maybe?

    2. Installation process runs for HALF AN HOUR and is only 10% done. This is off of a floppy disk. I quit in disgust, take a look at the game file in a hex editor, and find it's an .arj file. I decompress it with my .arj decompressor program, and game installs in five minutes. Obviously they didn't want to pay royalties on a commercial program, and tried to write their own installer.

    3. Time for some gameplay! Listed specs: 286/8, 2 meg of ram. My computer: 386/25, 16 meg. Game crawwwwwwwwls. Character AI is non-existent. Controls are buggy and unresponsive. It's real-time, but order and character information screens cover up the gameplay screen. My characters get slaughtered because I can't control them and they're too stupid to save themselves.

    4. I finally give up and check out some of the other files in the game. I find a .gif with the games final screen. Seems like the guy who's been giving you missions the whole time was actually one of the aliens you've been fighting, and he gloats about how he used you etc etc etc. Damn, what a shocking surprise.

    5. I came across the game a few years later sitting in the back of my floppy disk bin. Thought I'd try it with my new system, a 486/33. Maybe it would be okay with that much raw processing power. Nope. Still buggy, still slow, still sucked.

  • Enter the matrix was the worst stack of coasters i have to date. Games like Beach Head, Raid over moscow, Day of the Tentacle, Sam N Max, captain goodnight, the metal slug series, all have graphics today's gamer feel inferior, but gameplay that goes way beyond that. To go from 20 games on a hole punched double-sided floppy to 1 game on 4 cd's or a dvd and move backwards, i think the developers spent more time watching the matrix than making this log.... i don't even know where to go with this.. worst game
    • I can't beleive I forgot to mention this piece of crap in my own post. I was one of the idiots suckered into buying it just before the reviews hit...will I never learn. Max Payne did it better 2 years ago...shame on you Shiny. The hype machine wins again.
  • I rember a game called Tomb Raider (angel of darkness). It was a sequel of a sequel that shouldn't have appeared of a sequel that shouldn't have appeared of a sequel that shouldn't have appeared, etc.
    • It's about time Eidos got a kick up the ass for the TombRaider series, the first was a gem on the PSX for it's time. Sadly Angel of Darkness should have slipped into development hell and never been allowed to surface. But I'm sure the series will return...God help us all
  • 3D0 - any game that had more FMV than actual gameplay (which pretty much kills 75% of the 3D0's back catalogue) PSOne - Formula One 99 - The first 2 games rocked, then somehow the same development studio managed to kill off the franchise by taking every single element of what made the game so good and flush it down the shitter PS2 - Every game up until GTAIII, it took me that long to be convinced that it was worth buying a PS2 as nothing had impressed me at all up until then - even GranTurismo3 sucked GameC
  • Brother bought game for N64....

    Made fun of brother for buying Iggy's Wrecking Balls....

    Felt bad for picking on younger brother for buying a game called Iggy's Wrecking Balls....

    Tried playing a game that can only be described as a game that you race Bionic Commando (their wrecking ball chains were able to pull you up to the next level in the race) type balls with faces (some happy, some sad, some mean looking) up a pattern with obstacles.....

    Gave little brother a pounding for making me feel bad about

  • Myst (Score:3, Insightful)

    by DavidLeblond ( 267211 ) <meNO@SPAMdavidleblond.com> on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @10:17AM (#6685372) Homepage
    I remember Myst being advertised as a 7th Guest killer, with better graphics and such. I got it home and low and behold, it was a slide show! And ever since then, everyone else figured slide show games were the way to go.

    If anything were to kill adventure games, it would be the "slide show game" genre.
  • As a huge Deep Space Nine nerd, I went out and bought the game Dominon Wars for like $50 right when it came out. I had already read some bad reviews of it, but I figured the coolness of the setting might make up for its shortcomings. Wrong. Terrible interface both in-game (nothing you would click seemed to affect the ships' movements) and out (seems to be impossible to save). Plus the game mechanics were out of whack, and the "all-new starfleet ships" were pretty lame, especially since there were plenty of
  • I remember not having instructions to any of my Commodore 64 games when I was little. So most games I just mashed keys till I found a way to play it. This one I didn't figure out till I met some other kid who had it in Texas, at a Hilton, that had Yie-Ar-Kung-Fu in the lobby to play. My program had only one LCP running around with his dog but this kid had two. By then I didn't have the program anymore because I chucked it out the window on a cold winter day since I was fed up on figuring it out. I wish
  • I don't know about the rest of you, but I've played so many stinkers I can't count how many. One of the most recent horrible experiences was with the Men In Black 2 game. I got a free rental at Blockbuster, and I figured that it would be good for 30 minutes of fun. I was wrong. Aside from the generic heroes, the uninspired gameplay, horrible AI and PS1 type graphics, I had enough after 30 seconds. I immediately returned the game, and talked them into letting me rent something better.
  • Any MegaMan after III (NES)
    Hmmmm... it's getting boring... find out who to kill first (with your power shots), then figure out the right order, go to the castle, kill the guy with the white scrub riding that crane and voila!.. you've got a sequel!
    Mortal Kombat I (SNES)
    4 Words: What was Nintendo thinking?
    Stunt Race FX (SNES)
    After Starfox, SRFX looked like a winner, it looked like the Virtua Racing Killer....(Long live FX Chip) ..Hands on... bad, bad controls, and come on... cars with eyes????!!!?
    • Are you out of your goddamned mind?

      While Gunstar Heroes wasn't ever marketed to be a "Contra Killer", it is still one of the best games ever made, for one of the most successful consoles in history. I don't know a single person who has played Gunstar Heroes and not liked it. If you want proof of that, look at eBay and see the outrageous prices it goes for, because nobody wants to part with their copy.

    • Ultra64...Yeah!!! ... nope N64... great!! Cartridges are good..they give no load times!!!....

      Actually, the Ultra 64 was the name that they were originally going to give the N64 in America, but they later on decided to just give the system the same name on both sides of the Pacific.

  • Lost in Time [mobygames.com]. Just terrible. Bad, bad, bad, with a terrible story, technically wrong (ie a strange and ugly mix of pictures and rendered scenes made by a 3-year old boy), and with an unusable UI.
  • Let's see, for pure bile-producing rage, nothing has yet to match up with Ruins of Myth Drannor for me. I was all pumped and excited about playing a game that used the new 3rd Edition D & D rules, plus the screenshots looked awesome. It turned out to be an unplayable suckfest on my machine due to controls that went randomly wild and redraw problems that made it hard to figure out what the heck was going on. Not only that, but I couldn't even get one of the patches to install properly. I probably wou

  • Sewer Shark on the 3DO console
    Jurassic Park Interactive on the 3DO console

  • Monday Night Football - SNES (Score:4, Funny)

    by Rudy Rodarte ( 597418 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @11:32AM (#6686174) Homepage Journal
    This was one of the worst games I've ever played. The control was toally chopped up. If a defensive player evern grazed you, you were tackled. The only reward was to hear "Whoa Nellie. Touchdown." after every touchdown. What a waste of a rental!!!
  • Number one would have to be Outpost, by Sierra. I'd been playing Civilization, and one of the ways to beat Civ was by colonizing Alpha Centauri. So when Outpost came out, which looked like Civ in Space, I thought it'd rock!

    It sucked rocks. I got the rock part right, at least.

    Another huge disappointment, and one I'm glad I didn't buy, was The Tick for the SNES. Sure enough, instead of a game needing a theme, it was a theme needing a game. The gameplay was boring even for a sidescroller, and the most intere

  • I was bitterly disappointed by Fallout Tactics, the squad-based RTS/TBS version.

    One of the hallmarks of the Fallout RPG was that you could do what you wanted; multiple solutions to puzzles, multiple paths, blah blah blah.

    Well, in FT, my crack squad of spec-ops guys were thwarted by a waist-high pile of sandbags. They could not climb over them, move them, blow them up with C4, cut them open with knives to spill out the sand, nothing. Why not? Because each level isn't a map with an objective, it's a pa

  • The worst game i have owned, was The Movie Monster Game to C64. I had the tape version of the game, and it would load for 20-30 minutes before the game started, and it could be over in 2 minutes. And you had to reload it to play it again.
  • Is the song "Superfly's Johnson (Suck it Down)" by the Laziest Men on Mars. If you can find a copy, it's well worth a listen.
  • With that thought, here are some of my biggest disappointments (in no particular order):

    1. Unreal Tournament 2003 [unrealtournament2003.com]: I played the original UT from the day it came out, up to the day the UT2003 demo (actually the leaked alpha) was released. I actually bought a new computer to play UT2003. I can't even tell you how disapointed I was by UT2003. The biggest reason is it seemed like Quake2003 and didn't have the feel of Unreal or Unreal Tournament. On top of that, the weapons were weaker than the ones i
  • Har. I have an NES with a four-player adapter, so I have made a hobby of grabbing any NES games that support it. This can be great (take a bow, Gauntlet II), very good (thank you, Ivan "Ironman" Stewart's Super Off-Road), or pretty stinky (sucks to you, Play Action Football)

    But the worst four-player game I have, and the worst NES cart I own, is Monster Truck Rally. The premise (monster trucks, racing against each other, multiple events) is fine, but the gameplay is DEEP HURTING! If the trucks touch anythin

  • Ikaruga (Score:3, Funny)

    by Palshife ( 60519 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @03:28PM (#6688705) Homepage
    This game punishes your sense of self-worth more than any game I have ever experienced. It bites you off, chews you up and spits you out. You leave a session feeling like you're not good enough to do anything.

    Then you play it again. What the hell is that!?!

    • Re:Ikaruga (Score:2, Insightful)

      by n0wak ( 631202 )
      Exactly! Most people here seem to be just blindly responding with their lists of disappointments, which seems off topic, but the parent is absolutely correct.

      I love Ikaruga. My favourite game of the year. Yet it pisses me off something fierce, and it frustrates me the likes of which I haven't seen since the 16-bit era. I toss my controller in frustration; I shout obscenities at it; and I scream out loud: "I HATE THIS DAMNED GAME!!" -- but I return everytime, and I love it.
  • When I was very little, I was unable to tell the difference between a really good game and a really bad one. They were all equal but also different. It was only later that I started to compare them with each other, and that still continues today.

    I used to play a lot of crap :P
  • Having played some really bad games (hey, I just played Home Alone II on the SNES just the other day) I figured something horrible would just come to mind, yet the one I find rising to the top in my memory is Karateka on the C64, a game I really liked.

    I loved Karateka, yet I hated it. It drew me in like an addiction, fighting repetetive bad guy after bad guy, running and running towards the beautiful pixilated princess who needed me to save her. And that stupid eagle. I practiced and practiced just to b
  • As far as disappointments go, Knights of the Old Republic was my big-time number one.

    I heard so much good stuff about this game "Best Star Wars Game Ever". Everyone said it was great.

    Nobody warned me about the stupid combat system! When I play games, I like to have a little bit of skill involved. Like, when I kill people, it is fun to run around, aim, and shoot. Not just select the dumb 'engage' option and hope for the best.

    I also like to choose who I shoot. Everyone who plays first person shooters k

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