Worst Game Ever

Lucky Day

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I can't remember a thread on this but there probably is one.

On Pricewatch! we've been talking about the ET game so I brought up Limbo of the Lost and Desert Bus Simulator?

I think I'd throw U9 in there as well because of the condition it was in at release time. So…

I can't remember a thread on this but there probably is one.

On Pricewatch! we've been talking about the ET game so I brought up Limbo of the Lost and Desert Bus Simulator?

I think I'd throw U9 in there as well because of the condition it was in at release time. So…

ET the atari game
- This game had a 5 week development time but sold 300k copies at Christmas but 1million cartridges had been made. An urban legend regarding the lost "millions" of copies developed and which had been found to be true and the subject of an upcoming documentary.

Limbo of the Lost-A indie adventure game originally started development on the Amriga was finally released for PC. A year later some players noted areas that looked suspiciously like Oblvion, including the crosshairs symbol that game uses. With a week screenshots from the game flooded in from users side by side with screenshots from the games they were stolen from.

On top of the plagiarism LotL includes one of the most memorable and shocking end game cut scenes ever seen. Had it not been for the controversy already, this jewel in a pig's snout would have gone unnoticed.

Desert Bus - a minigame in Penn & Teller's unreleased Smoke and Mirrors 1995 Sega game, that was meant as a gag gift to give to friends. The game is a realistic simulation of the 8 hour drive from Tucson and Las Vegas played in real time. The road is straight, but the bus pulls to the right requiring the player to be at the controls the whole time. There are no passengers. The only interesting thing that happens is a bug hits the window after 5 hours.

Ultima 9 - the story of the long awaited sequel to what was then the most popular game franchise in has many facets. The biggest irony of which was that in both variants of the game it was meant to be a redemption to the fans of where the company went wrong with the last game in the title.

The game was originally well into production when it was an Isometric 2d game but the development team was cannibalized to work on Ultima Online. After UO was released, with the game looking old with with no one motivated to completing it that iteration of the game died.

Some tests with 3dfx Voodoo Card impressed some old Origin employees at EA to restart development in 3d. Richard Garriot insisted on removing transitions and "blow ups" that were the hallmark of the early games he invented to make the game more realistic along with many other graphic innovations such as the ability to walk under vertical walkmesh plains.

Development time took so long that the story was radically cut and completely abandoned its original premise. EA halted development and insisted on hard release date at around the same time 3dfx went out of business due to the growing popularity of nVidia cards which U9 was not optimized for.

The result was a game pushed out the door that literally did not work. Complaints were so bad another new first happened thanks to Origin: the official forums were reset to clear out negative complaints. They eventually closed altogether. Lord British was forced out of the company, including in his UO role, and the Origin Studios division was shuttered forever.

Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor is a remake of the first and most successful of the official Dungeons and Dragons by SSI in the early 1980's that spawned the nickname "The Goldbox Games". Its 10 year development time was marred by re-writes, including the last one of redeveloping the game using the d20 rules.

Expectations were so high for this game that it was the best selling game for the first two weeks of its release. It was also the most returned game.

PoR: RoMD was clunky, and repetitious. The released version of the game had a bug the demo didn't have even though they had the same version number.

Worst of all, was the bug that could corrupt your Windows Operating System. A patch and an apology was released to the fans and a lot of stickers were were sent to the Software shops to slap on the box.

Dungeon Lords - DW Bradly who took over the successful Wizardry franchise developed the premise for this game which is so successful that the publishers continue to package new variants of it every few years with minor tweaks (such as the official patch) so they can sell it again as a new product at Wal Mart.

Like taking an old Robert E Howard public domain Conan story and slipping a Frank Frazetta cover on it the game is a work of marketing genious with a low cost threshold

For the record its empty and boring. We try to warn you every few years but you don't listen. Let's warn you again.

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Honourable Mention

Grimoire - 20 years in the making from a bipolar, paranoid schizophrenic ex-pat American ex-Wziardry developer living in the Outback this will probably be an amazing game when we all hop in our time machines.

Outpost - A forgotten combination of Simcity meets Civilization after they colonize the stars, this game would have required 20 CD's in its original form. It was scaled down to 1 or 2 when finally released and the game was effectively a boring sci fi 4x game.

Duke Nukem Forever, Doom 3, Lara Croft, XCom, Deus Ex Invisible War, Fallout platformers - way to kill a franchise. sell unimaginative sequels that do little but cash in on the name.
 
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I really like U9 :)

As for worst games ever, that's kinda a boring topic - as most of those would be obscure free games no one ever heard of.

Perhaps it should be worst high-profile games or most disappointing games ever?

If so, I have a few examples:

Master of Orion 3
Aliens: Colonial Marines
X-Rebirth
Battlecruiser 3000AD
Mortal Online
Duke Nukem Forever (though we all saw it coming)
Daikatana
 
Difficult topic as most such games that we've played would have taken place prior to the ubiquity of the internet and access to reviews. And I've long-since forgotten those titles... due to their lackluster nature!

Why would you play a bad game these days with easy access to peer reviews? :)
 
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Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor
 
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I recall the list for worst movie ever on Wikipedia after seeing of an $80million flop kids movie that got no advertising. There was something noteworthy about everyone of like Plan 9 from Outer Space or that Western that blue up a living horse with dynamite and ended up bankrupting the studio.

I'm thinking this as a list of such games. After all, people seem to go on and on about them :).

Daikatana would be on that list definitely. Forgot to mention that.

And, of course Drith, the obvious answer to your question is regarding the great quality of those reviews.

For example, does Star Wars Galaxies belong on that list? or SWtoR for roughly the same reason?

--

oh yeah - PoR - yeah, yeah
 
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Well I've pretty much tried to erase the memories of playing very bad games, however few turds I recall vividly…

1. Deus Ex invicible war - I would have to think really hard for more dissapointing experience. No… who am i kidding? This is in fact the most dissapointing videogame I have ever played.

2. Splinter cell double agent. I loved splinter cell chaos theory and wondered if a stealth game could get any better from this. I didn't bother reading reviews or forums comments. I just bought the sequel because all three previous splinter cell games had been a blast… How wrong I was. Horrible engine, horrible controls (most essential keys like jump couldn't even even remapped!!!) and ofcourse dumbed down gameplay.

3. G3: forsaken gods. I wish this game was never made. It was Jowood's last insult piranha bytes and a pure money grab. Outsourcing the development of gothic 3 add-on to an unknown indian game developper with zero experience of rpgs? What do you call a move like that? :) Lame ass story was one thing, but on top of that they somehow managed to release the add-on in worse state than the orginal gothic 3 which itself is a remarkable accomplishment.
 
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Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor
This one surely has flaws but also had some things right so for myself I wouldn't be that hard on it. Definitely one of the biggest disappointment of the 90's but nothing more for me. As Drithius wrote, it's hard those days to buy something that bad without having clues before hand so...
 
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Not at all. That game was horrible beyond belief (I'm talking the 2001 game, not any of the old goldbox games).
Was it actually 2001 ? Well I really thought that came out a bit earlier but after exhuming the DVD box from my garbage it appears that you"re absolutely right. Time surely flies ! :)
 
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It's hard to remember the really bad ones. I play them for a bit, I hate them, and I move on. It's not like I spend days and days playing them most of the time.

Let's see… Final Fantasy 8. After loving 7 to death I kept playing, hoping the game would get better. The story was a terrible attempt at romance (oh gee, we all knew each other as kids but we just forgot about it) and the battles were dull things where you drained monsters of spells. I got about 70% of the way through before "boy lost girl" for the dozen'th time and I finally quit.

Crysis 2 is sure ticking me off right now. They seem to have completely dumped the old story. The game is totally linear taking you from one battle area to the next. Cheap check-point save system. Just all around blah. I'm glad I got it for super cheap as part of a Humble Bundle but honestly, I would have been happier not playing it at all.
 
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Dungeon Lords - easily my worst personal video game disappointment.
 
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"Clans"
One of those "how bad can it be?" purchases, full price

I played some "breed/train the perfect horse" type of game before, and it was nowhere as bad as Clans

Dungeon Lords is worthy of a mention, however =)
 
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Most of the games listed here are not "that" bad, just (incredibly) disappointing.

I suspect that the "worst game ever" would be something along the line of Crazy bus (turn down your volume!), though we might need to define "game" here.
 
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Pick a random phonegame or a cow clicker. There it is. Worst game ever for me.
 
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Ok..let's see..Phonegame at random generator..ah ha, HORN for the iPHone

yeah, I think Dung Lords belongs there - but its only really noticeable by our crowd. Its been a surprising money maker thanks the book cover judging afficianados so I think its the only hit on the list.

Really I only played Daikatana for about 5 minutes to see what all the (bad) fuss was about but I never saw it. I don't like shooters anyway but I put it away.

Some of the games "aren't bad" or have good qualities like the graphics in Ultima 9 but they have serious issues such, not playable for any reason until the third patch, or corrupts your operating system requiring an reinstall.

I suspect with Daikatana it was the first victim of Romero's over the top shilling of a game and his first solo project since taking credit for Doom.
 
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Most of the games listed here are not "that" bad, just (incredibly) disappointing.
Well, yeah, that's got to be part of it. Otherwise I could just pull up Visual Studio and write up a super terrible text adventure in about half an hour that would be worse than any game ever made.
 
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I think the FMV (Full Motion Video) games that were prevalent in the Sega CD / 3DO era were among some the worst games I've ever played. (Dragon's Lair, Sewer Shark, etc.). If you've never played these games, imagine a game where gameplay consisted of nothing but quick-time events. And to compliment the boring gameplay these games very often had really terrible plots and terrible acting.

I'm sure there's some other awful games I've played and forgotten but those FMV stick out in my mind as a time when I feared for the future of the video game industry.
 
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