Video games are not always wonderful. Sometimes they fall slightly short, sometimes they fall so far from wonderful that wonderful is just a very distant speck on the horizon. Here is our second collection of those games.
Once again, our criteria were not to choose titles that are just plain awful – there are too many of those, and most of them will not have troubled you. No, these are games that are singularly, spectacularly bad – or even worse, perhaps, they’re games that promised the Earth, but then delivered Watford.
Prepare yourself, then dive in...
Knack (PlayStation 4, 2013)
The PlayStation 4’s launch title came from a seemingly dream team collaboration: Sony’s own storied Japanese development studio and Mark Cerny, the console’s genius architect. But when this 3D platformer was first revealed to show off the power of the new machine, there were already doubts. The linear design, styled similarly to Cerny’s best-known work, Crash Bandicoot, seemed anachronistic. Indeed, Knack turned out to be forgettable and routine, grossly underselling the promise of the hardware it was supposed to celebrate
Leisure Suit Larry: Box Office Bust (Multiple formats, 2009)
The second attempt to bring Larry Lovage, star of risque point-and-click series Leisure Suit Larry, into the modern world was, like the first, a disaster. Taking the form of a platformer (for some reason) Box Office Bust sees diminutive creep Larry sleazing his way through a series of desperately unfunny film references in order to sleep with a parade of hideous, dead-eyed, badly-animated women. It’s a rotten game, with unbearably twitchy controls and a premise that’s essentially “lie to women until they agree to have sex with you then play mini-games”.
Limbo of the Lost (PC, 2007)
Many games borrow elements from classic titles to craft something new – but not quite as many do it as literally as Limbo of the Lost, a whole game made of art and music seemingly stolen from The Elder Scrolls, Unreal Tournament and many other games, not to mention movies like Beetlejuice and Spawn. All of this plagiaristic fun obscured one of the worst adventures ever, a trek through the afterlife fascinating in its complete incompetence, ugliness, and chutzpah. At least we got one of the most unforgettable endings in video game history before it was pulled from the shelves…
Perfect Dark Zero (Xbox 360, 2005)
The sequel to brilliant N64 thriller Perfect Dark arguably provided the first marked slip in quality from Rare, one of Britain’s best-loved game developers, following its 2002 purchase by Microsoft. The legacy was impeccable, built upon foundations laid by Goldeneye 007, the first truly great console-based shooter. But Perfect Dark Zero was, in game design terms, incredibly dated, with shallow gunplay, poor AI and a cliched setting. “Only on very few occasions will you feel like an elite assassin,” lamented GamesRadar. “The rest of the time, you’re a clumsy, blundering thug.”
Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties (3DO, 1994)
A seriously strong contender for the worst game of all time, Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties is an “interactive romantic comedy” that makes The Only Way is Essex look like a work of pretentious high art. Made up entirely of still photos overlaid with horrible, amateurish voice acting, this is the story of John, a plumber, who finds himself torn between two women. It’s like going to a dinner party and being forced to watch in awkward horror as the host couple present a slideshow of themselves role-playing their deranged erotic fantasies.
Resident Evil 6 (PC/PS3/Xbox 360, 2012)
Promising a return to the glory days, when the popular survival horror series was steered by masterful designer Shinji Mikami, Capcom instead employed a team of 600 developers to produce an utterly lacklustre homage to former brilliance. Stripped of all the old tension, it’s a production line of ludicrous explosions, senseless plot twists, interminable car chases and bombastic action set-pieces, as though faxed in by a zombified Michael Bay.
Resistance 2 (PlayStation 3, 2008)
Despite being met with largely positive reviews, Resistance 2 is, at its core, an awful first-person shooter with messy, inconsistent levels and baffling design decisions – including not being able to sprint in ankle-high water. Like a summer popcorn movie, big, impressive things are happening in front of you constantly, but you feel nothing. Your interaction is limited, the shooting is boring and weedy, and the enemies repeat themselves constantly. And let’s not forget about those fish things that kill you the instant you touch the water, even if they’re miles away. A game of shallow bombast
Rise of the Robots (multiple formats, 1994)
Edge Magazine was so impressed with early demos of this robotic fighting game that it granted developer Mirage Studios a cover feature in which the team criticised Street Fighter 2 as dated. When this tinpot brawler finally lurched onto shop shelves it was clear that, behind the 3D-rendered visuals, there was almost no actual game. The characters couldn’t turn around, the AI fighters were mortally susceptible to the same move, and the music was by Brian May. Despite all this, Rise was converted onto every games platform available, symbolising an era in which filling the disc with video and music was often considered more important than providing something people might actually want to play.
Ride to Hell: Retribution (PC/PS3/Xbox 360, 2013)
Promising to plunge players into the exciting world of the 1960s counterculture, Ride to Hell instead plunges players into the not quite as exciting world of extremely unfinished games. Lead character Jake Conway returns from Vietnam and alienated by the America he finds, he naturally joins a motorcycle gang. Unfortunately, the bike handling is irredeemably flawed, the melee combat is unfocused and the voice actors seem to have been going through some sort of breakdown while recording their parts. The result is a game of truly psychedelic awfulness that manages the truly rare feat of getting every single component wrong.
Shaq Fu (Mega Drive/Snes 1994)
In 2013, producer Sandy Sandoval appeared on an ESPN programme about sports sims and admitted that this 2D fighting sim about a famous basketball player being transported to another dimension in order to punch people was “probably one of the worst games in EA history” – and that’s saying something, considering it’s up against Need for Speed: The Run and Catwoman. Perhaps, during development, French studio Delphine, famous for cinematic platformers such as Flashback and Fade to Black, thought “zut alors, we have no experience with this type of game”, but that didn’t stop anyone.
Sonic the Hedgehog (multiple formats, 2006)
Sega’s 356th attempt to rejuvenate its mascot was in fact another nail into his big, blue coffin. Despite the involvement of Sonic team and direction of Sega legend Shun Nakamura, the game was blighted by long loading times, rampant glitches, and a twitchy, unstable camera. The developers blamed the quality of the game on having to develop simultaneously for Xbox 360 and the as-yet-unreleased PlayStation 3, which had notoriously idiosyncratic hardware. But that doesn’t explain the excruciating story, which climaxes with Sonic kissing Princess Elise — a human. Yeah, the less said about that the better.
SQIJ! (ZX Spectrum, 1987)
While there were skip-loads of terrible games in the 8bit era (Ocean’s terrible movie tie-ins and Firebird’s amazingly cynical Don’t Buy This being obvious examples), the Spectrum version of avian platformer SQIJ is the pinnacle – not least because, due to a coding error, it is impossible to control. Instead, you watch a large bird character bouncing around the screen shedding chunks of graphics as motionless enemies look on bewildered. Years later, the programmer behind the game claimed he intentionally sabotaged the project to get out of a development contract. Better yet, the game reportedly contains an unlicensed copy of the coding app Laser Basic, which means it’s not just unplayable, it’s technically illegal to buy. Genius.
Star Trek (multiple formats, 2013)
Based on J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek reboot, this shameless cash-in reduced the legendary relationship between Kirk and Spock to a dumb, badly-designed cover shooter. Marred by glitches and endless, interminable hacking mini-games, it harks back to the dark days when shoddy movie tie-ins splattered the console release schedules like sick up the walls on a rough ferry crossing. There are puzzles where two characters are needed to progress, which would be fine if your AI partner didn’t routinely just stop responding, leaving you completely stuck. The voice acting is decent, though, so it’s not all bad.
Superman 64 (N64, 1999)
Behold Lex Luthor’s ultimate plan for defeating Superman – torture him with one of the most infamous video game failures of all time. “Solve my maze!” he boomed, before making the man of steel ... fly through some rings. And then fly through MORE rings. Worse still, the whole game was set in a “virtual world” which rebranded the N64’s limited rendering distance as “kryptonite fog”. In an interview with YouTuber Proton Jon, the game’s producer claimed that licensing restrictions meant that the developers weren’t allowed to use all of the hero’s powers, or show him beating up real people. “The final is not even 10% of what we intended to do,” he says, “but the licensor killed us.”
Universal Studios Theme Park Adventure (GameCube, 2001)
Back to the Future. Jaws. Jurassic Park. Imagine entering a realm filled with some of the greatest movies ever made, and Waterworld. It’s a pity that all this game could do with Universal’s fun park was to create a bunch of half-arsed mini-games. Even then you had to earn the right to access the rides by ... picking up trash. And shaking hands with park mascots. At least the Waterworld game is authentically painful: it simply forces you to watch one scene from the movie several times. Worst Holiday Ever.
