Wrestslemania x8 on the gamecube. Didn’t even have a frigging campaign mode…
myself and everyone I knew were massive fans of the N64 WCW and WWF games, but I had played the PS2 Yukes! games at friends houses and always kinda hated them. Ended up getting Wrestlemania X8 because I somehow got to actually go to the event at Skydome, and even with that huge bias still thought the game was shit and barely ever played it.
Wrestlemania was fucking wild though, it fell on the same day as St. Patricks and everyone there was drunk as shit, tons of fan scuffles and rowdiness, as a high schooler was a total blast.
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.
And don’t forget the oddly weird multiplayer.
I bought Haze for PS3 the day it came out even after reading a lot of mid to negative reviews, both because I really love all three TimeSplitters games and wanted to support the devs, and also out of a feeling of ‘how bad could it really be?’. It was incredibly boring, graphically underwhelming, and I ended up beating it the same day I bought it. Tried to trade it in and even on release week EB offered me an incredibly insulting amount, like $7 or something, and I still took it.
Over the years I’ve played a bunch of awful games. But the one that always sticks with me is ET. I spent hours stuck in pits in that game.
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.
I was happy that the next release was pretty good.
Moo2 forever, though.
Agreed.
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.
Not. It’s just a horrible game.
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.
Same for me. It was my first flop I played and boy was it bad.
You didn’t like flying through 150 rings?
There are way more rings than that, and they’re actually the best parts of the game. It gets so much worse in the levels without rings. Awful combat, terrible puzzles, inconsistent framerate, and thoroughly unclear objectives.
Oh, and everyone’s favorite: escort missions!
escort missions
Clark Kent must really have not made much money as a reporter if he had to walk the streets at night too
Hard disagree. You just need to play it long enough for the Stockholm syndrome to kick in. Once it has its claws in you, you can’t stop playing it. Trying to figure out what makes this garbage puzzle box tick.
I must’ve played a ton of trash games that I purged from my memory, but one notable one that comes to mind is Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun. The game was super highly anticipated and hyped and I was a massive C&C fan before, only to be completely disappointed by this massive turd that they shat on this genre defining franchise. The revolutionary “physics” did nothing to the game play, the main story was maybe a total of 4 hours and it was just buggy as fuck with the AI pathfinding being incredibly bad and somehow worse than the predecessors or the main other RTSs of the time.
the main story was maybe a total of 4 hours
You must have been amazing at it, because it was certainly more like 20 for me, not counting branching missions. (The internet says it’s around 25ish)
it was just buggy as fuck with the AI pathfinding being incredibly bad and somehow worse than the predecessors
I think you’re wearing some rose tinted goggles about Red Alert (and some solid black ones for the first game). Pathfinding in Tiberium Dawn was so terrible that it was part of the balance of the game: when they tried to fix it for the remaster, they found it horribly unbalanced the game in favor of GDI, so they decided not to fix it. Pathfinding was pretty shit in Tiberian Sun, but it was much worse before.
or the main other RTSs of the time.
Yeah, StarCraft was better but Total annihilation was much worse than Tiberian Sun in places where there was any terrain.
TA is much better now, but it has 25 years of mods going for it.
I liked that game. The controls were horrible, but the story was okay and it featured a lot of new game mechanics for the time. They tried too much really. It was more of an experience than a game.
Flatout 3. I just checked on steam, and it’s tagged as “psychological horror”. Being a fan of the first one, and still having spent lots of hours playing the second one, I was totally not prepared for the utter monstrosity of the third one
Never played 1, but I really liked 2. I didn’t know 3 existed until now, and I’m having a blast reading the reviews. I think I might have to buy it (with the intention of refunding) just so I can experience the horror firsthand.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pF6QaE69Dus Rerez did a video about it that just about covers everything there is to the game, I found it amusing
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.
This is not what you are talking about, but reading this reminded me of the “Super Noah’s Ark” rom I downloaded in high school which was a reskin of the original Wolfenstein where all the animals were restless meaning that you (Noah) would need to shoot feed at them so they could take their naps.
Super Noah’s Ark is on my rg35xx. It’s amazing.
My cousin had a couple Bible themed NES games. Spiritual Warfare seemed decent.
There used to be a store called Heaven & Earth that sold all kinds of Christian stuff for Sunday school teachers or whatever plus books, cheap Bible toys, etc. She bought it there.
Turok Evolution on GameCube.
It doesn’t look that bad on reviews, but it’s pretty awful.
Lula 3D. Though, I never played with it eventually as it froze up the computer so bad we had to pull the plug, the experience as a kid was probably my worst gaming moment.
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
As a former 9yo I would have liked a Formula One game
Different strokes for different folks
Different strokes for different folks
That’s doubly true for the golf game.
They can’t all be Lee Carvallo’s Putting Challenge.
Disney’s Aladdin for game boy. Beat it in under a day and returned it. Just awful.
