The worst games

[Mikeus Caesar]

4. BF 2142 - When you make fantasy games, or future games, can you make it more realistic or something? The guns had recoil people! Recoil! They can build big fancy ships that can be destroyed by blowing up some shoddily protected command consoles, but you can't eliminate recoil??? It was okay as a game, but not good.

Upon reading '2142' something clicked in my head, and i felt the need to scream out loud my distaste for this game.

Truly terrible. Buggy and flawed. The only fun thing about it was the mechs. And some of the maps were also pretty good. In fact, the entire game could have been good, but it was just entirely flawed.

[Nobunaga]

i would say: ROME: TOTAL WAR

mainly because of my high prerelease expectations due to CA advertising.

[caravel]

i would say: ROME: TOTAL WAR

mainly because of my high prerelease expectations due to CA advertising.

I disagree with this. While I would agree entirely that RTW was a big disappointment as a TW game, I disagree that it qualifies as one of "The worst games". There are vastly worse games than RTW.

Luckily for me I haven't played any of the games listed so far in this thread. I can't really think of any games that I've bought and would call the worst excpet C&C games, those have always been bad IMHO.

[TinCow]

Just remembered another one. It was called "Campaign," it was a WW2 strategy game, and it was released in the early 1990s. You moved divisions around on a world map, and when they engaged the enemy it switched to a 3D rendered battle. The battle consisted only of vehicles (mainly armor) and you could command one of them, driving around the battlefield and shooting up the enemy. It was really, really bad. The strategy was non-existent and it essentially turned into a FPS with tanks. I kept playing it off and on for years, thinking I simply didn't understand how to play it properly, but I eventually concluded it was just a poor game and trashed it. I can't even find anything about it on Google. That probably says more about it than anything else.

[Nobunaga]

objectively speaking their are many games that are worse than RTW. However I was never disappointed with a game like I was disappointed with RTW. Especially with all the hype from CA. I remember a post from one of the developers that said that the game is not getting dumbed down and it will appeal to hardecore MTW and STW fans.

So for me (and mainly because of the huge disappointment I got) RTW is the worst game ever. I just can't play RTW.

[caravel]

objectively speaking their are many games that are worse than RTW. However I was never disappointed with a game like I was disappointed with RTW. Especially with all the hype from CA. I remember a post from one of the developers that said that the game is not getting dumbed down and it will appeal to hardecore MTW and STW fans.

So for me (and mainly because of the huge disappointment I got) RTW is the worst game ever. I just can't play RTW.

When you put it like that then it seems like a valid point.

[Martok]

objectively speaking their are many games that are worse than RTW. However I was never disappointed with a game like I was disappointed with RTW. Especially with all the hype from CA. I remember a post from one of the developers that said that the game is not getting dumbed down and it will appeal to hardecore MTW and STW fans.

So for me (and mainly because of the huge disappointment I got) RTW is the worst game ever. I just can't play RTW.

I understand what you're saying -- RTW was my second-biggest letdown after MOO3 -- but I still disagree that it's actually a bad game per se.

If Rome had been the first of the TW series -- if STW or MTW had never been made (the gods forbid!) -- I suspect a lot of us would be gushing over how awesome the game was, despite its obvious flaws. As it is, I sometimes envy RTW/M2TW fans who've never played STW or MTW, as most of them will probably never know what they're missing (better AI, more immersive atmosphere, etc.).

So while I personally can't stand the game, I wouldn't characterize it as "bad". I would probably describe it more as a colossal disappointment and a massive waste of potential.

Now Master of Orion III, on the other hand, truly *is* a terrible game.

[edyzmedieval]

Need for Speed Carbon (I bought the Collectors edition too!)
Civ City: Rome
Battlefield 2142
FIFA 2007/2008
NBA 2006/2008

[Kenshin the vega bound]

Heh you pc gamers dont know what your missing when it comes to crap games.

Being a console gamer since the late 80's I've played some awfull games.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQvuwu1CFHI

Is just one example. Perhaps the NES dispite having some classice games, also had the most crappy games for a console ever.

[Kekvit Irae]

I have to disagree. I am old enough to remember just how bad Atari games were.

[TB666]

In no particular order

Roma Victor - buggy, ugly, overly complicated, devs that refuse to listen to their test teams and fans(which they don't have many off).

Two Worlds- Buggy, old english with bad voice acting equals epic failure.

Trespasser - Not sure if anyone remembers this gem. Awful physics, aiming a gun was damn near impossible, the dinosaurs were dumb as hell.

Imperial Glory - Tried to be a TW-clone, failed in every way.

Legion Arena - Tried to be a TW-clone, failed in every way as well. For Odin's sake they even had damage numbers floating above soldiers heads.

[frogbeastegg]

Trespasser - Not sure if anyone remembers this gem.

Was that the game with the arm? I didn't play it. I did see lots of reviews panning it, and all of them mentioned this arm which you had to 'deploy' to activate things. There were screenshots with this awful looking arm poised next to the gun, reaching out into thin air in an attempt to be relevant. The graphics made it ook like a 6 day old severed limb your character happened to be carrying.

[TB666]

Was that the game with the arm? I didn't play it. I did see lots of reviews panning it, and all of them mentioned this arm which you had to 'deploy' to activate things. There were screenshots with this awful looking arm poised next to the gun, reaching out into thin air in an attempt to be relevant. The graphics made it ook like a 6 day old severed limb your character happened to be carrying.

Yep.
You did everything in the game with that arm.
It was really a nightmare.
Aiming are horrible, if you hit anything consider yourself lucky.
Trying to enter a code on a pad was hit and miss.
You couldn't just move your arm during those cases since you would hit the other buttons as well.
So you kinda had to aim(which was hard enough) move forward and hope that you hit the right number then move back, aim again and then move forward again.
Only thing nice in the game was that you were playing a female character and everytime you looked down you saw your huge cleavage with a tattoo the shape of a heart(which was your health bar btw, I'm not kidding, if you wanted to see how much health you got, look at your naughty bits) on the left boob.
They must have been drunk when they made that game.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Says it all really

[Kekvit Irae]

Jurassic Park: Trespasser really was a pile of garbage, but it did have one redeeming value... it had the most realistic physics engine of its time, until Half-Life 2 came out six years later.

[TB666]

Actually games like Painkiller, Far Cry and Doom 3 had far superior physics engine then Trespasser and came out before HL2.
Hell I'm pretty sure that there were games out before even that with a better physics engine then Trespasser.
Of course it was pretty easy to beat trespasser since the physic engine was horrible beyond anything I have ever seen.
Pong had better physics then that game.

[CountArach]

Have to say it:

Medieval Total War 2

Biggest waste of my money ever.

[Fragony]

Jurassic Park: Trespasser really was a pile of garbage, but it did have one redeeming value... it had the most realistic physics engine of its time, until Half-Life 2 came out six years later.

The game still has a rabid fanbase, supposedly community fixed the game, and turned it into what it should have been in te first place. Game had tons of potential to be awesome.

[Dutch_guy]

Jurassic Park: Trespasser really was a pile of garbage, but it did have one redeeming value... it had the most realistic physics engine of its time, until Half-Life 2 came out six years later.

I remember playing that game years and years ago. At the time I couldn't care less that the gameplay was horrible, the only fault I could find with it was the rarity of actual dinosaurs in the game.

[Navaros]

I always be sure to read a variety of professional reviews on metacritic and various sites with end user feedback to know if a game is good or not before I bother to touch it. That way, I play relatively few really bad games.

But Doom 3 clearly had many review scores that were bought, and as such it was the worst game that comes to mind that I've ever played. Endless repetition of the same 3 or 4 enemies over and over again. Most especially and most annoyingly, Imps. Not scary. Not fun. I ended up uninstalling if halfway through because of how mind-numbingly awful of a gameplay experience it was killing the 1500th set of Imps. Not to mention the environments which were just as repetitive. Worst of all it didn't even maintain the fast gameplay of Doom or Doom II, yet professional reviews lied and said things like: "it's just a beautiful looking shooter that provides the same addictive, gung-ho game that made the original so much fun to play." That's wrong. Doom had "run and gun" gameplay. Doom 3 only had (much worse) "crawl and gun (to the next scripted spawn point)" gameplay.

[Quirinus]

Legion Arena - Tried to be a TW-clone, failed in every way as well. For Odin's sake they even had damage numbers floating above soldiers heads.

Oh my god! I remember this game...... fell flat in every way, especially after playing Rome: Total War. The History Channel repacked it as "Battles of Rome" or something. So I was tricked into buying the same awful game twice. Didn't do much for my opinion of the game (or the History Channel, for that matter).

[econ21]

I agree with some posters that the worst game has to be a game that you cared about - that could/should have been good but was awful.

For me, it would Napoleon 1813. It should have been a Napoleon Total War that predated RTW. It had a real time strategy layer, better than RTWs in that you moved actual historical formations (corps, divisions etc). And it had a tactical battle layer. Sadly, neither layer worked but were instead completely broken. The strategic layer never led to significant battles or even led anywhere; the battles were equally flawed with enemy formations marching randomly and the same failure to even connect. My newly recruited French Imperial Guard marching off to join the enemy was the straw that broke the camel's back for me. But it pains me because if it had worked as intended, it probably would have been the best PC game ever.

The game designer tried much the same thing - with the same hopeless results - with an ACW game called the Civil War or such.

People lambasting RTW or M2TW should really play the above two efforts to get a sense of perspective. And play some mods ...

[Fragony]

I always be sure to read a variety of professional reviews on metacritic and various sites with end user feedback to know if a game is good or not before I bother to touch it. That way, I play relatively few really bad games.

But Doom 3 clearly had many review scores that were bought, and as such it was the worst game that comes to mind that I've ever played. Endless repetition of the same 3 or 4 enemies over and over again. Most especially and most annoyingly, Imps. Not scary. Not fun. I ended up uninstalling if halfway through because of how mind-numbingly awful of a gameplay experience it was killing the 1500th set of Imps. Not to mention the environments which were just as repetitive. Worst of all it didn't even maintain the fast gameplay of Doom or Doom II, yet professional reviews lied and said things like: "it's just a beautiful looking shooter that provides the same addictive, gung-ho game that made the original so much fun to play." That's wrong. Doom had "run and gun" gameplay. Doom 3 only had (much worse) "crawl and gun (to the next scripted spawn point)" gameplay.

Played Quake 4? Is what Doom 3 should have been. What makes Doom 3 so bad is that shooting isn't fun, there is no visual feedback, you shoot untill they drop, makes for a very unsatisfying game. Quake 4 is one of the best pure shooters in years imho, everything about it is solid, some parts are suitably repulsive, enemy's put up a fight and the weapons are basic but just very fun to use.

[frogbeastegg]

People lambasting RTW or M2TW should really play the above two efforts to get a sense of perspective. And play some mods ...

If I say RTW looked set to be the game I had been longing for since the very day I discovered computer games, would that place it in perspective? If I added that it was made by a developer I considered to be the best in strategy games? RTW was my Napoleon 1813.

I always consider mods and vanilla games to be two very seperate entities. Gothmod improved BI IMO. That's Gothmod, not BI. Mods build on the base game, they don't become it and they don't replace it. IMO I shouldn't have felt the need to turn to mods. With a good game mods are a different flavour to explore. They're not a desperate scramble to find a way to make the game enjoyable.

I view expansion packs in the same light. BI improved RTW. That's BI, not RTW.

[econ21]

... RTW was my Napoleon 1813.

I always consider mods and vanilla games to be two very seperate entities. Gothmod improved BI IMO. That's Gothmod, not BI. ..

Well, we are going to go off topic here but just to give a quick reply:

I understand your viewpoint, but it's just not how I look at it. RTW was perfectly playable out of the box. I had a blast in my first (Julii) campaign - I think it was the first TW campaign I ever finished solo. It was an education in classical history (I had no idea the rise of Rome and Alexander the Great were so close in time; was largely ignorant about the successor states; had only a vague understanding of the Punic wars etc). I had a lot of fun marshalling a historical Roman army and fighting the Gauls in tactical battles was very atmospheric (it largely "felt" right and was exciting to boot). I really can't compare that with Napoleon 1813 where the game just did not work - it generated no significant battles at the strategic level and what tactical battles there were out of control events of great weirdness (the AI units just walking across the map and off it, while mine vainly struggled to get into formation and engage them). I think with RTW, you are comparing what you hoped would be your dream car with what turned out to be a Ford fiesta. With Napoleon 1813, I am comparing my dream car with a piece of scrap that I could not even start up.

RTW then blew up my laptop which dampened my ardour somewhat. And when I returned to it after a few months, I started to realise the big problems with it: notably the awful strategic AI (which just fails to bring enough boys to the fight) and the dodgy battles (cavalry and elite archers too powerful; terrible phalanx AI; weak AI tactics in general). I gave up on it for a while, but even then could regard it - as I regard say Morrowind - as an impressive technical accomplishment if not the kind of gameplay I enjoy. Just as the Morrowind world is amazing to look and hear, so seeing a RTW tactical battle in all its sound and fury was an impressive thing to me. So I could not say it was one of the worst games I had played even without mods.

Mods rehabilitated the game for me and again I can't share your perspective. For me, the mods are nothing without the core game. Gothmod is just a tweaked BI. It's like a P-51 Mustang with a better engine or more guns - same thing, just modified to improve it. I could not play RTR or EB without RTW and indeed they would not exist without RTW. So I attribute a large part of the credit for RTR or EB to the people who made the basic engine that the mods tweak. The fact that you can get much of the gameplay benefit of RTR/EB by just changing a few numbers in a couple of text files (ie slow down move and kill rates; boost AI income) makes this rather clear. Buying RTW opened up several years of playing RTR, BI, Gothmod and EB which I am still not done with. So in a very real sense, it counts as one of the best games I've ever bought - its faults out of the box not withstanding.

[Kekvit Irae]

Gothmod improved BI IMO. That's Gothmod, not BI.

Gothmod? What's that? A mod with a bunch of angsty teenagers who dress in all black and red and who don't like the sun and only listen to their faction leader, Marilyn Manson?

[Geoffrey S]

Well that's dandy, a faction that eliminates itself.

[Kekvit Irae]

Well that's dandy, a faction that eliminates itself.

No, that's the Emo faction.

[Artorius Maximus]

I say that Stronghold II was the most dissapointing to me. I tried to like it, I really did, but I couldn't play more than ten hours total with it. It was laggy, took a long time to load, and the gameplay was very difficult. It was hard work just to train ONE SPEARMAN.

I would say: ROME: TOTAL WAR

mainly because of my high prerelease expectations due to CA advertising.

This is blasphemy! This is madness!

[Quirinus]

I say that Stronghold II was the most dissapointing to me. I tried to like it, I really did, but I couldn't play more than ten hours total with it. It was laggy, took a long time to load, and the gameplay was very difficult. It was hard work just to train ONE SPEARMAN.



This is blasphemy! This is madness!

Madness? THIS.... IS...... THE ORGGGGGGG! *boot*

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Sorry, couldn't help myself.

[frogbeastegg]

Econ, where it comes to RTW, like KOTORII, I fear we shall never agree.

For me RTW was broken out of the box. The reason comes down to something I have never, ever understood about the game, and never shall. It's so uneven - two people can have a very different experience playing much the same settings, and not in a good way. Where the AI in your games tried to do things, in mine it very often did nothing whatsoever. It didn't expand, it didn't build, it barely attacked me. Shuffling stacks of its starting units about was about as exciting as it got. The only influence in that game world was mine, and I was playing on my own in the fullest sense of the word. Rebel settlements? If I didn't take them no one would. Pirates? If I didn't clear them no one would. Settlement upgrades? 50 turns into the game I'd be capturing enemy capitals which hadn't upgraded at all. And so on. I tried rushing, I tried playing at my normal slower pace, I tried sitting around doing nothing myself, and it just didn't help.

I have to call that broken; the alternative is saying the developers intended the game to be that way. I don't think the harshest of CA's critics would level that charge at them. I had numerous other troubles with the game, but I class them as design decisions I don't like rather than broken. Cavalry's overpowering strength was a design decision and I hated it, but I won't call it broken because it was intended to work that way. Neon faction colours were nasty, but intended. Etc, etc.

I'm not entirely alone. From time to time I did see other players reporting exactly the same thing. Not enough of them for me to spot a common cause for the problem.

Many of your comments about Napoleon tie in closely with my experience of RTW. To use your own analogy, I expected a porshe and got a shell with no engine and a single tyre.

But hey, we'll never agree. When we haven't had the same experience how can we?



If you want my dream car which turned out to be a Ford, look no further than Crusader Kings by Paradox. I'm semi amazed I forgot to include that before. Please, no one ask me why. I'd much rather continue to blot the game from my mind and be happy. Hmm, add Black and White to this category too. I neither expected nor wanted an RTS. Icewind Dale too. I hoped for something closer to Baldur's Gate than 'AD&D does Diablo'. Ah, actually I'll stop thinking about Fords entirely - the list is growing very quickly in my mind and it scares me. 13 years of gaming adds up to a lot of Fords.

Gothmod? What's that? A mod with a bunch of angsty teenagers who dress in all black and red and who don't like the sun and only listen to their faction leader, Marilyn Manson?

This one.