The worst games

[drone]

RTW was fun at the start, but once I got deep into my first campaign it just fell apart. Much of this was due to initial bugs, the 2 key ones being the missile/melee attack value mixup and the load game issue. The combat AI was weak, and this was compounded by the strategic AI incompetence. It felt like I was playing computerized whack-a-mole beating up on small stacks roaming around. It also was too much like a job micromanaging your territory, agents, and stacks once your empire got large. I know some of these problems got fixed later, but it turned me off the game before those patches came out. I never felt the urge to reward CA's effort by buying BI, and just went back to MTW.

I was disappointed with RTW, but not as much as I was with MoO3.

[Makanyane]

Worst, load once and delete, ones I acquired:

Codename:Panzers (luckily only bought from bargain bin)
Empires: Dawn of the Modern World (trying to be Age of Empires and failing)
BladeRunner (good film - absolutely no idea what the game was trying to do....)

and Moo3 for me too, which is doubly annoying because we used to play the earlier version on LAN and loved it, so we actually bought two of the damn 'improved' game before deciding it was utterly unplayable!

[Mouzafphaerre]

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I should have mentioned, once done with MiNO:

Age of Empires (any)
Civilisations (any)
The cartoon remake of Pirates!
Empire Earth (bad replica of an already bad thing)


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[KarlXII]

Big Rigs. Dear God. 4 boring trucks, you pass through scenery, fall through bridges (yep, RIGHT THROUGH THEM!) and go up mountains, completely vertically, at 180 mph of course. Don't buy it, avoid it like the plague, if you get this game, you're wasting your time, money and soul. I bought it for 5$, and I feel ripped off.

[Quirinus]

Age of Empires (any)
Civilisations (any)
The cartoon remake of Pirates!
Empire Earth (bad replica of an already bad thing)

I didn't quite enjoy the Civilization series either, though I suspect it's more a matter of personal taste than anything.

But I enjoyed Pirates!, in the brief time I played it (I played it in a internet cafe for an hour or so). I particularly liked the ship combat system-- both the cannoning and the fight after you board a ship.

Empire Earth I played when it first came out, and I enjoyed it. Granted, my standards have risen a lot in the intervening years (I can't stand to see 'China' brandishing legionary-look-alike Short Sword now), but you have to admit that the multiplayer was pretty fun-- especially towards the modern age-- nothing like strafing a bunch of Imperial Age grenadiers with WWI biplanes.

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.

Why is that?

[Kekvit Irae]

Land of the Dead: Road to Fiddler's Green

[Crazed Rabbit]

Xtreme Paintball

CR

[Fragony]

BladeRunner (good film - absolutely no idea what the game was trying to do....)

Owwwwww? Good game

[Togakure]

I'm careful about what games I purchase, researching first and usually waiting until the game's been out for a year or so. Thus, I haven't encountered many really bad games. The biggest disappoint that comes to mind for me was Masters of Orion III. I played the heck out of MOO II, and III had so much potential ... but the overall experience was very disappointing.

Another game that disappointed me in the same genre is Galactic Civilizations. It got excellent reviews and sold well. When I finally bought and played it though, it just didn't have the magic that prior games in the same genre had, for me anyway.

EDIT: Yes, of course the biggest disappointments in my gaming history have been RTW, M2TW, their expansions, etc. I've only sampled them on other peoples' PCs, not bought them. Sad to say, it's not likely that I will buy another TW game. The direction they've taken is not to my taste.

[Adrian II]

My worst buy ever was Knights & Merchants - stupid, repetitive, predictable to the core.

[Crandaeolon]

Worst purchase - MoO 3. Because of its great predecessor I tried to deceive myself into thinking the game was decent. Much grinding of teeth and pulling of hair resulted when that fragile illusion shattered.

While not objectively bad games, Titan Quest and GalCiv 2 never saw much playtime. The gameplay in TQ felt very dated after Guild Wars, and GalCiv 2 missed tactical space battles, an ingredient I consider absolutely essential in space strategy games.

I've had a lot of disappointments with bargain bin and other cheap games of course, but those probably don't count.

[TB666]

Land of the Dead: Road to Fiddler's Green

Well that game is kinda like Oblivion, you have to mod it to truelly enjoy it.
The X3 mod make the game far more better by adding 3 times as many zombies.

[Quirinus]

GalCiv 2 missed tactical space battles, an ingredient I consider absolutely essential in space strategy games.

I'd venture to say that maybe you've missed the point of the GalCiv games, which IMO is more of a nation-building sim that happens to be set in space, than anything.

[Martok]

I'd venture to say that maybe you've missed the point of the GalCiv games, which IMO is more of a nation-building sim that happens to be set in space, than anything.

I'm not sure he really missed the point per se. I think he's just saying that for him, he finds tactical battles between ships/fleets to be an essential part of space strategy games, and that therefore GC2 feels like it's lacking.

While I won't say that I think battles are essential in space 4X games, I admit I do enjoy them very much. GalCiv 2 is a great game, but I won't deny that I would've loved it if I could've controlled battles as well (instead of just watching them on the tactical viewer).

[Crandaeolon]

I think he's just saying that for him, he finds tactical battles between ships/fleets to be an essential part of space strategy games, and that therefore GC2 feels like it's lacking.

Yeah. Please, allow me to explain what I mean:

Overall the game is great, of course, and GC2 fully deserves its accolades. There's just nothing "in-depth" about the combat, even though marketing slogans claim otherwise. Reviews also spread false information. Gamespot quote:

In addition to playing with the default ships included with the game, there's a very cool ship designer that'll let you make your own. ... you can successfully take the approach of designing fleets of small, fast, and pesky fighters that may be effective against larger capital ships if you choose your weapons wisely (defenses are effective only against specific weaponry). Conversely, you may prefer fighting with huge space dreadnoughts, or perhaps mixed fleets. Prudent investment in espionage can give you a crucial advantage in discovering what weapons system the enemy is building, so you can design the most effective weapons and shields to counter them. But be aware that the AI is likely doing some spying of his own.

Sounds great, no? Intricate ship design, diverse weapons, hard choices, espionage. Too bad most of it is not true (or wasn't true in the retail version, I don't really know how the game has progressed since then.)

The space 4X genre has always been about epic space battles. Marketing and reviews both claimed that GC2 had interesting ship design and combat. As a fan of the space 4X genre I believed this, bought the game and got burned with a Civ in space instead.

GC2's promise of an "In-depth combat system for planning and executing strategic warfare" just didn't pan out. I was fully aware that the game does not have player-controlled tactical battles, but the simplistic rock paper scissors (beam, missile, mass driver), dumbed down RTS tactics (all ships focus-firing on one ship all the time) boring mechanics (attack was always better than defense in the retail version at least) and frighteningly ugly combat presentation (ships floating around randomly) are more suited to a board game for retarded monkeys than a space 4X game. IMHO.

I won't deny that I would've loved it if I could've controlled battles as well (instead of just watching them on the tactical viewer).

I'm not talking about player control actually, just that the "tactical" combat system in GC2 is a needless, brainless marketing gimmick. Space Empires and Dominions are good examples of how to make a good combat system without direct player control.

[Quirinus]

Oh my, yes, I agree with you on that. The space combat system was limp and for the most part not as good as expected. But I was disagreeing with you in this:

The space 4X genre has always been about epic space battles. Marketing and reviews both claimed that GC2 had interesting ship design and combat. As a fan of the space 4X genre I believed this, bought the game and got burned with a Civ in space instead.

Personally, the most gratifying GalCiv games I had were games where I didn't have to fight a major war or, in a couple of them, not even fire a single bullet to win the game, that is, by using diplomacy, trade and/or influence. The meat of the game for me was always the robust AI and the nation-building bit-- in effect, "Civ in space".

Also, (this is another personal reason) I played the first GalCiv too, which had literally spreadsheet ship combat, where all ships had a number for attack, one for defense, and one for hitpoints, and that was the sum total of their combat engine. So when I played GalCiv II, I was disappointed that it had no tactical ship control, but thrilled at the ship builder, and, if not completely impressed, then happy with the rock-scissors-paper mechanics.

[Crandaeolon]

Ah, I see now. Yes, I agree that combat doesn't really need to be a significant part of a 4X space game - interstellar politics and intrigue are easily worth their own treatment. However, prior to GalCiv games the genre used to pay a lot of attention to armed conflict, and that created certain assumptions.

I intentionally skipped the first GalCiv because conflict in it was so downplayed, it just wasn't what I expected from the genre. The second GalCiv burned me because by most accounts (marketing & reviews) the combat aspect was much improved. Perhaps it was, but it just didn't meet the expectations created by MoO2 and its ilk. I was also hoping for a game to atone for the abomination that was MoO3 but it didn't. And, I didn't really want a Civ-type game at that time, the Civilization series filled that space well enough. For these reasons GC2 was a personal disappointment to me, which is what this thread seems to be about.

EDIT: There were also a lot of other oddities in the release version of CalCiv2 that degraded the overall experience. Here is an old thread in the Arena with some arguments about the issues beginning on page 3.

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showt...ivilizations+2

[Quirinus]

EDIT: There were also a lot of other oddities in the release version of CalCiv2 that degraded the overall experience. Here is an old thread in the Arena with some arguments about the issues beginning on page 3.
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showt...t=61790&page=4

I think a lot of these oddities and bugs were ironed out by successive patches-- for example, I'm almost certainly sure that the AI now does specialise on planets.

I didn't quite notice the problem with the universal production slider thing, because it was carried over from GalCiv until you mentioned it. After I read it I saw that it would indeed have improved the game quite a bit. I guess this is again the predecessor directly influencing expectations and hence indirectly enjoyment of games.

I don't think the controls are made to 'cripple' the human player versus the AI, though, it's more likely just an inherent flaw in the game. If each civilization has a unique code that can fight proxy wars, prioritize alliances and vote according to its interests, I don't think teaching it to specialise on planets would be an insurmountable difficulty.


On an unrelated note, one of the things I was annoyed about in GalCiv II was how some races are inherently hostile or well-disposed towards some race. For example, the Torians have an apathy towards the Drengin, the Iconians towards the Yor, the humans are good friends with the Altarians, etc. It does make the game more characterful, but it also removes an element of variety from the game. In the first game, every imaginable alliance, trade network, scenario can happen. Not so in the sequel.

[Abokasee]

Rise and Fall: Civilzations at war ~ This one was trying to be a TW with a small RPG element but I just didnt like it, I cant even take it back because I bought in canada for $60, (about £30) and when I tried to sell to a trade in place the people said it would only be worth £0.01 because it was a foegrin important... that sucked immensly, a worthy partner to the game at hand

Praetorions ~ Another TW wanna be

[Ferret]

micro commandos what was I thinking?!

[Mek Simmur al Ragaski]

The worst game ever that i have ever played has to be WOW, i had only played on it for 5 minutes before i got bored of it, good thing i was on my friends laptop, all you do is walk around killing stuff, nicking stuff, and others.

Also, its not on a disk, and i did actually really like it, but ill have to say Runescape2, completely bored, i cant even look at it without feeling drowsy, and i got to sleep at 4 o'clock and wake up at 9!

[Mount Suribachi]

Hidden&Dangeous, the sad part is that it was a good game at heart, but it was completily unplayable, never seen a game this buggy, wasn't even in the beta-fase. Such a shame because it could have been so good.

I always remember the PC Gamer review of that when someone called it a "bug-ridden piece of crap" and they said "no, its a bug-ridden piece of genius". After a while I tried to complete most of the missions on my own - much easier without your colleagues randomly deciding to come out of cover and firing their Brens at a German on the other side of the map.

For me - and this is going to be controversial - Operation Flashpoint. I *very* quickly became bored of all my squad mates contriving to get themselves killed in 30 seconds and being given the "mission failed" message. I'm like "well, what the hell am I supposed to do about that?" I remember one mission, being driven to a wood in a jeep. The 2 other guys in the jeep managed to get themselves killed straightaway by a Russian sniper. I then spent over an hour crawling through that wood, killed the ruskie, drove the jeep back to base and...

[MISSION FAILED



The other one that stands out is one of the NHL series....02 or 03? I forget the numbers as the years blur into one. Anyway, 00 and 01 had been hugely popular, each one getting more realistic, so of course EA decided to bring out this horrid, terrible arcade piece of trash. You think Rome dumbed down the TW series? You guys ain't seen nothing compared to what EA did to the NHL series. About the only people who liked it were 5 year olds. The next year was just the same. Thankfully after 2 years of awfulness EA started listening to the fans again and the games got much better. I still play 06 all the time.

[Kekvit Irae]

OPF gets more interesting with the Resistance and Red Hammer expansion pack, especially with the ability to keep looted weapons from mission to mission (you carry around a truck and you load up captured weapons in it) in Resistance, and the inclusion of the G36 and the Steyr Aug rifles (weapons so deadly and accurate, it's only present in a few missions). This helps make the game easier. But OPF is touted as a realistic shooter. If you go in thinking it will be like Crysis, you're in for a shock.

[TB666]

Well OFP isn't the worst but it was pretty damn bad.
Always pissed me off the fact that you weren't allowed to continue the campaign if you had too low ratings. Codemaster did the same on pretty all of their racing games at the time(finish atleast 3rd or it's game over) and that is what OFP will always remind me off, a war racing game.

[Mek Simmur al Ragaski]

Im not sure i hate a game in general, but games based on films really bore me, your so limited, its like being chained up, you have to go a certain way, the harry potter 2nd and 3rd games were all right, but the rest were terrible, also that Narnia game, Pirates of the Carribean and the new Spiderwick game all look completely useless and rubbish. I prefur games like TES Oblivion, where you can do whatever you want

[Kekvit Irae]

Pirates of the Carribean

Like RTW, vanilla PotC is bad, but there are many mods out there that turn it into a bag full of awesome and win. The same can be said for many games like Neverwinter Nights 2. Once you pop on a user-made AI mod, it becomes your new heroin.

Trivia: PotC was originally made as a pirate game with no affiliation with the movie. When the original movie came out, the developers jumped on the brand name bandwagon, slapped on the Disney logo and the Pirates of the Caribbean name, and rushed it out without any regards to fixing gameplay issues or such.


And don't even get me started on Pirates of the Caribbean Online. Free game? Yeah, it's free to play. But so is the Call of Duty 4 demo. And you'll get a LOT more fun and functionality out of the CoD4 demo than you will with the "free" version of PotCO. And that's what it is; a demo. You need to pay to upgrade to the full version. If I am going to pay for an online game, I'd rather play Pirates of the Burning Seas, which is WORLDS better than PotCO.

[Mouzafphaerre]

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The Trivia is 100% correct info. It was going to be Sea Dogs 2 but the publisher, Bethesda, sold it out for movie merchandise.

The best thing about PotC is that it's almost full open source, except the engine and related DLLs. If you're good enough with C/C++ and your imagination marvels can be made with it.
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