Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Lists of "worst video games ever" are quite a bit different from equivalent lists of books, movies etc., because before you can even begin to analyse whether a game is good or bad from an aesthetic perspective, it has to meet a certain floor of being functional from a technical, mechanical perspective. Hence, these lists often tend to boil down to a list of games which are hideously broken from a technical perspective (Big Rigs, E.T. for the Atari 2600), as opposed to games which are "so bad it's good/horrible" in the sense of aesthetics, tone, quality of acting, poor writing etc.. Of course a game which is so badly designed as to be functionally unplayable is very embarrassing for the studio that designed it, but it doesn't induce the same sensation of discomfort and cringe that a so-bad-it's-good film does. Broken video games, to my mind, are only interesting if you're a game designer or software developer who wants to learn what not to do; to everyone else it's just "they tried to make a game which was mechanically sound, and they failed". These games aren't interesting to discuss the way bad films can be. Probably the closest analogue is in film, in which bad films are often criticised in part for being technically incompetent. But The Room didn't become a classic of the so-bad-it's-good genre because of its primitive green screen, amateurish post-production dubbing and slapdash continuity: those elements were just the icing on the cake of its nonsensical plot, illogical characters, bizarre dialogue and its creator's misogynistic, narcissistic worldview. Even a version of The Room directed by a halfway competent production team (but using the same screenplay and actors) would probably still have been an embarrassment. (And conversely, a film with a passable screenplay and decent actors, but with clumsy post-production dubbing, would never become a classic of so-bad-it's-good cinema on the level of The Room.)
With all of that preamble out of the way, I'm curious what you consider the worst video games ever from an aesthetic perspective. In particular, I'm interested in video games which are technically functional and not completely broken, but which make so many bad aesthetic choices that playing them induces a feeling of vicarious embarrassment comparable to what one might experience watching an Ed Wood or Neil Breen film.
(I'm sure someone's going to mention Deadly Premonition but I'm not sure if it really counts: looking at the cutscenes I get the distinct impression that the developers were in on the joke and deliberately aiming for a cheesy kind of B-movie humour.)
I've got something that might fit.
Hardspace: shipbreaker
Mechanically an amazing game and very fun.
Story wise atrocious, and heavily panned in many reviews.
It's a story of workers doing a miserable and dangerous job for shit pay, so they rise up to fight their bosses by destroying a bunch of property as a form of strike. It would probably be a fine story as a movie.
The problem is it creates a total mood disconnect with the player. Not only do I enjoy the main characters' supposedly "miserable" job, I actually payed money to the developers to do this "miserable" job.
I think other games solve this sometimes mood disconnect by just having dishonest characters tell the player that what they are doing is fun and good. Like Glados in portal.
I ended up trying to make as little progress as possible in the Hardspace campaign, until I was done with the game and wanted to see for myself just how bad the story was. It's just cringe. And one of those things that you don't realize is an unwritten rule of video games storytelling: never directly trash your own video game within the video game. If you need to do so for storytelling reasons, get an obviously dishonest character to say nice things.
In between HW3 and Shipbreaker, we have two Blackbird Interactive games as answers here. A gold mine of cringe. Wonder what they'll do next.
An extraction shooter marketed to fans of boomer shooters.
Wait, Bungie has that covered…
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link