Worst game you ever bought

[The Matticus]

Gah, DragonAge II. It was SUCH a huge letdown compared to DragonAge: Origins. I expected an epic journey in a beautiful open world.... I-- I-- You know what? Don't get me started. -_-'' That game pisses me off. 

 

EDIT: and Fable 3. FLUCK Fable 3. >,<

Edited April 19, 2013 by Matticus

[SuperStingray]

I've played a fair share of bad games, but Mindjack is the only one I ever bought that I instantly asked for a refund for.  I mean, at least some entertainment value can be derived from Sonic 06, but Mindjack is just one of those games that's so bland and shoddily put together, I can't even have fun with it ironically.  The plot is cliched and nonsensical, the gameplay is poorly programmed and generic and   the mindhack mechanic and integrated multiplayer, the only unique things about it, add nothing substantial to the experience.

[Gabz Girl]

Oh Bubsy 3D was a mess, but at least my parents bought it for me. XP

 

Oh, just remembered one that might be quite controversial. Twilight Princess for the GCN. YES. I paid 38 pounds in CeX...for a pre-owned copy! This game, which I've wanted to play for ages but never had a chance to (wanted GCN version but it's hard to find nowadays) was finally in my hands. The game I was hyping up for years. Then I played it and...what a disappointment!

 

The dungeons weren't memorable, the character designs were mostly quite ugly, the music had some great, memorable tunes but also forgettable tunes...and why is Hyrule field so effing big if there's nothing to do there?!

Even the story, which was supposed to be really epic, isn't that great! Zant could've been an awesome villain, but he was a missed opportunity because look! Here comes Ganondorf who, for some reason, has something to do with all this! It's certainly not a bad Zelda game but it's just not my favourite. I prefer OoT and WW over this. I have to admit though that Midna is the best sidekick character in the Legend of Zelda series. I really like her and she's ten times better than Fi. 

Edited April 19, 2013 by Gabz Girl

[Tara]

I've played a fair share of bad games, but Mindjack is the only one I ever bought that I instantly asked for a refund for.  I mean, at least some entertainment value can be derived from Sonic 06, but Mindjack is just one of those games that's so bland and shoddily put together, I can't even have fun with it ironically.  The plot is cliched and nonsensical, the gameplay is poorly programmed and generic and   the mindhack mechanic and integrated multiplayer, the only unique things about it, add nothing substantial to the experience.

I watched a review of Mindjack once and laughed my head off at how horrible it was.  It's like, some games don't need an explanation for why they're so bad.  Though I notice you didn't mention how the bosses (or at least the one boss I saw in the review) are just for show and don't actually attempt to hurt you and instead you're just supposed to gun down wave after wave of generic enemy soldiers.

[Doctor MK]

I dunno about worst game in terms of quality, but in terms of just absolute shoddiness...

 

 

MySims.

 

Goddam freakin' MySims.

 

I loathe this game with a burning passion that mere words are incapable of comprehending. Before Animal Crossing: City Folk Let's Go The City! was released for the Wii - which was another incredibly disappointing game, thinking about it - MySims was billed as the next big build-your-own-life kinda thing but with extra emphasis on construction and character customisation and other such nonsense. It looked quite good, and it certainly was getting a lot of attention from the gaming press in the run up to its release. It even scored a whoppingly overrated 94% from Official Nintendo Magazine, which I think was what persuaded me to take the plunge and give it a try in the end.

 

Worst. Mistake. EVER.

 

The game was just horrible. The whole thing felt clunky and unresponsive, the load times were horrendous, and it literally made my Wii sound like it was choking to death on its crappiness. Seriously. No joke. My Wii was making the most worrying noises whenever the MySims disc was spinning around inside it. No other disc did that. Just this one.

 

Needless to say, I gave up on it very quickly. It was by no means the next Animal Crossing, and it was certainly not worthy of a 94% score.

 

Much satisfaction was had from trading this pile of doo-doo in so I could buy something less of a shambles instead.

[Linkabel]

 

This game right here. I've bought some pretty bad games in the past, but for some reason this one takes the cake. Not going to lie, at first I was kind of into it, but as I continued playing the game my disappointment grew.

 

Half of the time I didn't know what was going because of the bad details they gave you. The helicopter/planes etc etc. flew like, well, flying shit. The graphics sucked and the controls were not as responsive as I would like.

 

Worst gaming experience from my Dreamcast days.

[SuperStingray]

I watched a review of Mindjack once and laughed my head off at how horrible it was.  It's like, some games don't need an explanation for why they're so bad.  Though I notice you didn't mention how the bosses (or at least the one boss I saw in the review) are just for show and don't actually attempt to hurt you and instead you're just supposed to gun down wave after wave of generic enemy soldiers.

I don't think I even got that far in.

[KHCast]

I forgot to add this;

 

 

This game really tested my patience. It basically drops you in the deep end from the very beginning. If you waste your valuable money on seeds and plant them in the wrong season, your crop fails completely and you've wasted your investment entirely. The game doesn't even instruct you on which seasons seeds have to be planted in. The game gives you hardly any guidance at all and clearly expects you to know the other villager's routines so you can interact with them in the right time frame. You work your ass off and get fatigued yet have little food to satiate your farmer. Before long, you're running around eating Mugworts and other stuff growing wild outside to hopefully sustain him. The villagers are all cheap ungrateful people who happily take gifts from you but refuse to share what they have.

 

It an incredibly unforgiving, extremely slow-paced, dull struggle that is very unintuitive and quite boring. It's characters aren't very endearing, being either jerkasses, moochers or as interesting as watching paint dry. It's a game that doesn't provide much sense of escapism. I'm sure that it's the kind of game that improves with a real investment of time and knowledge of it's intricacies but It really didn't captivate me enough to make me endure it until that point.

I found that game fun...... >_>....yeah those problems do exist though, won't deny it. It's okay for a harvest moon game. Not my favorite though. Not by a long shot!

Edited April 20, 2013 by Hedgehogs Boost

[Eternal EX]

Sonic 06. Do I even have to explain myself?

[Tani Coyote]

Sonic 06 is 100x better than Spyro: A New Beginning. That game is atrocious and is like Sonic Unleashed, except without the characters I love and adore, and nothing to separate the Werehog stages from eachother. It's never ending melee after melee and gets boring and stale very quick.

 

I bought it to try and diversify my collection of furry franchises that I could obsess over. I bought the classics for PSN; they are FAR superior. Every time someone says Sonic's fallen from grace, I'm going to mention Spyro and Crash Bandicoot.

[Teoskaven]

-Monster Hunter Freedom

I only heard about the Monster Hunter series before getting this title; sadly, i found it slow, painful, and overall even boring. And it's sad because the premise is really good with different monsters, weapon/armour customization, etc.

 

-Lord of Arcana

Basically the same thing of the previous title; the only difference here is that the protagonist has a smaller weapon and there are QTE.

 

-Jak II: Renegade

The rest of the series is fine, but this damn title. I already said everything in my other posts, but long story short: it's cheap, it's difficult, it's unfair, it's punishing and there's almost 0 variety.

[Yoko/葉子]

For me, its Castlevania Harmony of Despair. Sure you get a large variety of heroes from the series, but much like Sonic 4 Episode 1, there was way too much recycling. The chances of getting good equipment was obnoxious, didn't like some of the voices (English AND Japanese), no real story or cutscenes, odd leveling up and some bad remixes, need I say more?

[redhellc]

For me, Spider man web of shadows for the ps2.

 

Oh god, I can't believe I spent so much money on that.

[Lisbon]

If I were to call it honestly, I'd say Secret Rings, seeing that the letdown I experienced from saving up as a little kid to buy that game only for it to be a complete piece of shit was just infuriating to me. I don't know, though, I feel like excluding the Sonic series for the sake of thought alone.

 

I didn't technically buy this on my own, seeing that I bought it with money I received for Christmas the year it came out, but if I'd have to say that this game was the worst I ever bought.

 

 

 

When I was little, my ability to assess quality in a game wasn't too much to be proud of. I'd play almost anything that was put in front of me unless it was just outright, boring rubbish. Spyro: Enter the Dagronfly was probably my first real disappointment as a gamer and one of the main reasons I actually tried out Sonic, because I didn't want to play anymore Spyro after this game.

When I was little, the first three Spyro games on the Playstation were my jam. I long for the days of sitting in front of that box like TV, playing Ripto's Rage and munching away on this chocolatey delight. I remember my dad taking me to the Movie Gallery to rent Year of the Dragon and buying me a chocolate bar and a bowl of microwave popcorn to go along with my rental. It was amazing, really. Most of my earliest childhood memories involve this guy. 

 

I was about 6 when Enter the Dragonfly came out, I think? Maybe 7. I was little. The only thing I remember about this game specifically is that it pissed me off about how it had to load just to have a load screen. The little purple bar at the bottom would take forever to fill up, and just when I thought I was going to a new area, BAM - turns out, it was just loading for the fucking actual load screen's simple image of Spyro flying. 

 

I hated this game as a kid because it just frustrated me so much. I couldn't ever figure out what to do and why I couldn't accomplish anything - and Spyro games aren't a myriad of complexity either. You hit one button and you breath fire, one button to charge enemies if you can't hurt them with fire, one button to jump and one button to fly - that's about all someone really needed to know to play these games, yet I couldn't even get past the first couple of levels before just outright calling it quits. I didn't want anymore Spyro after that.

 

Fucking hell, too - I wanted something new so my dad bought me SA2:B for the Gamecube as a result. If this game never happened, I probably would've been able to go through life without being a Sonic fan

[error1]

For me the worst game i played was possibly double dungeons on the Pc engine. When dungeon crawling everything looks the same confusing you as to where you should go. 

[Phos]

Hmm, gonna have to go with Star Wars: Super Bombad Racing. It's the game that made me realize that the "select games" feature from Tips & Tricks leaves a lot to be desired. I feel like there should be a worse game super Bombad racing is a fairly servicible if unremarkable Mario Kart clone, but that's always the one that jumps to my mind.

Oh wait there is a worse one: S.C.A.R.S., for the Nintendo 64. It was not a servicible Mario Kart clone. Probably its biggest problem was that most of the pickups were these forward launched stage hazards that didn't do anything because the AI had perfect timing and would just always jump over it.

I've probably bought some others that are more conventionally bad (for lack of a better term), but hey, I had fun with Ray Tracers and Crime Killer, no matter how schlocky they were.

Oh wait, just remembered a more recent example, "Strike Vector", on the PC. This game that touts its heavily skill based and competitive design just doesn't really control so well, aiming seems very odd, and the craft don't seem as maneuverable as you would expect based on their depiction.

[Gabz Girl]

Shadow the Hedgehog. Wasted 60 Euros on that POS and it's still the worst Sonic game for me, just below Sonic 06. At least Sonic 06 was bought at bargain bin price though... >>

 

Also sorta regret buying Mario & Sonic at the Olympic games. Another full price buy for a meh minigame fest, urgh.

[Failinhearts]

I don't remember if I bought it or got it as a gift but Sonic And The Secret Rings takes this spot.

The regular levels without missions and Party Mode was the only fun I had.

[Speederino]

Uggggggh this isn't a memory I like to dwell on often. So before I talk about the game, there's a story behind it that is honestly what makes this purchase truly sting.

 

You see way back in late 2002/early 2003, my brother was looking to clear out some his old PS1 and N64 games. The way he tells it these days is that he told me I could sell his unwanted ones AFTER he sorted through them and figured out what to keep. Well, the way *I* remember it is that he just told me I could sell them all. Period.

 

So I did.

 

I traded in the likes of Goldeneye 007, Tomb Raider, Dino Crisis, Metal Gear Solid (tbf I had intended to keep that one, I guess it got in the pile by accident), and possibly Perfect Dark along with a buttload of other games for about $60 at Gamestop. So what did I do with this money? Well $30 went towards either Zelda: Oracle of Seasons or Super Mario Advance 2. Either way, that's not bad. But what about the remaining $30? What other game did I decide was worth sacrificing friggen Goldeneye 007 and Metal Gear Solid for?

 

[Spidey3525]

About a year ago, I heard about this game on the Wii U eShop called The Letter that was receiving negative reviews, calling it the worst game on the eShop. My cousins pressured me into buying the game since it was only a dollar and played it soon after.

 

It was horrible. It plays like Slender if Slender wasn't in the game. You wander levels in search of random objects with no danger ever present, unless you count dying of boredom, especially in the second level, which is ridiculously massive. The story is equally bad as well, with the biggest cliche serving as the ending. The game describes itself as a horror game, which is true for the wrong reasons. Bad graphics, horrible story, broken flashlight mechanic, and lack of save feature make this game worse than it should have been.

 

Until the update released, which threw in the save feature and added many more problems, such as making the second level even bigger than before with more objects to find. There's a bonus level that can be accessed by finding five tapes in the levels, but I couldn't push myself to find them.

 

The only good thing that came out of this purchase was the laughter that ensured when my cousins and I realized that this game was as bad as people said it was. 

[Blacklightning]

Lazy copypasta from another forum gogogo:

 

 

I played a lot of awful games back in the day, but to this day I don't think I've ever played one as astonishingly bad as the console RTS Stormrise.

Let's start from the bottom and work our way up. The controls. They're mind bogglingly crap, and centrefold to every issue with it is the much-touted "Whip Select" system it uses to pick allied units to control. You hold the right stick in a certain direction, a HUD shows up, you hold it in the direction of one of your unit icons, then release to select it - hence a "whip" movement. The problems start when you realize the gameplay takes place in a 3D space and Whip Select is a horizontal 2D overlay, so often the icons don't actually line up to where they are relative to where your camera is. Then you have to consider that, thanks to the shockingly low command limit (basically a sin in RTS games on its own), most of your units are going to be generally clustered around the same general area, so the icons will overlap a lot and you'll often have to whip multiple times to get to the unit you were actually aiming for. Then you have to consider that, while you can rotate your camera freely, it leaves you completely unable to control where it's placed, so you're unable to look ahead to where you're sending a squad in a game where it can quickly kill them without warning. More on that later.

What really takes the friggin' cake is that the developers somehow thought Whip Select warranted a goddamned patent. Seriously, look close at the back of the box, there's a copyright notice for it. Did they seriously think they'd get more than one use out of it?

Next off, Stormwise has what is probably the second most awful learning curve known to man, behind Street Fighter. There is a tutorial level, but it teaches you how to Whip Select, how to make a unit attack another unit, and not much else. This is basically the equivalent of a New Super Mario Bros game teaching a player to move and jump, but not how to run, and Stormrise ignores essential controls to actually playing the game properly until, get this, midway into the second mission of the game. How essential? Oh, you know, stuff like moving more than one unit at a time. You know, that thing you want to do when you're gearing up to attack an enemy base? That thing you'll have needed to do twice already? And even then, you'll never get to move more than two squads at a time. Somehow the need for the player to select as many units as they need to escaped them entirely.

Finally, there's combat and the balancing thereof. The first two missions (three if you count the tutorial) consist exclusively of infantry, and somehow manages to be convoluted as all hell with just that. There are two to three infantry units in total, but I never saw any reason to use anything other than the standard riflemen because they come in groups of 5-10 and the others don't seem to go above two despite no noticable power increase. In combat the main gimmick is Crossfiring, which is engaging a single target from two different angles to multiply the damage from both participants. Which is probably meant to discourage sending an army into a base as one big amorphous blob, but it turns fighting into a complete and utter campfest - in the time it takes for a squad to stop and start firing, a crossfiring defender will have already obliterated half of it, even if the offenders themselves are crossfiring. Literally the only workable strategy in the game is turtling, especially when all routes to the enemy's base are choke points, and it's not uncommon to have to go through 5-10 separate assaults to overcome even a trivial amount of defenses on the enemy's part. To say the least, it's obnoxious, repetitive and incredibly boring.

tl;dr, Stormrise is an RTS game that tried to streamline itself specifically to be playable to a console audience, and somehow managed to be even less playable than other games on the systems that used traditional RTS controls. And it takes a spectacular kind of awful to screw it up that badly when Brutal Legend manages everything Stormrise tried to do practically effortlessly, and still had enough creative meat left over to make the player himself a presence in the field too.

[Agie]

Sonic Lost World on the Nintendo 3DS.

 

It's one of the hardest games in the series...but it's hard for the wrong reasons! Bad level design, bad motion sensor controls, and the fact that the larger enemies take forever to kill!

 

On the motion controls bit...you know something is wrong when stuff you should avoid in favor of the motion controls is still easier to deal with.

 

The Wii U version might have had that problem, but I got the patch before it became a serious one. The 3DS version didn't get a patch, and is highly unlikely to get one at this point.

 

Also, GoldenEye Reloaded on the PS3.

 

Why did I buy this from K-Mart? The game is bland. The level designs don't have the same effect as the N64 original. Now, I understand the legalities preventing them from using the old designs (outside a few nods), but they didn't even try to give it the same feeling as the old one.

 

While it could be annoying, the old version had exploration and such. This version is too linear and holds your hand too much for my liking. It outright points out where to go.

 

The graphics are pretty. That's my best praise.

 

If this is what modern first person shooters are like, I'd rather keep playing old ones.

 

I'm sure there's more, but they're not immediately popping up in my head for some reason.

 

EDIT: Also Final Fantasy XIII for Xbox 360.

 

I got bored before I even got halfway through the first disk. The graphics are nice, and the character designs I like...and that's it. It's a boring game, and the fact that it got not one, but two sequels bewilders me.

[Shade Vortex]

This is a tried-and-true answer, but let's give it a go!

 

The worst game I ever bought was Sonic 06. See, back in 2006, I remember that there had only been so many mediocre or bad Sonic games. For me, I hadn't even experienced the likes of Labyrinth and 3D Blast until later.

 

And at the time, the Adventure games were looked back upon fondly, so the idea that there'd be a game in a similar vein brought a lot of hype. I remember that SEGA's brilliant marketing department decided to only really show the action scenes that emphasized the good of the game.

 

Also, back then I was 16 years old, so I was more gullible, not as savvy on what "good" games were, and just was buying most Sonic games regardless. Anyways, this is the game that changed all that for me...

 

On launch I bought the game for its full 60 dollar pricetag, and what I got was of course a glitchy game with long (and frequent) loading screens, annoying side missions, pointless collectibles, annoying boss fights (Silver and Shadow mainly), bad physics, terribly executed gameplay mechanics (Mach Speed sections), inconsistent framerate, and a myriad of other problems.

 

Of course, I had some fun with the game, and it's not literally the worst game ever, but it just was the most disappointing purchase I've ever made, and thus also the worst game I've ever bought.

 

Ever since then, I have avoided impulse buying, and tend to wait until I see extensive gameplay, hear impressions, and also try and have some hands on experience with the game before I buy it, if possible. It was certainly the ultimate lesson for my game-buying habits.

[Daisy-Fan]

Medal of Honor Warfighter and BF4 first week of his release.

[Tara]

I guess I shouldn't complain, because I got this game super cheap thanks to Steam's extremely generous sales... and also, I only played about thirty minutes of the game, so maybe my opinion isn't super well informed, but after some time of being interested in the game, I played The Last Remnant on PC.

 

Wow.  It's awful.  It's a complete trainwreck of an RPG.

 

The story is literally every JRPG cliche tossed at you within the first five seconds.  Your sister is kidnapped. You're the generic animu protagonist that shouts the girl's name every two seconds.  The protagonist isn't perfect and is also kind of a dick but you're supposed to empathize with him anyway because he's your every man. (Except not because there's nothing relatable or empathizable about the character's cocky attitude)  Also, you're some grand "chosen one" born of some prestige position I don't remember.  None of these are particularly bad on their own or even in conjunction.  But they're thrown at you within the first ten minutes in the game consecutively and the game has such a pretentious tone to it.

 

Part of this may have just been my PC at the time, but the cutscenes are awful.  The camera is all over the place, the voice acting isn't the worst by far but it's still bland and lacking in direction.  The tone is very monotonous.

 

And the gameplay isn't much better.  The battle system (in my opinion) is extraneous and complicated.  The mechanics are confusing, but without anything interesting or positively complex to justify it.  Granted, it may just be me being stupid, but the tutorial didn't exactly help it.  And even moving around in the hub world is surprisingly strange feeling.  I mean, you can still get from Point A to Point B, but it feels stiff, unnatural and just odd.

 

And these problems are just unrelenting.  I mean, you're welcome to criticize me for judging the game without at least completing the main story first and you might not be totally wrong, but I felt like I literally couldn't continue playing the game, because at no point in the thirty minutes to an hour of playtime are these issues any less prominent.  It's all shoved right in your face from the get go with no hopes of stopping for the foreseeable duration of the game of stopping.