Controller Crusade Roundtable: What is the Worst Game You’ve Ever Played?
Hey everyone, and welcome to another Controller Crusade Roundtable discussion. Every Friday our team of writers tackle a different gaming question, and the question this week is “What is the worst game you have ever played?”. Everyone has had that moment when a game turns out to be incredibly disappointing and not what you’d expect, so let’s hear from our team about some of their gaming nightmares.
Josh
The worst game I have ever played has to be a little game I picked up a few years back called Clive Barker’s Jericho on the Playstation 3. I was at the local EB Games and I noticed this game, which I had never heard of, with a $1.00 price tag on it. I thought this was a misprint so I brought it up to the counter and informed them of their error. They assured me that this was no error and that Jericho was actually only worth $1.00. I had to see this for myself so I purchased the game and began playing it; Boy do I regret that decision. The levels were linear, the AI was horribly stupid, and the quick time events made me want to throw my controller through my TV. I guess I can’t fully criticize the game since it came out in 2007 and I was playing it in 2012, but Clive Barker’s Jericho definitely did not age well.
A close second for me was 007 Legends. I’m a massive James Bond fan, and I really enjoyed the Goldeneye remake. I figured that 007 Legends would be pretty similar, and I couldn’t have been more wrong. If you could mold a dog turd into a blu ray disc, it would be 007 Legends. It took all of the Bond movies of my childhood and turned them into a horrible joke. I still have nightmares of that awful Skyfall dirtbike level, where the crowds of people seem to hover an inch above the ground and slide in and out of your way. If you’re a Bond fan and you have not played 007 Legends, STAY AWAY.
Justin
I’m not sure if it’s the worst game I’ve ever played, but Mindjack is certainly up there. It seemed pretty cool on the surface – a third person where you hack into the mind’s of your enemies and make them fight on your side, while you’re hopping around from body to body, but failed on, well, pretty much every level. It’s just such a clunky, awkward game that’s difficult to even control, much less have fun with. I even tried to push through and finish it, just to say I did it, but I couldn’t do it. Whether it was terrible controls, the spotty hit detection, the slow, awkward dialogue sequence after every single encounter (which locks out most of your controls), the straight hallway level design that made up every single level, or the bosses that had 10 times as much health as they should have, Mindjack was a complete and total disaster of a game. I only paid five dollars for it and I still feel ripped off.
Wedge
One of the worst games I have ever played is strangely one I’ve had for as long as I can remember, Action 52 on the NES. How it ever came into my possession I am not completely sure. Back when I was much younger, my older brother borrowed a lot of games from friends and had a tendency to not give them back, so maybe that was how. At least that’s the story I’m going to stick with, cause the idea of my parents paying over 200 dollars for something like this is embarrassing.
Action 52 is at least one of the worst games on the console, if not all time. This is the pinnacle of failure, an achievement that even to this day strangely impresses me. Usually when a game fails, even spectacularly, you can at least conceive what it tragically strived to be, however Action 52 doesn’t invoke such an impression, other than it was a soulless, false advertising cash-in. It advertised that it contained 52 games on one cartridge with a variety of different genres, but unfortunately lackluster graphics, design, controls and sometimes even functionality plagued every single one of them. There is not one game on it that even meets the standard of mediocre. They’re bad, legendarily bad. I could explain further in-depth why, but someone else has already done that quite adequately. Admittingly though, there is a certain novelty to it. It is amusing to witness just how terrible it is, so I guess in a sense it does achieve at being entertaining – if one is to give it credit for anything. Oh, and the Cheetahmen theme is pretty catchy too.
That’s a wrap on this edition of Controller Crusade Roundtable. As always we love when our readers join in on the discussion, so give us your two cents in the comments below. Also if you have any questions that you would like our team to answer for next week, let us know! Check back next week, and each and every Friday for more Controller Crusade Roundtable Discussions.
