Games aren’t perfect, we all know that. For every Mass Effect or Uncharted out there, there’s bound to be a few mediocre titles that pop up. But at least those games will have their fans, a small dedicated following and eventually its own wiki crafted by obsessed fanatics with no life at all. But then you get bad games. Games so terrible that you will would rather perform open heart surgery on yourself with anaesthetic than than pop that title into your console. Here’s a look at several games that deserve special mention for their sheer awfulness.
Night Trap
Oh Sega CD, yours was a special kind of failiure that for once didn’t involve an angry man shouting at us about the virtues of blast processing. But we’ll always remember you for your grainy footage and poor audio that obviously took lip-synching lessons from B grade Kung Fu movies.
Night trap was no exception to the rule, giving gamers a title that managed to combined perverted voyeurism with stupid teenagers and vampires. Now if ever there was a group of people that deserved to be hunted down by non-sparkly vampires, it would be this clique of ladies and their annoying valley girl speech patterns. Stuck in a house that for some reason is under siege from German rubbersuit fetish vampires, your are the only hope the dimwitted girls have, as you have to lure the vamps into a preset trap in the house that launches some kind of magic, nosferatu-disabling smoke at the attackers.
Or you can do humanity a favour and just let the vampires kill the girls.
Zelda: Wand of Gamelon
Its almost unheard of to see the words “Zelda†and “terrible†together.I would have thrown in some more words, but this is website would then have to start asking if you were 18 or older before you could enter. Appearing only (thankfully) on the CDI console, players took on the role of the princess herself for a change, on a quest to rescue Link. With a side-scrolling design and numerous weapons at her disposal, its amazing how badly the developers ruined this basic gameplay mechanic. Zelda moves like an epileptic sufferer at an anime convention, while her attack skills are as useful as strapping a Gatling gun to a hamster.
As if the atrocious gameplay wasn’t bad enough, players also had to sit through several minutes of mind-bending and horribly voice-acted animations, an experience that anti-drug campaigners still use today to convince children to stay off drugs.
Iron Man 2
Where to begin with Iron Man 2? Is it the broken gameplay? The flawed visuals? The way too short story mode that happens to have no redeeming factors whatsoever, and will leave you with more regrets than that time you spent cash at a positive mental health reinforcement seminar . Yeah its probably all that combined, and no amount of awesome armour can save this game from the garbage pile.
Rise of the Robots
Ignore the beautiful visuals, and you’ve got a game that’s more broken than Stephen Hawking when he forgets to bring an umbrella on on a rainy day. In the year 2043, the robots have finally decided to go ahead and revolt, thanks to a combination of a virus and a computer hive mind that thinks she’s all that. As the only uninfected robot, thanks to your fleshy human brain, its up to you to punch and kick your way through a series of difficult robot adversaries, thus saving mankind.
As a fighting game. Rise failed dismally. Enemies were notorious for being cheap and for attacks being spammed, while your own character had the fighting skills of a plastic bag. Attacks were sluggish, movement was painfully slow, and your repertoire of moves were confined to either punch, kick, or “Dear god, just kill me now pleaseâ€.
Leisure Suit Larry: Box Office Bust
How do you completely ruin what was once a successful, albeit guilty pleasure,gaming franchise? Why you make a sequel that doesn’t learn a thing from its predecessor obviously! While the previous game, Magnum Cum Laude, at least made an attempt to keep some of the raunchy sexiness of the original games, Box Office Bust decided to take the one thing that made the Larry games infamous and ditch them completely.
For a game designed as a sandbox title, its amazing just how many fundamental gameplay mechanics were ruined. Repetitve and uninspired, the dumbed down scenarios and situations present in the game only further cemented its sheer awfulness, while its script consisted of such bad humour and over-reliance on swearing that it makes Bulletstorm look like Hamlet in comparison.
If the Leisure suit Larry franchise already had one foot in the grave, then this game is the proverbial wrecking game that pushed Al Lowes beloved creation in.
Not had enough yet of terrible games? Then read the original article for more digital crimes against humanity
Last Updated: July 8, 2011
