So Bad It's Horrible/Video Games: Difference between revisions

{{Video Game Examples Need Sorting}}

 

 

Hopefully, someone in the quality-assurance divisions of several game companies got fired over letting [[So Bad It's Horrible (Darth Wiki)|these titles]] slip through the cracks. These probably wouldn't pass muster as coasters or clay pigeons.

 

'''''Second Important Note:''''' A game isn't horrible just because [[The Angry Video Game Nerd]], [[The Spoony Experiment|Spoony]], [[Zero Punctuation|Yahtzee]], or any other [[Caustic Critic]] [[Reviews Are the Gospel|reviewed it]]. There needs to be independent evidence, such as actual, professional reviews, to list it. (Though once it is listed, they can provide the detailed review(s).)

 

== Second Generation (1977-84) ==

* ''Karate'' for the [[Atari 2600]] was a near-unplayable [[Fighting Game]] with extremely unresponsive controls and with almost no chance to win. There's only so much you can do with a digital joystick and one button. (Let us note that Atari's first-party joysticks were fragile, so unresponsive controls will lead to shredded controllers.) Some even consider ''it'' the worst Atari 2600 game.

* ''Isle of the Dead'' is a strong contender for the worst FPS of all time. Coming out the same year as ''[[Doom (series)|Doom]]'', its engine is more on the level of ''[[Wolfenstein 3D]]''. Right from the start, the game offers enemies which can tear you to pieces in seconds and respawn right after you leave the room. The graphics and sound are horrible—with nothing to tell parts of the map apart, navigation becomes far too difficult. There are some static screens where you interact (similar to adventure games), but in these you are often clueless about what you are supposed to do, and can easily miss crucial items. To top it all off, quitting the game is referred to as "the coward's way out," and is greeted with a [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3nh27bRXYQ#t=6m41s graphic depiction] of a [[Ate His Gun|shotgun suicide]].

* ''[[Legend of Success Joe]]'', a horrible excuse of a boxing game [[The Problem with Licensed Games|based on]] the manga/anime ''[[Ashita no Joe]]''. The gameplay alternates between ''very'' primitive [[Beat'Em Up]] segments in which Joe fights a few [[Mooks|wimpy enemies that die in one punch]] before fighting a very long boss, and boxing matches based on famous battles of the series. The controls are clunky and unresponsive, and the music sounds like something out of an early NES game even though this game was produced for one of the most powerful systems of the early 1990s. The graphics are not much better — an ugly, overly-bright color palette, non-existent animation, and hunchbacked character sprites. It was one of the few early [[Neo Geo]] titles that [[No Export for You|stayed in Japan]], for good reason.

** It doesn't end there. Cutscenes, even ones that are supposed to take place in castles, are composed of [[Walls of Text]] between people standing in some field. Sprites are poorly made — only cloak color differentiates the hobbits from each other, and no one but Gimli and Gandalf looks any different from the generic NPCs. The cities look like any other part of the world, except they have lazily-designed houses in them. And at the end? You fight the Balrog, using the horrendous control scheme which causes you to either control every member of your party at once or let them wander around and die — not that it matters, as the fight is more or less [[Unwinnable]] anyway. There are noticeable loading times between areas despite this game being on the SNES. The game's sole redeeming point is its beautiful music...but it only has three tracks, and one of them is reserved for the title screen.

* The ''[[wikipedia:Make My Video (series)|Make My Video]]'' series on the [[Sega CD]]. All four games involved "editing" three videos with filters and silly stock clips. That's the entire game. Even for the time, it was ridiculously limited. Since the Sega CD had limited video capabilities, the resulting videos were grainy, had a limited color palette, and were displayed on a very small portion of the screen (especially bad since all three videos are played at the same time). The "Kris Kross" release is often cited as the single worst Sega CD game which, considering the amount of crap in the U.S. library for the Sega CD, is saying something.

* The Xbox 3D fighting game ''Kabuki Warriors'' was described by [http://www.gamespot.com/xbox/action/kabukiwarriors/review.html Gamespot] as "... one of the worst games to be released this year or any year, on the Xbox or any other platform." Characters that are only differentiated by palette swaps of identical graphics, stages that differ only by backgrounds, terrible character animation, and a "fighting" system that is just as effective as closing one's eyes and mashing buttons make it one of the worst 3D fighters ever. It holds the dubious honor of being the first game ''Edge'' magazine — infamous for its refusal to adhere to the [[Four Point Scale]] and stinginess with giving a 10/10 rating — has given a 1/10 to, and remained the only game with that rating until ''[[Flat Out]] 3'' 10 years later.

** In Game Informer's review of the game the reviewer states "[[Sincerity Mode|I literally won a match just by bashing the controller against my ass. I wish I was joking, but the score is seriously Kabuki Warriors zero, my ass one.]]" This was confirmed by other editors.

* ''[[Lunar]]: Dragon Song'' recycled many characters and plot elements from [[Lunar: The Silver Star|the original game]], and wrapped them up in a ridiculously awful battle system, where running on the world map hurts you and you can't select your targets. The beginning enemies are ''way'' overpowered, or seem so because you only have 20 hit points and weak attacks to start with. You can choose to receive experience ''or'' [[Vendor Trash]] for the battles you win, but not both. Enemies attacking you can randomly break your equipment, and God help you if you don't have a spare. Your main healer's lost early on, and in her place comes the ''Level 1'' replacement healer in a location that makes it near impossible to train her without a ridiculous amount of luck. The ''only'' redeeming features about the game are the music and the R button, which lets you speed up battle animations. It's not a stretch to say that it almost killed the franchise for good. Thank the good lord for ''Lunar: Silver Star Harmony''.

** The sad part about the whole recycled plot and characters thing is that the game was touted as being the first ''Lunar'' game that wasn't a remake of ''[[Lunar: The Silver Star]]'' in several years. It was—sort of. Unfortunately, European gamers are now [[No Export for You|denied the chance to play the rest of the series]] because [[Ink Stain Adaptation|this was the first installment]] sent there.