Worst game you ever played that wasn't full of bugs/glitches?

[Sylveria]

-snip-

It's a Final Fantasy game, the weapons don't have to make sense. Ultimecia's GF has the same name as Squall's ring, didn't you get that she is a descendant of Rinoa and Squall?

Actually, no. The gunblade is a plot-point in the game. It is a rare and iconic weapon. Edea saw Squall wielding it when Ultimecia showed up at her doorstep at the end of the game and she was the one that came up with the idea of SeeD as an anti-sorceress force because of what Squall told her, however she never learns his name. The reason why Cid is so excited over Squall becoming a proper SeeD and practically handing the leadership-role over to him on the first opportunity is because, through Edea, he knows that Ultimecia would be defeated by a time-traveling SeeD with a gunblade. Squall having an iconic weapon that can identify him on sight is actually part of the stable time-loop, but it also happens to be one of those tidbits that you only recognize after a few playthroughs, which not many people bothered to do.

As for Ultimecia being Squall's and Rinoa's descendant... No. Being a sorceress in not hereditary. There are a lot of women in FF8s world who has the capability to become the sorceress, but at any given time there is only one of them, and the power gets handed down directly between them. Case in point, Rinoa got her sorceress-power from Edea even though they are not related at all, and then she also absorbs Adel's power as well.

As for the reason why she summons Griever... well, that makes little sense because the translators screwed of Ultimecia's personality and dialogs big time. Her stick is that in the final battle she preys on the insecurities of the characters regarding the whole GF-induced-amnesia thing. In fact most of her lines in the original Japanese are taunting them about their memories, and she summons Griever because she digs into Squall's memories and takes it out as the strongest symbol he believes in. Also note how this whole memory-theme ties into Griever's ability to make the characters forget their spells.

In fact a good portion of FF8's confusing plot and characterization comes from the really bad translation, but Ultimecia in particular suffers the worst because she is supposed to be a thematic villain instead of a charismatic one. The theme of FF8 is memories, longing for the past and forgetting important things, and each one of those themes were botched in the English release. It's actually quite shocking that the quality of the translation is so little known, probably because it doesn't have obvious typos like FFVII did.

If this is accurate, it was fascinating to read.

Anyway, on topic, worst game I ever played was Advanced Dungeons and Dragons: Heroes of the Lance. It was also the first game I ever played at the tender age of 5. Makes me wonder how I could touch that mess and still want to play games afterwards. I guess I should be thankful that my brain was too soft for the horror to really register.

 

[FalloutJack]

This. Is. Perfect. Lol. That was the best breakdown for this game of all time.You are my hero. XD

But, my vote will probably go to Final Fantasy XIII. Final Fantasy VIII might be a bad game, but it is still game at heart. Final Fantasy XIII has an even worse story than VIII, even worse characters than VIII, and the game play is so on-rails that it is even worse than VIII's overly complicated monstrosity. The game is nothing more than a chore to get through with all the bad characters, horrible story, and boring gameplay. At least VIII had some cool moments and can be laughed at for its complete ineptitude. XIII just........ sucks.

To be fair, there are things I don't like about FF13, but it hasn't grated on me nearly as much. People's mileage vary a little more on this, but it definitely has its problems. One thing that bothered me was that FF13 hit Xenosaga-levels of incomprehensibility, where you need a damn dictionary to understand all the terms and what's going on. I won't say that I hated it, I will say that I had fun playing it, but I won't rate it up there with 5, 6, 7, 9, or 10 on my scale.

 

[Nazulu]

Ha! Yeah, I'm not surprised you mentioned this. After I mentioned Half Life you probably care even less what I think.

Lord, I hope I don't seem like that much of an asshole : P

Everybody has different taste. I just went into HL2 expecting the greatest game ever, and what I got was a competent FPS. I assume it's the same reason people hate FF7. No game can live up to that hype.

To be fair, I didn't find actively offensive, like some titles. The worst offender is probably Duke Nukem. It had no redeeming qualities whatsoever, other then to remind me how much games, and gamers, have grown.

Ha! I'm more likely to think I made mistake than think of you as an asshole.

In fact, I look at my post now and I think I assumed too much

Sorry

 

[Mr Fixit]

Well since I've been playing games from the NES era on, I've played a lot of games that can easily be considered bad for many different reasons. I'll just stick with fairly modern games just to keep things simple.

I still regret paying $8 for Final Fantasy 13, but that one has already been covered.

It took about 6 tries for me to finally finish Dragon Age: Origins, not a terribly bad game, just not for me.

I've played my share of broken Wii shovelware, enough said about that...

The one game that really sticks out in my mind as just bad & all around poorly done has to be Assassin's Creed 3. Now I say this as a fan of the series. I know many people had issues with bugs in this game, but I only had one that required me to to reload my last save so I guess I lucked out with that. First things first, Connor is a twat, completely unlikable asshat. You start the game of as Haytham Kenway, charismatic & damn good at his job & then you dumped into annoying Connor. He might not have been so bad if his VA had actually tried, at least half of his dialog he just sounds bored with life.

Now the gameplay, not too different from the others, too many freaking weapons though. Just try carrying a sword, big ass ax, a tomahawk, pistols & bow & arrows & remain stealthy. There was no need for so many when the combat is so piss easy(Not saying any of the others were much better, just seemed to stand out more in 3). Speaking of piss easy combat... I remember I got into a small scrap with some town guards once, I dispatched them quickly & easily, but then a half dozen more showed up still no problem. Then they just kept coming, I had a pile of bodies on the street so many that the game started deleting the original ones I'd killed. I tried to get away from them, but they must be psychic super guards, because they always found me. And lets not forget about all those fucking scripted chase sequences, one wrong step & you better just start over.

That crafting system, WTF were they thinking. I'm not going to build chairs when I have stabbing to do. Took me forever to figure out what I needed to do to get my own upgrades. I didn't mind building up the homestead, but the convoys & they rest of that, no I'm not going to bother with that.

Now one last thing, who fucked with the menus & map in this game? Who decided that making all the menus & maps so damn unwieldy was a good fucking idea? There was no reason to change this stuff, none whatsoever, but lets do one thing with the left stick & another thing with the right stick & put it all on the same screen because that's completely counter intuitive to ever other previous game in the series.

Like I said I really like Assassin's Creed, hell I think Liberation had the best actual "hide in plain sight" assassin gameplay, but AC3 really fucked it up. If I hadn't started play the AC games so long after they came out I might have stopped right there, but I knew that Black Flag was really good so I continue on with them.

 

[The Jovian]

By far the worst competently programmed game I've ever played would have to be Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight. Offensively shallow gameplay, bull$#!t story, non-existent payoff to three games-worth of buildup and completely ruining the best RTS franchise ever created result in a game so bad that it made me boycott all EA products released ever since, which means I didn't get to play games which looked interesting on paper just in case they end up being boring offensive cash grabs like C&C4.

 

[sageoftruth]

One of the many handheld game I played way back when I was a little kid. I don't know if these are still a thing (seems impossible now that iPhone games exist), but back when I was a kid, there were those games that get referenced now by Mr. Game and Watch in Smash Brothers. There were no pixels, just a bunch of images that would light up at the appropriate time to simulate stuff happening. Those games were REALLY simplistic, to the point where the gameplay sometimes consisted of pushing two buttons over and over again, and you kept playing only because you were a little kid and the lights were moving (WOW!). Back when I didn't own a game console, it was the best thing I had. Right now, I doubt there's an iPhone game out there that doesn't look super fun by comparison.

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

Thor The Movie: Videogame. If only there was a sign that could have warned me that the game was going to be crap? lol.

 

[happyninja42]

Prince of Persia: Warrior Within.

I couldn't get out of the tutorial. The tone of the game was such a huge change from the first one, that it just wasn't the same game at all. The playful, sarcastic, "lovable rogue" type Prince we came to love in Sands of Time was gone. In his place was this dark and gritty, angsty version of the Prince. The music went from this really awesome techno-arabian fusion, to death metal growly voice shite. And the villaness...oh god, the villaness. Introduced ass first, in a full screen closeup of her butt, wearing a metal fucking thong outfit. I turned the game off and never touched it again.

Delicious Max Payne 3 rant snipped for space

Yeah, I feel your pain about MP3. I LOVED the first two games, and felt they were actually really good games. The first one had that slight supernatural flavoring to it, that made you unsure if everything was going to go In The Mouth of Madness on you by the end. The second one was a great homage to the classic action/romance stories, with the femme fattale and everything.

MP3....MP3 was basically "Hey, I really loved the movie Man on Fire, and I want to make a video game that's basically exactly like that, but with a white guy." They even used the scrambled screen frames, mixed with having dialogue on the screen at the same time, just like Man on Fire. Which, in theory could be great. I LOVED Man on Fire, so a video game version of it would be awesome. But it shouldn't have been Max Payne. It butchered the ending of 2, and all the emotional struggle he went through in the course of those two games. I stopped playing it probably an hour before the climactic final battle, and haven't been back. Though I did recently reinstall, and I might play it again on easy difficulty just to blaze through it and get to the ending. I keep hearing people say that the final fight scene, coupled with the song from the trailer is a really awesome experience to play through. It might be awesome enough for me to ignore the rest of the games down sides.

 

[Coruptin]

Metro 2033
I think I got to the first outside world sequence before I dropped it.

 

[Politrukk]

Metro 2033
I think I got to the first outside world sequence before I dropped it.

Oddly I once changed the language setting in the Metro games to Italian and boy did that help the game a whole lot for some reason.

 

[The Purple Grape]

Tomb Raider 2013. A boring linear slog of quicktime events disguising a snuff film. I pirated it and stopped playing after 30% completion.

Don't worry its written by a woman so its 'more realistic' and 'builds character'. Fuck you Rhianna Pratchett. Fuck you and your shitty one dimensional writing.

 

[CaitSeith]

Probably God of War 2. I played the first GoW, and it was good. But just after the intro of the second one, I just said "nope, not even Kratos can be so stupid"

EDIT: OK, maybe the game itself isn't bad. But it's hard to me to catalog a game as bad if it doesn't have a game breaking bug or experience hampering glitches. This is just the game that disappointed me the fastest.

 

[Xeros]

Probably Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero. Bought it on a whim after seeing the case and mistakenly thought it'd be a side-scrolling beat-em-up with MK's signature solid controls.

Spoiler: I was the one who was mistaken.

 

[Leon Royce]

Tomb Raider 2013. A boring linear slog of quicktime events disguising a snuff film. I pirated it and stopped playing after 30% completion.

Don't worry its written by a woman so its 'more realistic' and 'builds character'. Fuck you Rhianna Pratchett. Fuck you and your shitty one dimensional writing.

It's cool. I went back and played the first two instead. I much prefer the simple Indiana Jones stories. There's an artifact (Scion, Dagger) and Lara wants it. 20 levels of awesome and exploration. No quick time, no cutscene BS, no interrupting gameplay, no changing the rules every few minutes, no invisible walls, no glowing objective markers, no flashy prompts telling you that a long lost tomb is within fifty feet of you etc...

 

[MoltenSilver]

When I think of 'worst experience I had due to deliberate design choices' Chromehounds is the first thing that comes to mind. For those who haven't heard of it, it's a mech-warrior type game. What's wrong with it? well:
-The single player was basically just a tutorial, so right off the bat we're dropping into the experience being dictated entirely by the quality of the service and other people
-A whole lot of interface one would expect is gone for the sake of making it part of gameplay. For example, there's no way of telling who's actually on your team easily, and whether or not you get a meaningful map is dependent on whether you manged to get matched with someone willing to play the boring, useless 'commander' class

In other words, the only people I could see possibly enjoying this game is if you happened to be part of a pre-existing group with everyone having voice chat and being coordinated before the match even starts. It makes cooperation in mobas look like a walk in the park by comparison.

 

[Carzinex]

MP3....MP3 was basically "Hey, I really loved the movie Man on Fire, and I want to make a video game that's basically exactly like that, but with a white guy." They even used the scrambled screen frames, mixed with having dialogue on the screen at the same time, just like Man on Fire. Which, in theory could be great. I LOVED Man on Fire, so a video game version of it would be awesome. But it shouldn't have been Max Payne.

I agree so much with this, i actually cant play MP3 past the first stage because i just want to be controlling Denzel Washington. Looked for mods but to no avail.

 

[The Purple Grape]

Tomb Raider 2013. A boring linear slog of quicktime events disguising a snuff film. I pirated it and stopped playing after 30% completion.

Don't worry its written by a woman so its 'more realistic' and 'builds character'. Fuck you Rhianna Pratchett. Fuck you and your shitty one dimensional writing.

It's cool. I went back and played the first two instead. I much prefer the simple Indiana Jones stories. There's an artifact (Scion, Dagger) and Lara wants it. 20 levels of awesome and exploration. No quick time, no cutscene BS, no interrupting gameplay, no changing the rules every few minutes, no invisible walls, no glowing objective markers, no flashy prompts telling you that a long lost tomb is within fifty feet of you etc...

I recommend Legend as well, if you want Lara with a sense of humor and more of a personality above whine and angst. And Keeley Hawes. And more respect shown to the character. Its not perfect by any means but at least its success wasn't on gender politics alone and whiny teenagers who need someone to ' relate' to them so they can post it on their blog and how it 'speaks' to them.

 

[Ironbat92]

Probably the original version of Ninja Gaiden. The game didn't have any glitches or bugs. But my God was it terrible. Everything that made the first games amazing was replaced by mindless button mashing, boring boss battles, and shallow combat. It sucked the big one.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

Yeah, I feel your pain about MP3...

Though I did recently reinstall, and I might play it again on easy difficulty just to blaze through it and get to the ending. I keep hearing people say that the final fight scene, coupled with the song from the trailer is a really awesome experience to play through. It might be awesome enough for me to ignore the rest of the games down sides.

I'm not sure exactly what people refer to as the final fight, but the last real fight against the main bad guy, I guess (as they all blend together), that takes place in the airplane hanger is horrible and IMO a microcosm for everything wrong with the level design of MP3. The main bad guy is shooting a grenade launcher from the middle with lots of other baddies shooting at you from the left and right. If you actually go to far either left or right to get into an actual good tactical position, you get cutscene killed by the grenade launcher. You have to play whack-a-mole behind some luggage carriers and stay in the middle all fight or die because the game doesn't want you doing that. A lot of the game's levels play out like that where you have no real options of maneuvering around without getting killed. The 2nd to last level is the police station and that's actually the best level in the game because it's a bunch of close quarters fighting where you can have a lot of fun bullet dodging and such.

 

[WendelI]

Defender for the game-cube, the game was so eh. I loved it back then because i just havent had the quality of games for me go up, the game was perfectly functional, it was just boring and the dificulty went from EZPZLEMENSQZY to OH MY GOD WHY? WHAT DID I DO TO DESERVE THIS? at random times and the game is really bad at keeping your attention. It had cool ships i guess.