There are a lot of bad games and they continue to be released every year. As gamers, against our better judgment, just need to see for ourselves how bad games can be. So, we hate play a lot of games. However, some games can’t be hate played, because these games are the worst of the worst.
These games are so bad that you should not consider playing them. They are so bad, broken, and busted that your time is better spent elsewhere, like getting randomly selected for extra TSA screening at the airport. The games on this list deserve this distinction of being so bad there is nothing redeemable about them. They play like a rough draft that was thrown together in the last week of production, but that copy got lost in the mail to the publisher, so they had to throw a new game together from memory in an hour.
You are probably thinking, “Well it can’t be that bad. They were at least shipped.” That’s where you are wrong. Just because you can obtain a copy of these monstrosities, does not mean these games got the same care and attention as your beloved Zeldas or Witchers. The developers of these games probably regret even making them.
These games are so bad that this list should be a warning to gamers and developers alike. It is one thing to make a laughably bad game, it is another to make one so bad you can’t even hate play it.
15 Kinect Sports Rivals
Wii Sports was a hit and Microsoft wanted to blatantly copy Nintendo’s homework but make it slightly different so the teacher wouldn’t notice. We all got Kinect Sports Rivals and Microsoft got a failing grade.
The one thing the Kinect 2.0 tried to do better than the original Kinect was to detect the gamer and their movements. RHowever, ivals appears to not care if you’re in the room with it or not. The sensor won’t detect you. This game was supposed to help the Xbox One during its first holiday season. Instead, it was a mess of a game that had uninspired and bland gameplay. That is if you got it to detect what you were supposed to be doing. Rivals is absolutely not worth the time, money, or effort.
14 007 Legends
Most Bond fans would jump at the chance to play a game that allowed you to play his most iconic moments. Those fans would be surprised to find out that game exists, but it is so bad they should rewatch the Timothy Dalton film instead. It’s somehow less painful.
Jumping from one Bond scenario to the next only creates gamer whiplash. There is no context or reason beyond showing off and saying, “Hey these cool moments can be put into a game.” No one is impressed by that. This game isn’t just bad because of a little jumping around. It is terrible from top to bottom, including horrible controls, crazy glitches, and zero 007 brand fun. 007 games may never live up to the nostalgia of GoldenEye, but that doesn’t mean they must be unplayable like 007 Legends.
13 Fighter Within
A Kinect-based fighting game was always going to be bad, but Fighter Within manages to be excruciatingly bad even without the Kinect’s help. When you are not fighting the menus in this game, the gamer is treated to some truly awful combat. The gestures needed to pull off even the most basic moves are rarely detected. This makes more complex moves feel unattainable and frankly just rude to dangle in front of gamers.
Fighter Within goes even further by delivering a story and dialogue that will make you cringe so much that the Kinect will detect it. The game is a whole bunch of promise that never delivers even a simple jab, let alone a knockout blow. Gamers should not waste their time even hate playing this one.
12 Superman 64
The granddaddy of all unplayable, bad games. Superman 64 took flight, soaring the Man of Steel into the 3D realm for the first time and promptly crashed him into every object imaginable. You might think to yourself, it is at least worth a playthrough on my old N64? I will save you some time and tell you that it's absolutely not.
Aside from the less than responsive flying controls, the game features the worst textures, combat, and writing in any piece of Superman media. That includes Batman vs. Superman. You can at least hate-watch that. This game, however, restricts the gamer to tight spaces, then glitches objects and Superman all over the place. There are only so many paths you can walk and they aren’t all glitch free. If you have heard it once, you can hear it again. Don’t even hate play this game. It’s super bad.
11 Soda Drinker Pro
Soda Drinker Pro is like Tim and Eric, as it is bad on purpose. And exactly like some of Tim and Eric’s worst bits, Soda Drinker Pro is so bad you should avoid it. The game is mostly walking around drinking, slurping, and gulping a soda in some purposefully bland environments. It is a tongue in cheek joke that just goes too far.
The developers are in on the joke and they want you to be too. The only problem is you paid money to be in on it and they got paid to write the joke. The developers should have taken done what the makers of Dr. Langeskov, The Tiger, and The Terribly Cursed Emerald: A Whirlwind Heist, did and make their 'joke' game free.
10 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants In Manhattan
Remember all the fun you had playing the TMNT Arcade Game with your friends? Well, this game has none of that fun and was rushed to be released at the same time as the Michael Bay film. However, we can't blame Michael Bay for this particular failure.
The game is so bad that only physical copies are left. Do not hop on Amazon or eBay right now to look for it. It is not worth the high price some people are charging, not even for a hate playthrough. The gameplay and level design are abysmally boring. The environments are empty, the boss fights are slow and uneventful, and the upgrade system doesn’t net anything useful. Might I suggest watching the Michael Bay TMNT and its sequel on loop for four days straight instead of wasting your time with this title.
9 Lichdom: Battlemage
It is a bad sign when a game's tutorial video can run at 60 fps, but the actual game cannot. It is also a bad sign when the game is the first CryEngine 3 game to not run 1080p on Xbox One. Needless to say, the deck was stacked against Lichdom: Battlemage before we played it. What makes this game worse is that the developers admitted to all these shortfalls, sided with frustrated gamers, but then released the game anyway.
The game is a broken husk of an idea that spends the majority of its time on loading screens. If the load screens actually loaded something of note or optimized performance or did dishes, then the game might be worth a hate play. Sadly it does not even remotely run enough for most “Let’s Players” to make fun of it.
8 Alekhine's Gun
We take a lot of things for granted in modern gaming, like auto-saves, skipping cutscenes, and streamlined controls. Back during the Cold War, we didn’t have any of that. Alekhine’s Gun takes place during the Cold War and manages to take game development back with it. It has none of those luxuries I just mentioned and worse.
It is a Hitman rip-off in the Cold War. However, before you go bounding to your computer to buy it, notice that I didn’t say a good rip-off or even an okay one. It is a bad one that has you stumbling through stealth missions with dated graphics and less than responsive controls. Stealth games are where controls matter the most or else you must start over. However, you won’t have any auto-saves or be able to skip the same cutscene you already watched. Is the picture becoming clear now?
7 Ben-Hur
While Ben-Hur is a free game, you will pay for it if you download it. This rushed game was, in theory, the tie-in-game that would recreate the magic that is chariot racing. It will make you wish you played Star Wars Episode I: Racer.
The game is short, but most gamers would probably get more kicks using compressed air to blow dust out of their console for an hour than playing this game. You get to choose from three races in the same environment. You will die a lot. You will die from the crappy controls, the fact you must mash A the entire time, and from the AI’s uncanny ability to cling to life. The remake was a bust. Not to be outdone the developers said, “Hold my beer” and managed to make an iconic sequence a dismal experience.
6 Marvel Avengers: Battle For Earth
The Avengers films break records and their video games break spirits. This game was very bad on the Xbox, utilizing the ever so fun Kinect. It then was ported to the Wii U and translated for the controllers. Both versions are unplayable, but the Wii U sticks out as more horrendous because of its godawful controller mapping of a motion game.
The gang is all here from Thor to the X-Men, all following the story from the comic books and not the MCU. The heroes are also following the same fighting moves because there is no difference between their punches, kicks, or even super moves. The game isn’t fun. It is a mindless brawler with Avenger skins on the playable characters. The Wii U also version sucked out any fun of getting up and moving around. There wasn’t that much fun to ruin anyway.
5 Sonic Boom: Rise Of Lyric
Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric continues the tradition of making Sonic wish he hung up his red shoes in the nineties. The game does something that most gamers would have thought unthinkable; frame rate drops in a Sonic game. The one video game character who has built an empire on speed can’t suffer from frame rate drops.
Aside from choppy performance that makes the game close to unplayable, there are boatloads of glitches and a pitiful collision detection system that make it entirely unplayable. The characters don’t have animations, they kind of just hop around instead of move. By far the greatest sin against Sonic, Rings don’t mean anything in this game. You can only hold 100 and they are everywhere. This game is not worth your time, even if you are video game masochist.
4 Quantum Break
The most ambitious game on this list, Quantum Break promised to be the game that blended TV and video games. Instead, it delivered a giant pile of bad gameplay and so many darn cutscenes. Final Fantasy and Metal Gear are jealous about how long and plentiful these cutscenes are.
It was supposed to be an action game with cool time manipulation mechanics. The developers promised that you'd get to them after this cutscene. "Well, maybe the next one. You are definitely going to do bullet time after this one. And so on." The acting in all of the cutscenes was a disappointment and annoying. When gameplay resumed, finally, it was nothing more than an uninspired third person action game. Avoid Quantum Break or else you’ll end up hating yourself more than this game.
3 LocoCycle
LocoCycle is a vehicle combat game that tries to lay the camp on thick. It comes off as just a bad game needing direction and a little heart. You might be thinking you could probably stomach a few hours with a game like this. However, this game will bore you to death.
No action you take has real effects on the world around you. You can attack enemies, but they will just move away and not pose any real threat. You can deplete a boss’ health, but have to wait for the game to decide it’s time to move on from the area. It is a game with fast sentient motorcycles that crawls at a snail’s pace. Even the QTEs, though complex and super long, bare no effect on the game. LocoCycle should drop the Loco and just be a boring old cycle. It is more fitting.
2 Albedo: Eyes from Outer Space
Albedo: Eyes from Outer Space tries to take the player back to the fun world of 60s sci-fi. What you will get instead is a complicated puzzle game with controls that are a puzzle themselves.
The puzzles are solved by manipulating objects and environment. Fans of The Witness will start to salivate at the idea of a 60s sci-fi version of that game. Cut that out. This game wished it was in the same solar system as The Witness. At its best, interacting with objects and environments required a complicated order of button presses. At its worst, the puzzles require too many buttons to be pressed, so accomplishing simple tasks like using inventory items is frustrating. This game takes away any campy fun you could have by making the gamer mash their controller the whole time.
1 Zelda: The Wand Of Gamelon
Oh man. This game is the worst of the worst. Unplayable doesn’t begin to describe this half-cartoon, half-side scroller. It is not only the worst Zelda game ever released, all copies should be buried in the desert along with E.T.
The game frequently breaks while trying to load its goofy cutscenes. The controls are ridiculous, but all of this is outdone by the infamous presentation. Most gamers will recognize it right away. It is straight out of the failed Zelda cartoon. There has not been another game in history that has quite captured the bad that this game so effortlessly exudes.
Sure, the game looks like a hilarious failed experiment of blending media. Do not be fooled, this game is so terrible, no one can hate play it.