Building a console can be rough, and Microsoft knew this when they dove headfirst into competition against the highly acclaimed PlayStation 2 and Nintendo’s GameCube. Luckily, the Xbox was incredibly blessed with a talented group of developers that were able to deliver timeless classics to the console over the six years it stuck around. We’re talking about absolute smash hits like Halo, Forza, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Ninja Gaiden Black, Project Gotham Racing, Panzer Dragoon Orta... the list just goes on and on. To add on top of that, Microsoft gave the Xbox a little extra advantage over the PS2 and GameCube by delivering excellent ports of previously PC exclusive games such as Counter-Strike, Serious Sam, and The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind for people who still hadn’t jumped on board the PC game train.
The success of these games on the Xbox platform propelled Microsoft to be one of the biggest names in the console game as they went on to dominate the next generation with their follow-up system, the Xbox 360. However, no good deed goes unpunished, and no good game is discovered without wading through a sea of stinkers. The original Xbox is no exception to that, as the freshman effort of Microsoft’s had more than a few missteps in its attempts to establish itself. I have personally and painstakingly sorted through the vast library of the original Microsoft console to provide you with the 25 lowest of the low titles on the Xbox.
25 Azurik: Rise Of Perathia
If your local game stores were anything like mine in the early 2000s, you likely saw an entire shelf dedicated to heavily discounted, pre-owned copies of Azurik: Rise of Perathia, the mysterious blue figure on the cover practically begging you to go on an adventure. As it turns out, this game was so bad that you couldn’t even give it away. Despite holding a technically “average” score of 52 on the aggregator Metacritic, Azurik: Rise of Perathia is actually much less than the sum of its parts. Sporting a cumbersome control scheme, amateur level graphics and a vast amount of dull, soulless objectives, it’s no wonder some reviewers of the game to label the experience as “poorly thought out, second hand, uninteresting and redundant drivel.”
24 Robocop
On paper, a game based on the original Robocop film would seem like a slam dunk; first-person shooter with a robotic HUD, and it lets you drive a futuristic car through the streets and bust up punks in Detroit. Easy peasy cash in, through and through. However, the 2003 video game adaptation of the cult classic film went horribly off the rails in its Xbox debut. The corny dialogue of the movies didn’t translate well to the gaming space and the majority of the mission objectives have the titular robot cop scrounging for enemies in repetitive corridors. Truly a misstep in bringing a long dead franchise back to life. As the reviewers at Game Informer put it, 2003’s Robocop was there “to serve, protect, but more realistically, to suck.”
23 Bruce Lee: Quest Of The Dragon
Is there any martial artist more iconic than Bruce Lee? The man revolutionized the martial arts movie before his untimely death, but his sphere of influence has just never been able to craft a decent fighting game. Bruce Lee: Quest of the Dragon on Xbox is hands down one of the worst attempts at digitizing the famous fighter. Quest of the Dragon seriously underperformed and showcased laughable controls paired with downright stupid AI, all wrapped in graphics that would have gotten laughed off the Atari 2600. Game Informer’s review put it best when they said, “I hate this clear exploitation of Bruce Lee's name so much that I am considering going out to buy this game just to bust it into a hundred little pieces.”
22 Chase: Hollywood Stunt Driver
These days the Xbox is known for its superior racing franchises such as Forza and Project Gotham Racing, but the original console had its fair share of racing duds. Enter Chase: Hollywood Stunt Driver, a game where you perform car tricks for Hollywood blockbusters, putting it into direct competition with a more successful game on the Xbox console, Stuntman. Chase: Hollywood Stunt Driver fell short on most fronts as the cars controlled clunky and left a lot to be desired on the audio aspect; even the finished stunts in the movies were criticized for being snooze fests. The game definitely didn’t nail the driving aspects and apparently forgot to be fun as well. In a review for IGN, Chase is criticized for “lacking ingenuity, vive, and excitement… It lacks passion.”
21 Blinx: The Time Sweeper
For the sake of time I’m going to include both of Microsoft’s attempts in this space. Back when mascots were a big thing, the Xbox tried to establish their own in the form of a time traveling cat janitor named Blinx. However, while they attempted to create something like the classic Sonic we know and love, they accidently created something like the modern Sonic we know and loathe. Blinx opted to squander all of its wacky time travel potential in favor of playing it safe and delivering a by-the-book, serviceable platformer that went on to be the most forgettable title you never bothered to play. One positive I see in Blinx is that it should work as a warning sign for other platformers, but then again we are seeing the same issues reoccur in titles like Knack.
20 Classified: The Sentinel Crisis
Not all games strived for absolute greatness on the Xbox. In the case of budget FPS title Classified: The Sentinel Crisis, being just okay would have been an achievement. This run-of-the-mill black ops shooter was slapped together and pushed out the door for $20 as soon as possible. Classified: The Sentinel Crisis is an FPS that only offered one game mode, a short campaign, and completely nixed any multiplayer in a time when Xbox Live was seriously gaining traction. The worst bit is that the exclusion of multiplayer would have been forgivable if the campaign wasn’t so mind-numbingly dull. IGN panned the game in their review stating: “It's got boring gameplay, poor graphics, unremarkable sound, and only one short game mode. Sure it's only 20 bucks, but it's not worth it.”
19 Dino Crisis 3
The life of the original Dino Crisis found its way, as Dr. Ian Malcolm would say, when the original Resident Evil team took a break from zombies and terrorized our lives with a dinosaur infestation. The original Dino Crisis and its sequel got by with aping the entire control scheme and gameplay loop of the original Resident Evil games: tank controls, static camera angles, and item/ammo management. However, when the Xbox presented the team with new hardware, Capcom took the Dino series into the future; 300 years in the future to be exact. However, while certain aspects of the game attained space age modernization, Dino Crisis 3 was still hampered by the unwieldy static cameras. In a review by Eurogamer, the faults are further shown by stating that “the combat mechanics feel redundant, limited and stuck in the past, and the whole locked door/find key/backtrack game design feels utterly stale too.”
18 Crime Life: Gang Wars
Late in the Xbox’s console generation, Open world crime games such as the Grand Theft Auto series were hitting their stride. Everyone wanted a vast world to explore and cause mayhem in. This thought process is what gave life to Crime Life: Gang Wars, a budget open-world title that absolutely sucks in everything it attempted to do. The open world was minuscule compared to other games on the market, the soundtrack was poorly selected, the fighting mechanics were stiff, the atmosphere and dialogue bordered on outright parody. There was literally next to no value in this game at all. G4, when that was still around, put it best when they said: “At least we now have a low bar for Grand Theft Auto clones.”
17 World War II Combat: Iwo Jima
Believe it or not, there was a time and place when World War 2 shooters were a dime a dozen. Nearly every year we would see wave after wave of WWII combat sims from any pop-up developer under the sun. In 2006, Direct Action Games, a budget division of Zombie Studios whom were already known for creating sub-par PS1 Spec Ops titles with a regular budget, cursed the Xbox with World War II Combat: Iwo Jima. Iwo Jima featured the rare appearance of fog of war in a first person shooter, leading to abysmal draw distance that often saw your character being shot by unknown enemies in clouds. There was no way to heal, pick up weapons or ammo, and the graphics looked straight out of 1996. Iwo Jima was truly a disgrace to video games.
16 Kabuki Warriors
The fighting genre can be a fickle mistress. It’s all about control; either you got it or you don’t and 2001’s Kabuki Warriors on the original Xbox most definitely did not have “it”. With slow paced battles, unresponsive controls, bland stages and venues, and only a single button for attacking (there were also buttons for jumping and blocking) Kabuki Warriors made a lot of mistakes. All of these mistakes are made even worse when paired with the fact that this was a launch title, leaving early adapters of the Xbox wanting for a true fighting experience. Kabuki Warriors, a fighting game that controls so poorly that Game Informer editor-in-chief Andy McNamara reportedly won a fight by literally smashing the controller against his butt.
15 Kakuto Chojin: Back Alley Brutal
Where Kabuki Warriors failed, Kakuto Chojin: Back Alley Brutal attempted to shine. Sporting a style that could easily be compared to the (at the time) Sony exclusive Tekken series, Kakuto Chojin showed promise in that it appeared to bring a level of graphical polish that the Xbox fighting space that wasn’t available before. However, those graphics appear to be the only thing Kakuto Chojin brought to the table. With many reviewers claiming the game to be nothing more than a tech demo, Back Alley Brutal left a lot to be desired. When it comes to the nitty gritty fighting technical systems, Game critics stated: “opponents cannot be forced off balance, pressured, or intercepted. Kakuto Chojin rarely forces players to think, react, or adapt to their opponents. Worse still is the absence of a deep grappling system.”
14 Murakumo: Renegade Mech Pursuit
The PlayStation 2 had a deeply customizable mech fighting game in Armored Core during this console generation that carved out a fair bit of success in an overlooked crowd. The Xbox wanted to get a piece of that niche market with Murakumo: Renegade Mech Pursuit on their flagship console. However, the game was seriously hamstringed by uninspired robot designs, cumbersome controls that didn’t mesh at all with the twitchy gameplay, an intrusive HUD, overly repetitive missions, and a severe lack of game modes. I wish I could attribute the game’s failure to the short length, but as Gamespot put it in their review: “All of the missions in the game (even the ones that you can unlock by completing Murakumo's main mode) grow incredibly tiresome”.
13 Metal Dungeon
On paper, Metal Dungeon checks off a lot of boxes that were missing on the Xbox launch lineup. Xbox was a console that was starved for RPGs and fans of the genre were aching for a new experience. Metal Dungeon attempted to deliver in the form of a Diablo-like loot collecting dungeon crawler. However, Metal Dungeon ended up being a dungeon that nobody wanted to venture into. The textures were so bland and repetitive that it was hard to tell where you came from and where you needed to go. The similarities to Diablo did it no favors with reviewers when Xbox Nation Magazine panned the title in their review: “"Diablo" without the story, characters to converse or interact with, variety in graphics or, well, fun. It's just a tired, slow trudge through 10 levels of a dungeon you really have no motivation to enter in the first place.”
12 Sneakers
Sneakers is about a mouse that wears sneakers and uses them to sneak around and play hide and seek. That’s about as much thought that went into this brain dead pile of garbage that was built to attract kids; it even went so far as to exclusively be sold at Toys R Us stores. However, even the youngest kids able to use a controller could tell pretty quickly that this game is absolutely terrible. Essentially, the game is on a track and you can tell the titular mouse to go forward or back as you point and click around the screen to look for rats that are hiding from you. Sounds thrilling, right? In IGN’s review, the game was panned as “an embarrassment of a game flawed from concept to finished product. If this was meant to be for kids, it missed the mark.”
11 Superman: The Man Of Steel
Today, superheroes and nerd culture have dominated media, taking films and TV by storm. However, the video game realm has always been left wanting. While the majority of hero games fail, Superman seems to set new lows for how bad they can suck. While not as terrible as the notorious Superman 64, 2002’s Superman: The Man of Steel on the original Xbox wasn’t too much better. The flight controls were still busted up and down and the gameplay loop was as bland and lifeless as ever. The game never made you feel as super or heroic as the titular character is supposed to be. To use the words from Gamecritic's panning review of the game: “Is there anything worse that you can say about a Superman game?”
10 Chicago Enforcer
The console era of the original Xbox saw the very first release of 2K’s mobster sim Mafia, but you may not have known about another Mafioso that creeped onto the Xbox, Chicago Enforcer. This game was an FPS set in mobster city circa mobster time; the time and place don’t really matter that much, or at least they didn’t seem to matter much to the game devs when crapping this thing out. Chicago Enforcer features weapons that just feel entirely broken when used, horrendously long loading times, a story that could have been written by a puppy scratching at a bit of newspaper, and unbalanced AI that cause nothing but frustration. Game Informer put it best when they said “it sucks in a vomitous, spirit-crushing kind of way.”
9 Land Of The Dead: Road To Fiddler’s Green
George A. Romero, progenitor of zombies in popular culture, deserves so much better in the video game adaptations of his work that this. Granted, Land of the Dead was one of the weaker films in his iconic series, but damn it, Land of the Dead: Road to Fiddler’s Green should have been a fun time anyway. Glitchy hit detection with guns that offer no real “pop” to the action and a significant frame rate spike every time zombies are onscreen serve only to take you as far out of the moment as possible, which should be a complete non-issue with a game whose graphics look like they were a decade behind the curve. Land of the Dead: Road to Fiddler’s Green is just a travesty to Romero’s legacy, but I suppose you could always play Dead Rising and just tell yourself it’s based on Dawn of the Dead.
8 Stake: Fortune Fighters
A fighting game lands on this list yet again with Stake: Fortune Fighters. This time, instead of the traditional 2D plane 1 on 1 fighting, Stake: Fortune Fighters opts for a 4 player free-for-all arena based brawl akin to the Dreamcast’s Power Stone. This would be all well and good, but Stake: Fortune Fighters offers arenas that are too large and incredibly poorly designed for a fighting game of that nature, often leading to battles that grind to halt as you search for a person to punch. These large levels necessitate that the multiplayer be split screen, causing the small sections of your map to be even smaller with friends, thus making them harder to navigate. Stake: Fortune Fighters embodies the spirit of “why bother?”
7 Drake Of The 99 Dragons
What do you get when you put so much pressure on your IP to become a massive success (potentially spawning comics, movies, and a TV series), but you enter a terrible contract that only gives you 6 months to completely develop? A steaming pile of horse dung known as Drake of the 99 Dragons, that’s what. This game was panned universally by anybody that put their hands on it; it’s the gaming equivalent of arsenic. Drake had no playtesting whatsoever and it shows in every painfully idiotic design choice, like excluding a target reticle in favor of auto-aiming that simply doesn’t work. Drake of the 99 Dragons is simply a garbage, half cooked game that should have been cancelled the minute the developers heard they would only have 6 months to make it.
6 Toxic Grind
Imagine there’s a world where extreme sports are outlawed. Now, imagine that in that world if you’re caught being extreme you will be submitted to a deadly Running Man style gauntlet. Sounds really awesome, right? Well, surprisingly Toxic Grind messes up that idea entirely. Somehow playing worse than its contemporaries that released before it, Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX and Mat Hoffman’s Pro BMX, Toxic Grind implements a ridiculous story that does all of the heavy lifting of the game. Gamespot’s review hits the nail on the head when they said “While Toxic Grind has the standard complement of features you'd expect from an action sports game and mixes things up by including a clever back story, the actual gameplay ruins anything else the game has to offer.”