It’s been over 15 years since the gaming world saw the release of Microsoft’s game console, the Xbox. Many of you will no doubt have incredible memories of the countless hours spent playing games with friends and finally beating the level you were stuck on for two weeks!

Fast-forward to 2006 and the release of the Xbox 360 and a new generation of gaming. A better Xbox live and the Xbox Marketplace made it possible to buy games digitally as well as arcade games that were accessibly right from your console!

Jump forward yet again to 2013 when the Xbox One came into our lives. This new system was faster, stronger and paved the way for some of the greatest games in Xbox history. It also helped to create a more unified entertainment experience, bridging all forms of media.

But even the greatest of gaming consoles are sure to have some games within their vast libraries that fall flat, as well as those who rise to heights they probably shouldn’t have. We all know those games that we would love to forget about, as well as those that we will always love and left us with amazing memories. What about those games that seemed awesome, but really weren’t anything to special? Hindsight helps one to really see the games that we loved for what they really are and while they might not be terrible, they most definitely have not earned the reputation that they have. Perhaps you will find some games on this list that you feel the same about when you really think about it.

20 Dead Island

Zombies, crazy-weapons, and a cool island backdrop are not enough to really make this game a keeper. Was it fun to kill zombies with a flaming katana? Absolutely! But really that’s all this game had going for it. The story for Dead Island was pretty terrible along with very forgettable and pretty terrible characters.

If you were unfortunate enough to not have friends who played this as well, then you had to slog through the game either by yourself or with random players online, which also saps a lot of the fun from the game. The graphics are very sub-par and don’t even get me started on the bugs of this game, often causing the player to fall through the map, lose their weapons, etc. You’re better off just buying Dying Light. Same concept, much better execution.

19 Killer Instinct

The popular fighter returned with a free-to-play installment on the Xbox One, though unfortunately it comes with the free-to-play model that has become quite popular these days. While the game is free, you are essentially getting what you pay for. While the weekly character rotation may work in the MOBA genre with a different group every week, this game lets us know that it doesn’t work for a fighting game.

There is very little fun to be had with only one character. If you want to play this game, you have to be willing to pay the whole price of the game. It isn’t that enjoyable in terms of a fighting game either. The punches don’t have any oomph and just about every match will turn into a button mashing frenzy.

18 Quantum Break

Talk about a hype train. Quantum Break was at the forefront of a very aggressive ad campaign pushing this game as one of the definitive titles for the Xbox One. This sci-fi action game gives the player the power to control time. Sounds awesome right? Well it is for a little bit, but soon wears out its charm and seems to become more of a gimmick to draw players in.

The gunplay also doesn’t offer the player very much in the way of fun and enjoyment. The fact that it’s also a television show tie-in game was not that great of a move. Even with Iceman himself, Shawn Ashmore, as the main character, this game couldn’t be saved from fading into obscurity. Maybe tie-in games are just not a viable video game option.

17 Watch Dogs

Undoubtedly a fresh concept in the world of gaming, Watch Dogs was widely anticipated as a new direction for sandbox games. Unfortunately for this game, technical issues, such as bugs and glitches, plagued it from day one. The main protagonist was also relatively uninteresting and Watch Dogs wasn’t the success it was thought to be. The gunplay and combat is basic, but lacks the spark that other games have to keep gamers entertained and engaged.

Things turned around for the series with the release of the sequel, led by the much more interesting Marcus Holloway. The series looks to be turning around and led to a much more positive experience for gamers to engage in. You should probably just skip right to the sequel if you wan to have some fun.

16 Tom Clancy's The Division

Yet another title on this list that sees continued love by its fans for a reason I can’t quite understand. This new Tom Clancy IP was so highly anticipated and was such a let down that I can’t understand players continued love for it.

The story motivation is interesting and noble at its roots, but, in execution, the story falls apart. The task of helping to restore and rebuild Manhattan after its almost apocalyptic viral pandemic sounds awesome, but usually consists of “go hear and kill these guys,” all over the city. The characters have no real life of their own and it becomes incredibly repetitive. The term overrated was made for games like this. The name of the late, great Tom Clancy is what keeps this game alive.

15 Fable III

As any fan of the popular role-playing franchise will be able to tell you, the popular series took a nosedive for its third installment. You play the younger sibling to Logan, the tyrannical ruler of the kingdom of Albion. The adventures you go through while building the rebellion to face your brother are fun, but not the best in the series and certainly not the best in the genre.

The game swapped the open world style for an over world map with smaller maps that sometimes connect to each other. You would rarely find action outside of doing missions and there really isn’t that many to begin with. The weapons often share visual appearances and skills, despite the game insisting their all different. It’s incredibly apparent that the world feels so much smaller with a lot less life in it.

14 Saints Row IV

Talk about falling from grace, the popular sandbox series by Deep Silver Volition fell way far from its humble roots in the streets of Stillwater. Each installment in the popular gang series became more eccentric and whacky with the fourth installment taking the cake.

The once humble gang leader of the Third Street Saints has become the president of the United States after averting a terrorist attack. You are then subsequently abducted by Zinyak, the leader of an alien race known as the Zin. You make your way out of captivity only to see the Earth be destroyed. No you must defeat Zinyak in the simulation he puts you in to break your spirit. Plus super powers. The upside is that we see the return of Johnny Gat.

My God. What happened to the Saints?

13 RFinal Fantasy XIII

Whatever you do, play any other Final Fantasy game than this one. With a cast that is almost all unlikeable and incredibly cliché, this three-disc adventure featured some of the most unnecessarily complex mechanics for such a stupidly boring combat system.

With every one of the main characters being, whiney, douchey, or unlikeable, it is a great breath of fresh air to see the masterpiece that is FFXV, where everything we hated about this game is more or less corrected. This game leaves such a bad taste in player’s mouths that I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that people who played this as their first FF game, never played another again. If that's the case, please don't let this game ruin the experience for you!

12 N+

This Xbox Live Arcade game puts the player in the shoes of a ninja. You must jump from wall to wall and collect coins and make your way to the exit while avoiding trip mines, machine guns, and rockets.

Perhaps my biggest issue with game and the biggest draw back in general is that you are perhaps the slowest moving ninja ever. When playing, I genuinely thought that I was missing the “go fast” button. This game is more painful than enjoyable, with nothing really unique setting it apart. It really just seems like Super Meat Boy with a fresh coat of paint.

I have a very hard time trying to figure out why this game became so popular with so many other more deserving titles in the Xbox Live Arcade.

11 Resident Evil 5

If ever there was an award to give for worst gameplay mechanics and gunplay, it would go to the Resident Evil series, but it is Resident Evil 5 that stands out from the rest. The story is pretty terrible and is the turning point of the series towards their long series of bad games.

The fact that you must always stop moving to shoot makes it such a disjointed and chunky experience anytime there is any sort of conflict. This game definitely put a hurting on the love people had for protagonist Chris Redfield, especially following the surge in love for the other series protagonist Leon Kennedy with Resident Evil 4.

Thankfully they have done away with the awful gunplay mechanics for Resident Evil 7 and it marks a positive and much needed shift for the series.

10 Dead or Alive 3

Perhaps the most un-enjoyable fighting game series out there, the Dead or Alive series survives on two things together; Boobs and Volleyball. This fighter series has nothing on the more popular series such as Mortal Kombat, Injustice, Marvel Vs. Capcom, Street Fighter and Tekken. These games give the player a wide cast of characters with fun and entertaining move sets (for the most part), an area in which Dead or Alive sorely lacks.

While pretty much all of these series see some form of female objectification, it is only Dead or Alive that thrives and exists on it. They seem to have been concerned with making their woman more “slightly” than providing a quality fighting game for gamers to play. If I am being honest, for the longest time I wasn’t even aware there were male characters in this game.

9 Call of Duty: Black Ops

via youtube.com

Where do I even begin on this one? I feel like I don’t really have to convince many of you that the whole Call of Duty franchise is incredibly overrated, but Call of Duty: Black Ops, definitely takes the cake.

While more recent releases such as Advanced Warfare and Infinite Warfare are just as bad, I feel it is well established that they are a travesty of the shooter genre. Black Ops however followed the highly successful and rather enjoyable Modern Warfare 2 and took what made both MW and World at War fun and threw it out the window.

Perhaps the biggest issue is how terrible the Zombies mode was in this game. The maps were terrible, especially the starting map Kino der Toten. Thankfully we got a much more improved version of zombies back in Black Ops 2 along with some of the best maps in the series.

8 Dark Souls 3

The proper title to this game should be Anger Inducer 16. Now I understand the unbelievable difficulty that this game pushes on the player is part of its charm and brings great pride to the gamer when they defeat this beast of a game. But what else does this game truly offer to the player besides the memorization of checkpoint locations and higher blood pressure?

Dark Souls earns its name for being one of the most difficult games ever to be made, but offers little else to accompany the difficulty. The combat is difficult, but not in a fun way. It’s very slow and painful to play. I find the combat of this game does more to shy players away from actual combat than towards the challenge of defeating the foes set before them.

7 Left 4 Dead

Left 4 Dead is such a popular game, but can I ask why? The first installment was very limited in terms of weaponry variation and was touted as a truly horror centric game. Anyone who has played it can tell you this is not the case. Occasionally you will hear the groaning of a special infected and can only be caught of guard with a jump scare, if you were at all.

The shortcomings of this game were partly rectified in its sequel, with the very basic inclusion of melee weapons, as well as adding much-needed new special infected to worry about. Both installments, however, were very choppy and had a rather unpolished feel to them and as a result gameplay suffers tremendously. Hopefully the rumored sequel will fix these issues. If we ever live to see it.

6 NBA 2k17

Probably the most prominent of annual release sports franchise (one could argue for either Madden or FIFA to hold this spot), but this year’s installment seems to be more loved than any before. While I can admit that may seem true for every year’s installment, it doesn’t excuse the large amount of issues and bugs that plague this installment.

Aside from the abhorrent and numerous server issues, the commentators will often speak the wrong voice lines or even speak about players on different teams as though they are participating in the game. Even while writing this today, it showed my season stats for my player up with an image of the Wizards starting point guard, John Wall, for some reason. There are numerous instances of deleted or corrupted data and loss of players. There is no shortage of issues with this game, but people are willing to overlook it every time because of how fun it is to play virtual basketball.

5 Mass Effect

I can already hear the displeasure and disapproval at this game's inclusion on this list, but I encourage you to truly think about it. Bioware’s Mass Effect series is probably one of the greatest gaming franchises in history but the little bits of joy that made this franchise so amazing are few and far between in the series first installment. The first Mass Effect title felt so overly complex for no reason and it results in what feels like a sprint to finish the game so that you can move onto the series best installment, Mass Effect 2.

Ironically, one could argue the series took the opposite approach when it comes to game complexity when the third and final installment rolled around, and while Mass Effect laid the ground work for one of the best space-epics ever, it falls short on its own, but is carried by the success of its successors.

4 Fallout 3

Talk about a great game world. The post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland that is Washington D.C. is host to some of the best moments in gaming history. However, as a Bethesda game, it features the studios signature charm of a seemingly unending supply of glitches and bugs.

While many would put Fallout: New Vegas on this list, one has think about the many improvements made to the Fallout formula. Simple additions such as iron sights and weapon-modding are only the tip of the iceberg. Fallout 3’s DLC content has nothing on what is essentially a second story hiding within the additional content of New Vegas. All of these things together make it difficult to revert back to Fallout 3, no matter if it has the better story.

3 Halo 3

Of all the entries in the marquee Xbox franchise, it is Master Chief’s third adventure that finds itself on this list. After what many consider to be the best in the series, Halo 3 falls flat and doesn’t even retain the punch it once had with the death of Master Chief.

While the series has gone on, the high point of 3 suffers as the key emotional moment is now rendered pointless with the fact he still alive in the new games. While it may be explained and understood why he comes back, but the fact remains that Halo 3 now has no emotional strength or hook to it. The lack of this is a dangerous oversight for any franchise if they want to keep their players invested and enthralled throughout the game.

2 Gears of War

The Gears of War series is known a whole for being violent, gory, and has the ability to pull on the heartstrings when it needs to. However, in a series of such great moments, the first installment in the popular shooter series falls short of the other main series installments, in terms of story, characters, and overall impact on the player.

The game’s finale sees the main squad of Cog soldiers drop the light mass bomb on the locust hive and, while explosive as all hell, it's fruitless to stop the locust horde. General Raam is cool but has nothing on Gears of War 2’s Skorge.

The game is held back by having to introduce the characters, which makes it easier for the sequels to surpass it with the groundwork already laid. Gears of War also features the least interesting and most pathetic Carmine brother.

1 Grand Theft Auto V

When we talk about overrated games, there can truly only be one that reigns supreme over the others. That game is Grand Theft Auto V. This sandbox game is at the center of many gamer’s hearts and after releasing in 2013, it’s still one of the most played games on the Xbox One. This can be attributed to the large amount of freedom given to the player in sandbox games, but is it really worth it?

Listen, I get it. Its fun to run around and do what ever you want, but this game is not as great as everyone makes it out to be. This game is driven by everyone’s obsession with Trevor, who is incredibly interesting, but the other two characters, Michael and Franklin, are very cookie cutter and lack any real depth. The multiplayer is its only redeemer, when there aren’t server issues.