2018 has been a pretty great year for gaming. The Nintendo Switch had a strong second year that ended with the triumphant Super Smash Bros. Ultimate; the PS4 and Xbox One are clearly on their way out with some great AAA titles; and indie games have never been better, easily mixing themselves into the world of big budget games. We have truly lived through a fantastic generation of gaming. At the same time, 2018 has also been one of the worst years in gaming in a long time with Nintendo’s poor online, a growing emphasis on homogenized AAA development, and some truly awful titles.

For as good as 2018 was, its bad parts are enough to make the shift into the next generation a bit worrisome. Where are we moving as a medium? Microtransactions, in-game advertisements, and overpriced season passes are the most rampant they’ve ever been. We are shifting into an age of gaming that will likely do away with physical media and prioritize game streaming. If nothing else, the games that came out this year only show just how little developers care about consumers. For every Red Dead Redemption II, we have three cash grab games around the corner waiting to drain our wallets.

25 Metal Gear Survive

As Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance proved, Hideo Kojima is not a necessary ingredient for making a good Metal Gear game. He is an important one, mind you, but a Kojimaless game can indeed be good. Unfortunately, Konami’s first attempt at continuing the series without Kojima was an utter disaster.

Who knew removing everything fans loved about a series was a bad idea? 

Sadly, Konami’s attempt at keeping Metal Gear alive meant stripping out stealth, littering the game with microtransactions, and almost exclusively reusing assets. Metal Gear Survive is more a piece of bad DLC than it is an actual entry in the series. Sadly, its broken release will likely mean the end of the franchise.

24 Nickelodeon Kart Racers

There seems to be this idea that games, or really any media, made for kids are inherently of a lesser quality and should be judged appropriately. This is nonsense and puts a stop to important criticism before it can ever flourish. Children can recognize quality and it’s our job to ensure they have quality content to process.

Unfortunately, no creative control was put into Nickelodeon Kart Racers. Ugly, hard to control, and surprisingly difficult, Nickelodeon essentially made their own discount Mario Kart without any of the charm. If you’re a parent and your child is asking for this game for Christmas, have an honest discussion with them about quality.

23 Heavy Fire: Red Shadow

The latest entry in the Heavy Fire series should lately take a look at the critical consensus and make itself the final entry. Red Shadow is a short, bland shooter that calls back to an era of gaming that’s long gone not due to the advancement of technology, but because we have all figured out what makes a good video game good. Even the inclusion of VR isn’t enough to Red Shadow, simply adding an awkward layer on top of a game that has too little going on for its own good.

22 Fallout 76

Fallout 76 is proof that the Fallout franchise has gotten too big for its own good. While the last game was certainly a step in the wrong direction, it was still a good game for the most part. This, though? This is an utter disaster, cannibalizing the spirit of the series to cash in on a gaming trend.

Arguably the worst AAA game of all time. 

There is nothing unique, special, or interesting about Fallout 76. Fallout should be an event, but Bethesda refuses to give the series the respect it deserves. Given how critically panned the game has been, hopefully this will spur Bethesda to actually care about quality control moving forward, but that seems like a wasted wish.

21 Out Of Ammo

It’s always tough merging genres together. While it almost always seems like a good idea on paper, it’s important to recognize just how different genres are from one another. We categorize media into genres for a reason. Mixing an RTS with an FPS is a fine idea, but it’s an overwhelming one as well, especially with a third element: VR. Out of Ammo tries to be three games at once ensuring that not a single third of its body is composed well enough for a competent release.

20 Tennis World Tour

Realism is not always a good thing. For many, video games are a way of escaping reality. While a bit of realism does work for immersion purposes, realism can also destroy a game. Tennis World Tour is arguably the most realistic tennis game in a long time, but that is by no means a selling point. Rather, its realism ultimately works in detriment to the game since the gameplay has no real hook. What is the advantage to playing virtual tennis over real tennis? To be completely honest, there is none.

19 Morphies Law

With the advent of Splatoon, third person team shooters have never been more popular. This is a genre that got a massive second wind, one that will likely keep it alive for years to come. Of course, that does mean developers are desperately trying to break into the niche with countless ripoffs.

Never less for less. 

Where this is possible in the battle royale genre, the third person team shooter is simply too niche for any rivals to come in. As a result, a game like Morphie’s Law offers very little to compete against the likes of Splatoon 2, especially since both games are on the same console.

18 Past Cure

The more games push to be cinematic, the worse the medium is going to become with time. An emphasis on storytelling is by no means a bad thing, especially when lifting narrative tools from more developed mediums, but an over-reliance on the cinematic can go on to cripple gameplay.

Sadly, this is exactly what happens with Past Cure. In the push to present a game with a cinematic backbone, the developers forgot to iron out all the other details. The voice acting is laughably wooden, the gameplay loop is underdeveloped, and the plot itself meanders after the first act, defeating the purpose of a cinematic game.

17 Fear Effect Sedna

Every now and again, you’ll come across a game that isn’t so much offensively bad as it is just offensively boring. Fear Effect Sedna is not a broken game by any means. In fact, it’s actually perfectly acceptable in some areas. The problem is ultimately how little imagination is actually found within the title.

The only thing to fear is Fear Effect itself. 

This is a game that is content spinning its wheels until the credits roll. It’s boring, not because of design mistakes, but because the game was simply designed a specific way. Not every mechanic can be a hit. Not every melding of ideas will work. Sometimes, a game will just end up boring, and that in itself is not a good thing.

16 Agony

Considering just how much Agony ended up bombing critically, it’s hard to believe people were actually ever excited about this game. Chalk it up to an aggressive marketing campaign (though not aggressive enough to help the game generate enough hype to sell well,) because even the concept is weak.

While the idea of starting out as a lower tier demon in Hell only to rise above the rest seems cool, where’s the actual hook? What’s the gameplay like? What’s the story like? Why are you doing this? What are the goals? What’s the allure? Agony doesn’t know what it wants to be past a superficial level.

15 New Gundam Breaker

New Gundam Breaker is bad, alarmingly so. The base premise is great- asking you to build your own personal Gundam- but the gameplay is tedious to an extreme degree. There is no discernible gameplay loop to speak of and the story itself is less about the mecha politics the franchise kickstarted and more a harem cringe fest.

A game not worth breaking your wallet over. 

The Steam version is especially bad thanks to unoptimized controls and half baked porting. This is the kind of guy that simply will not appeal to even the most hardcore if only due to how much New Gundam Breaker distances itself from the anime that brought the franchise into the limelight in the first place.

14 Hello Neighbor

If you play Hello Neighbor on Steam, chances are you’re going to like it. A survival horror game where you flee from your neighbor, this is easily one of the most inspired entries in the genre. It’s fun to boot, too! So why is it on this list? Especially since it came out initially in 2017?

Well, that’s because the Switch port came out this year and did everything a port shouldn’t do. Controls are broken, the game is a buggy mess, and all the polish of the Steam version has been taken out. The porting team did one of the worst rush jobs we’ve seen in the industry in a long time, turning a fun game into an unplayable disaster.

13 Scribblenauts Showdown

It’s hard to believe considering how far the franchise has fallen as of late, but Scribblenauts used to be a serious killer app, especially for the Nintendo DS. It was one of the hottest games of its time, pushing what could be done with the medium by emphasizing creativity above all else.

How the mighty have fallen. 

Given how far we’ve come in terms of player freedom and creativity, the series really doesn’t have the legs to run too far and Switch’s Scribblenauts Showdown shows that outright. What was one a trendsetter is now struggling to keep up with the trends, meandering in circles with a drought of uninspired content.

12 Senran Kagura Reflexions

Senran Kagura has always been a hard sell in the West due to its more… “fan servicey” qualities, but the franchise has always managed to find a solid enough footing to justify multiple release. With Reflexions, though, the masses have seemingly had enough of the series.

Reflexions brings less content than ever before, severely diminishing what players can do. In many ways, it’s a massive leap back for the franchise, dismantling everything built up over the years for seemingly no reason. Taking into account how creepy the vibe of the series is in a modern content, Senran Kagura likely won’t be around much longer.

11 BRAWL

Bomberman is not a particularly popular franchise these days, but it’s still very much beloved by its loyal fanbase. Not each game is a hit, but Konami managed to usher in a brand new age for the eponymous Bomberman with the launch of the Switch. For the first time in a long time, we got a great Bomberman game.

BRAWL is lazy and uninspired at best. 

Which means we don’t need BRAWL. A Derivative knock off that desperately tries to be Bomberman without any of the charm, BRAWL is really not worth the time of day. It has neither the polish or support of Bomberman R and features a substantially uglier aesthetic to boot. Never settle for an imitation.

10 Shaq Fu: A Legend Reborn

We’re currently living in a gaming generation absolutely obsessed with calling back to the past. In general, this is a media trend that has gotten out of control within recent years. Nostalgia is the name of the game and everyone wants to make money off all the IPs we loved as kids.

Sometimes, this nostalgia driven pursuit of money pays off well. Other times, it gets us Shaq Fu: A Legend Reborn, a sequel to one of the worst games on the SNES that people only discussed because of its lack of quality. Naturally, this is not a good game in the slightest and is the definition of a cash grab.

9 ARK Park

Ark Park is a fine game in theory- a virtual reality experience where you interact with dinosaurs in first person. What’s not to love? It calls back to everyone’s childhood love of dinosaurs. Sadly, this is one of those games that values “experience” over gameplay.

ARK Park somehow makes dinosaurs lame. 

ARK Park is more interested in making sure that you feel what it’s like to live in a world with dinosaurs than it is offering you an actual video game. This is not to say the medium cannot strive to create an experience, but games need to still be games when it comes down to it.

8 Underworld Ascendant

When a game advertises itself by linking the development team to both System Shock and Thief, it’s only fair to go into said game with certain expectations. Both titles stand out as two of the best games in the genre so naturally a game helmed by the minds behind both franchises would be a hit.

Unfortunately, Underworld Ascendant is proof that games need more than just the memories of yore to be good. This is a game that was pushed out far too early and its performance indicates that. If you so much as try to endure what the game has in store for you, you’ll be met with one of the most technologically incompetent games to release this year.

7 Hollow

Surprisingly, the Nintendo Switch has become quite a bastion for horror-themed video games. In the past two years, we’ve gotten an influx of scary indies. On paper, this is a great idea. The horror genre is one that’s consistently in need of more love. On the other hand, such a desire for horror promotes shoddy craftsmanship.

There's nothing worse than a bad port. 

Hollow is yet another shallow piece of indie shovelware meant to capitalize on the Nintendo eShop’s Wild West atmosphere. As a game, Hollow is actually fine for the most part, but its Switch port is an utter disaster, pushing what would be forgivably mediocre design elements into horrific tedium.

6 One Piece: Grand Cruise

Anime games aren’t often the best. This is really the case for any licensed game, but anime games take it to another level. Rarely do we get titles like Dragon Ball Fighterz. For the most part, we’re stuck with games like One Piece: Grand Cruise- haphazard attempts at milking a franchise for all they’re worth.

If an anime game’s claim to fame is VR, chances are the game itself isn’t worth the trouble. VR itself is very much in its infancy, and that means most games that utilize VR will simply do so superficially. Naturally, a One Piece game is going to do exactly that. It isn’t even worth playing for fans of the series due to how awkward the whole concept is.