Over the past decade or so, Metacritic has become the scourge of video games developers. Some of them have performance bonuses based on their game’s Metacritic scores. Others are simply afraid that gamers will not buy the product if the score is too low. Still, the reviews aggregation tool is extremely useful to the public. It’s a great tool to look at a game’s quality at a glance, and it’s also just fun to simply compare games against each other. Rankings are fun! It’s one of the many reasons why I write for this website.
There are two main objectives behind this list of the twenty worst and ten best games as ranked by Metacritic. First, it’s always fun to argue about our favourite games of all time and try to find where they fit when compared to everybody else’s list. Second, I have always thought that there is something fascinating about truly awful games. It’s the real stinkers that make us understand how special the real gems are, plus it is perversely entertaining to play something that is completely atrocious. That’s why people still voluntarily watch The Room.
Before we dive into the list, let’s establish some rules. To be considered, a game needs at least ten reviews. We want our games to be legendarily bad, and their quality to be universally agreed upon. The list will also be devoid of doubles. If two versions or more of a game existed, only the one with the lowest (or highest) score made it. In case of a draw, the version with the most reviews made it.
On to the list!
30 WORST: Amy (Xbox 360)
Score: 25
We are starting strong! This is the least bad of the “worst” list, and yet, it has been called “one of the worst games ever made by Jim Sterling, back when he was still on Destructoid. The story of Amy is basically what would happen if The Last of Us had not passed quality assurance. It’s the story of an 8-year old called Amy, who has psychic abilities and can use them to save a woman called Lana, who is basically protecting/exploiting her to make her way past hordes of zombies. Amy’s powers are so wide-reaching that she can even heal people from the virus. Obviously, the army wants in on that when they learn about it, so the two main characters are basically alone without any allies on either side.
The first thing that jumps at the player is the abysmal quality of the voice acting and cut scenes.
Especially the introductory cut scene, which seems to go on forever. From there, it’s a constant fight against the sloppy controls and the frustrating gameplay. The game describe itself as “survival horror” and “stealth-based”, and yet, it struggles in both of those categories. It’s not actually scary: the zombies are just used as an obstacle in a puzzle and not as actual enemies to vanquish. The stealth part is more effective in the sense that many areas ask of you to be stealthy to get to point A to point B, but it’s so badly implemented that it feels pointless.
29 WORST: Batman: Dark Tomorrow (Xbox)
Score: 25
Batman: Dark Tomorrow is not off to a good start when you learn that two of the main villains of the game are going to be The Ventriloquist and Black Mask, two lesser members of the Dark Knight’s rogue gallery. Thankfully, the Joker, Poison Ivy and Ra’s Al Ghul eventually make it into the game, but it is so, so painful to get there. The camera work is questionable at best, with the angle changing when Batman reaches certain parts of the set. It works for a slow-paced game like Resident Evil, but Dark Tomorrow is supposed to be an action game. It becomes confusing fast.
The most frustrating part of the game has to be the ending. The gamers brave enough to stick with this abject product were more often than not rewarded with an ending where Ra’s Al Ghul’s plan succeeded despite the player’s best efforts, and Batman perished despite being the hero. This is because the game has a good and a bad ending, something that wasn’t advertised anywhere. Even worse: The good ending requires the player to find a tiny signaling device in the last level before facing Ra’s Al Ghul. That objective is never made clear either, so unless it is by accident, a regular player will never stumble upon the proper ending. It’s like a rotten cherry on top of this already foul sundae.
28 BEST: Perfect Dark (N64)
Score: 97
As the spiritual successor of GoldenEye 007, Perfect Dark had some mighty shoes to fill. The pressure was on also because the game came in so late in the Nintendo 64’s lifespan. By mid-2000, gamers were already looking at the next big thing, with PC games particularly having made a giant leap into lush (for the time) 3D environment. And yet, despite all the expectations, Perfect Dark was able to prove that there was still plenty of life left in Nintendo’s console.
Starring Joanna Dark (and a little grey alien named Elvis, seriously), the game is the ultimate first-person shooter on N64. Not only are the controls as smooth as you could hope for when it comes to a console shooter, it is also packed with everything that you would think of as standards of the genre. There is a great multiplayer mode, and there is also a cooperative mode, but my personal favorite was the lesser known VS missions, where one player played the nameless enemies trying to stop Joanna Dark. Sure, those enemies basically go down with one hit, but every level has an almost endless supply of them. It feels a lot more personal when you have to compete against a friend to complete a campaign mission. Let’s not forget the guns, especially the Farsight, which allows players to see their enemies through walls, although in a funky neon-colored display. Perfect Dark is crazy, but in a good way.
27 WORST: Stalin Vs Martians (PC)
Score: 25
Full disclosure: I have never played Stalin vs Martians before, but if I am only judging by the title, it sounds like the perfect game for people who think that putting two completely random things together is the height of creativity: Cowboys vs Aliens, Alien vs Predator, Freddy vs Jason… the list goes on, but the quality is never really there. It’s as if creators thought that simply by pitting two recognizable things against each other, half the job is done.
It might be true, but judging by various people’s reaction, the other half of the job was unceremoniously abandoned before it could be completed.
The most I was willing to do was watch other people play the game, and by all measures, this looks like any of the lesser titles of the real-time strategy crazy of the mid-90s. The problem is, the game was released in 2009. The gameplay is dated, the music is dated, everything is dated. The developers hid behind the caveat that the game is supposed to be a parody, but by creating a game so terribly unplayable, it seems like nobody felt like sticking with it long enough to see any of the satire. The strategy element also seems noticeably absent, as there is almost no unit management to be made. It’s just about clicking and clicking on your enemies until they are gone, while stereotypical soviet-era slogans are being spouted endlessly over your speakers. It’s like the developers had a semi-clever title and nothing else.
26 WORST: Terrawars: New York Invasion (PC)
Score: 24
Sometimes, even the best intentions are not enough to simply will a good product into existence. Terrawars: New York Invasion apparently had its heart in the right place. The Wikipedia page for the game states that the development team took over 5000 pictures of New York in order to built maps as realistic as possible. They must have caught New York on a really bad smog day, because the sky is constantly red, and the draw distance is just enough to let the player see about 20 feet in from of them. I haven’t seen that much fog in a game since Superman 64. But let’s backtrack a little.
Terrawars: New York Invasion is a first-person shooter with a story which could be interesting. Aliens are taking over New York, and as a reservist in the National Guard, it’s up to YOU to make things right. The problem is in the execution. The game was made in 2006, and yet I remember the first Quake being more visually impressive. The gameplay has no variety at all, with the missions being of the mindless variety. It doesn’t matter whether you try to sneak around or smash your way through your enemies’ defense lines, as long as you keep shooting, nothing bad should happen. Finally, the sound is a real irritant in this game, because every single alien sounds like a chorus of cats being set on fire.
25 BEST: Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 (PS2)
Score: 97
There are plenty of games on this list which I have played over and over, but Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 is basically my first year of college encapsulated in a single title. The tricks are as easy to pull off as they have ever been, and the levels are even more diverse than they have ever been. You can skate in Area 51 once it’s all said and done! The formula does not really change, except for a few improvements over the other two versions: you can now create a female custom skater, and the game introduced reverts to be able to chain longer combos together. THPS3 is a dream to control.
As usual with the series, one of the stars of the game is the soundtrack. Tony Hawk’s soundtracks were always great little slices of punk rock, but the third installment goes wider with its range of genres. This is a game where Motorhead is side to side with Del The Funky Homosapien and Redman. It might be weird for a soundtrack to be the most talked about part of a game, but in the Tony Hawk’s series, it’s a vital element which holds everything else together. THPS3 is a game which plays very smoothly, and hours go by like minutes. A bad soundtrack would make you want to turn down the volume, or worse, might take you out of the moment. Here, it solidifies the identity of the game.
24 WORST: Gravity Games Bike: Street Vert Dirt (PS2)
Score: 24 - 12 reviews
In a great bit of coincidence, I get to talk about Gravity Games Bike: Street Vert Dirt right after Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3. Gravity Games tries to do for BMX what Tony Hawk did for skateboarding, but something went very wrong in the process. I will just start by mentioning that the riders in Gravity Games can bleed, or if that isn’t enough, fall into vats of acid strategically placed in the middle of some levels. Bleeding, sure, I can understand. BMX is a dangerous sport.
However, I don’t recall ever seeing acid barrels laying around an X-Games track.
If weird design choices were the worst problem with Gravity Games Bike, it wouldn’t be so bad. However, it misses the mark in nearly everything else that matters. The game is full of glitches: your rider will often get stuck in a wall or disappear through the floor. Your bike will get stuck in railing, or sometimes just stop as if it just hit an invisible wall. It’s really hard to talk about Gravity Games Bike without constantly going back to Tony Hawk: It tries so hard to be like Tony Hawk that its failure to do so basically defines the game. Even the soundtrack is like a lesser version of its competitor: you get Sugar Ray and Disturbed instead of Public Enemy and Motorhead.
23 WORST: Postal III (PC)
Score: 24
It’s really hard to take anything associated with the Postal series seriously. It tries so hard to be offensive just for the sake of getting a reaction that it loses all credibility as a real game. Postal III is no exception, coming along nearly a decade after anyone stopped caring about Postal. Once again, you are playing the creatively named “Postal Dude”, but this time, you are given a choice which can affect your campaign: will you join the Police, or will you join with the corrupt mayor of the city? No matter which path you pick, it’s more of the same: you shoot things while making your way through various unsavory scenarios. Only the difficulty of the game will change, and I guess the ending, if you have enough time to waste to make it there.
More than being legendarily bad for its game-crashing bugs and inane story, Postal III became famous because even its creator ended up disavowing it. According to Vince Desi, of developer Running With Scissors, the project was licensed to a Russian company for help with creating something significantly bigger than Postal II, and with a bigger budget. This strategy obviously failed, and the game was eventually pulled from the Running With Scissors website. Instead, the developer encouraged gamers to buy Postal II, and even created an expansion pack for the game, Paradise Lost, which takes not-so-subtle jabs at Postal III.
22 BEST: The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of the Wild (Switch)
Score: 97
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was named “Game of the Year” in 2017 at the Golden Joysticks awards, and at half a dozen other ceremonies. It is barely a year old, and it has already attained a nearly mythical status. What truly sets it apart from its predecessors is that it reinvents the Zelda formula by giving players a freedom they have never experienced before. Gone are the long dungeons. Instead, Breath of the Wild gives you an objective, some tools, and tells you to go for it. How long it takes you, or what you do in the meantime, is totally up to you. You are free to take your time and build your character up, or if you so desire, it’s entirely possible to storm Hyrule Castle with three hearts and a tree branch. You rate of success may vary, but the possibility is there.
What makes the game special is that Nintendo made sure to fill up Hyrule with all manners of interesting sights and enemies to make sure that no games would be the same. Even things that look boring or mundane hide wonders. They even hid a gigantic golf course on the floor of a seemingly bottomless canyon! Breath of the Wild succeeded because it’s one of the few games that make you wish it never ended. Thankfully, Nintendo has stretched the game with two batches of wonderful DLC, so you don’t have to stop journeying through Hyrule anytime soon.
21 WORST: Legends Of Wrestling II (GBA)
Score: 24
Though none of the versions are particularly memorable, the Game Boy Advance release of Legends of Wrestling II manages to squander one of the few selling points the series had. The non-portable Legends of Wrestling games use the same engine that Acclaim created all the way back in 1997 for WWF War Zone. The engine was terrible then, and nearly a decade of development did not improve it at all. Therefore, the main attraction is the parade of legendary wrestlers with which to create dream match-ups. The full-blown version features recognizable likenesses of its wrestlers.
The GBA version, on the other hand, looks like the most generic wrestling game released since the days of Tag Team Wrestling on NES.
Here, Roddy Piper wears long tights, the Road Warriors wrestle in short trunks, and Bam Bam Bigelow has lost his trademark flames. So the game tells you that it’s supposed to be a Bret Hart vs Eddie Guerrero match, for example, and you have to take it at its word, because nothing else will make it look believable.
The game does try to include signature moves for its roster, but the graphics are so blurry, and the animations so choppy, that you would be hard-pressed to differentiate a suplex from a piledriver. It was ambitious to try and include all the features of the console version into the portable one, but just because they could doesn’t mean that they should.
20 WORST: Fighter Within (Xbox One)
Score: 23
Fighter Within was a launch title for the Xbox One which was supposed to showcase all of the improvements that Kinect had made since the first version was released during the heydays of Xbox 360. Instead, the Kinect line of products was discontinued just a few years later. Obviously, something went wrong somewhere, but what exactly?
First, the main issue is that Fighter Within is a fighting game which tries to be complex with combos and throws and special moves. This ambitious type of system needs responsive controls to really work, and by its nature, the Kinect is anything but. The camera reads the movement of a player’s body, but despite the technological advancement, these readings are sloppy at best. That is because a player needs to be in the proper spot for their movements to register, while mimicking punching and kicking basically encourages a player to do anything but stay in place. The result: two people weakly flailing away in hope that their punches will register, while the characters on screen go through the same two or three basic combos because it’s all the game could recognize. As a workout, Fighter Within works great, but as a gaming experience, it feels fruitless, useless, and frustrating. Even Wii Sports Boxing felt like a deeper experience.
19 BEST: Grand Theft Auto V (Xbox 360)
Score: 97
Games from the GTA series have always been lovingly made and stuffed full of things to do, but none of them ever felt as complete as Grand Theft Auto V. Sure, the game is still about the same glorified life of crime as its predecessor, but it feels a lot more fun, and a lot freer. Though the other games also allowed you to roam the map at your leisure with whatever vehicle was available, GTAV does not wait for you to finish a few missions to give you access to the good stuff. The game understands that, sure, the missions are OK, but some players just want to drive around, cause mayhem, and escape the police like they are playing a supersized game of cat and mouse. Here, everything is available from the start.
The true achievement here is the sheer size of the game world. This was released near the end of a console generation, with an upgraded next-gen version completed about a year later. And yet, the only difference between the two versions seems to be that there is a bit more draw distance. Don’t let the controversy surrounding the game distract you: GTAV is a technical accomplishment. More than that, it’s also just so much fun. The soundtrack is as good as ever, with an actual original soundtrack on top of the licensed music on the radio. Finally, the multiplayer mode is so great that it’s keeping the game relevant nearly five years later.
18 WORST: FlatOut 3: Chaos And Destruction (PC)
Score: 23
While the FlatOut games were never classics, they still had a good name for providing solid gameplay for gamers who wanted a little bit of over the top physics with their car crashes. On the other hand, FlatOut 3: Chaos and Destruction takes that good name to the woodshed. The game is FlatOut in spirits only; the crashes are still there, but the magic is long gone.
One of the things that set FlatOut apart from its competitors (other than the ragdoll physics of its drivers being ejected from their rides) was the smooth as silk controls. If one is going to try and crash their car into another one, it requires pinpoint accuracy which can only be accomplished with tight controls. FlatOut 3 instead opts to play it loose.
You never feel in control of your car, and every time you do clip another driver feels like a coincidence.
What’s truly disappointing is that you can see that the developers were trying. They included so many different game modes, and yet, most of them are either derivative, or just plain boring. The races are frustrating because your car keeps slipping off the road, the demolition derby is a pain because you keep missing your preys, and the stunt man mode is just baffling. You try to throw your driver into a target in the distance, but any chance of success just feels random. It’s a serious downgrade from the original FlatOut.
17 WORST: Charlie's Angels (GameCube)
Score: 23
There are so many things wrong with Charlie’s Angels that it’s hard to know exactly where to start. Therefore, I will start with the one thing that scared me the most when I first laid eyes on that game. There’s a level where the Angels are in a bikini competition, which obviously goes wrong for whatever reason. They must then fight their way through the rest of the beach level, all the while still wearing bikinis. I think that the developers were going for “enticing”, but the empty eyes of the characters and the grotesquely deformed polygon models made it look like even more of a nightmare than the actual movie it is based on.
The rest if a fairly straightforward beat ‘em up game with some light puzzles. So why is it so terrible? For one, the controls are atrocious. The fights look about as soft as 3-ply toilet paper. Charlie’s Angels also attempts to mix in some areas where the three main characters must work together to complete their objectives, but you can only switch between them at specific times. It’s extremely convoluted. The only reward you get for suffering through this mess is a chance to unlock still photographs and trailers from the actual movie. If you have ever watched it, you know that this is no reward at all. Thankfully, unlike the silver screen version, the video game never got a sequel.
16 BEST: Super Mario Galaxy 2 (Wii)
Score: 97
The first Super Mario Galaxy was a masterpiece (here’s a hint: we’re probably going to talk about it a little later in this list), and Super Mario Galaxy 2 did not fall that far behind. In fact, it might arguably be a better game. It streamlined some of the more tedious parts of the original by replacing the hub world with a simple map as in traditional 2D Mario games. As for the rest, it kept everything that had made the first one such a success. The power-ups, the imaginative worlds, the freedom, everything is still there.
One welcome addition is the introduction of Yoshi, who had not been seen since Super Mario Sunshine. The character opens up new gameplay possibilities, and is used extensively throughout the game. The sequel also goes further than the original, with new smaller planetoids which might not have as many objectives as the main ones, but which instead go in weirder directions with the design. Quite frankly, the game gets a lot of points just for how charming it is, and how original it manages to stay despite being a straight sequel. It also is slightly more difficult than its predecessor. Its more straightforward overworld allows more casual players to skip over some of the tougher levels, which means that Nintendo could go all out in some areas. It’s one of the most challenging 3D Mario ever released, but that might be why it feels so rewarding in the end.
15 WORST: Rambo: The Video Game (PS3)
Score: 23
My first question, when it comes to Rambo: The Video Game, is “was anyone truly eager to play a game based on Rambo?” The series was a lot of fun in the 80s, sure, but it hasn’t aged as well as some other slices of action movie cheese from the same era. Even the Rambo sequel released in 2008 had to move away from its predecessors by becoming even more gritty and violent to stay relevant. Anyway, no matter how large the target audience was, I can at least say that Rambo: The Video Game was successful in reproducing the movies, which at the same time, is one of the reasons why the game is so boring.
It is a reproduction so faithful that you are basically just rewatching the movies, redone with computer animations, with minimal intervention from the player.
Most of the time playing Rambo is spent watching cutscenes with single button presses thrown in as quick-time events. Miss one and you might have the restart the whole sequence. Getting to the end just means you get to move on to the next sequence and do more quick-time events. Every once in a while, the action will switch to an on-rails shooter, where you don’t actually control Rambo’s movement. You just get to move the gun and press the trigger before Rambo moves on to the next area. It’s just so boring. Just watch the movies again instead.
14 WORST: Drake Of The 99 Dragons (Xbox)
Score: 22
The shame about Drake of the 99 Dragons is that it had such a fun premise: you play as an undead gun ninja who must collect souls to prevent his enemy from using them to power an army of zombie cyborgs. This last sentence is simultaneously one of the coolest and most idiotic things I have ever typed. The problem is that the game was supposed to serve as the launching pad for a new multimedia juggernaut property, which gave the developers a very short deadline. Therefore, shortcuts were taken, and the result is a lot more disappointing than the words “zombie cyborgs” would lead you to believe.
The biggest issue with Drake of the 99 Dragons is the controls, and these were brought down by the game being too ambitious. Drake is supposed to be really good with guns: He can use two of them at the same time and aim in any direction. The whole gameplay is based on this idea, but the result is comical at best. Drake’s arms can be moved separately by using the two thumbsticks on the controller, and there were no limits put on the animations. Therefore, Drake’s limbs flail around not unlike those inflatable tube men you would see in a used car dealership, and it more often than not looks like he is dislocating every joint in his arms. Even with better controls, it would still be nothing more than a mediocre shooter, but the gameplay really sinks it.
13 BEST: Super Mario Galaxy (Wii)
Score: 97
For Super Mario Galaxy 2 to be so good, it had to follow in the footsteps established by its big brother, Super Mario Galaxy. The game, released in 2007, proved that the Wii could do more than house minigame compilations and shovelware. It went back to the roots of the 3D platformer genre established a decade earlier by Super Mario 64, and then expanded on the concept by saying “yes” to pretty much anything that went through the development team’s head. What if Mario was in space? What if the worlds were planets from which Mario can’t fall? What if Mario was a ghost? Or a bee? Or a spring? When you stop for a moment to think about it, Super Mario Galaxy is truly bonkers.
Despite the absolutely absurd concept, the game works on all fronts. The bigger stages are beautiful and varied. The smaller ones are insane platforming challenges that will test even long-time Mario veterans. Most of all, the game was also the introduction of Rosalina, a character which became so popular that she has basically supplanted Daisy as the de facto #2 princess in the Mushroom Kingdom. She now goes karting, plays tennis, and was even included in the latest Super Smash Bros. It goes without saying that Super Mario Galaxy left a long-lasting print on the gaming world.
12 WORST: Afro Samurai 2: Revenge Of Kuma Volume 1 (PS4)
Score: 21
Pretty much everything associated with Afro Samurai is a success. The original manga was well-received, the TV series was good, and the soundtrack created by RZA was awesome. That’s why it came as a surprise when Afro Samurai 2: Revenge of Kuma ended up stinking so badly. Once again, the soundtrack is great, it’s just everything else which falls apart. I could spend entire paragraphs talking about the slowdowns in the action when too many characters are around, or the boring levels, but I think that the best way to explain how terrible this game truly is, is with the following story.
When the game was released, it was planned to be the first volume of a trilogy. The PS4 version was the first version released, with an Xbox One version to follow shortly. In the end, the game’s reviews were so abysmal, and the public’s reaction so harsh, that the game was pulled from the PSN store and from Steam less than three months after release.
Fans who had pre-ordered the next volume were issued refunds.
The next two volumes in the trilogy were completely canceled, as was the release of the Xbox One version. To this day, the game is unavailable by legal means. Afro Samurai 2 was such a bad game that it sunk two more projects. That’s not something you see everyday.
11 WORST: Infestation: Survivor Stories (PC)
Score: 20
The first thing that people will notice about Infestation: Survivor Stories is that it looks similar to another project called The War Z. The second thing they will notice is that it sounds like the most generic video game possible in an already overcrowded genre. The third thing they will notice, if they choose to push forward and start playing, is that they were right on the first two assumptions. Infection is indeed similar to The War Z, because it is just the renamed “complete” version of the latter. The Alpha released was moderately well-received, showing promises of an open world where players could either compete against each other or fight zombies. Things took a wrong turn once the final version reached Steam.
First, the company producing the game was caught lying more than once. First, it was by falsely advertising absent features, and then, by claiming things that were simply not true about the game. For example, the executive producer claimed that the game map was over 100 sq. km, while the truth was closer to 10. Then, the same producer was caught using slurs against players of his own game in a forum post on the company’s official website. Finally, features kept being added then taken away, only to be reintroduced later for a price. It was one of the worst examples of everything wrong with freemium games. The servers were thankfully shutdown in 2016.