Games that are as bad as you were led to believe.

I'm curious what games you have played that are as bad as you were led to believe. Forget agendas and social things that might impart bias; I'm talking about games that are mechanically bad. Maybe it ran poorly, the controls were baffling, or perhaps it just felt sort of "off" to you.

Anyway, that's the question above. Rant below:

The reason I ask is I just had one of the more negative gaming experiences in recent memory: Forspoken.

Now, I know what you're thinking: why did you buy it? Everyone said it was bad. Reviewers said it was bad.

Well, it was $20, and I was curious. Surely this massive AAA fantasy epic, despite it's shortcomings and failure to deliver, couldn't be that bad? Right?!

Well...it is.

At first glance there's a lot to enjoy about Forspoken: a typical but fun fantasy story about an underdog reluctant hero whisked away to an exotic fairy-tale land, a mysterious force corrupting the land, parkour and magic.

But it's sucks. It's just awful. And you warned me.

Some things I don't like:

• Constant interruptions: the initial hour is just terrible. When escaping the gang, they lock your camera. Why!??!?! In telling the story, it interrupts the game every 30 seconds, sometimes for no reason. I guess they ran out of alleyway for me to walk down to tell the story so they just lock my movement?
• Unlikeable protagonist/s: both Alfre and Cuff (your sentient vambrace) are annoying. Initially I liked the concept of a street orphan on her way to jail but they took someone with potential and just made her kind of whiny. And of course they gave the snobby talking jewelry a British accent, because why not.
• Empty game world. After the initial 45 minutes or so you finally get to the game world and...nothing. Very little to really explore. There's this courtyard and I thought "Oh great, finally, a world to explore." Went to check out this fountain, maybe there's a plaque to read. Nope. Just a big empty poorly-textured courtyard.
• Combat seems kind of simple. After my initial 90 minutes and a boss fight, combat is essentially me throwing rocks at a dragon.
• Bad design choices. They removed block for I would guess gameplay reasons, and yet to interact with a chest I have to press the same button twice? Sorry I know that seems nitpicky but if you're streamlining controls why remove a core component of most fantasy games (blocking) but then leave in two input commands for one action.

Anyway, Forspoken is not great. It's not the worst game I've played, but it's arguably the worst I've played in the past few years. I tend to avoid Japanese games, and this is why: most of them tend to be like Forspoken. Just baffling design choices, convoluted story telling, constant interruptions, and tons of jank.

On the bright side, at least the menu let's me quit the game directly. Most Japanese games make me quit to the main menu but only after 30 seconds of essentially relaunching the game and making me watch the main menu animation with shit music.

Devil May Cry 2 immediately springs to mind. God that game was horrible.

God of War 2018. I was correct about all my early criticisms, and there was still much more to hate.

Ya, definitely Forespoken. She's annoying as hell. Writers need to stop thinking a curse word every other word is mature or cool. It's dumb.

I got very bored of the combat quickly. Once I got sick of the combat, nothing kept from from deleting the game.

Dude ... saying most japanese games are like Forspoken is probably 10x as baffling as any of the design decisions it has.

Anyways OT ... Wanted : Dead . It's clunky and just not redeemable imo. I was hoping it was just a case of people sucking at it, unfortunately it's just bad.

Tricky question, I usually steer clear of negatively reviewed games regardless of how good the prequels or previous games were. Usually what happens is I am steered into thinking a game is great, but I find out it quite crap.

But you're saying when did I doubt it was crap, but it actually was, and I should have believed the reviews? Or maybe I was led to believe it was crap, and just played it out of curiosity?

My answer for you is Metal Gear Survive. Even though all signs pointed to crap, I thought it's Metal Gear how bad could it be? One of the worst games ever made.

Ride to Hell: Retribution

On the plus side, definitely not woke:

you'll have been drenched in the game's pathetic, out-of-touch approach to sex, violence, and masculinity

- GameSpot Review

Zelda breath of the of the wild and tears of the kingdom

You were led to believe those were bad games? By whom?

Yeah, not so much doubt it was crap, but just sort of doubted it was as bad as people said it was. Like, a game that was a huge AAA title but received a 5 or 6 from Gamespot; not terrible scores, but not the 8 or 9 people tend to demand or expect from games of this caliber.

Or, perhaps, a game that got really terrible reviews but you thought "Well it can't be that bad" but it actually turned out to be worse. Postal 2 was like that for me; I knew it was bad, people said it was bad, but people were like "It's so bad it's good" and when I played it, the game was so bad it was just...bad.

And yeah, it's always painful when a franchise you like has a bad installment. I think for me that was Splinter Cell: Double Agent. That game just completely ruined it for me and I was willing to forgive a lot.

I realize now that was a controversial opinion lol, but I am going to stick to it: my experiences with Japanese games have been more akin to Forspoken than anything good. Sorry not sorry.

• Clunky menus.
• Odd gameplay mechanics.
• Sometimes pretty game worlds that feel sort of dead (i.e. no atmosphere). It's like...the game world and its inhabitants are two separate things instead of one cohesive thing.
• Really annoying characters and voice actors.
• Excessive de-immersive elements (cutscenes, removing agency from player for the sake of exposition, intrusions to TELL me how to play instead of SHOWING me how to play, etc).

Forspoken is a poor example of Japanese game development, but it's also a pretty typical example of it, too.

Anthem (a month or two after release) was worse than I was lead to believe and my expectation was lower than the norm. Was handed a free code and still left very disappointed. It played like hot-garbage and loading screens unbearable (why give me a map and then clock me out if I'm not in a place within a weird time-frame???) the flying aspect was the only mildly fun feature but ran its course quickly, as noted it's linked to weird loading screens.

Even if I just ignore that Anthem tried to have a Monster Hunter style mission to hub structure and entirely looked at Anthem as a coop Third Person Shooter it still falls short. The shooting is woefully mid and overly streamlined, it auto aimed and the A.I. for enemies was embarrassingly terrible, the missions are also panderingly simple and one-note. Doesn't help that the level design is some of the worst I've seen in any AAA game ever, with common clipping through the map. I've seen indie teams with a one year project do better.

I'm glad modern Bioware is seemingly dead. Good! No one will miss them.

High in large the AAA American gaming industry can't seem to make fun video games anyone can enjoy playing. Generally feel bad for the few talented studios in that country trying to fight the allegations that USA makes shit games.

Hour of Victory. It was an Xbox 360 WWII first person shooter and it was a terrible game. It was god-awful in every way. The enemy AI was easily the worst I've ever experienced. They won't approach you or throw grenades at you if you hide behind a box -- they'll just wait for you to move. Furthermore, they can't hit the broad side of a barn. You can also blow up a tank by simply throwing a few grenades at it. I even encountered a game breaking glitch in the final boss fight that made it impossible to kill him.

I'm surprised that I didn't vomit blood on my way through the game. The only good thing about Hour of Victory was that you were given a choice as to whether you wanted to play as a stealthy character, a sniping character or a character that had lots of health. The one with lots of health was always the best to pick.

@RSM-HQ: Anthem is one of my biggest disappointments because it had the structure of a good game, there just wasn't really any incentive to play.

I mean, what's not to love? Flying around on a beautiful alien planet in sweet power-armor suits. It was Iron Man and Avatar blended together.

Poor management decisions from what I've read. Developers built the game then some EA suit came in and said "Yes...Yes...No, no no..." apparently the Frostbite engine is a nightmare to work with for anyone but DICE as well, and DICE was not feeling collaborative when asked for help by Bioware.

I've never played Forspoken, but the credits show the writers are Western, including Amy Hennig (Uncharted and Legacy of Kain). The writing, storytelling, voice acting and music are all Western, not Japanese. But the director, producer, programmers and artists are Japanese. So it's a hybrid Japanese-Western game, if anything.

@mrbojangles25:

• Odd gameplay mechanics. (Very broad - but they also often have some of the best mechanics - Platinum, Nintendo, Team Ninja, Capcom when they bring their A game are hard to beat )
• Sometimes pretty game worlds that feel sort of dead (i.e. no atmosphere). It's like...the game world and its inhabitants are two separate things instead of one cohesive thing. (Western devs probably have the edge here)
• Really annoying characters and voice actors. (Voice acting is probably stronger in Western games)
• Excessive de-immersive elements (cutscenes, removing agency from player for the sake of exposition, intrusions to TELL me how to play instead of SHOWING me how to play, etc). (This is 100% a problem with western games as well- TLOU, Uncharted, most of Sony's big games really, modern Tomb Raider , most of Ubisoft big games, Red Dead Redemption 2 , CoD all filled with cinematic crap that takes away player control. Where as the most popular Japanese games - like from Nintendo and From Software - barely have any story in them and are gameplay focused. There's plenty of cutscene heavy Japanese games but you can typically skip those )

Forespoken never once had a good showing. It looked entirely vapid from the first moment and with each gameplay trailer looked less and less inspiring.

I feel like Death Stranding may fall in this post too but I have yet to play it. I need it to cost 9.99 for me to want to jump in.

@mrbojangles25: Even the poorly received Iron Man video games are likely more fun than Anthem, and they're one-twentieth the budget.

As for the whole Bioware Frostbite thing, that was debunked a long time ago with a Schreier piece. Former employees at Bioware shared the power complex and overall harassment at Bioware. It's a mess of a developer and EA actually tried to clean up and bring the game structure with an actual release, furthermore course-corrected a lot of Biowares problems at the studios. Electronic Arts can usually be labelled the bad-guy, with modern Bioware it's the idiots that run the teams who harass the overall hardworking staff.

Apparently this was all cleaned up for a healthy work environment with Dragon Age 4's release, however looking at how that turned out, and what's come out about Bioware the last two months I have my doubts. Toxic work environment. I feel bad for Americans trying to make video games & getting jobs at these studios they likely looked-up to; how sad and embarrassing. They should send an application to id Software over a shithole like Bioware or Blizzard.

*Not related what-so ever but anyone read about the guy who was working on the massive Fallout: Nuevo México? Cancelled the project because he wants to play Monster Hunter Wilds, and MH is awesome. Great taste, because Monster Hunter is never bad, unlike the crappy games being mentioned here. Praise be to Monster Hunter, Wilds is easily the shining light of 2025

Cities Skylines 2.

I loved Cities Skylines 1 and I could play CS2 for free with gamepass iirc. So I gave it a shot despite the complaints...

Couldnt run it.

I have played a lot of games, but funnily enough I can't think of a single game that exactly met my low expectations.

Ff15 really sucked, and it was way worse than what reviewers wanted me to believe.

Macaroni before he died said Indiana Jones And the Golden crap game was a pile of shit.

He was right.

Indiana Jones may definitely have some "movie game" trappings with long cutscenes and an over reliance on actors acting in front of a green screen, its gameplay though is a 10/10. Beginning to end.

For a game released in 2024 it also does not fall into any of the issues that plagued games in 2024.

Watching hate videos on video games isn't really the same thing as being in an aula and learning about stuff. It's hate content meant to make youtube influencers richer in their get rich quick scheme.

Uninspiredcop and I disliked the game just from the promotional footage. The YouTube hate culture had nothing to do with it. A crappy game and an even worse Indiana Jones. MachineGames is a loser studio.

MUSIM PANASMUSIM PANASMUSIM PANASMUSIM PANASMUSIM PANASMUSIM PANASMUSIM PANASMUSIM PANASMUSIM PANASMUSIM PANASMUSIM PANASMUSIM PANASMUSIM PANASMUSIM PANASMUSIM PANASMUSIM PANASMUSIM PANASMUSIM PANASMUSIM PANASMUSIM PANASMUSIM PANASMUSIM PANAS

Games like Suicide Squad, Star Wars Outlaws, and DA: The Veilguard come to mind.

Ironically, they all share problems like "excessive de-immersive elements", "unlikable protagonists", "annoying characters and voice acting", "game worlds that feel sort of dead", "odd gameplay mechanics", and "poor design choices".

My experiences with most Western games have been more akin to these games than anything good. Sorry not sorry, haha.

It is also worth noting that Square Enix learned from the poor reception of Forspoken, made many improvements and turned things around with FF7Rebirth, the most acclaimed ARPG of last year. Hopefully studios like Rocksteady, Ubi, and Bioware will follow suit.

@st_monica: yeah big-scale development is not doing great right now across the board.

Looking forward to giving FF7 a try one of these days.

First-person brawlers or whatever you want to call them are awesome. Wish we got more games like this. Reminds me of Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay. Sneaking and punching and using improvised weapons. Very immersive, I can stomach the cutscenes in this case.

Saints Row...Everyone was saying it was awful and then it hit Steam after the Epic exclusivity and it had a sale and I just wanted an open world game to scratch that GTA itch and wow...what a stupid ass game...lol. The dialog, cutscenes, the writing, just absolutely cringe and awful. The shooting and driving...just nothing about it I found enjoyable...

Saints Row 2 was peak in my opinion and I enjoyed the 3rd one as well. I also remember playing the original on the Xbox 360 and I enjoyed that one as well from what I remember