Asklemmy

Difficulty-wise, The Lion King on SNES. This game shattered my childhood.

Superman 64 was a hell of a mess

Same as a lot of other gen-xers: E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial

It's a classic answer, E.T. on the Atari 2600.

That shitty mobile version of SimCity.

Took a beloved childhood classic (the original SimCity) and took a giant free-to-pay shit all over it.

There are probably worst games I've played that I don't recall, but there was a Roller Coaster Tycoon knockoff for the Playstation once. First impressions were "I bet this is going to be as customizable a sandbox game as the computer version". Nope. It's like the actual Roller Coaster Tycoon, except the parks are tiny, so much of the land is unusable, everything costs a bajillion dollars to make, the parks get demolished every time you "succeed" (since it was level-based), and you get absolutely no warning before a game over screen just drops in on you because you took out the wrong loans. Even being a real park owner probably has less checks and balances than it.

Mostly any modern mobile game. Piles of shit with p2w and gambling addictive mechanics that aren't fun but stressful...

ROTFL

A bunch of early access survival crafting games on steam in the early days of early access. One was trying to be like starship troopers and it got like one update

Mario is missing. Imagine being a young kid thinking this is Mario 3/4 (can’t remember where it fit in) and it’s a platformer not realizing it’s an educational game when you got it. What a pos, greatest let down of my life.

Sonic 06. This is coming from someone who eagerly wanted to be optimistic about the game, especially given how, on paper, it seemed very reminiscent of the Adventure games. I purchased an Xbox 360 and the game to try it out, to see if it really was as bad as people say it is.

It was...very sloppy. There are glitches everywhere, to the point where a significant amount of deaths will occur due to them, such as wall running physics just randomly breaking, causing you to fall into pits of lava, having to hit the jump button 10 times just so Knuckles jumps off of a wall every time, and even when not considering the glitches, the controls just feel awkward and clunky, Sonic himself is slow and the physics leave a lot to be desired. I enjoyed the story much more than what the gameplay had to offer.

Desert Bus.

I'm going to say Battletoads. The game was mostly pretty fun, until you got the jetski section where it was biologically impossible for a human to react in time. The only way to get past this level was to perfectly memorize the sequence of buttons to push.

Back to the Future on NES. All I remember is a series of pain in the ass mini games having little to nothing to do with the plot. One of them was called "That Sinking Feeling", where Marty apparently had to platform his way out of his own stomach.

And E.T. of course, fuck that game.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit on NES. Ghostbusters was more disappointing, but I've at least kinda figured out how to play it over my lifetime. WFRR I'm clueless on. I think it's some kind of point and click, but I'm not really sure. There's a part where you have to call a real life telephone number to progress.

Pretty accurate depictions of what it feels like to play these games.

Resident Evil 6, on PC.

I normally try to play a game for a minimum of 10 hours just to give it a chance in case it grows on me, but this was just such a piece of shit I couldn't even reach half that...

Superman 64.

Weeks and months of hype (the era of print gaming journalism), Blockbuster stocking 100 copies on launch day for "guaranteed availability" etc.

Then I finally popped the cart in, and this thing was so bad it just defied all logic. Horrific controls, shitty graphics, unclear user interface and objectives, terrible draw distance. Timed level segments and insane difficulty.

There might be "worse" games but I have never been more disappointed in a release than Superman 64.

Does ET count?

I wouldn't say worst, but maybe greatest difference in expectation vs reality - "My Time at Portia".

Cutscenes and voice acting were janky. The UI felt like it was originally an MMO and feels odd for a single player game. The gameplay loop felt tedious and seemed to disrespect the player's time.

Maybe I needed to give it more time, but for a game that I thought had generally good/great reviews, it wasn't clicking for me.

Worst that I can recall playing was Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero. You had to hit the B button to turn around. It was frustrating as hell.

Top Gun for the nes. I never actually finished the first mission. I could beat Mike Tyson but that aircraft carrier kicked my ass.

Christmas Day, we just got a PS1 years after everyone else. My brother and I are ecstatic to play. My mum and sister are smiling at our reaction, since they went to the game store and asked the guy what a good game would be to play.

Formula One '98. We played a lap each, and then turned off the console. I can still recall the commentary "it looks like he's stuck in the kitty litter!"

*hands shake*

The Bible Game. It’s a game that was originally released on the GBC or GBA; I honestly can’t even remember which… I downloaded a ROM pack for my retropie and discovered it hidden inside. My buddy and I got drunk one evening, and decided to boot it up for shiggles.

It has you running around trying to answer bible verse questions to get keys from demons. It’s the single most boring and unintuitive game I’ve played. It also blatantly got several of the Bible verses wrong. We looked it up online, and there’s also a version that was on the Xbox, but it apparently had wildly different gameplay and was more like a game show, where the players answered trivia questions.

I don't even remember all the trash games i tried to played just to delete them after few minutes.

But the ones being remembered are instead the biggest disappointments, games which were supposed to be great or were supposed to be improved sequels of great games.

In this cathegory trashcan lid medal goes definitely to REBEL GALAXY 2. I played first part like 10 times and only ever wanted more of it, but 2nd problem was not that it was bad or not (it was though), but that it was entirely different game.

Dishonorable mentions for few more:

• Dragon Age Inquisition for being a solo player simulator of a boring MMO instead of a awaited resurrection of series and even sub-genre
• Marvel Midnight Suns, again for being supposed to be next X-Com but in reality being poorly optimised card game
• Pandora: First Contact, supposed spiritual successor to Sid Meier Alpha Centuari. Well it was spiritual in sense i wanted to get drunk on spirits because no chance to play this turd while sober.
• Starfield, i don't think i have to comment on this
• Less specific but every Dune game since Emperor: Battle for Dune and probably every Dune game in the future as long as the unFuncom have the licence
• Gladius: Relics of War: for a game that had so much development and DLC's it's still shallow as puddle. Which, along with Pandora above leds me to:
• Everything published by Sltherine i played maybe except Armageddon in good way and Pandora in bad way. Somehow nearly every good idea for a game that this company make into reality turns out to be the mediocriest of mediocrest game ever.

EDIT: oh and the one i tried to forget so hard but other poster made me remember it: "X-Com" Chimera Squad. No, just fucking no, the pathetic death of series after glorious predecessor is just too much.

I remember buying Duke Nukem Forever in a Humble Bundle, a bundle that I had virtually every other game for the price. I remember only paying $1 and I gave *all* that money to charity.

I played DNF. I still felt robbed. To this day I haven't completed it due to how terrible it is (if my memory serves me, I've been minaturised and I'm driving around in a tiny car? But the controls are awful and Duke now seems like a Trump like character whose charm is entirely devoid in modern times. It was already wearing thin back when it was released, too).

Looking through the lens of relativity, I'd have to say Witcher I. The fact that the fucking masterpiece that is Witcher III and not-amazing-but-definitely-worth-a-playthrough that is Witcher II both stemmed from the comically bad dumpster fire that was #1 is nothing short of a miracle.

The franchise *should* have died at #1, but I'm sure glad it didn't.

Paper Mario Sticker Star. Moreso disappointed rather than hate, but it left a bad taste in my mouth for the whole RPG genre (when I played it for the first time, I was 6, and thought all RPGs were like that) until I played the TTYD remake a few months ago

Deadly Towers.

This game is awful

..It has to be Drakengard. What a thing. I literally couldn't finish it, and I'm close to finishing Final Fantasy XIII. I have a high tolerance, but good LORD is it a slog.

Probably Call of Juarez: The Cartel. I wanted to play the entire franchise back to back, but it wasn't being sold on Steam, so I had to hunt down a copy on some key reseller. Boy, do I see why it's not on sale anymore. runs like absolute shit, incredibly buggy, cheesy as hell and with some pretty questionable game design choices. Still, it was somewhat entertaining in a "so bad it's good" sense, and it ties into the previous games in a fairly interesting way, so I don't regret playing it. It was certainly an experience, but it's a very bad game by pretty much all metrics.

Master of Orion III. A 4X game for PC that had had all the fun carefully eliminated during development. It was like playing a spreadsheet.

My greatest shame is that I actually bought it twice because years later I couldn't believe it had been that bad and risked a bargain bin copy. It was exactly that bad.

Omikron the Nomad Soul.

It's david cage's worst game and I have no idea how he tricked David Bowie into collaborating on it. Also, listen to the music.

edit: whoops, got silvagunner'd. Here's the real track.

Puyo Puyo Tetris 2

I wrote that essay back in 2021, and three years later time proved all of it correct. This game straight up killed the series.

Quest 64. It wasn't even funny bad, it was just boring.

My uncle gave me an Atari 800 when I was a kid. Came with a stack of old carts and games.

One of them was E.T. Which was one of my fave movies at the time.

Wrestslemania x8 on the gamecube. Didn't even have a frigging campaign mode...