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What's the absolute worst game of 2018 you played?

Phediuk

Member
Oct 27, 2017
3,323
Well, looks like that time of year again. The GOTY thread is up, so let's get the darker counterpart going.

I think it's Underworld Ascendant for me.

https://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/underworld-ascendant

I felt like I had to at least give it a try because I supported the Kickstarter. A buggy, unfinished disaster of a game all around really. The really baffling thing is that despite being billed as the successor to Ultima Underworld, it's utterly inferior in every way to its predecessor. Like why are even spending your time making a (vastly) worse version of a 26-year-old game?

Also, its save system is quite possibly the worst one ever, as this thread elaborates:

https://www.resetera.com/threads/do...he-worst-save-system-in-gaming-history.82389/

So what's missing? Really fundamental things, like a working save game. At the moment the game lets you create respawn points using some dumb magic glowing tree thing in prescribed places, but should you quit and restart you'll find progress wiped and you're back at the very start of its expansive levels. Oh, and not all progress wiped! Because it ludicrously lets you keep your entire inventory, but resets all the puzzles and enemies. Having had to restart the opening section, I've now got an inventory with two of each of the unique items it hands you in its tutorial.

This isn't about preventing "save-scumming" (although there's a whole other article to write about how it's fine to let people "save-scum" if they want to, just don't do it if you don't like it), it's a failure to have implemented a way for checkpoints to be remembered between play sessions. In fact, even if you tried to reload during play after placing a tree-point, it'll still wipe all your progress, while maintaining your inventory, and dump you back at the level start. More mad still? When you reload a respawn point, it'll have maintained your progress after you created it, making a complete mockery of the whole process!
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Bundy

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
20,931
One of my friends had Agony. "Played" it for an hour. Wow.... it's trash.
 
Xeontech

Xeontech

Member
Oct 28, 2017
4,059
Was pretty time constrained this year. Worst was probably Fall Out 4. It wasn't crazy bad, just didn't enjoy it.
 
BassForever

BassForever

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
29,918
CT
Probably Double Dragon 4 on switch, not new but new to me and wow it was so bad. I dunno why I stuck with and finished it.
 
Wrellie

Wrellie

Member
Oct 29, 2017
696
Hello Neighbor. But I am very happy it was on Gamepass because it's easy to move on quickly.
 
tenderbrew

tenderbrew

Banned
Oct 30, 2017
1,807
Don't feel like I really played anything bad this year.

Was somewhat disappointed in Kirby Star Allies and Monster Hunter World.
 
fracas

fracas

Member
Oct 27, 2017
4,637
I try to avoid bad games as I don't have much free time these days, but I played about 15 minutes of the Fallout 76 beta and uninstalled it. I love Fallout but this was everything I didn't like about the series expanded into one terrible game.

Maybe it's unfair of me, but that's the worst thing I've played this year. I'm going to give it a fair shake eventually, though.
 
No Depth

No Depth

Member
Oct 27, 2017
18,266
Yea, didn't really feel like anything stuck out as bad on my playlist.

I was a bit disappointed with MHW, Iconoclasts, and Spider-Man(as an open-world game). All were fine games though despite some faults.
 
Valkrai

Valkrai

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,495
Overkill's The Walking Dead. I'm a huge fan of Payday and liked Walking Dead enough but this game was piss poor. Buggy, boring, generic, clearly rushed out for Starbreeze to make up for their last game bombing.
 
OP
OP

Phediuk

Member
Oct 27, 2017
3,323
Valkrai said:
Overkill's The Walking Dead. I'm a huge fan of Payday and liked Walking Dead enough but this game was piss poor. Buggy, boring, generic, clearly rushed out for Starbreeze to make up for their last game bombing.
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Fuck, I legit forgot that came out. That feels like a 2016 game.
 
Lant_War

Lant_War

Classic Anus Game
The Fallen
Jul 14, 2018
23,543
Death's Gambit probably. It's actually good, but pretty much everything else I played in 2018 has been great.

Do indie PS+ games count? Absolver bored me.
 
darkside

darkside

Member
Oct 26, 2017
11,265
Didn't play many bad games this year (it was a great year) so I'll say Dissidia NT. Just a complete bummer.
 
TheThirstyPrisoner

TheThirstyPrisoner

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,152
I find it difficult to fathom how anyone (on a forum such as this) could have played a truly bad game unexpectedly. It is not difficult to filter out the real garbage, and though a certain game may have been personally disappointing, that is not the same as being "bad." If anything, threads like these are really asking, "Are you capable of distinguishing between objectivity and subjectivity?"

That being said, I guess the most disappointing game to me would have to be Fox n Forests. It looked like the old generic SNES/Genesis games that everntually oversatursted those systems. It turns out it was like that. Certainly not a bad game, but it didn't charm me the way I had hoped it would and I lost interest pretty quickly.
 
Clive

Clive

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,088
Only played decent games and above but I felt Kirby's latest was incredibly stale and that the series need to slow down a bit. The 3DS got two similar Kirby games and Kirby has had a too frequent schedule of samey games post-Gamecube. One per gen is plenty unless they reinvent the series completely. Star Allies was absolutely not a poor game though.
 
Atomic Playboy

Atomic Playboy

Member
Oct 27, 2017
3,899
Portland, OR
Does it have to be released in 2018? If so, I think it's probably Subnautica by default (which is a great game that I enjoyed immensely, but the only other games from 2018 I played were Spider-Man and Red Dead Redemption 2, so stiff competition). I didn't play a lot of games this year and none of them were bad. If we're including games from other years, Assassin's Creed Rogue (which was good, but definitely feels like a relic after playing things like Origins), or The Stanley Parable (which is also good, and very well written, but ultimately a pretty short experience). This was a good year in gaming for me.
 
KillstealWolf

KillstealWolf

One Winged Slayer
Avenger
Oct 27, 2017
16,069
I play a Demo of Let's Go Pikachu at a convention. Them motion controls alone were enough to be turned away, The only good part was the expanded roster of pokemon in Viridian Forest for it. Getting a lot of options as possible from the start tends to make for the best starts.

The main game didn't even use that expanded roster the demo had.
 
Sparks

Sparks

Senior Games Artist
Verified
Dec 10, 2018
2,879
Los Angeles
For some reason I'm playing Disneyland Adventure on Xbone (the one that released without Kinect Support), I have no idea why. It's not the best.
 
Cheesy

Cheesy

Member
Oct 30, 2017
2,267
Just cause 4. Made the mistake of pre ordering on PC. Can't play for more than a few minutes without experiencing a crash to desktop.
 
DSP

DSP

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,120
you can smell really bad games from a mile, so it's hard for that to happen unless you want it to.

From the games I played this year, NNK2 was the weakest game but it's still a decently made product.

I guess I "played" The Quiet Man by watching giantbomb, that's easily the worst notable game this year. It's really really bad.
 
Kurdel

Kurdel

Member
Nov 7, 2017
12,157
Don't think I played anything bad this year.

edit: oh shit forgot, Far Cry 5.

That game was dissapointing garbage
 
Azriell

Azriell

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,109
Fallout 76. My friends bought it and we've been playing it sometimes as 4p, sometimes 2p, and sometimes solo. I've put like 80 hours into it. It's easily the worst the game I've played all year, but I'm sort of hooked on it. It's an awful, buggy game, but I'm still having fun. Sort of.
 
Memento

Memento

Banned
Oct 26, 2017
8,129
Not even on page 2 yet and we already got God of War, Spiderman, Celeste, Monster Hunter World and Far Cry 5...
 

Deleted member 49319

Account closed at user request
Banned
Nov 4, 2018
3,672
LITTLE ADVENTURE ON THE PRAIRIE

I played it just for an easy platinum, and I totally regretted to waste that 30 minutes.
 
Mesoian

Mesoian

▲ Legend ▲
Member
Oct 28, 2017
26,431
I didn't play a lot of bad games.

Probably Ni No Kuni 2.

Edit: No it was Dandara, which is truly a shame. That game fell apart so quickly...
 
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Derrick01

Derrick01

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
7,289
Ni no kuni 2 hands down. I hate every single thing about that game. How easy it was at launch with no tweaks for difficulty, how stupidly grindy the town system was, how every quest in the game was some basic MMO style quest (seriously Japan sort your shit out with side quests), how bad the world map looked, how terrible the skirmish system was, how painfully bad the story and writing were. What a piece of fucking garbage game.

And I was somewhat looking forward to it too, thinking the first one was flawed but ok enough and they were ditching that terrible pokemon-like battle system for full action so I thought it would turn out better.

Jessie said:
Really? I was wondering about that game, but JC3 was terrible so I was holding out for a sale.

Yikes if it's actually that bad.
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I tried starting it on ps4 pro today and had to stop. The image quality is probably the worst of an "enhanced" game I've seen this gen and also has some of the worst pop in of an open world game this gen. The overall graphical quality reminds me of some games in switch's handheld mode where the art style will change slightly to keep things steady with less power, that's how bad the graphics are lol. The game itself is probably pretty fun but I can't play it on anything other than PC.
 
MaxEverblack

MaxEverblack

Banned
Oct 30, 2017
194
Iowa
It's been a very big year for me with personal things, both good and bad, so I haven't played everything that came out. Out of what I did play, I'd have to say FF Dissidia NT. It's my first in the series and god damn it was awful to play. Dreadfully boring and I'm sad I also bought the collectors guide book.
 

Deleted member 3183

User-requested account closure
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
1,517
I didn't play a lot of games this year - but uh... it's Red Dead Redemption 2. To its credit - the world is so very very detailed and it is a marvel. The gameplay however (and really, that's what matters to me) is not good. The game, I feel, goes out of its way to prevent the user from having a good time. Arguably, that makes the detail and care put into its world even worse. There's so much potential there - and it was squandered.
 
Minilla

Minilla

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
3,514
Tokyo
Worst triple A, I paid for was probably RDR2. Trying to think of some of PS plus that was bad? Black OPs 3 Campaign was really poor
 
Count of Monte Sawed-Off

Count of Monte Sawed-Off

Member
Oct 27, 2017
4,766
Of the games released this year that I played Fallout 76 was the worst one I played. Octopath Traveler was also pretty bad, but I can at least respect what they were going for, 76 is just shit.
 
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