Let’s get this out of the way – some games just plain sucked this year. It could be due to a confused vision, poor execution or just a desire to cash in on a beloved property without making any proper follow-through. Regardless, here are our nominees for worst game of 2016.
NOMINEES:
Umbrella Corps
It’s games like this that just make you ask: Why? Who thought it would be a good idea to have Counter-Strike meets Resident Evil meets competitive co-op shooter, that too in third person? Why would you throw extensive melee combat mechanics on top of this, especially when they’re more effective than shooting enemies? What the hell is wrong with those crouching animations? Umbrella Corps is one of those games that didn’t start out as a good idea and still somehow got progressively worse.
NASCAR Heat Evolution
The NASCAR range of racing titles has had a history for being immensely terrible but there have been some bright spots. Monster Games’ NASCAR Heat Evolution sadly isn’t one of them, combining a bland single-player campaign with next to no interesting racing or competent online features.
Ghostbusters: The Video Game
Would this game have ever seen the light of day had it not been for the recent Ghostbusters reboot? Probably not and while it’s not unbelievable to see someone exploit the franchise name, surely they could have done better than this. Ghostbusters: The Video Game is linear but stupidly so; boring but also a chore; cheesy but outright lame.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants In Manhattan
You really do expect better from Platinum Games, the minds behind Bayonetta. Every single thing in this beat ’em up just feels trite. And what kind of Turtles game foregoes local co-op in favour of 60 FPS? And then hilariously doesn’t hit 60 FPS? There’s very little redeeming about this game, unless you like banging your head against the same mission types again and again.
Necropolis
Necropolis is one of the most curious failures of 2016. It comes from the studio behind Shadowrun Returns and Shadowrun: Hong Kong and would have mixed co-op with Dark Souls-style combat and rogue-lite dungeoneering. Instead, we got a fairly repetitive set of rooms, some routine hacking and an overtly frustrating game as a whole. The multitudes of bugs didn’t help either.
MXGP 2: The Official Motocross Videogame
Somehow, the MXGP franchise took several steps backwards with this year’s iteration. Considering it wasn’t in all that good a place to begin with, the result is plain for everyone to see. MXGP 2’s bad graphics are just the start of this nightmare as you find yourself dealing with awful controls and physics. The various events and customization options are decent but there’s not much else to enjoy.
WINNER:
Ghostbusters: The Video Game
Wait, you want us to tell you even more reasons to hate this game? Each stage is more or less the same and littered with huge open spaces that look all too familiar, like Groundhog Day (except Bill Murray actually learned something valuable during his time warp). The shooting is unresponsive and unrewarding, there’s little to no point in upgrading and despite running on Unreal Engine 4 – yes, that Unreal Engine 4 – it still looks horrendous. However, the worst crime of them all is that Ghostbusters: The Video Game is a full priced game. Lock this in the containment unit of abysmal games and forget it ever existed for the sake of your own sanity.
Note: GamingBolt’s Game of the Year categories, nominations and awards are selected via an internal nomination, voting and debate process. You can check the rest of categories and the respective winners here.
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