10 Terrible Single Player Games of 2023

If single player games are usually where your preferences lie, 2023 has been a particularly fruitful year, but the good always has to come with the bad, which means there have been a few stinkers that we’ve crossed paths with over the course of the year as well. Here, we’re going to talk about some of the worst single player games we’ve played this year.

THE LORD OF THE RINGS: GOLLUM

The wait for a half-decent Lord of the Rings game continues. Not that Daedalic Entertainment’s Gollum was ever going to blow anyone away, but there were plenty who thought that it would, at the very least, deliver a solid stealth experience, as the developer’s games have been known to do in the past. What we got, however, was anything but. Its incredibly barebones and simplistic mechanics would have been enough by themselves to send the game straight to Mediocre Land, but with its bevy of technical issues, dull mission design, and underbaked systems combined to drive it further into the depths.

ENCHANTED PORTALS

One look at Enchanted Portals is enough to tell you how heavily it draws inspiration from Cuphead, but don’t let the screenshots fool you- this game is far, far, far below the level of quality of Studio MDHR’s modern classic. Though it’s not without its merits – there’s some genuinely good work done in here on the vibrant art style and animations – ultimately, the game is little more than eye candy, because the act of actually playing it is plain torture. It’s poorly designed and challenging in a way that relies not on smartly tuned difficulty, but an amateurish view of what it is that actually makes a hard game feel rewarding. More often than not, it’s an incredibly frustrating experience, and one that you should steer clear from.

DEMOLISH AND BUILD CLASSIC

Does working as a construction and demolition contractor sound exciting to you? No? Well, games have a way of taking the most mundane things and turning them into weirdly enjoyable activities – like power washing everything in sight, for instance – and Demolish and Build Classic… well, it doesn’t do that. No, it might actually be one of the most boring and shockingly dull games we’ve played in quite some time. The controls are rigid and unresponsive, which means not a single action in the game feels satisfying to do, while on top of that, you also get bland objectives, rigid progression, and visuals that can only be described as ugly. It’s not often that we run into a game with almost no redeeming qualities, but sadly, this is one of them.

BATMAN: ARKHAM KNIGHT (SWITCH)

It’s an absolute shame that this keeps happening to Batman: Arkham Knight– a legitimately great game that is consistently let down by crippling technical deficiencies, something that happened to its PC port way back in 2015, and has happened once again this year with the game’s jump to the Nintendo Switch. Heading into this port would have been the wise course of action regardless, given the fact that this is still one of the best-looking games of all time that’s now trying to run on the considerably weaker hardware of the Switch, but on Nintendo’s platform, Arkham Knight fails to match even those low expectations, to the point where, quite often, it’s downright unplayable.

SKULL ISLAND: RISE OF KONG

Let’s be fair here- no one really expected Skull Island: Rise of Kong to be anything more than forgettable and mediocre, regardless of the IP name that it carries. But there were some who at least expected mediocrity, right? That the game manages to fall as far below even those expectations should tell you all you need to know about just what a disaster it turned out to be. From combat to platforming to level design to visuals to even the camera, absolutely nothing about this game worked on even the most basic level. Publisher GameMill Entertainment isn’t exactly known for its mark of quality, but this is really pushing the limits of what can be acceptably released as a game being sold for money.

THE CROWN OF WU

An action-adventure game inspired by Journey to the West isn’t exactly a novel concept, but it is, if nothing else, one that usually leads to experiences that are at least passably enjoyable. The Crown of Wu defies those expectations though, because though it surely has some neat ideas that sound interesting on paper, ultimately, it fails to nail even the fundamentals. Combat and platforming are both dragged down by severe issues, from sluggish movement to objectively bad level design to just a glut of glitches that hamper the experience even the few times it does come close to working as intended. In the end, there’s very little here that’s worth your time.

ACROSS THE VALLEY

If you ever wanted a farm sim in VR, look no further- actually, scratch that. Definitely do look further, because Across the Valley is not worth your time and money. There’s some enjoyment to be had from its zen vibe and its hand-drawn aesthetic, but it quickly wears off because it doesn’t take long for the game to show you just how shallow and repetitive it is. Not only does it quickly get boring though, Across the Valley can be tough to play even if you are buying into its threadbare central loop, thanks to technical issues, control issues, gameplay bugs, and more.

CALL OF DUTY: MODERN WARFARE 3 – SINGLE PLAYER CAMPAIGN

You never quite know what you’re going to get from a single player Call of Duty campaign, from the excellence of the likes of Infinite Warfare and Black Ops Cold War to the mediocrity of others like Ghosts and Vanguard, or even the nonexistence of Black Ops 4’s single player component. Never before, however, has the series sunk to such depths as Modern Warfare 3. That Activision was trying to pass off a glorified expansion as a full-priced $70 game was pretty clear even before it was out, but somehow Modern Warfare 3’s campaign turned out to be even worse than many of us could have imagined. Short, derivative, creatively bankrupt, and worst of all, just plain boring- these are some of its biggest – but far from its only – issues.

FLASHBACK 2

The original Flashback may not be a household name, but it was, nonetheless, a game that resonated with plenty of people back in the day. If, however, you were hoping that Microids would be able to follow-up on the 1992 game with at least a respectable sequel, Flashback 2 is going to be a bitter disappointment. Barring the game’s occasionally solid visual aesthetic, there’s very little here that deserves any real pace. From the frustrating movement to the horrible aiming controls that turn combat into nothing short of a trashfire, from the laughably bad writing to the hilariously terrible AI, there’s no shortage of things in Flashback 2 that contribute to it being one of the worst gaming experiences of 2023.

THE WALKING DEAD DESTINIES

GameMill Entertainment tortured us with not one, but two spectacularly terrible cashgrabs based on popular IP in 2023. In fact, The Walking Dead: Destinies can easily stand toe-to-toe with the atrocity that is the previously mentioned Skull Island: Rise of Kong. On paper, it had an intriguing core premise, where players would be able to play through some of the show’s most pivotal moments while being able to change how they play out through their actions. This isn’t a game played on paper though, because that idea is executed in the worst, most underwhelming, and leas effective manner possible. Add to that a cavalcade of technical and graphical issues, mind-numbingly boring combat and stealth mechanics, and whatever passes for storytelling in this game, and you get one of the worst games we’ve played in ages.

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