SHELLSHOCK 2: BLOOD TRAILS

Shellshock 2: Blood Trails is maybe not completely without its redeeming qualities, such as its genuinely creepy atmosphere, but it is, at the same time, also a classic case of a game that is as unfun to play as it is conceptually interesting. Broken shooting mechanics and AI, terrible level design, frustrating controls, you name it- the game was riddled with issues that made it an absolute nightmare to play.

DUKE NUKEM FOREVER

Few games deserve a spot on such lists as much as Duke Nukem Forever do. After spending an interminably long time in development hell and changing developers more times than anyone could keep track of, the long-in-development FPS was brought to market by Gearbox, and it. Was. Awful. As broken and bland in its design as it was dated and abrasive with its writing, with a host of technical issues to boot, Duke Nukem Forever was an unmitigated disaster.

XIII (2020)

The original XIII, back when it first came out, may not have been special by any means, but it certainly didn’t deserve a remake as horrific as the one it got in 2020, which may truly be one of the worst games ever made. 2020’s XIII may have had some cool visual flourishes, but from a mess of technical issues to braindead enemy AI to painfully dull shooting to so, so much more, it was an atrocious time. A major overhaul in 2022 did sand out many of its rough edges, but it’s still a tough game to recommend.

MEDAL OF HONOR: UNDERGROUND (GBA)

We understand that Medal of Honor: Underground came at a time when it was common to see completely different versions of the same game for different platforms- but why the hell would you try to develop an actual first-person shooter for the Game Boy Advance? Unsurprisingly, it did not go well. Medal of Honor: Underground looked awful and was frustratingly limited in the gameplay department in ways that an FPS just cannot afford. Other than as a curious novelty (that stinks like week-old socks), there is no reason for this version of this game to exist.

ALIENS: COLONIAL MARINES

Everything about this game was an absolute dumpster fire. Gearbox and Sega made huge promises in the lead-up to Aliens: Colonial Marines’ launch, but the game itself fell spectacularly short in so many ways. Game-breaking AI issues, crippling technical problems (including a huge visual downgrade), and more combined in an experience that failed to satisfy in any real way. Hell, so bad was Colonial Marines that Sega and Gearbox literally got dragged into court over claims of false advertisement.

ROBOCOP (2003)

Coming after an unusually long development cycle of four years (for the time, at least), Titus Interactive’s RoboCop arrived in 2003 on the back of the promise of an authentic FPS based on the beloved sci-fi property, and roundly failed to deliver on that promise even the teensiest bit. Terrible licensed games were far from a rarity in those days, and given how repetitive, generic, and painfully dull it was, it was no surprise to see RoboCop join that list.

REDFALL

Until not too long ago, it would have been impossible to imagine that the studio behind the original Dishonored and 2017’s Prey would end up delivering one o the worst shooters ever made, but the sad and indisputable fact is that Redfall is that bad. Broken, buggy, and uninspired, it exhibits none of the ingenious design that Arkane is typically known for, all in favour of a co-op looter shooter structure that it also doesn’t do any sort of justice to. On top of ending support for Redfall and cancelling its DLC plans, parent company Microsoft also went on to entirely shutter Arkane Austin, which shall always be this game’s unfortunate and tragic legacy.

BATTLE: LOS ANGELES

Coming back to poorly received licensed games, here’s one that you may not even remember ever existed- which would be a blessing in disguise, because boy is this an awful game. Battle: Los Angeles launched in 2011 and was just as bland and forgettable as the movie it was based on. A shockingly short campaign that lasted under an hour and painfully dull level design and gunplay were just a few of its many glaring issues.

THE WALKING DEAD: SURVIVAL INSTINCT

The Walking Dead as an IP has had its ups and downs in gaming. Survival Instinct definitely falls in the latter category, and may even be so bad that it’s its flag-bearer. Focusing on the Dixon brothers, The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct made thin promises of being a genuinely well-made game, before being roundly criticized by one and all upon launch for being a disappointingly shallow and broken experience, to the point of being downright unplayable.

GOLDENEYE: ROGUE AGENT

Rogue Agent was literally announced with the working title GoldenEye 2 back in the day, but the actual game couldn’t have fallen further from those implied heights. Though it hid some fleeting moments of fun in its innards, there was by and large just too much else that dragged the game down, including uninspired levels, lackluster gunplay, and a nonsensical story that was almost hostile in its disrespect for James Bond canon.

007 LEGENDS

We’ll stick with the man with the license to kill a tad longer, because we can’t really talk about bad Bond games and not mention 007 Legends, which may even be one of the worst games ever made, period. Conceptually, its promise of combining all eras of the Bond movies in a single, anthological experience was an intriguing one, but the game seemed much more interested in instead being a poorly made Call of Duty clone that did not even have the shooting mechanics to back up those ambitions.

TERMINATOR 3: WAR OF THE MACHINES

Also often known as the poor man’s Battlefield 1942, Terminator 3: War of the Machines is a rare example of a game where it’s genuinely hard to come up with legitimate redeeming qualities. In almost every way that mattered, this was a game that came up short in significant ways. It was ugly to look at, its awful level design made it a chore to play, it was riddled with technical issues, its multiplayer was downright broken- and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

FAR CRY VENGEANCE

The Far Cry series has generally maintained an admirable level of quality with its mainline entries over the years, but its spinoff offerings have stumbled in more worse ways. Exhibit A: Far Cry Vengeance, an absolute mess of a remake of a game that wasn’t that great to begin with. Vengeance checked almost none of the boxes that you want a Far Cry game to check, instead coming across as an underwhelming cashgrab with mindlessly repetitive offerings and downright ugly visuals.

ROGUE WARRIOR

How this game was allowed to release in any form, much less as a full-priced $60 release back in the day, will forever remain one of gaming’s greatest mysteries. Releasing in an era that was oversatursated with shooters, Rogue Warrior offered absolutely nothing of value. Rather than focusing on fun shooting and stealth and solid design, the game instead relied on horrible writing and dull mechanics, all delivered in a shockingly short campaign and broken multiplayer modes.

HAZE

Haze was one of several games to be billed as a supposed Halo killer in the lead-up to its release back in the day, and like every single one of them, it did not live up to that billing. On the contrary, in fact, it has rightly gone down as one of the worst games of its era. Though Haze could show fleeting flashes of quality from time to time, it was ultimately far too much of a mess across both its campaign and multiplayer modes to be remembered as anything more than than massive disappointment it was.

Big Rigs: Over The Road Racing

2003’s Big Rigs: Over The Road Racing is regarded as one of the worst games in the history of the medium, with good reason. The Stellar Stone developed title involves players making their way through the US in an effort to get cargo goods delivered within time. In actuality, however, playing it is an exercise in pain as you try to wrestle with the game’s multitude of bugs and other technical inefficiencies that will make you want to throw your controller in the air.

Lair (2007)

The PlayStation 3’s Six-Axis controller might not have been the most ergonomic when compared to its competitor the Xbox 360 controller, but it was certainly ambitious – sporting a fully-featured motion control setup. Factor 5’s dragon warfare game Lair was made to utilize the motion control functionality, and a big-budget and marketing coalesced to form huge hype and of course, expectations for the game. After a year-long delay, Lair would finally release in 2007 – to middling critical reception. Reviews at the time criticized the game’s motion controls as being cumbersome and unintuitive among a number of things, and the game quickly became one of the biggest disappointments of the year.

RIDE TO HELL: RETRIBUTION

Ride to Hell: Retribution has received no small amount of criticism (to put it mildly), and yet it still doesn’t feel enough. Some games are simply offensively bad, and this is one such game. From crappy writing to repetitive gameplay, from terrible AI to a litany of bugs, ugly visuals to awkward controls, Ride to Hell: Retribution was a game that had critical problems in almost every single area.

Days Gone

While the Freaker Hordes tend to be powerful threats, many of the Bandits in Days Gone are just dumb. It’s extremely easy to sneak up and kill them within a few feet of their allies without causing a stir. You can murder heaps of enemies from a bush simply because the others fail to react when one goes down. To think that these stray humans managed to survive when the Freakers are clearly smarter.

Haze

Haze should have had it all. It was developed by the team behind TimeSplitters, backed by a large publisher in Ubisoft and one of the key exclusives for the PlayStation 3. Lo and behold, this epic single-player shooter was simply a mess of glitches, bland visuals, terrible writing, boring gameplay, dumb AI, and so on. It’s a shame too because the premise was genuinely interesting.

No Man’s Sky

Hello Games’ No Man’s Sky was a complicated case. With its initial reveal, the developer unveiled large alien creatures and a fairly dense planet teeming with wildlife. Enormous fleets and epic space battles were teased in screenshots leading up to launch. In comparison, the final game felt kind of empty. Those massive animals and epic space battles were almost no where to be seen. Procedural generation could be blamed for some of that and No Man’s Sky did have some pretty stunning vistas. They were just far from what the trailers before it had promised. Fortunately, Hello Games has been heavily supporting the game after launch and given us incredible forests, the potential to build massive bases and vastly improved visuals overall.

Far Cry 4 – Ubisoft Montreal

Why not start with a particular screenshot, featuring co-op gameplay with players in buzzers, that was the focus of a Kotaku article about a professional bullshotter? This Far Cry 4 shot had soft edges on the bullet casings and muzzle flash on guns, an effect which extended to the buzzer’s rotors. That’s only the tip of the iceberg for Ubisoft though so don’t worry.

Duke Nukem Forever

Duke Nukem Forever was in the works since 1996. 3D Realms would infamously throw the “when it’s done” line while hopping from one engine to the next. After a conflict with publisher Take Two Interactive, 3D Realms eventually went bankrupt. The project didn’t die – it’s rights were eventually acquired by Gearbox Software and Duke Nukem Forever released in 2011. Surprise, surprise but it was mostly mediocre. And don’t worry – this isn’t the last time we’ll mention the Borderlands developer.

When it comes to Aliens: Colonial Marines, Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford is either weirdly tone deaf, or simply unable to admit mistakes. In an interview with IGN, Pitchford yet again defended the universally panned 2013 game, saying he had no regrets despite the fact the development personally cost him somewhere in the neighborhood of $15 million.

Though he lost millions of his own investment money in the game, he said that,”I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything.” When talking about the reception of Colonial Marines, Pitchford said that he never expected to please everyone. The rebuttal to that, of course is that the game apparently pleased very few.

There’s little doubt that Pitchford thought at the time that once the game hit the market, he would be vindicated. His company actually went without royalties, in addition to his own investment in the game, because he wanted to finish it so badly.

It’s certainly understandable that the exec might want to believe it was all worth it, but the fact remains that all evidence points to the contrary. “I understand that there are some people that didn’t enjoy it and I’m very sorry about that,” he explained. “That’s the nature of entertainment – some of my favorite bands who’ve made some of the songs I think are the best in the world have other songs on B-sides that I completely don’t care for. It’s going to happen.”

Pitchford said. While that might be true, few album producers are sued for false advertising the way Sega and Gearbox were after the release of Aliens: Colonial Marines.